Middle East is not what you think
Not just knowledge, but perceptions too around Middle East are artificially created, biased, mythical, unreal. To escape this bias, I should not even use the term Middle East, since this is a colonial term from a western geographical perspective. The picture below shows what we can understand under this term.
Mashriq would be a better term, even though it excludes some of the countries like Turkey, Iran, Sudan, while Libya is interchangeably used as part of Mashriq and Maghreb.
I won’t even explain what these biased narratives represent and how they were created. To name a few, however, I will mention terrorism, male dominance, backwardness, poverty or religious fanaticism as some of the biased narratives that have been artificially created around the countries in the area. I don’t deny the existence of e.g. male dominance in the region, a.k.a. patriarchy. Yet this and other narratives mentioned above have been the result of foreign, non-local impositions which eventually resulted in so many of the problems the region faces nowadays.
This region has been the birthplace of not only philosophy, sciences agriculture and many other innovations the western world prides itself to be at the forefront today. This region has also been the birthplace of matriarchal societies. And pretty much like elsewhere, matriarchal societies were united around beliefs that stemmed from reverence to Mother Nature.
Civilizations such as Canaan, Ugarit, Ebla, Mitanni that were once located on today’s Levant area, or Hittite and Hurrian civilizations originating in today’s Anatolia or ancient Egyptian civilization, most of these civilizations sprung up around great rivers such as the Nile, Tigris & Euphrates. The presence of these rivers nourished a rich agricultural landscape and provided sustenance to agricultural civilizations which as mentioned already, were initially predominantly matriarchal societies.
People in these civilizations clearly saw the link between their lives and the pattern of birth, maturity, death and re-birth that they observed in the plants and animals around them. And therefore their beliefs centered around respecting what Nature and Mother Earth would give them. This was also reflected in legends and mythologies of these civilizations.
And yet foreign invasions at about 2400 B.C. or earlier by aggressive tribes worshipping a supreme male god began to invade these matriarchal communities. New myths developed in which the feminine (goddess, her representatives on Earth) was made evil or inferior to male-patriarchal god of the invaders. Goddesses were dethroned from their traditional role of creator, women were subordinated and the importance of relations with the life sustaining Nature and Earth was diminished and replaced with the rhetoric of heroes taming the nature and the women.
Who were these aggressive tribes?
According to some researchers, such as Joseph Campbell, the reason for this invasion was the changing climate in northern Africa, where it was turning hotter and land — barren. And so people started moving further to north-east, wհere today’s Lebanon, Palestine and other Mashriq countries are. The changing climate had left these people with less food and therefore fewer reasons to be thankful to nature and goddesses. They had created their tribal god who guided them on their way towards conquering new fertile lands. Subsequently, after invading new locations, they imposed their own god, legends & beliefs.
But these transformations didn’t remain confined within the borders of Mashriq. These new patriarchal religions (known as Abrahamic) spread to many parts of the world ever since then, turning the world (or big part of it) into patriarchal chaos exploiting nature, women, etc.
As if losing the connection with its origins wasn’t enough, Mashriq continued getting hard blows and going through number of religious, economic wars, that continue to this day (consider the alarming situation in Lebanon, Syria, hunger in Yemen, non-recovering Iraq, faltering Turkey, etc.)
A psychologist might explain this chaotic situation by the unreconciled identity of the “middle east” with its matriarchal past and patriarchal present.
However, external triggers may have played a bigger role in retaining the chaos in the region. Patriarchal west kept attacking this region for centuries with its religious or economic wars, which have radicalized the region even further and have thus given no opportunity for reassessing its past and rehabilitating for its better future. (In psychology these foreign attacks by the patriarchal west on “middle east” could be compared with a boy attacking his mother or the feminine in general for his failed life journey? That’s until the boy is reconciled with the feminine inside him).
Mashriq’s renaissance could mean world’s renaissance
Mashriq and neighboring countries need to recall their origins and reconcile with it. Layers of dust and amnesia have covered these origins and a huge effort is necessary to uncover what has been disguised or altered. In fact a lot more regarding the origins of this region was not merely disguised, but actually modified into ideologies fitting patriarchy. But this region, its people should revisit their roots and by doing so, shape their own narratives that will be free from influence of patriarchy, the west or any other part of the world. Mashriq countries have given a lot of spiritual and material innovations to the world. Once this region reclaims its origins, who knows, maybe then they will again have something to give to the world, this time — narratives, myths, beliefs, ideologies devoid of patriarchy and oppression?
To read more on original beliefs: https://professional-ethics-articles.blogspot.com/2016/03/goddesses-of-middle-east.html
