# Which are the Arab countries?



## andersxman

I've just found this

"The Arab countries include Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt."

on an online dictionary, ie this is supposedly one of the meanings that the word "arab" might have. 
But how about Jordan? Libanon? Iran? Are there only 4 arab countries in the world?

My original question in the italian-english language forum was what the near, middle and far east are called in italian. It appears that there is some ambiguity on the issue, and now I find on a dictionary that only the 4 above countries are to be considered Arab. I thought many more countries were "Arab", even if I don't have anything like a good idea as to a number.


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## Kelly B

First, there is an issue with the word include. It does not necessarily mean that the list which follows is complete. I could say "the countries of Europe include France and Germany." This is meant to orient the reader, not to give a _complete _list, and it does not mean I can't find Denmark on a map.

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=82176&highlight=arab+countries This is in the Arabic forum, but much of it is in English.


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## elroy

Agreed. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt are _*some* _of the Arab countries. 

Jordan and Lebanon are others. Iran is not.

Some others _include _Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, UAE (United Arab Emirates), Qatar, Bahrain, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

Palestine (that is the Palestinian Territories) also counts - the Arab League considers it a state.

We also have Djibouti, Somalia, Mauritania, and Comoros. These are countries in which Arabic is an official language and which are members of the Arab League; however, for some reason I don't think of them when I think of "Arab countries" (which doesn't necessarily make them any less legitimate as Arab countries).

Chad is a country that has Arabic as an official language but for some reason is not a member of the Arab League.

More information on the Arab League.


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## andersxman

Iran is not an Arab country? How would that be explained? They speak arabic? Up until now I wouldn't have hesitated a second in saying that Iran is an arab country.


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## ElaineG

Actually, the official language of Iran is Farsi, aka Persian.


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## Fernando

I find the term "Arab" so "useful" as "Latin" or others. Arab can mean:

1) Most of people (in the West) that say "Arab" standing for "Muslim", from N Nigeria to Indonesia.

2) Arab as an ethnicity (maybe). So, it would spread through Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Palestine Ter., Lebanon(?) and Arabic Peninsule.

3) Arab as an Arabic speaker. So, it would include (roughly) the Muslim countries except Turkey and all countries East of Iran (Parsi, Urdu or Javanese are spoken).

Of course in Maghreb bereber and French are spoken for some parts of the population. 

4) Unhabitants of the Arabic Peninsule. The most proper meaning (to me).

5) Unhabitants of Saudi Arabia.


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## cubaMania

andersxman said:
			
		

> Iran is not an Arab country? How would that be explained? They speak arabic? Up until now I wouldn't have hesitated a second in saying that Iran is an arab country.


 
andersxman, here's a quote from a website run by Iranians in North Carolina:


> The oficial language of Iran (Persia) is Persian (locally known as Farsi)
> No, Iranians are not Arabs. Although there is a small Arab population in South Western Iran, the majority of Iranians are of Aryan origin. There are also other minority populations within Iran such as Kurds, Lur, and Baluch.
> Iran literally means " Land of the Aryans "
> Iranians are founders of the first monothiestic religion called *Zoroastrianism*.


However, I can also say that this is a highly politicized subject, and you will find other opinons at other websites. My personal experience is that many Iranians are very sensitive about not wanting to be considered to be Arabs.


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## Outsider

Here's an enlightening discussion.


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## cherine

andersxman said:
			
		

> I've just found this
> "The Arab countries include Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt."
> on an online dictionary, ie this is supposedly one of the meanings that the word "arab" might have.
> But how about Jordan? Libanon? Iran? Are there only 4 arab countries in the world?


My opinion is that the dictionary said "include" not "are" which can be understood as : these are some but not all.
What do you think ?

Also, I agree with the link given by CubaMania : Iran speaks Iranian (Farsi) which is a totally different language from Arabic. So : they don't speak Arabic, they're not ethnically Arabs; hence there's no reason to consider them Arabs. They are Muslims though, but there's a big difference between Arabs and Muslims (this has been said many times in many threads, but allow me to repeat it  ) :
*Muslims* are those whose *religion* is Islam (simple, hein  ) they can speak any language, live anywhere, including America, Europe, Asia, Africa.... They don't necessary speak Arabic, so they can't be called Arabs per se. (examples: the muslims of Iran, Turky, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan)
*Arabs* -for me- are those who *speak* Arabic as a mother tongue. This is the simplest definition. If we think ethnography, then Arabs would only be those living in the Arabic Peninsula (Also known as Gulf countries+Yemen which is not on the Gulf but in the Peninsula) and this would leave out many Arabic speaking countries like all the countries of North Africa, Lebanon, Syria, the African countries where Arabic is a major language like Somalia, Djibouti, Moritania...

This is only my opinion as an Egyptian-Arab-African-Muslim (in whichever order you like, but I'm all these)


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## maxiogee

Surely speaking a mother-tongue is an unsafe way to classify anyone in this age of refugees, migration across huge distances and educational policies in many countries which see only the State language being taught with any degree of diligence?

What would that make a child of Arab parents who is born in Ireland. He or she is going to have no Arabic lessons when they begin school. Will probably know no other children who speak Arabic and by six or seven 
would be an English-speaker with a smattering of Arabic.

I think Arabic as an ethnicity covers any of the Semitic people of the 'Arabian' region, I would probably modify the dictionary definition of 'speaking any of the Semitic languages' to take account of the modern world and stretch it to "born of parents who speak any of the Semitic languages." (Of course the Jewish 'opt-out' clause needs to be retained.)


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## cherine

maxiogee said:
			
		

> Surely speaking a mother-tongue is an unsafe way to classify anyone in this age of refugees, migration across huge distances and educational policies in many countries which see only the State language being taught with any degree of diligence?
> 
> What would that make a child of Arab parents who is born in Ireland. He or she is going to have no Arabic lessons when they begin school. Will probably know no other children who speak Arabic and by six or seven
> would be an English-speaker with a smattering of Arabic.


You do have a point maxiogee, but remember that we're speaking of countries not individuals.
Besides, the refugees take new nationalites and they gradually stop considering themselves as Arabs or any other thing but their new identity (see a thread about many persons-mainly second and third generations of immigrants- who only speak English in America, for example, and almost deny their roots).



			
				  said:
			
		

> I think Arabic as an ethnicity covers any of the Semitic people of the 'Arabian' region, I would probably modify the dictionary definition of 'speaking any of the Semitic languages' to take account of the modern world and stretch it to "born of parents who speak any of the Semitic languages." (Of course the Jewish 'opt-out' clause needs to be retained.)


The problem with ethnicity as a criteria is that it rules out many Arabic speaking countries -as I said in my previous post- including my own country  and all the other African countries where Arabic is the main language, as well as Lebanon and Syria (I'm not well versed into ethnology, but I don't think they're classified as Arabic ethnicity).

P.S. Lebanon is an Arabic country, but it's not a Muslim country. It's Christian. So you can see, Arabic is not necessarily equivalent to Muslim.


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## maxiogee

My point was that Arabic is both an ethnicity and the name of a language.

The people who live in Spain are the only ones who can rightly be called Spanish - but the speakers of Spanish outnumber that population many times over. The same is true of Enland and English.

Why therefore do people assume that there is a congruence about Arabs and Arabic? 

Similarly with religion - Not all Britons are Christians, but it would see itself as a Christian country. The United States strives furiously to keep God and the State as separate as possible and yet it would be extremely difficult for a non-Christian to seek the office of President.

We must be careful when speaking of what divides us to be sure that we define which boundaries we mean when we use words which can have multiple constituencies.
My last job was as manager of a video shop in anm area of Dublin much favoured by immigrants. Many of them were what the untrained eye would call "Arabs" - I was one of those untrained eyes. I don't know how to identify a Frenchman from a German or an Austrian from an Italian - but if I can hear them speak I can make a pretty good guess.
We in Ireland are so unused to "Arabs" that we don't know how to distinguish them, by either sight or sound, into nationalities. As to their religion - well if I cioudn't tell a German Protestant from an Austrian Catholic from a French athiest, what chance had I got with nationalities and faiths I know nothing about?

Oh what a tangled web we stumble into when we try to pigeon hole people.

Countries are probably a little bit easier - a country *is* what the majority of its citizens are - France is French-speaking and white; Ireland is English speaking and Catholic; Saudi-Arabia is Arabic and semitic.


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## Outsider

maxiogee said:
			
		

> My point was that Arabic is both an ethnicity and the name of a language.
> 
> The people who live in Spain are the only ones who can rightly be called Spanish - but the speakers of Spanish outnumber that population many times over. The same is true of Enland and English.
> 
> Why therefore do people assume that there is a congruence about Arabs and Arabic?


Many people feel that English speaking countries, such as the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have common cultural traits...



			
				maxiogee said:
			
		

> Countries are probably a little bit easier - a country *is* what the majority of its citizens are - France is French-speaking and white; Ireland is English speaking and Catholic; Saudi-Arabia is Arabic and semitic.


Does each country have one nose and two ears, too?


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## maxiogee

Outsider said:
			
		

> Many people feel that English speaking countries, such as the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have common cultural traits...
> 
> 
> 
> Could that have anything to do with sharing a common recent ancestry and a common language and legal system?
> There are people in Ireland who are more distantly connected to the English than many people in each of those countries you mentioned. Many of them have ancestors who left England within the last seven or eight generations. _Of course_ they are perceived as having common cultural traits!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Does each country have one nose and two ears, too?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No, obviously not. Ireland for instance has approximately 6 million noses - all highly attuned to the scent of Guinness. And the Isle of Man has three legs, while I'm at it!
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


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## andersxman

I was trying to figure out where the Iranians come from, it was stated in this thread that they are of "Aryan" origin - and on the fictionary I find:
Aryan:
Definitions:
1. *Nazi ideal: *in Nazi ideology, a white person of non-Semitic descent regarded as racially superior2. language *Indo-European language: *the hypothetical parent language of the Indo-European languages ( dated ) 3. peoples *Indo-European ancestor: *somebody who spoke the hypothetical parent language of Indo-European languages ( dated ) 
[Mid-19th century. < Sanskrit_ ārya_ "noble, of good family"]
	

	
	
		
		

		
			








Ar·y·anadj

I don't really know, but my conception is that there is quite a divergence between what the madman Hitler saw as an ideal race and the aspect of a typical, iranian person.
So when it is being stated that iranians are of Aryan origin, is there something I am misunderstanding? From whom do they descend?


