I will begin with an account of an experience I had that defies the wisdom of such adversarial conventional designations as “Orient” and “Occident”, “East” and “West”, “Europe and Asia”.

Some years ago, I attended a prestigious conference at the India International Center in New Delhi, dealing with India's relationships with the Middle East, under the direction and chairmanship of the high politician, parliamentarian and scholar Dr. Singh. The Indian colleagues at the conference worked hard at pushing a certain agenda. They wanted to abolish the whole concept of the “Middle East” with all its attendant baggage, implications and applications on account of its colonialist origins, Orientalistic overtones and glaring Eurocentric reference point.

But, then, to my dismay and shock they proposed instead the concept of “West Asia” as the “proper” and appropriate designatian of my part of the world, the Arab Middle East, on account of its supposedly greater authenticity, accuracy, adequacy and superiority in comparison with the more conventional “Middle East”.

More specifically, they contended that the concept of “West Asia” restores what is commonly known as the “Middle East” to its “Asian anchor” (as they called it), and second that it transcends the Eurocentric classification of lands, cultures, and peoples in terms of their distance from Europe itself as in Near East, Far East and Middle East.

I immediately shot back arguing: If I have to make a choice, by way of self-description and/or self-identification, between your natural vision of us as West Asia and Europe's natural vision of us as Middle East, I will not hesitate a moment in opting for the second designation i.e., the “Middle East” and for excellent reasons at that. I explained to the conference: First, that out of these two inherently biased and tendentious ways of looking at and naming us, the “Middle East” has the advantages of wide currency, long standing usage and the prestige of emanating from and referring to the original center of the modern world namely, Europe. Second, that “West Asia” jarringly violates the fundamental way in which we see ourselves as “Middle Eastern” Arabs by cutting us off from Egypt – which is in Africa. In contrast, no Orientalist view, no Eurocentric definition, no colonial conception of the “Middle East” has ever separated Egypt from the rest of the Arab Mashreq i.e., from the eastern wing of the Arab world, as we often refer to ourselves as well.