yeah and it’s pretty culturally distinct, they just want to lump muslim countries together. it’s as “middle eastern” as pakistan, turkmenistan, or uzbekistan. it’s like saying austria is a balkan country

most yanks seem to think afghans and iranians are arab, too

After 9/11 the Bush admin coined “Greater Middle East” which was literally just every majority Muslim country more or less contiguous to the Middle East. Anything from Mauritania to Somalia to Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan. The former-most having a latitude west of Europe and the latter-most having a latitude going into India and China, being lumped with a geographic region that just means “near the east”