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## maxiogee

The first thing to do when seeking information on the word "aryan" is to disregard anything to do with Hilter. The Nazi view of Ayran-ness was totally discredited and shot full of holes.
Approach with extreme caution.


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## Outsider

maxiogee said:
			
		

> Outsider said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Many people feel that English speaking countries, such as the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have common cultural traits...
> 
> 
> 
> Could that have anything to do with sharing a common recent ancestry and a common language and legal system?
> There are people in Ireland who are more distantly connected to the English than many people in each of those countries you mentioned. Many of them have ancestors who left England within the last seven or eight generations. _Of course_ they are perceived as having common cultural traits!
Click to expand...

Sure, but you could say the same about Arabs: many of them also share a long history of common ancestry, common language, and  similar legal systems.



			
				andersxman said:
			
		

> I was trying to figure out where the Iranians come from, it was stated in this thread that they are of "Aryan" origin - and on the fictionary I find:
> Aryan:
> Definitions:
> 1. *Nazi ideal: *in Nazi ideology, a white person of non-Semitic descent regarded as racially superior2. language *Indo-European language: *the hypothetical parent language of the Indo-European languages ( dated ) 3. peoples *Indo-European ancestor: *somebody who spoke the hypothetical parent language of Indo-European languages ( dated )
> [Mid-19th century. < Sanskrit_ ?rya_ "noble, of good family"]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ar·y·anadj
> 
> I don't really know, but my conception is that there is quite a divergence between what the madman Hitler saw as an ideal race and the aspect of a typical, iranian person.
> So when it is being stated that iranians are of Aryan origin, is there something I am misunderstanding? From whom do they descend?


'Aryan.'

In short, it started out as a linguistic term, but was hijacked into racism during the 19th century by people who mistakenly believed that language=blood.


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## cherine

andersxman said:
			
		

> I was trying to figure out where the Iranians come fro...
> So when it is being stated that iranians are of Aryan origin, is there something I am misunderstanding? From whom do they descend?


 
I hope these would help :

*Aryan:* «(from Sanskrit _arya_, “noble”), a people who, in prehistoric times, settled in Iran and northern India. From their language, also called *Aryan*, the Indo-European languages of South Asia are descended. In the 19th century the term was used as a synonym for “Indo-European” ... »
Source : "Aryan." _Encyclopædia Britannica_ from Encyclopædia Britannica Online. <http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9009750> 

*Iran : *«The state was popularly known as Persia, a name first used by the ancient Greeks, after the ancient province of Parsa. The people of this land, however, always called their country *Iran*, or the land of the Aryans.»
source : "*Iran*." _Britannica Student Encyclopedia_ from Encyclopædia Britannica Online. <http://www.search.eb.com/ebi/article-9275086>


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## maxiogee

Outsider said:
			
		

> maxiogee said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> outsider said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _Many people feel that English speaking countries, such as the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, have common cultural traits..._
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Could that have anything to do with sharing a common recent ancestry and a common language and legal system?
> 
> There are people in Ireland who are more distantly connected to the English than many people in each of those countries you mentioned. Many of them have ancestors who left England within the last seven or eight generations. _Of course_ they are perceived as having common cultural traits!
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Sure, but you could say the same about Arabs: many of them also share a long history of common ancestry, common language, and  similar legal systems.
Click to expand...


But you don't tell me what way you are using the word "Arabs" there, and that is what this thread is about. What makes a people or a country "Arab"

I said that the US, Canada and other places shared a lot in common with the UK, but that doesn't make them British. 
You seem to be saying that because many people "in Arab Nations" or "of Arab stock" share similar commonalities it makes XYZ Arab - but you don't say what the XYZ is.


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## Outsider

Your analogy is flawed. Claiming that Arabs share a common culture is not the same as claiming that they share the same nationality.


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## maxiogee

You appear to be misreading me. and I'm definitely unsure of what point you are making.

I am saying that sharing a culture in no way implies sharing a nationality!
The diametrically opposed religious/political/social elements in Northern Ireland share but the English language and a geographical location and yet they are all Northern Irish.
Arabs are people who, for me, speak Arabic and live in countries which are predominantly populated by Arabs. There will be those who were born in Arabic countries but no longer live there, such as Arabic migrants to Ireland. They, unless they chose otherwise, will be Arabs to the day they die. Any children they have here will be Irish, even if they speak Arabic - just as children born to a Spanish family which is resident in Ireland will be Irish annd not Spanish.

I don't see what point you wish to make which is different from that.


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## Outsider

When you wrote:



			
				maxiogee said:
			
		

> Why therefore do people assume that there is a congruence about Arabs and Arabic?


...it seemed to me that you were challenging Cherine's definition of 'Arab'.

Perhaps I did misunderstand you. Do you accept Cherine's definition?


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## maxiogee

Outsider said:
			
		

> Do you accept Cherine's definition?



My posts on this thread have all explicitly backed Cherine's definition.
However, I have pointed out that "Arabic" is a word that covers a language and an ethnicity, and several political entities also.
We need, when using the word, to be very specific about how we are using it.


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## cherine

maxiogee said:
			
		

> My posts on this thread have all explicitly backed Cherine's definition.
> However, I have pointed out that "Arabic" is a word that covers a language and an ethnicity, and several political entities also.
> We need, when using the word, to be very specific about how we are using it.


Thanks for accepting my definition 
I also agree with you. Yes, Arabic is a language, an ethnicity and a culture. But I think that to determine a country's being Arab or not we can rule out the ethnicity criteria, otherwise many countries won't be considered Arab -as I said before.
So again, I still believe that language should be the main, if not the sole, criteria to classify (French "classer") a country as Arab.

As for politics, I don't think it can apply either, for not all Arab countries adopt the same political systems.


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## elroy

Fernando said:
			
		

> I find the term "Arab" so "useful" as "Latin" or others. Arab can mean:
> 
> 1) Most of people (in the West) that say "Arab" standing for "Muslim", from N Nigeria to Indonesia.
> 
> 2) Arab as an ethnicity (maybe). So, it would spread through Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Palestine Ter., Lebanon(?  ) and Arabi*an* Peninsul*a*.
> I also consider most North Africans Arabs.
> 
> 3) Arab as an Arabic speaker. So, it would include (roughly) the Muslim countries except Turkey and all countries East of Iran (Parsi, Urdu or Javanese are spoken).
> 
> Of course in Maghreb bereber and French are spoken for some parts of the population.
> 
> 4) Unhabitants of the Arabic Peninsule. The most proper meaning (to me).
> 
> 5) Unhabitants of Saudi Arabia.


 
To me, only #2 applies. "Arab" is first and foremost an ethnicity.


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## cherine

Sorry to contradict you Elroy,
But if you speak ethnicity, then countries like Morroco, for example, won't be considered Arab because of the huge number of berbers there, Somalia is not Arab either; it's African (don't know how they're classified exactly from an ethnicity point of view).....

And I'd also like to add to your corrections for what Fernando said: #4 & #5 are almost the same : Saudi Arabia is part of the Arabic Peninsula.


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## elroy

cherine said:
			
		

> Sorry to contradict you Elroy,
> But if you speak ethnicity, then countries like Morroco, for example, won't be considered Arab because of the huge number of berbers there, Somalia is not Arab either; it's African (don't know how they're classified exactly from an ethnicity point of view).....


 
That's why I said "*most* North Africans."


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## cherine

Ok. I hate to argue but have to do this 
1- if we speak of North Africans, then we're speaking of individuals not countries. Which is not the topic.
2- Even between North Africans, it's a bit difficult to determine who is Arab and who is not. I -for example- am one of millions who don't know for sure who my ancesters are : are they Muslim Arabs ? Christian Copts ? Egyptian Jews ? Romans ? Greek ?.... To name but few possibilities.
3- Same goes for people in Morroco, Tunisia, Algeria and Lybia : to speak of North Africa.
4- If we move to Lebanon, I know there are many Lebanese who claim to be Phoneician !!


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## elroy

cherine said:
			
		

> Ok. I hate to argue but have to do this
> 1- if we speak of North Africans, then we're speaking of individuals not countries. Which is not the topic.
> 2- Even between North Africans, it's a bit difficult to determine who is Arab and who is not. I -for example- am one of millions who don't know for sure who my ancesters are : are they Muslim Arabs ? Christian Copts ? Egyptian Jews ? Romans ? Greek ?.... To name but few possibilities.
> 3- Same goes for people in Morroco, Tunisia, Algeria and Lybia : to speak of North Africa.
> 4- If we move to Lebanon, I know there are many Lebanese who claim to be Phoneician !!


 
The North African countries we've listed above are officially considered _Arab countries _(you are from الجمهورية *العربية* المصرية, right?), which does not mean that every single person inhabiting them is Arab (Israel is a Jewish country, but 20% of its citizens - me included - are not Jewish).

That's why I said that I considered most _North Africans_ Arab. I would consider Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya _Arab countries_ because the majority of their citizens are Arab (I think). My hunch is that the majority of the citizens of Somalia, Mauritania, Comoros, and Chad are not Arab, which is why I hesitate to consider those countries Arab despite their affiliation (with the exception of Chad) with the Arab League.

