An expert on the traditions and history of the Middle East visited UNM Monday to lecture about the current crisis facing the region and the shifting role that the United States is playing in its fate.
R. Stephen Humphreys, professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, explained to a large crowd inside Dane Smith Hall that a book he wrote in 1998, Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age, meant to detail the current events of the region, would need an overhaul to be correct after Sept. 11, 2001.
“Like any book on current affairs, it represented the cosmetic events of the times,” Humphreys said. “It was written in a time of relative peace and hope for the Middle East. No one could have anticipated the several changes that loomed on the horizon.”
Humphreys said he would like to research many components of the book further, including the collapse of the Israel and Palestine peace process, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, which led to fundamental changes in the way the U.S. administration views the outside world and the still uncertain Iraq crisis.
“This book is important because it is a study of the frustration that exists within the region,” Humphreys said. “Middle Easterners are caught between a past that cannot be redeemed and a future that always seems just out of reach.”
He said that the book, which is just one of five books he has written about the Middle East, goes beyond common stereotypes regarding Muslims and attempts to rationalize their actions and the events that are unfolding in the region.
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These people must face the prosperity that once existed in their countries, which serves to remind them of just how far they have fallen, Humphreys said.
He added that the countries that comprise the Middle East are suffering from an inability to persuade the world arena to shift its actions in ways beneficial to them and have failed to develop any high-value exports to supplement their already struggling economies.
Humphreys named four dimensions in his book that would need to be updated, including the global role of the United States since Sept. 11, which he said is much bigger now.
“The U.S. has always been a super power militarily, but was tentative about using its extraordinary war capacities without support from the U.N. or a strong coalition backing,” Humphreys said. “The current administration has been forced to change its views, and must be prepared to strike with or without the support of the international community to protect its interests.”
He added that corruption and international weakness resulting from the struggle to find solutions to crises of economic stagnation and political gridlock in recent decades that resulted in many of the countries’ citizens turning to Islam is another epidemic that has proved detrimental to the region.
“When I wrote the book the notion of trans-national terrorism in the name of Islam was just a myth,” Humphreys said. “Now it is commonplace. It is proving disastrous for the region as far as its relations on an international scale, and has forced much of the world to view Muslim countries as enemies.”
The lecture was sponsored by the UNM Asian Studies Department.
