A Study On Islam And Dual Identity In International Relations Of Middle East In The Post-Cold War Era

Religious and ethnic conflicts have long been regarded as the main cause for the perennial instability in the Middle East. However, during the Cold War era, cultural and religious factors had been largely kept at bay by the political reality under the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Secularism and national identity established its dominance against religious and cultural identities. Since the end of the Cold War and especially after September 11th, a far-reaching resurgence of religious movements has recently taken place in the contemporary world. The most visible manifestations of this resurgence are the emergence and rapid development of various trends of Islamism in the Middle East. Stimulated by the interactions between external and internal factors, the regional dynamics become to change in the Middle East with the increasing presence of religious and cultural factors in constructing the international relations of this volatile region.The international system today is a system of nation states. However, with the decline of sovereignty after the end of the Cold War, students of IR have paid increasing attention to the duality of international society: the parallel progress of integration and fragmentation. On the one hand, the nation state keeps declining, although reluctantly; and on the other hand, other groups that base their political loyalty on religious and cultural identities are rising, leading to the shift of balance between the state and the society. This trend is especially true for the Middle East. More and more Muslims are turning to Islam for political identification.The Middle East today has undergone profound and dramatic transformations. Triggered by external factors, the Middle East is evolving into a new direction with regard to its internal dynamics. A structure of dual identity has emerged in the Middle East, in which national identity competes with Islamic identity. The interaction between the two has produced a complicated and dialectic relationship that will shape the politics in the Middle East and determine its future development.