Who are Middle Easterners? What is the Middle East? Who are we? Why do we exist? These are the type of questions explored by those who identify as Middle Eastern and others who define them as such. The answers to these questions vary depending on who is exploring and who is exploiting them. Group identities are often compounded by individual and societal definitions that are shaped through historical events, political dynamics, and cultural factors. Nevertheless, depictions of the Middle East and its people, either self-defined or constructed globally, often generate a story that develops and reinforces identities and behaviors present in the region. Titles such as The New Middle East and The Young and the Restless have been recently blasted on magazine covers and news broadcasts to characterize the events of the Arab Spring and define the demographics within. Could it be that these somewhat true characterizations of the region have guided and reinforced identities and behaviors within? The term “Self-fulfilling prophesy” is used to explain behaviors governed by predictions of the mind and the underlying energy that drives the outcome of human beliefs. Similarly, behavioral confirmation refers to the process of which people’s perceptions and definitions of others are transformed to behaviors by those being perceived. This paper will explore these phenomena and reference social behavioral theories to demonstrate how constructed identities of the Middle East and its people have molded existing behaviors, experiences and self-expressions. The author will explore how regional analyses and narratives as described throughout various media outlets have been internalized and used to rationalize manifested behaviors within the region. Trends and patterns of behaviors as associated with these characterizations will be illustrated and discussed.

The interplay of narratives and identities between the West and the Middle East results in a reciprocal, but imbalanced, exchange of ideas, tropes, and concepts that present a number of evolving opportunities and challenges for policymakers. Political, economic, and community leaders must negotiate a set of difficult questions: Are we truly witnessing a historic political change in the Middle East on the scale characterized by global media? Are historical undercurrents simply continuing to drive events under new packaging? What is change, what is hype, and what can be used to shape meaningful policy? Complicating the answers to these questions, external impact on the construction of Middle Eastern identities varies based on the external actor, the internal dynamics of the Middle East (based on nation, ethnicity and region), and the impact of scattered diasporas. U.S. and multinational policymakers have seen cascading second- and third- order effects of their descriptions of the Middle East and Middle East policies. George W. Bush, for example, did immeasurable and unintentional harm to U.S. Middle East policies in 2001 by couching the Global War on Terror as a "Crusade," exhuming centuries-old divisions between the Christian and Muslim worlds and seemingly confirming the rhetoric of Islamic extremists. Messages intended for U.S. domestic audiences cannot be crafted for domestic consumption alone, thanks to the unending reach of global media. The author examines how political, economic and community leaders can help answer questions of rhetoric and substance related to external identity constructs and narratives adopted by groups in the Middle East. Additionally he will explore how U.S. leaders can recognize the unintended consequences of their own narratives and harness the opportunities to utilize those narratives to shape favorable conditions to U.S. policies.

The most recent uprisings in North Africa have shed a light on the intersection of gender and identity during a time of change. Many women joined their fellow revolutionary men in their demands for greater freedoms, dignity and an end of oppressive practices. Meanwhile, others called for gender equality, especially as the euphoria of the uprisings began to fade and women feared political marginalization and the strong emergence of Islamist ideology among a segment of those who sought change. While some women were visible in the streets, others found their voices online, where there were hardly any restrictions. The success of the revolts is too early to determine, unrest is ongoing and constitutions are being rewritten. Women are especially worried and have continued their protest. They do not believe their governments have adequately responded to their demands or addressed women’s issues. In this paper, I examine and seek to unpack North African women's identities through a gendered lens during a critical time of change the region. This case study focuses on the period of uprisings between 2010 and 2012 when women actively participated in public spaces (on the streets and online); which was testament to their agency and empowerment despite their marginalization as women and citizens of the state. During the 6877th Meeting of the UN Security Council on November 30, 2012, Under-Secretary-General Michelle Bachelet, the Head of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of women (UN-Women) stated that “Whenever there is conflict, women must be part of the solution.” In order to learn how women can be part of the solution to the Arab uprisings, I seek to learn, in their own spaces about their marginalized discourses and complex identities.

In the Western political science literature of the late 20th and early 21st century, the Middle East has often been described, not only as authoritarian, but also as impervious to democracy. Institutional, structural, and cultural explanations were advanced to explain this democracy deficit. Among the most notorious of the cultural explanations is Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory. Two American scholars, Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, have built on Huntington’s theory to argue that the permissive sexual mores and gender equality seen as indicative of the contemporary West have not taken root in Islamic societies. This piece debunks the notion that democratization in the Middle East is limited by entrenched Muslim and/or Islamist views on social and sexual mores, and on women’s political and social rights. Indeed, the events of the so-called Arab Spring have shown that the desire for democracy is the reason for the overthrow of several regimes in the Arab world. These popular led regime changes were triggered by a desire for political and social reform. The main actors behind the Arab Spring have been Arab youths and women, with women actively participating in anti-regime demonstrations and sometimes paying the price for that participation with their bodies. The presentation will show four trends (the discourse of male religious scholars, changes in the law proposed by grassroots secular activists, and the work of Muslim feminists and Islamist female activists) in the transformation of women’s roles in the Middle East that counter the claim that Islamic views on gender equality limit the emergence of democracy. The presentation will also demonstrate a correlation between grassroots activism among secular, Muslim and Islamist women in the past couple of decades, and the events of the Arab spring.