The Lebanese claim to Phoenecian and not Arab roots is one I am hugely skeptical about - to say the least.


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## mansio

Strictly speaking I do not consider North-Africans as Arabs. To me they are arabized Berbers. But in France we just consider them as Arabs.


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## tvdxer

Off the top of my head:

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and Morocco.  The last few are somewhat dubious do to the Berber nature of the cultures.


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## mansio

Tvdxer

I agree with you except that you forgot Tunisia. What about Sudan ?


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## cherine

elroy said:
			
		

> (you are from الجمهورية *العربية* المصرية, right?)


Actually it's جمهورية مصر العربية  (Arab Republic of Egypt).
Just a slight correction 



> That's why I said that I considered most _North Africans_ Arab. I would consider Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya _Arab countries_ because the majority of their citizens are Arab (I think). My hunch is that the majority of the citizens of Somalia, Mauritania, Comoros, and Chad are not Arab, which is why I hesitate to consider those countries Arab despite their affiliation (with the exception of Chad) with the Arab League.


This is the problem I think : we're trying to follow our hunch, our feeling. But this will make us rule out many countries that are Arab, because their citizens are not ethnically Arabs. This is why I still believe that the easiest or more sure way is to depend on *language* as criteria.



> The Lebanese claim to Phoenecian and not Arab roots is one I am hugely skeptical about - to say the least.


I agree with you. But the fact is that some of them do say so. A friend of mine told me of a colleague he had at school, who used to claim he's phoenecian.
Another similar ridicule claim is sometimes heard by some Egyptians who claim they're Pharaos !!!

* * * 
To TVDXER and Mansio, here's a list of the state members of the Arab League : 
*Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq,  Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Libanon, Egypt, Lybia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morroco, Mauritania, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Comoros*
I tried to put them in a way as close to their position on the map as much as possible, starting from Saudi Arabic, going south west to Yemen, than going arround the Gulf towards North, then East....
As we can all see, the Arabic language is the main factor between all these countries so ethnically different..


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## mansio

Cherine

I don't think the last three of the Arab League members are Arabic speaking countries. 
Sudan has Arabic as official language but Southerners are black people who speak other languages.
Ethnically speaking it is difficult to see Sudanese (from the Black country) as Arabs. The infamous Janjawids call themselves Arabs, but to me they are just black people who cannot be differentiated from the black peasants they assail.
I would not mind a friend from Lebanon call himself a descendant of Phoenicians but to be an actual Phoenician he must learn and speak the Phoenician language, which btw is close to Hebrew.


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## cherine

mansio said:
			
		

> I don't think the last three of the Arab League members are Arabic speaking countries.
> Sudan has Arabic as official language but Southerners are black people who speak other languages.


Being black doesn't mean speaking or not speaking any given language, no ? 
It is tru that the Southernes don't speak Arabic, but Sudan -as a whole country- is actually an Arab country. Just as Morroco is an Arab country with many Berbers who don't speak/know Arabic.



> Ethnically speaking it is difficult to see Sudanese (from the *Black* country) as Arabs. The infamous Janjawids call themselves Arabs, but to me they are just *black* people who cannot be differentiated from the *black* peasants they assail.


Watch out Mansio, three "Black(s)" in two sentences, can get you accused of racism 

Sorry if I repeat myself : Arab countries are those where Arabic is the *language*, it doesn't have much to do -not necessarily- with the ethnicities, otherwise we'd only count the Gulf countries as Arab, and rule out all the rest.



> I would not mind a friend from Lebanon call himself a descendant of Phoenicians but to be an actual Phoenician he must learn and speak the Phoenician language, which btw is close to Hebrew.


Such people don't say I'm a _descendant_ of Phoenicians, they say : I _am_ Phonecians.


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## mansio

OK Cherine I agree with you. Arab is anyone whose mother language is Arabic. That excludes the South-Sudanese but includes the North-Africans.
Who gave the name "balad as-sûdân" by the way, me ?


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## rubes1

I remember reading an interview with an Arabic magazine editor. He was discussing the singles ads in the Arabic press and explained if a woman says she is looking to meet an "Arab" man, they are referring to the Gulf countries, as there is some prejudice in the against the poorer Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

PS- I don't agree with this. I would say any Arabic-speaking country is Arab. Pakistan and Iran are not Arab, for example. I suppose North Africa is questionable, but I would consider those countries Arab as well.


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## cherine

mansio said:
			
		

> OK Cherine I agree with you. Arab is anyone whose mother language is Arabic. That excludes the South-Sudanese but includes the North-Africans.


Of course, it excludes the individuals who don't speak Arabic, in Sudan or any other Arab country. But I think this thread is about countries not individuals, no ?
Actually, to determine if a country is Arab or not is easier -in my opinion- than when speaking of individuals : an Arab country is the one where Arabic is the major language, while to determine if a person is Arab or not we can go from ethnicity to language to georgraphic location or maybe other criterias.
Just my opinion.



> Who gave the name "balad as-sûdân" by the way, me ?


Maybe I did ? 
They were called so by Arabs, when the notion of racism wasn't in people's mind (at least not as it is these days)
*N.B.* I hope you didn't think *I* was calling you so, I was just kidding 



			
				rubes1 said:
			
		

> ... if a woman says she is looking to meet an "Arab" man, they are referring to the Gulf countries, as there is some prejudice in the against the poorer Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. /quote]
> It's maybe based on a belief that Arabs are those who live in the Gulf countries, not necessarily out of prejudice.
> Even us, Egyptians, when we say "Arabs" we refer to Gulf people, but I don't think it's pejoratif. This is the one reference based on ethnicity


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## Outsider

This discussion reminds me of the one over who is Latin. In Europe (as far as I've heard), Spain, France, Italy and Portugal are considered the Latin countries/ethnicities, because their official languages are derived from Latin. However, there are also other kinds of languages in some of these countries: Basque, Breton, Strasbourgian... And then there's the case of Romania, which leaves many people scratching their heads. They do speak a language derived from Latin, but they are so far away, and they've been so influenced by Slavic cultures...!
And what should we call 'mixed' countries like Belgium and Switzerland?...  
In the end, these cultural divisions always have some arbitrariness.



			
				cherine said:
			
		

> Even us, Egyptians, when we say "Arabs" we refer to Gulf people, but I don't think it's pejoratif. This is the one reference based on ethnicity


Or geography. Strictly speaking, only the people of the Arabian Peninsula would be called "Arab".


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## mansio

Outsider

I like my mother-language Alsatian being called Strasbourgian! Why not, my mother speaks it in the Strasbourg way.


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## Outsider

mansio said:
			
		

> Outsider
> 
> I like my mother-language Alsatian being called Strasbourgian! Why not, my mother speaks it in the Strasbourg way.


Sorry! It was a momentary lapse of memory. I should have known better.


----------



## mansio

Outsider

You are not wrong. Alsatian is a Germanic (not German) dialect which subdivises into closely related sub-dialects, so there is such a thing as Strasbourgian.


----------



## reaLest

Not to put a damper on things...(because I love opinions...and discussions are good)....but this must be said.....perhaps the only way to arrive at a conclusion for is to poll the world? Then perhaps we'll agree since generally....people side with the majority...although they are not always right. eg. majority of the world population are religious or at least claim to be....and religion....well that's for another thread i guess....but...

*I BELIEVE*..the only way to arrive at a logical answer for this question...and most questions of this nature for that matter...is to consider among other things... (1)who is asking the question. (2)who is being asked the question. 


These other things include...clearly defining anything ambiguous or subjective in the question. Which are the Arab countries...you ask? Well...it is apparent that most of us, if not all agree what countries are...although it can mean many things....but from what i have read...i believe that (you) define country as a soveriegn nation or state, with a populace. So we more or less agree on the definition of a country.

Now...how do you define "Arab?" This is where the problem lies. We do not and cannot agree on a single definition for "Arab." A person who may view his/herself as Arab...will have a different description of this word than that of a person who view theirself otherwise. Like quality or beauty...it is in the eyes of the beholder.

eg. Country A and citizens of Country A may view Country B and its citizens as terrorists, however Country B and its citizens view Country A as the terrorists. Country C views both as terrorists, whereas country D views only Country B as the terrorist.... it goes on. It's subjective...

So how do we arrive at conclusions...? I don't think we can...however it helps to talk about these things....it stimulates the mind...may generate understanding...and of course can be entertaining... 

dont take my word for it....like a wise man once said.... I would never die for my *BELIEFS* because I might be wrong...

reaL


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## Heba

I believe that it is a matter of language, not of ethnicity.
I , for example, belong to the camp that believes that Egypt is not actually an Arabic country and that we are Arabs because we speak Arabic.

During high-school years which I spent in Saudi Arabia, I learned that original Arabs are those who lived in the Arabian Peninsula and were Arabs even before the advent of Islam and before the expansion of the trade relations. Accordingly, people who are originally Arabs are the Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, kwait, Yemen, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain). While other countries like Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Morroco became Arabs when the majority of the population became Muslims and started to speak Arabic.

I do believe that Egyptians started to be regared as Arabs when they started to speak Arabic. I believe that they started to speak Arabic when the majority of the population embraced Islam and when they started to have trade relationws with the Arabian  Peninsula, thus, we are Arabs because we speak Arabic (or our own version of Arabic). The Arabic language brought with it the Arabic culture.

I guess that people of the same race look alike, and that is a second reason why I believe that Egyptians and Arabs from outside the Arabian Peninsula are not Arabs. The Arabs of today can be divided into four or even more groups according to how they look: 
1. Inhabitants of Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon
2. Inhabitants of Egypt (the majority of Egyptians still look like the pharaohs whose pictures are engraved on temple walls)
3-Other inhabitants of North Africa (Tunisia, Lybia, Algeria and Morrocco)
4- Inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula

Those four groups do not look alike. Actually, they were different civilizations, they had different cultures and histories. They became regared of the same race when they all adopted Arabic as the main language. Even when they started to speak Arabic, they developed new vernacular versions that gradually became different from standard Arabic. Each group developed its own different version of Arabic which is still spoken is and is completely different from the Standard Arabic which was spoken by the Original Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula. Standard Arabic could be only read in the newspapers and books. Perhaps the closest version to Standard Arabic is the one spoken in the Arabian Peninsula today.


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## MarcB

The late Egyptian president Gamal abdel Nasser is credited as the first person to” officially" define and Arab as anyone who considers Arabic as his/her native language. That would especially at that time include Muslims, Christians and Jews. Many of the last two have left Arab countries as well as many Muslims but today most Arab countries have fewer non-Muslims. Even Lebanon no longer has a Christian minority. Making Malta the only majority Christian Arabic country. Malta recently has added its name as an Arabic country although this may not be agreed upon by all Most Arab countries have non Arabic speaking minorities or had them. From a genetic stand point most if not all; including Arabia have diverse populations with many types of physical features. I have met many people from Arabic countries who speak Arabic plus another languages who will alternately consider themselves Arabs and non-Arabs.
Many descendants of Arabs still consider themselves to be Arab even if they do not speak the language. We can conclude that many people do not know the definition of an Arab, but the Nasser one is the most widely excepted.
 
Muslim as mentioned is a member of Islam a religion not an ethnic group just as Christian and others can be anyone including converts. 
It is generally accepted that the Nazi use of Aryan and swastika were incorrect since the Iranians (Iran the modern country name dates to 1934) and northern Indians are the origin of the Aryan name and symbol. The symbol can be found on Hindu shrines built centuries ago. It is true that Semites are not classified as Aryans.


----------



## Outsider

MarcB said:
			
		

> Even Lebanon no longer has a Christian minority.


That's not true. 



> Religions of Lebanon:
> 
> Muslim 59.7% (Shi'a, Sunni, Druze, Isma'ilite, Alawite or Nusayri), *Christian 39%* (Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic, Armenian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Chaldean, Assyrian, Copt, Protestant), other 1.3%





			
				MarcB said:
			
		

> Making Malta the only majority Christian Arabic country. Malta recently has added its name as an Arabic country although this may not be agreed upon by all Most Arab countries have non Arabic speaking minorities or had them.


Really? Malta is not listed in the Wikipedia page for the Arab League...


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## mansio

As of the religions in Lebanon, it is not possible to count the Druze and the Alawites as Muslims. They belong to different religions.


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## cuchuflete

MarcB said:
			
		

> Many descendants of Arabs still consider themselves to be Arab even if they do not speak the language. We can conclude that many people do not know the definition of an Arab, but the Nasser one is the most widely exaccepted.


This gets interesting.  In the US, there are a great many immigrants and children of immigrants who are or were Arabic speakers, although not all of these are people from or descending from inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.  According to the Nasser definition, they would cease to be Arabs after a generation or two.  And then what?  Revert to the ethnicity of their forebears?  

By this scenario, an Egyptian could emigrate to Michigan, and his children, born in the US, and having only American English as a native language, would not be Arab, while their parents are Arab.  These children might then consider themselves to be Americans of Egyptian heritage/background, but not Arab.
Hmmmmm.  Dubious.


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## Outsider

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> By this scenario, an Egyptian could emigrate to Michigan, and his children, born in the US, and having only American English as a native language, would not be Arab, while their parents are Arab.  These children might then consider themselves to be Americans of Egyptian heritage/background, but not Arab.
> Hmmmmm.  Dubious.


Why?
Are Americans of Irish, or German, or Norwegian heritage still considered Irishmen, Germans, or Norwegians in Ireland, Germany, and Norway?


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## maxiogee

We Irish don't see the American-born children of Irish emigrants as Irish. In fact the more remote the connection to Ireland, the more of an embarrassment many of them become. I quote from a letter to an Irish newspaper published today...

For several months I have watched from across the sea 
as the fate of my ancestral homeland has been decided 
on the pages of newspapers, in public hearings, and in 
the High Court. And though it pains me to write it, it 
pains me even more deeply to see it: the Irelanf of my 
dreams is gripped in the blind frenzy of what the 
television calls "progress", and the Hill of Tara, the heart 
of Ireland, is slated to suffer for it.
Please, people of Ireland, tell your government that you 
don't need another road. Not there. Tell them you see 
beyond the allure of the global economy, and the trinkets 
money can buy. Tell them Ireland is yours, not theirs. And 
please treat her well.

He writes because a road is proposed to pass near a very historic site. But due to our ancient history much of Ireland is 'historic'. Guys like this would have us all live in picturesque cottages and travel by horse and cart. The Ireland of his dreams is not the same on I live in, and it has never been. If he wants to go and save historic sites I'm sure there are plenty of places in America with history pre-dating Columbus which he could devote his attention to.


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## MarcB

Quote:
Originally Posted by *MarcB*
_Even Lebanon no longer has a Christian minority._

That's not true.   Good catch Outsider I meant Christians are no longer the majority, they once were.
Malta is not in the Arab league never was nor did I or anyone else say so. They spoke of being Arab as a historical and lingustic concept. I am sure also for political and economic reasons. They speak an Arabic derived language mixed with Sicilian and some English. Arab league= not all members are completely Arab and not all Arabs are members.
Wikipedia page for the Arab League... Wikipepedia is an interesting and sometimes useful site, however, anyone can post info without verification.
Originally Posted by *MarcB*
_Making Malta the only majority Christian Arabic country. Malta recently has added its name as an Arabic country although this may __not be agreed upon by all__ Most Arab countries have non Arabic speaking minorities or had them. I still stand with Nasser's definition since it is the most widely accepted especially in the Arab world._


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## MarcB

Why?
Are Americans of Irish, or German, or Norwegian heritage still considered Irishmen, Germans,...? A resounding yes!!! They are ethnically but have an American nationality although many use the word nationality to mean ethnic group. One need only look at the recent St Patricks day. Most Americans identify with the nationality of their ancesters and the US census records them as such.


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## MarcB

Cuchu .   Many descendants of Arabs still consider themselves to be Arab even if they do not speak the language.
So yes it is a combination of Nasser's definition and self described ones.
Is an Arab one who is self proclaimed an Arab? I guess so what do the rest of you think?


----------



## cuchuflete

Outsider said:
			
		

> Why?
> Are Americans of Irish, or German, or Norwegian heritage still considered Irishmen, Germans, or Norwegians in Ireland, Germany, and Norway?



Of course not.  However, Americans of Irish or German or Norwegian (etc.) heritage tend to hyphenate their self-applied labels, to maintain at least an emotional link to their heritage.
Hence, Irish-American, German-American....

This is not based on language of ancestors, but on place and culture.  Thus if only language were used to define "Arab", then such hyphenated groupings would not be possible.

The entire matter is a little fluffy.  An Arab is obviously someone who chooses, for reasons of place and/or language and/or culture, to define himself as such.  If one chooses to identify with that group for reasons of heritage, language, culture, or whatever, that seems to be all the definition needed.  

This makes me think of a friend, American-born, of parents who had emigrated from Cuba.  He considered himself Chinese-Cuban-American.  His ancestors were Chinese.  His parents were born in Cuba, and were considered by themselves and other Cubans to be Chino cubanos.

Neither my friend nor his parents spoke a word of Chinese, except for the family name.


----------



## Outsider

It seems to me that having a certain ethnicity is a mixture of identifying with it, and being recognized as such by other members of the society in which you live.

I think the replies to this thread show that there isn't only one way of looking at ethnicity, but apparently language, or the primary language of a country or region, is one of the criteria often invoked to define it. Another one may be ancestry.

P.S. Here's a nice page about ethnicity.


----------



## se16teddy

andersxman said:
			
		

> Iran is not an Arab country? How would that be explained? They speak arabic? Up until now I wouldn't have hesitated a second in saying that Iran is an arab country.


 
There is an Arab minority in Iran, but the majority speaks Farsi (sometimes also known as Persian).  Farsi is an Indo-European language; Arabic is a Semitic language.  In its origins, Farsi is related to English and Danish but not to Arabic.


----------



## Residente Calle 13

Outsider said:
			
		

> Why?
> Are Americans of Irish, or German, or Norwegian heritage still considered Irishmen, Germans, or Norwegians in Ireland, Germany, and Norway?



It depends on who you ask.


----------



## panjabigator

What about the Bedouins and Berbers.  They are not arabs but they speak Arabic, correct?


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## SofiaB

Bedouins are Arabs, perhaps the most Arabic of all. Berbers (a misnomer) are not Arabs unless Arabic is their native language. Some people who are bilingual consider themselves as both Berber and Arab. Arab has come to mean a speaker of Arabic.


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## palomnik

I'm resurrecting this thread because I was intrigued by Pedro de la Torre's bringing it up again, and there was what I believe an important point missing in this discussion.

The question of who is an Arab is one of recent vintage. 120 years ago most of the people who call themselves "Arab" today would have been insulted by the term. Egyptians, Moroccans and Lebanese identified the term with bedouins who lived in the desert and lived on dates and camel meat. The fact that one spoke Arabic did not make one an Arab. Part of the reason for this was historical. While tribes and ethnic groups always existed, the traditional political entity in the Middle East was built around religion, not Arabism. 

