Would you consider Pakistan to be a South Asian or a Middle Eastern country?

[phk]

Would you consider Pakistan to be a South Asian or a Middle Eastern country?

[Joe Republic]

Its adjacency to the Middle East and the prevalence of Islam doesn't affect its geographical location in South Asia.

[phk]

South Asia and Middle East are being used as 'cultural' terms.

[Joe Republic]

In which case, I would still consider it to be a hybrid.  It may be Muslim, but it hasn't really had much to do with any recent history of other Middle Eastern countries.  I don't think it has any particular noticeable diplomatic opinion on Israel, and doesn't contribute significantly to the oil trade.  Its quasi-war and relationship with both India and Bangladesh puts it in South Asia as far as I'm concerned.

For the record, I voted South Asia for the reasons given in my earlier post.

[Speed of Sound]

hhmmmmm, good question. Im leaning Middle Eastern

[v0031]

South Asian ! Pakistan  was seperatedfrom India.

[Joe Republic]

South Asian ! Pakistan  was seperatedfrom India.

Yes, they were separated because Pakistan has a closer religious bond with the Middle East.

That's about it though.  The cultural similarity from being joined up with India and Bangladesh as a British Imperial Colony is a far greater influence in my opinion.

[Emsworth]

It seems like a purely arbitrary and artificial distinction.

[they don't love you like i love you]

South Asia. After all it used to be combined with Bangladesh.

Which by the way is the stupidest thing the British ever did when they partioned India. I can't believe how dumb they were to do so. Yes they wanted to create a Muslim and a Hindu country, but when the two Muslim parts are that far apart just make two Muslim countries. That only resulted in a civil war that killed 3 million people. Idiotic, makes about as much sense as combining Spain and Poland because they are both Catholic.

[J. J.]

South Asia, geographically, linguistically and genetically.  I will even add culturally and historically.

[Platypus]

Islamic SOuth Asian.

[Hatman 🍁]

What a sill question. Pakistan is in Southern Asia. End of discussion. A good question would be if you replaced Pakistan with Afghanistan, and then added a third option for Central Asia.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Part of it is somewhat Middle Eastern )sod all people actually live out there but...), most of it is South Asian and a reasonably large part (NWFP et al) is something different again. Central Asian wouldn't be accurate as that refers mostly to the area north of the Hindu Kush IIRC.

[WMS]

and a reasonably large part (NWFP et al) is something different again. Central Asian wouldn't be accurate as that refers mostly to the area north of the Hindu Kush IIRC.

I vote for 'F***ing Insane', myself.

[MasterJedi]

Has both traits but a little more of the Middle Eastern ones.

[minionofmidas]

Certainly not middle eastern. If anything it's got a lot of centralasian influences.
Now, where to place Iran? That's actually more difficult - and the standard Western answer has more to do with the politics of oil than with the country of Iran.

[Erc]

Indo-Turko-Persian-Islamic

[© tweed]

I've always thought of it as a middle eastern country.

[angus]

Would you consider Pakistan to be a South Asian or a Middle Eastern country?

The question is very much like "would you consider phknrocket1k a partisan hack or a troll?" in the sense that they aren't mutually orthogonal groups.  For example, Israel and Jordan are clearly in Asia, but obviously they're at the heart of the middle east.  ("Ash-sharq al-awsat" I think the arabs call it, literally, "The Middle East")  Better example:  the Sinai peninsula is politically part of an African country, geographically part of Asia, and is in fact at the heart of the middle east. 

Sorry, maybe that's unfair, and a little misleading, since the region we call The Middle East is entirely different from the region we call "South Asia" (The latter being the Indian Subcontinent:  India, and two countries which, until the mid-20th century, were part of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; and perhaps you could lump some neighboring lands such as nepal, afghanistan, and burma into "south asia" at a stretch, a long one.)  I don't think any demographers, political scientists, or geographers consider any of the "stans" (persian for "lands") as part of the middle east.  (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan, etc. are the Stans.)  Kurdistan, if and when it comes into independent existence, may well be the first Stan to be part of the middle east, though.  But that would be a bit of an embarassment for the Bush administration, so it may not be allowed to happen.

I agree with Lewis' comment about Iran, since the arabic peoples don't historically call it part of ash-sharq al-awsat, but it doesn't fit neatly into Central Asia or the Indian Subcontinent either.  Here's an idea:  let's just call it Iran and be done with it.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

What, pray tell, does Pakistan have in common with the Middle East except for Islam?  If that is how you define the Middle East, then Indonesia, Niger, and Albania  ae part of the Middle East.  Culturally, Pakistan is a mixture of South Asia and Central Asia.  Of Pakistan's four major ethnic groups, the Pashtun are Central Asian while the Punjab, Sindh, and Baloch are South Asian.