Essay

By Daian and Yusuf

Why is the Middle East influential?

Our topic is about the Middle East and why it is influential. Our four sub-questions explore how oil and religion plays a big part in the Middle East’s power. ISIS manipulates religion as their main source of power.

One of our sub-questions is ‘How does Isis manipulate religion in their favour?’. It is common knowledge that they follow an extreme version of Islam, which they may use to control naive Muslims. This is a problem because they can bomb countries and wait for them to fight back. Then when there are Syrian casualties, they will use them to their advantage and gather them for revenge on the warring countries. A factor of ISIS’ power is how they attack countries, which have people from all sorts of different religions. This stirs up racist minds to attack innocent Muslims, which gives an unjust reason for extremists to fight back in the form of ISIS.

Islam plays a large role in the influence of the Middle East. For example, one prominent Middle Eastern country, Saudi Arabia, holds the two holiest cities in Islam, Makkah and Medina. The rest of the Middle East also holds a certain connection to Islam as all of the countries in the Middle East and most in North Africa were once part of the Islamic Caliphates. However, Saudi Arabia plays the largest role, not only to the rest of the Middle East but to most of the world considering how sparse the Islamic populations are. For example, Muslims from Europe, to name one continent, flock to Saudi Arabia annually for Hajj. This means that Saudi Arabia has large influence over a lot of Muslims. Furthermore, the King of Saudi Arabia, King Salman of the House of Saud holds the title Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques which suggests that the Royal Family and the King holds the power to repair and expand the Two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Medina. This is related to Saudi Arabia’s influence because the Royal Family is directly connected to politics as Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. This links back to the sub-question of how Islam plays a big part in the influence of the Middle East because as Saudi Arabia holds the two holiest cities in Islam, they wield a lot of influence over a lot of Muslims so this is how the Middle East is influential explained by our sub-question.

Oil has always had an important part in our industrialised world and the Middle East is like a bountiful bowl of fruit when it comes to the amount of oil it has. Oil is, however, heavily contested so some wars have erupted concerning oil which has come to be known as ‘oil wars.’ This leads onto another one of our sub-questions, ‘How may oil be used as a reason for war?’ Oil has damaging as well as empowering elements, for example, an oil rig can be bombed which would severely damage a country’s economy and the oil can also be used to improve an economy. One example of this is the Gulf Wars, where the US bombed oil rigs in order to weaken Iraq. However, this oil spill also severely damaged the climate. Also, another prominent example of an oil war is the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. One side-goal of the Iraq’s was to capture Iranian oil fields for their own benefit. These wars shows how valuable oil is and what a position the Middle East is in. However, this shows that if an oil-rich, Middle Eastern country were to lose stability it’s likely that a Western Power would intervene and take the oil. However, the Middle East has been and will most likely continue to pursue diplomatic relations as an alternative to war to spread their oil. This all links back to our sub-question of how oil may be used for war and how Middle Eastern countries use diplomacy in order to avoid it.

Another point on oil, oil has increased the influence of the Middle East, which brings us into our sub-question, “How has oil increased the influence of the Middle East?” Countries which have vast quantities of oil, especially in the Middle East. One prominent example of the power and influence that the Middle East’s oil contains is the severe consequences of what happens when one of these countries boycott another country of oil. The example we were talking about is when Saudi Arabia boycotted all countries supporting Israel in a war. A barrel which cost $50 rose to be around $560 per barrel. This shows the shear influence and power of countries in the Middle East who have large quantities of oil within their belt. In the future, the Middle East might be able to manipulate other nations on the basis of oil. For example, in the current Saudi-Houthi conflict the Saudi’s can easily buy more arms to use against the Houthi’s in Yemen by selling more oil. Also, countries with human rights abuses could make nations overlook them by selling oil, like what Saudi Arabia is doing. This is how The Middle East is able to use oil in order to levy influence and power.

In conclusion, linking back to our main question, “Why is the Middle East influential?” our sub-questions have answered this sufficiently. To herald back to one of our sub-questions, “How does the Middle East use Islam to maintain power,” we proved that the Middle East wields huge amounts of influence on over a billion Muslims because Saudi Arabia holds the two Holiest Cities in Islam; Makkah and Medina. Summarising our main question, the Middle East uses oil, religion and controversially terrorist groups in order to maintain power in the region and world wide. The Middle East greatly benefits our economies as well as having our economies to the neck as one decision to boycott the West would result in definite financial collapse. This means that the Middle East not only has huge influence in the Middle East but also around the world. This is why the Middle East is influential and how they are able to maintain their power.