Multiculturalism in the Middle East: An Overview

Middle East societies have significant complexity in terms of ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity. These complications are considered to be important factors in the formation of political and social crises and the delay or difficulty of the state-building and nation-building processes in these countries. Various researches have been conducted from the perspective of political science and political sociology about the issue of ethnic groups in the Middle East, and specifically countries with a mixed ethnic composition, and solutions to solve these issues have been proposed by researchers, experts and strategists. One of these analyzes and solutions that has received more attention in the last two decades is the proposal of a multicultural model for the Middle East. This liberal model seeks to give formality to ethnicities and identify them in the framework of identity, culture, language, and climate different from other ethnicities and make the distinction between them the basis of policy making. In this article, I am trying to show that this model is not suitable for Middle Eastern societies and not only does not solve the issue of ethnicity, but for various reasons it helps to divide and deepen crises. Therefore, the application of such a model may endanger the security of these countries and seriously delay the nation-building process.