A fascinating way to try to improve one’s own understanding of the Middle East is to try to explain the region to people from a totally different culture and history. I’ve done this in several far-flung places around the world but Thailand provides a particularly interesting example of the particularity and--in global terms--bizarre nature of the Middle East.

Of course, many people in Asia have the fewest preconceptions about the region because Hindus and Buddhists do not have the links to the Holy Land or what might even be called the Holy Region, a factor which so affects Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinking.