Is it the Middle East or West Asia? The Arab world or the Muslim one? Or is the “region” better distinguished by oil-producing states versus non-oil, monarchies versus republics? Determining a regional definition can be a difficult if not impossible task, given that the area in question traces its origins directly to British imperial geopolitics. The geographer Karen Culcasi has called for entirely abandoning the term, arguing that the Middle East lacks a continental base, unlike East Asia or Western Europe. But establishing an alternative is not straightforward. Alternatives like the Arab world or homeland impose a categorisation over non-Arab geographical imaginations. Many in the so-called Arab world hold firmly to non-Arab identities (e.g., territories such as the Amazigh). What it means to be an Arab is no less complex or contested than being Middle Eastern or Muslim; like the Middle East, the Arab and Islamic world are geographical ideas entangled with power.