At the end of the nineteenth century this started to change. The concept of being an "Arab" arose from two intertwined sources: dislike of the Ottoman Empire, whose ramshackle administration vacilated between being senile and oppressive in its dealings with virtually all ethnic groups in the empire, and the growth of a class largely educated in Western disciplines, mainly in Syria and Lebanon, and very largely Christian, since the Christians were the ones who benefited mainly by the new schools being opened by European and American missionaries in the Levant. To some extent, this was mirrored in Egypt by the Coptic Christians, who started joining the government administration under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century and slowly emerged from the relative ghetto existence they had previously had. Being Christians, not too surprisingly groups like the Lebanese Maronites and the Egyptian Copts had an interest in creating a non-religious concept of an ethnic group where they could be recognized as full fledged citizens. 

Arabism as a concept was fueled by the Arab revolt in World War I and probably fueled equally by the cavalier way that the European powers cast the Arabs aside after that war. Most of the anti-western political affiliations were tied to the concept of Arabism in the thirties and forties. The concept probably reached its apogee under Nasser in the fifties. It's worth remembering how Nasser tried to create a unified state out of Egypt and Syria.

While Arabism as an ethnic identity continues, it should be remembered that it is a relatively modern concept, and I think that it is mainly honored in the breach any more; the more traditional Middle Eastern concept of religion as the definition of ethnicity is regaining ground. My impression is based on the way that Arab Christian groups like the Christian Palestinians and the Copts seem to be getting more and more marginalized in their own countries. Echoes of political Arabism lingered on in Hafiz al Assad's Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but the concept seemed more anachronistic as time went on.

I think this may be potentially explosive but I'd be interested to see what the rest of the foreros think about this.


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

palomnik said:


> I'm resurrecting this thread because I was intrigued by Pedro de la Torre's bringing it up again, and there was what I believe an important point missing in this discussion.
> 
> The question of who is an Arab is one of recent vintage. 120 years ago most of the people who call themselves "Arab" today would have been insulted by the term. Egyptians, Moroccans and Lebanese identified the term with bedouins who lived in the desert and lived on dates and camel meat. The fact that one spoke Arabic did not make one an Arab. Part of the reason for this was historical. While tribes and ethnic groups always existed, the traditional political entity in the Middle East was built around religion, not Arabism.
> 
> At the end of the nineteenth century this started to change. The concept of being an "Arab" arose from two intertwined sources: dislike of the Ottoman Empire, whose ramshackle administration vacilated between being senile and oppressive in its dealings with virtually all ethnic groups in the empire, and the growth of a class largely educated in Western disciplines, mainly in Syria and Lebanon, and very largely Christian, since the Christians were the ones who benefited mainly by the new schools being opened by European and American missionaries in the Levant. To some extent, this was mirrored in Egypt by the Coptic Christians, who started joining the government administration under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century and slowly emerged from the relative ghetto existence they had previously had. Being Christians, not too surprisingly groups like the Lebanese Maronites and the Egyptian Copts had an interest in creating a non-religious concept of an ethnic group where they could be recognized as full fledged citizens.
> 
> Arabism as a concept was fueled by the Arab revolt in World War I and probably fueled equally by the cavalier way that the European powers cast the Arabs aside after that war. Most of the anti-western political affiliations were tied to the concept of Arabism in the thirties and forties. The concept probably reached its apogee under Nasser in the fifties. It's worth remembering how Nasser tried to create a unified state out of Egypt and Syria.
> 
> While Arabism as an ethnic identity continues, it should be remembered that it is a relatively modern concept, and I think that it is mainly honored in the breach any more; the more traditional Middle Eastern concept of religion as the definition of ethnicity is regaining ground. My impression is based on the way that Arab Christian groups like the Christian Palestinians and the Copts seem to be getting more and more marginalized in their own countries. Echoes of political Arabism lingered on in Hafiz al Assad's Syria and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but the concept seemed more anachronistic as time went on.
> 
> I think this may be potentially explosive but I'd be interested to see what the rest of the foreros think about this.



Very interesting. I've always wondered why Egyptians were referred to as Arabs seen as, to me at least, Arabs are people from the Arabian penninsula. Now I know!


----------



## eli-milqo

hello All :

the Arab world in my opinion consists of four nations "socially, geographicly, and historically" which are :

1-the nation of the fertile crescent (( "Syria",lebanon, jordan,palestine, iraq))

2- The egyptian nation
3- the nation of the western part of the arab world "al maghreb" which consists of (( Morroco,tunisia,algeria,mauritania,libya,western desert))

4- the real Arabs the people of the Arabic peninsula and which were called Arabs because of their land "Arabia" which in old "semetic " languages means "desert" and since this peninsula with most of its parts is a desert the people who came from it are called "Arabs" .

the other nations of the Arab world got arabized, although they have too many in common, but you can distinguish them as I mentioned above, for example the national music in the fertile crescent has a common style which differs from what in Egypt or Arabia, and the same in Architecture and national clothes...etc, and I don't say that this is the reason , I say this the result of them being many nations even after they got Arabized.
The nations are divided, I mean each nation politiecally is divided to many states like in the fertile crescent " Lebanon, "Syria", jordan...etc" or in the Maghreb "the western part of Arab world" we have Tunisia, Algeria...etc.

the name the Arab world is because of the Language spoken there and because of that the common thing between them is the relgious lingual relation that Arabs established between them .

Ethnically , the Arab nations are mixtures, for example here in the Fertiles crescent they are mixed ethnically and culturally starting from the ancient folks of the region and untill our days, but such mixtures are congenial , I mean you can't say they descent from one race , the effect of all races which were part of the mixture can bee seen in a one family usually.

but you can some times distinguish between people of the Arab world because there are some types of looks that exist usually in Egypt and others exist usually in Arabian peninsula and so on....
this is what I think
thanks
Salam


----------



## min300

andersxman said:


> Iran is not an Arab country? How would that be explained? They speak arabic? Up until now I wouldn't have hesitated a second in saying that Iran is an arab country.



Hi there,

Iran is not an Arab country at all.We have are own language which is Farsi (Persian). We don't speak Arabic. We have our own culture and hisroty which is different from Arabic countries.
If you look in history you can see that our country was occupied by Arabs many many years ago. Then they left our country, but of course they had some influence on our people and culture.


----------



## alexacohen

I would say that the Arab countries are those that share the Arabian Peninsula.


----------



## panjabigator

min300 said:


> Hi there,
> 
> Iran is not an Arab country at all.We have are own language which is Farsi (Persian). We don't speak Arabic. We have our own culture and hisroty which is different from Arabic countries.
> If you look in history you can see that our country was occupied by Arabs many many years ago. Then they left our country, but of course they had some influence on our people and culture.



And what about the people who speak Arabic in Iran?


----------



## min300

panjabigator said:


> And what about the people who speak Arabic in Iran?



Hi pajabigator,
Believe me we our Iranian not Arabs.
I myself don't know any persons who can speak Arabic in Iran.  
But  I guess people in south Iran know Arabic, because their neighbors are Arabs( Iraq, Emirate, Oman...). Like some people in north Iran who speak Turkish. But I know they all consider themselves Iranian. Actually one of the oldest Iranian city (Shiraz) is located in south Iran and  it  belongs to 3000 thousand years ago and to the ancient Iranian kings. I don't know why some people try to ignore our Iranian culture, language, identity and  ancestors. 
Arabs used to call us 'Ajam' which means _"one who is illiterate in a language"_, " silent" , and can refer to non-Arabs in general. Am I right?

Edit: I like all the people from all over the words and also Arabs and I appreciate their music very much, for example. They have a strong language. But  I can't ignore the reality  about my country. 

Hope this is clear now.


----------



## Jocaste

I know this is different, but why in today's world are people confusing Arab and Muslin ? The explanation of this confusion can't only be terrorism.


----------



## hassani1387

panjabigator said:


> And what about the people who speak Arabic in Iran?


 
Iranians are definitely NOT Arab, under any definition of the term. They don't come from the Arabian Peninsula, they generally don't speak Arabic as a mother tongue. There are many smaller ethnicities in Iran, but they all identify as Iranian first.

However, there is a small minority of Arabic-speakers in Iran who are Iranian citizens too and mostly live near the border with Iraq and along the Persian Gulf. Many have relatives that live across the borders in Iraq and Bahrain etc (which all used to be part of Iran) These people are one of the many minority groups that exist in Iran. Just like many European countries, Iran has speakers of smaller local languages, some of which are very ancient (iran even influenced European gypsies!)

About 51 percent of Iranians are Persians - people who speak Farsi as a mother tongue and are said to be of Aryan decent (though in Iran's 10,000 year history of civilzation, which includes 3 or 4 major Persian empires as well as invasions by Greeks, Mongols, Turks, Arabs, etc. there has been a lot of mixture of people! The Aryans came from Central Asia thousands of years ago, moved in two branches to Europe and Iran. The ones who came to Iran continued to northern India - which is why Sanskrit is much like ancient Persian languages.)

About 25% of Iranians also speak a form of Turkish language (and the current leader of Iran is himself a member of this minority language speakers.) 

There are also speakers of Kurdish (2 different dialects) and Luri and Baluchi and Gilaki etc. 

However the official language of Iran is Farsi (Persian) and all people of Iran are Iranian citizens regardless of their languages. Farsi is also spoken in countries like Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Historically, Farsi was once the language of the high culture and royalty in Turkey and India too.

Farsi is an Indo-European tongue distantly related to English and Danish. It is not a Semitic tongue like Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. Farsi is written in the Arabic script (though Farsi has some extra sounds, like "P" that doesn't exist in Arabic) but otherwise Farsi is relatively easy for Europeans to learn (no gender) and many English words actually come from Farsi ("Paradise")

Iranians are almost all Muslims - though there is a small minority of Christians and Jews (there is a very long and interesting history of Persian Jews in Iran; Persian religions such as Zoroastrianism greatly influenced Judaism, and later Christianity too. The Christians in Iran are mostly Armenian Orthodox which have existed in Iran for many centuries, as Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan were historically part of Iran for centuries.)

However, even though Iranians are almost all Muslims, they almost all belong exclusively to the Shi'ite branch of Islam. Shi'ites constitute only 10% of Muslims worldwide, though some Shi'ites exist in Arab countries such as Iraq and Lebanon too. So even religiously, Iranians have differences with Arabs.

Iranians have always referred to their country as Iran = "Land of the Aryans" (the real Aryans had nothing to do with Hitler) for more than 2000 years. The Greeks and later the Europeans in general referred to Iran as Persia because the capital of Iran was located in a district called Pars (modern-day Fars). However, in 1935 the King of Persia requested that Europeans also use the term Iran, not Persia. (Some Iranians who live in the West have prefer to call themelves Persian because they think it has a better connotation than Iranian, but the country of Iran has always been called "Iran" by her people for many centuries.)

There are other differences: for example If you go to an Iranian household as a guest, you are very likely to be offered tea, not coffee (though coffee drinking has become quite popular in Iran nowdays) whilst in Arabic households you'll probably be offered coffee. 

The Arab invasion of Iran around 7th century brought many influences, as did the Greek and Mongol and Turkish invasions. However, Persian culture also greatly influenced the invaders too! So many Persian influences were carried by the Arabs all the way to Europe, including many musical and mathematical concepts. In Spain, you;ll see classical Persian gardens.

Realistically speaking, Iran should perhaps be classified as a Central Asian country not a Middle Eastern country though all of these classifications are all entirely arbitrary.


----------



## hassani1387

Jocaste said:


> I know this is different, but why in today's world are people confusing Arab and Muslin ? The explanation of this confusion can't only be terrorism.


 

This is an aspect of something called "Orientalism" = the belief that "those people" in the East are fundamentally different from "us people" in the West, and are also somehow inherently inferior to "us".

When you view the world in such terms, you fail to see the individual differences in "those people" and so you assume that "they" are all alike. And because you see them as all alike, you tend not to see them as humans just like you. So, Muslim becomes the same as Arab which becomes the same as Middle Eastern, etc. 

So really Orientalism is a form of racism, and it was common in the European view of the world during the 18th and 19th centuries when it was used to justify British/French political dominance and Empire-building in the East.

Of course, this view of the world is false! but unfortunately Orientalism is still with us and some people still promote it.


----------



## La Bruja Libanesa

I am Lebanese I am Christian I am surely not a Phoenician but that doesnt make me an arab either, for me arabs are those who live in the Gulf
I believe that an ethnicity cannot be imposed on someone, an ethnicity has to be accepted before anything else
Even though i speak arabic I am not arabic, because for me arabic refers 1st to the Gulf and in a second place to Islam and i dont belong to both ( even though i respect them )


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

I've just been reading back through this thread and there are some interesting questions raised.



> Yes, Arabic is a language, an ethnicity and a culture. But I think that to determine a country's being Arab or not we can rule out the ethnicity criteria, otherwise many countries won't be considered Arab -as I said before.



And what is wrong with that? Using criteria laid down here (and in much of the media I suppose) one could say that the U.S., Canada, Australia etc. are "English", or Latin America (excluding Brazil) is "Spanish", both of which seem to me to be a highly unsatisfactory ways of grouping the said countries together.

Egyptians are not Arabs though they do speak Arabic. Americans are not English though they do speak English. Indeed, there would be more of a justification for calling Americans "English" than Egyptians "Arab". The English colonized America, Arabs never "colonized" Egypt, though they did conquer it.

I'm often confused by the definition of Arab given in most dictionaries as it seems to be radically different to how we label other population groupings (though there are perhaps historical reasons for the current appellation, as was mentioned before).
For me, an Arab is someone from the Arabian peninsula - that's it. Calling the Sudanese "Arab" is really a stretch of logic as I see it.

If X country adopts Arabic as an official language tomorrow do they then become "Arab"?


----------



## WadiH

Pedro y La Torre said:


> And what is wrong with that? Using criteria laid down here (and in much of the media I suppose) one could say that the U.S., Canada, Australia etc. are "English", or Latin America (excluding Brazil) is "Spanish", both of which seem to me to be a highly unsatisfactory ways of grouping the said countries together.



Well first of all, I think that, at the time, Cherine must have been unaware of the distinction between "ethnic group" and "race," or between "ethnicity" and "genealogy."  An ethnic group is basically a group of people who share a common culture and identity, usually, but not necessarily based on language.  For example, "Hispanics" or "Latinos" in the U.S. are an ethnic group, even though they come from many different races, and even though, genealogically there is very little that is either "Hispanic" or "Latin" about their origins.

In the modern world, Arabs are very much an ethnic group in a very similar sense.  Arabs are basically a group of people who share in common a certain body of values, historical experiences, and traditions -- in short, a common heritage.  Because this heritage is carried in the vessel of the Arabic language (or "languages" if you prefer, it doesn't really make a difference), and because the owners of this heritage adopt Arab history and Arab historical figures as their own, the owners of this heritage are called "Arabs ".  Now this doesn't mean that this shared heritage is ALL that they have -- I don't share ALL of my heritage, or even most of it, with someone from Libya or Yemen.  But the part of my heritage that I DO share with them, is what makes me Arab.  The cultural sphere of the Arabs is called the "Arab World" because that is where this Arab culture predominates, even though many non-Arabs live there.

So, the word "Arab" is just a shorthand for all of the above.  It is not meant to imply that someone has a pure and unadulterated Arabian genealogy.  Now, in English people have come up with nice distinctions like "Arabian," meaning "of the Arabian Peninsula," "Arabic" meaning of the Arabic language, and "Arab" meaning of the "Arab race," and so we could use something like "Arabic" or "Arabic-speaking" instead of "Arab."  But in Arabic, there is no corresponding distinction.  The only word we have is _Arabiyy_ عربيّ (many don't realize that, in Arabic, there is no word equivalent to "Arabia!").  Moreover, this ignores what _really_ is behind this Arab identity -- the language is the most salient feature but it is not sufficient by itself to create this cultural sphere that we call the "Arab World."

And really, genealogy is a very tricky thing, and with Arabs in particular, it is a topic incredibly rife with myths and misconceptions.  One of which is that the "Gulf" is supposedly "more (racially) Arab" than everywhere else.  Now, when I think of the Gulf I think of the coastal area, but I'm guessing the previous posters were referring the entire Peninsula.  Well, one should know that Arabia has always been a very diverse place, even before Islam.  Centuries of slavery, both white and black, along with centuries of immigration to the coastal areas have made Arabia as racially diverse as any other country you can think of.  There are many people in the Gulf or Arabia who have more Iranian, Turkic, East Asian, and (mainly) African blood than Arab, not to mention those who originate from places like Egypt, Syria, or North Africa.  By contrast, Arabian tribes have been migrating continuously into the other countries from before Islam up til about a 100 years ago.  In a place like Egypt, you'll occasionally see people who "look like the Pharoes in the museums," but you also see people who like Arabs from the Peninsula or like Europeans from Greece or like Syrians from Damascus, so I think relying on "looks" is not very helpful.  And anyway, many have pointed out already that you can't identify solely on genetics.  If I discover tomorrow that I had an ancestor who came from Iran or Turkey 500 years ago, it won't make me any less Arab or any more Turkish or Iranian, even if I wanted it to.  And honestly, most citizens of Arab countries have a much more intimate connection with the Arab aspects of their heritage than with ancient cultures that once lived in their land, and which they only know about from archeological digs. 

By the way, I want to address the idea that the Arab identity was until recently restricted to "bedouins in the desert."  What needs to be understood here, is that different words can mean different things in different contexts.  Yes, "Arab" often or mostly meant "bedouin" a couple of hundred yeras ago, but that doesn't mean that the other meanings were unknown.  Even in the Arabian Peninsula itself, a group of bedouins on the edge of town would be referred to as "Arabs" (in the sense of "bedouin") but that doesn't mean the townsmen didn't consider themselves to be Arabs in the ethnic sense.  The Quran itself refers to bedouins as A'rab (plural of 'Arab), but it also refers to itself as "an Arabic Quran" in a "clear Arabic tongue."  Even the idea of Arabism being defined by the Arabic language is not new, but appears in a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, which means the idea dates from at least the 9th century when the hadiths were recorded. Now, Arab NATIONALISM may be a recent idea, but nationalism is not the same as ethnicity or culture.

Finally, I want to point out that ethnicity, nationality, race, identity, etc. -- these are all fluid and ever-changing.  Just as there was no such thing as an "Arab World" 1500 years ago, there may cease to be one 50 years in the future, even if its inhabitants still speak Arabic.



> Egyptians are not Arabs though they do speak Arabic. Americans are not English though they do speak English. Indeed, there would be more of a justification for calling Americans "English" than Egyptians "Arab".



You're comparing apples and oranges.  Just because one ethnicity cannot be defined by language, doesn't mean others cannot either.  Some ethnicities or nations are defined by common geography, others by common religion, and still others by a common language (which is really, as I said, a short-hand for a common cultural expression, because language is not sufficient).  In any case, it is common for the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to be seen as closely-affiliated nations.  Sometimes they're even called the "Anglo-sphere."  Even politically and militarily, they nearly always align with each other.  But if you look at it genealogically, only a minority of Americans (even white Americans probably) are of English ancestry.



> The English colonized America, Arabs never "colonized" Egypt, though they did conquer it.



I don't know what you mean by "colonized," but the Arabs certainly settled in Egypt in large numbers with the Islamic conquests and continued to do so until relatively recently.  How else do you think Arabic became so deeply-rooted there?



> For me, an Arab is someone from the Arabian peninsula - that's it. Calling the Sudanese "Arab" is really a stretch of logic as I see it.



Well, many Sudanese are not Arab by any definition of the word.  But for the northern Sudanese who live in Khartoum, etc., I find it almost ludicrous to insist that they are NOT Arab.  Not only is there significant Arabic ancestry there (again that's why they speak Arabic, and that's why they can usually be told apart from non-Arab Sudanese), but they are definitely part of the Arab cultural sphere.  That should not let us ignore other aspects of their identity of course.  By the way, there are Arab bedouin tribes still roaming as far deep in Africa as Niger.  They are as dark-skinned as anyone in Africa, and they are Arabs (albeit with significant native African ancestry).


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## Pedro y La Torre

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Now, in English people have come up with nice distinctions like "Arabian," meaning "of the Arabian Peninsula," "Arabic" meaning of the Arabic language, and "Arab" meaning of the "Arab race," and so we could use something like "Arabic" or "Arabic-speaking" instead of "Arab."



That's just the problem though. Can we say that Egyptians or Moroccans are "of the Arab race"? I don't think we can. Hence the enveloping term "Arab" to refer to them becomes problematic.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> You're comparing apples and oranges.  Just because one ethnicity cannot be defined by language, doesn't mean others cannot either.  Some ethnicities or nations are defined by common geography, others by common religion, and still others by a common language (which is really, as I said, a short-hand for a common cultural expression, because language is not sufficient).  In any case, it is common for the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to be seen as closely-affiliated nations.  Sometimes they're even called the "Anglo-sphere."  Even politically and militarily, they nearly always align with each other.  But if you look at it genealogically, only a minority of Americans (even white Americans probably) are of English ancestry.



I see no problem with saying that Arabic-speaking nations have closley defined links, similar influences on their culture etc., however that is not the same, in my mind, as saying they're "Arabs".

Saying a particular country is part of the Anglosphere is not the same as saying they're English.

In my understanding, an Arab is someone from the Arabian penninsula i.e. Arabia.
Egypt is not part of Arabia and Egyptians are not ethnically Arab, indeed according to this, the number of Arabs (i.e. those from Arabia) who settled in Egypt, aside from the ruling classes, would appear to be relatively small.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> I don't know what you mean by "colonized," but the Arabs certainly settled in Egypt in large numbers with the Islamic conquests and continued to do so until relatively recently.  How else do you think Arabic became so deeply-rooted there?



See above. Suffice to say it took many centuries for the Arabic language to become the native language of all Egyptians. Coptic, the last stage of Ancient Egyptian, was still spoken until the 17th century. There appears to have been a very gradual movement towards Arabic and Islam rather than a wholesale adoption. And, of course, Egypt still maintains close links to its ancient cultural achievements.

I don't dispute that the current trend is to label any country with Arabic as one of their major languages "Arab". However as I've said, it doesn't really strike me as being correct. As has already been mentioned here, countries like Morocco are mostly ethnically Berber and indeed have a substantial minority, if not majority, of Berber-speakers.

It seems to me that it's often easier for English speakers to label anything from Morocco up to and including Iran "Arab" than actually taking the time to learn about the different countries and cultures, and the large differences, contained therein.

A similar trend is found in Canada where the Québécois, being French-speakers, often get labelled "French", or in the United States where Mexicans get labelled "Spanish". There are of course cultural links but in all these cases, the particular appellations used strike me as misnomers.


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## Mahaodeh

Pedro y La Torre said:


> That's just the problem though. Can we say that Egyptians or Moroccans are "of the Arab race"? I don't think we can. Hence the enveloping term "Arab" to refer to them becomes problematic.


 
I don't think it's possible to conider Arabs a race; I don't believe that you can even say that there is a Semetic race. Up to my knowledge, they are part of the Caucasianiod race together with North Africa, Northern Sudan and many other peoples. Maybe we should avoid the term "race" altogether because racially, all those peoples we are talking about (whether you consider them Arabs or not) are actually of the same race or mixture of races. Lets just use ethnicity. 



Pedro y La Torre said:


> I see no problem with saying that Arabic-speaking nations have closley defined links, similar influences on their culture etc., however that is not the same, in my mind, as saying they're "Arabs".
> 
> Saying a particular country is part of the Anglosphere is not the same as saying they're English.


 
I wouldn't equate the situation with "English" or "Anglosphere", it's closer to "Hispanic" in my opinion although each has it's particular situation.



Pedro y La Torre said:


> In my understanding, an Arab is someone from the Arabian penninsula i.e. Arabia.
> Egypt is not part of Arabia and Egyptians are not ethnically Arab, indeed according to this, the number of Arabs (i.e. those from Arabia) who settled in Egypt, aside from the ruling classes, would appear to be relatively small.


 
Egypt aside, limiting the Arabs to the Arabian penninsula is not accurate Historically. Arabs have been recorded in ancient texts in Northwestern Syria as early as 850BCE; the earliest Arabian Kingdom registered outside of the Penninsula dates back to the 1st Century CE and spread in the Levant and Northern Iraq, I'm not talking about the Lakhmids and the Ghassanids that immigrated 4 or 5 hundered years before Islam.



Pedro y La Torre said:


> See above. Suffice to say it took many centuries for the Arabic language to become the native language of all Egyptians. Coptic, the last stage of Ancient Egyptian, was still spoken until the 17th century. There appears to have been a very gradual movement towards Arabic and Islam rather than a wholesale adoption. And, of course, Egypt still maintains close links to its ancient cultural achievements.


 
Yes it did, but how common was it? If in the tenth Century, Severus ibn el-Muqaffa', a Coptic bishop of Upper Egypt, wrote _*History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria *_in Arabic!

I'm not disputing that Egyptians may have a different genology, but that is totally irrelevent to the fact that they are Arab ethnically. As Wadi mentioned earlier, ethnicity does not depend on geneology nor on race.



Pedro y La Torre said:


> I don't dispute that the current trend is to label any country with Arabic as one of their major languages "Arab". However as I've said, it doesn't really strike me as being correct.


 
Well, one of the definitions of an Arab is "the one that speaks Arabic". This definition is not new, it quite old - about 1400 years old.



Pedro y La Torre said:


> It seems to me that it's often easier for English speakers to label anything from Morocco up to and including Iran "Arab" than actually taking the time to learn about the different countries and cultures, and the large differences, contained therein.


 
But couldn't it not be that they in fact consider themselves Arabs, hence came the idea in the first place? As Wadi mentioned earlier, while there are local differences, the major parts of the culture (not limited to language) are the same accorss the Arab World. Claiming that they merely identify with each other through language is an unfair simplification of the common culture.


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## Pedro y La Torre

Mahaodeh said:


> I don't think it's possible to conider Arabs a race; I don't believe that you can even say that there is a Semetic race. Up to my knowledge, they are part of the Caucasianiod race together with North Africa, Northern Sudan and many other peoples. Maybe we should avoid the term "race" altogether because racially, all those peoples we are talking about (whether you consider them Arabs or not) are actually of the same race or mixture of races. Lets just use ethnicity.



Agreed. There is no such thing as an Arab race per se, however there are (seemingly) two definitions of what constitutes an "Arab":

a) Those originating in Arabia
b) Those who have Arabic as their first language



Mahaodeh said:


> I wouldn't equate the situation with "English" or "Anglosphere", it's closer to "Hispanic" in my opinion although each has it's particular situation.



Hispanic is another term with a confused history, and often mistakenly applied. But that's an issue for another thread.



Mahaodeh said:


> Egypt aside, limiting the Arabs to the Arabian penninsula is not accurate Historically. Arabs have been recorded in ancient texts in Northwestern Syria as early as 850BCE; the earliest Arabian Kingdom registered outside of the Penninsula dates back to the 1st Century CE and spread in the Levant and Northern Iraq, I'm not talking about the Lakhmids and the Ghassanids that immigrated 4 or 5 hundered years before Islam.



This is where our opinions start to diverge.

If we ignore racial definitions, an Arab is someone from Arabia. This is the primary meaning given in most dictionaries, and seemingly was the primordial meaning in English until relatively recently. An Arabophone is someone who speaks Arabic. The situation in Arabic itself is apparently different as there is only one word used to describe all these cases, but as regards English, the term Arab is now used both to describe people from Arabia and those who speak Arabic as a first language. This often leads to the mistaken identification of Moroccans, for example, as ethnic Arabs. This is my problem with the term.



Mahaodeh said:


> Yes it did, but how common was it? If in the tenth Century, Severus ibn el-Muqaffa', a Coptic bishop of Upper Egypt, wrote _*History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria *_in Arabic!



Arabic was (and still is) the dominant legal and cultural language in the region, a position akin to Latin in the West in former times. It therefore unsurprising that he would write in Arabic. The shift as regards the common people however, looks to have been much slower.



Mahaodeh said:


> Well, one of the definitions of an Arab is "the one that speaks Arabic". This definition is not new, it quite old - about 1400 years old.



What has been remarked in this thread is that the equation of Arabic-speaking with "Arab", in English, seems to be relatively new, not earlier than the 19th century.



Mahaodeh said:


> Claiming that they merely identify with each other through language is an unfair simplification of the common culture.



I don't deny that there is more than language binding the Arabic-speaking world. However, as I've said, the all enveloping term "Arab" seems to me to be open to misunderstanding and confusion.


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## WadiH

Pedro,
We can argue as much as we want about what "should" be called what, but that's neither here or there.  In the real world, "Arab" (or at least the most common usage of it) means anyone whose cultural heritage is in the Arabic language and who regards Arab history as his/her own.  Doesn't matter where their genetic material comes from because as I said, Arabia has always been home to many diverse peoples, and is a very racially diverse region.  Even 1500 hundred years ago, the creation myth of the Arab people held that the Arabs were composed of two separate nations, one of which (the one Muhammad belonged to) was referred to as the "Arabized Arabs."  I also disagree that this usage of Arab is recent in European languages such as English -- Europeans have always referred to such people as "Arabs."  Even during the Crusades, they called the native peoples of the Levant "Saracens," which is just an old Greek word for "Arab."  By the way, I don't believe that the existence of an Arab ethnic group is set in stone (it can easily disintegrate), or that it necessitates that the Arabs are one nation or should join into one political entity (an ideology known as "Pan-Arabism").


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## clevermizo

Pedro y La Torre said:


> I see no problem with saying that Arabic-speaking nations have closley defined links, similar influences on their culture etc., however that is not the same, in my mind, as saying they're "Arabs".



The difference that makes no difference is no difference. If you're Arab culturally and you have no concrete way of tracing your ancestry to show genetically where you come from, then you are essentially Arab. In fact, you are Arab. Identity issues are very personal in meaning. There are people that claim that they are Egyptian and not Arab - and we should allow them to do so. If they have traced their genetic ancestry and shown only 0.01% of them may be Arab, then bless their hearts. It still doesn't change the fact that many people throughout the Arabic speaking world consider themselves Arabs, no matter where their genes came from. 




> In my understanding, an Arab is someone from the Arabian penninsula i.e. Arabia.
> Egypt is not part of Arabia and Egyptians are not ethnically Arab, indeed according to this,


Well, you bring up someone's personal blog, however the blog is referencing this paper.

First of all, the data in that study is based on a Y-chromosomal genetic marker. This is only *part* of your genome. Also, it is only inherited from one parent. The data show that a haplogroup *E-M78* on the Y-chromosome has a northeast African origin. The marker can be found in people as far and wide as Portugal through southern Asia, however it is most frequent in the population of the Sa'id (Upper Egypt). This leads to the postulation that it is of Upper Egyptian origin. 

The blogger in your link, makes the claim that



> Southern Egyptians Y Chromomses are mainly native to Africa, both sub and supra Saharan. This makes a grand total of *80.3% definitively African non-Arab ancestry in the upper Egypt region*.


Although the blogger does not quote papers discussing other Y-chromosomal markers, the blogger's bolded sentence is very misleading.

What is meant is that *data from Y-chromosomal markers point to African origin in Upper Egypt of those genetic markers*. This means *with regard to specific loci* (such as E-M78) in Egypt, they are probably ancestral. *Those loci* are ancestral, not *all loci*. What about mtDNA data?  You cannot make such claims based on Y-chromosomal data alone. 

In fact, if you look at mtDNA data, as in this paper, what you find is that there is a large amount of Eurasian mtDNA markers in Egypt.



> It seems to me that it's often easier for English speakers to label anything from Morocco up to and including Iran "Arab" than actually taking the time to learn about the different countries and cultures, and the large differences, contained therein.


I agree and this is unfortunate. However, part of their learning should not be "Who is Arab and who is not Arab?" in my opinion. They should learn about what Arab identity means and how this is often a tenuous issue in some largely Arabic-speaking nations. Splitting hairs over ethnicity and genetics to me can often obscure the sociological reality. There are people in Egypt who will claim they are not Arab but Egyptian, but they may be 100% Arab in ancestry, just as there are people who claim to be Arab in Lebanon but may have Phoenician ancestry, or vice versa. Understanding the scope of what identity means is more important, in my opinion.



> A similar trend is found in Canada where the Québécois, being French-speakers, often get labelled "French", or in the United States where Mexicans get labelled "Spanish". There are of course cultural links but in all these cases, the particular appellations used strike me as misnomers.


These misnomers do occur, but it's not because some Quebecois are not actually French ancestry and some Mexicans are not actually Spanish ancestry and they've just been mislabeled. Inaccurate description of biological ancestry is not the issue - personal and cultural politics are the real issues.


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## Schmizzkazz

andersxman said:


> Iran is not an Arab country? How would that be explained? They speak arabic? Up until now I wouldn't have hesitated a second in saying that Iran is an arab country.


 

 Iran is not an Arab country. No. It ain't. It just ain't.


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## Einstein

To make this clear: Farsi is not related to Arabic, it's part of the Indo-European language group. Of course, if andersxman thought Farsi was a dialect of Arabic he might be forgiven for considering Iran an Arab country.
Another thing to remember is that the Arabic alphabet, like the Latin alphabet, is used for a large number of unrelated languages (Urdu, for example). If you didn't know this, then seeing Arabic and Farsi written you might think they were the same language... just as an Arab unacquainted with the Latin alphabet could not tell the difference between German, Turkish and Vietnamese.


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## إسكندراني

It is important to consider not only each country but each region and city. I do not have time to do this here, but if there is enough demand maybe we should try to do that collectively.
For example:
Starting from the extreme east, Iran is definitely not Arab, never was and has for as long as anyone knows been at the epitomy of persian-ness. However, Culturally & Ethnically & Linguistically it isn't all persian; in addition to turkic (azeri) north-westerners and balochi south-easterners, the southwest contains a good number of towns and cities which are traditionally Arab (Ahwaz and further east too I think) and continue to be to this day - judging by any standard except government lingo.
Ending in the west, the berbers are generally bilingual in their native tongue - berber being a western term for a whole group of languages - as well as Arabic, but couldn't be considered Arab by any other measure.
Southern Sudan and Chad have almost creole-like languages where a rudimentary dialect serves as a lingua franca - but consider any other Arabic dialect outside the gulf and it's usually 'rudimentary' too.

And in the far north it's interesting to hear talk of Malta wondering whether it wants to call itself Arab - legitimate since it really doesn't seem far off Tunisian to me.

So let's not try to find Saudi-style Arabs in Mauritania; this isn't what we're talking about.

When one mentions 'Arab Countries', the 'Arab World' or other such Arab things, he speaks of - in my opinion - something completely untangible and which extends beyond the Arab League. Politics is not a good way to approach this region at all; most countries don't have representative governments.

There are two ways to consider this sphere of Arab bieng: 

one is language; if I learn proper Arabic to a good standard, how many dialects can I 'cheat' my way into understanding? Note that Proper Arabic extends way beyond what 'the west' calls 'Modern Standard Arabic'; real Arabic penetrates every dialect to its core. Whether a dialect spoken contains enough Arabic to easily pick up - as I did with Moroccan from Egyptian for example - is a good way to determine whether an area would call itself Arab, since it would understand 'arabs' back. And in countries with large non-first-language populations, let's not forget that there are still fluent and influential Arab speakers in Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia - related to tribes in Yemen - though these countries' poverty and recent wars have made them less influential they still exist. 

the second is even less tangible; it's about where the 'people's media' sees its cultural sphere. News from Eritrea would be dealt with in a different section of an Egyptian Newspaper to news from Sweden or Kenya. Compare with a Spanish paper reporting news from Latin America separately to Kenya too.

The 'big umbrella term' encompasses many smaller more realistic and more traditional cultural spheres which I would suggest as being - based primarily on similarity of dialects:

Fertile Crescent: Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Ahwaz
PetroGulf: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait ... Oman
Bab-El-Mandab: Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia
Nile & SubSahara: Egypt, Sudan, Chad
Greater Maghreb: Mauritania, WestSahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya

Hopefully I got some kind of point across? Maybe a map would help though...


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## إسكندراني

Hopefully you guys can kind of see what I'm saying? 'sprayed in blobby bits' are non-arabs in arab countries or vice versa.


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## WadiH

إسكندراني said:


> Fertile Crescent: Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Ahwaz
> PetroGulf: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait ... Oman
> Bab-El-Mandab: Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia
> Nile & SubSahara: Egypt, Sudan, Chad
> Greater Maghreb: Mauritania, WestSahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya
> 
> Hopefully I got some kind of point across? Maybe a map would help though...


 
"PetroGulf?" Aside from the insulting name, you have reduced the entire Arabian Peninsula to one coast line. What does a place like Mecca have to do with "Petrol" or "the Gulf?"

Anyway, your list is highly arbitrary. What could Egypt possibly have in common with Chad that it doesn't have in common with Syria or even "the Gulf?" What does Iraq share in common with Lebanon that it doesn't share with any other Arabic country? Nothing really.  I bet most Egyptians don't even know what Chad is.  You also grouped Yemen with countries that don't even speak Arabic! If you've been to Saudi Arabia and seen how integrated Yemen and Saudi Arabia are you'd know that this is just silly (no offense).


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## Mahaodeh

I have to agree with Wadi, that map is rather weird.


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## إسكندراني

Wadi Hanifa said:


> "PetroGulf?" Aside from the insulting name, you have reduced the entire Arabian Peninsula to one coast line. What does a place like Mecca have to do with "Petrol" or "the Gulf?"
> 
> Anyway, your list is highly arbitrary. What could Egypt possibly have in common with Chad that it doesn't have in common with Syria or even "the Gulf?" What does Iraq share in common with Lebanon that it doesn't share with any other Arabic country? Nothing really.  I bet most Egyptians don't even know what Chad is.  You also grouped Yemen with countries that don't even speak Arabic! If you've been to Saudi Arabia and seen how integrated Yemen and Saudi Arabia are you'd know that this is just silly (no offense).


Again we're talking about countries; Saudi as a country (political entity) is closer to other oil-rich states than Yemen.
As for Chad, Egyptian companies are extremely active there, they are considered broadly within the same group as Sudan ethnically (which I found weird) and speak a dialect closer to Egyptian than to Yemeni or Maghreb dialects.
As for Iraq, it has nothing in common with Lebanon in the south, rather my logic in combining the two was that there is a continuum across those nations borders called the fertile crescent. None of the other groups have anything in common at each end either I suppose! But it makes more sense to me to think in terms of 6 or so 'blocks' than 20 or 30 splintered arbitrary nonsensical entities - though I admit I wasn't careful with 'terminology'


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