"Neighbour to the Moon," the legendary Christian Lebanese singer, فيروز.
Today Arabs, Muslims and Middle Easterners remain some of the last people in the west for whom racism is not only extremely common but also widely accepted, even governmentally endorsed. Merely advocating equality and human rights for Arabs and Muslims is often met with charges of racism and embracing hatred, probably the only people likely to ellicit that response besides Germans. Given this reality, centuries of negative stereotypes and repeated military and political actions that reflect undeniable double standards, it's no wonder that many view the frequent proclamations that "Islam is a beautiful religion" and hands extended in friendship with widespread suspicion at best.
The Arab world
Arabs trace their ancestry back to the Semitic tribes of the Arabian peninsula and the Syrian desert. Like many immigrant populations, Arabs are often viewed as so indelibly tied to their ancestral homeland that they are seen as perpetual foreigners; their allegiances are often questioned entirely on the basis of their ancestry. Today, not surprsingly, many Arabs make their homes around the world beyond the Middle East. The widespread hostility they are treated with is obvious not only in hate crimes, but larger political action, after both the Oklahoma City bombing and the Anthrax scare prompted calls to military response against someone, anyone in the middle east. Let's just drop some bombs over there and be done with it.
The "Arabian Elvis"... عبدالحليم إسماعيل شبانة
Arab in the non-genetic sense
Furthering the confusion is the use of Arab to describe anyone who speaks Arabic (similar to the way Amish call non-Amish Americans "English" or American-based Spanish Language TV stations are referred to as "Mexican."). Although many Berbers, Lebanese and Palestinians have some Arabic ancestry, it makes up a small portion of their genetics, even though they often self-identify as Arabs based on culture and language.
Arab n. Bad guys in the Middle East
Just as the definition of the Middle East seems to expand in an effort to encompass the Muslim world, the term Arab grows too, as with the Darfur War, which is usually characterized as a genocide perpetrated by Arabs, despite the fact that the attackers are themselves black Africans. Arab is, therefore, understood to mean "bad guy" and they're one of the few people in the world who're never allowed to be portrayed as victims. Even when occupied, oppressed and living as second class citizens under apartheid, there's an understanding that they had it coming, being Arabs. Another example is the media and American culture's disproportionate attention toward Buddhist Tibet and almost complete silence regarding its neighbor to the north, mostly Muslim East Turkestan, despite their parallel situations.
The Islamic world
The Islamic World is usually mischaracterized as being roughly synonymous with the Middle East. Although most Arabs practice Islam, there are large numbers of Christians and Druze. But, in the minds of most, Arabs and Muslims are synonyms. When I caught a local news story about the secular-Marxist Palestinian organization, the PFLP (founded by an atheist from a Christian background), the newscaster referred to them as "radical Islamists," apparently incapable of thinking that the motivation for self governance could be motivated by anything other than fanatical devotion to God.
Islam outside the Middle East
Even more notably, the countries with the largest populations of Muslims are almost all located outside the traditional middle east. In descending order of population size they are Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, Nigeria, Iran, Morocco and Algeria... none of which are in the Arabian peninsula. Of the biggest Islamic populations, only Egypt and Algeria are Arabic to a substantial degree.
The Middle East
The Middle East itself is a hazily defined region in Asia with no universally-agreed upon boundaries but always including Arabia, Egypt, the Levant and Mesopotamia... but sometimes including parts of Eastern Europe, Anatolia, North Africa, Central Asia and South Asia. It seems to grow the more people become aware of the dominance of Islam outside of regions traditionally thought of as the Middle East. Nonetheless, it's often discussed like it's its own continent, with static borders and completely exclusive from the rest of Asia. Yes, Jesus and Mohammed were Asian in that sense. Put that in your shisha and smoke it.
The Middle East exists in the collective Western consciousness as a vast, homogenous region full of harems full of belly dancers presided over by oil barons, insane suicide bombers, sneaky (but inept) sheiks and genies. Everyone (except Israelis) is both Arabic and Muslim. Of course, in reality, Middle Easterners practice just as many faiths as anyone else. Most Assyrians, Bilen, Georgians, Armenians and a large percentage of Lebanese are, in fact, Christian. (Yes, I know few people consider Georgia and Armenia to be in the Middle East, but there are large numbers of Armenians and Geogians living in countries that are.)
Non-Muslim/non-Jewish Middle Easterners
Druze Zoroastrians Samaritans
It's also worth pointing out that not only did Christianity, Islam and Judaism come out of the Middle East, so did Druze, Zoroastrianism, Bahá'í, Samaritanism, Yazdânism and Sikhism (if your personal definition of the Middle East includes Punjab).
Non-Arabic/non-Jewish Indigenous Middle Easterners
Afar woman Assyrian boy Azeri boys
Beja Chaoui women Hederab woman
Berber Woman Nara woman Nubian woman
Pamiri woman Pashtun mother and child Persian girls
Rashaida couple Saho Woman Talysh girls
Tigre Woman Tigrinya Tuareg homies
Turkish women Turkmen musicians
What's even less known is that there are large numbers of non-Arabic/non-Jewish people indigenous to the Middle East, each with their own traditions, music and culture including both the examples above and non-pictured people like the Abkhaz, Bakhtiaris, Baloch, Bilen, Danagla, Dom, Gilakis, Haratin, Hausa, Ja'Alin, Kabyle, Kurds, Laks, Lurs, Mazandaranis, Mozabites, Shaigiya, Teoubou and Zazas (to name a few).
Hollywood and the media's perpetuation of the faceless Middle East
With most of our impressions of the middle east coming from the media and Hollywood, it's not surprising how ignorant most westerners are about the Middle East. When Afghans (neither Arabic nor Middle Eastern by standard definitions) laughed at the idea of an Arabs like Osama bin Laden effortlessly blending into their population unnoticed, most American scratched their heads in confusion. How can they tell themselves apart? Of course, as part of the campaign to make our military opponents faceless, images of Afghans are extremely rare in the media. If we assume that all Middle Easterners are the same, we can just punish whichever ones we can get at most easily instead of pursuing the actual perps. When the World Trade Center came down due to the Afghan Taliban and al qaeda, the natural response was to shock and awe the Iraqi people, despite the fact that there were no Iraqis involved. It's the same kind of thinking that led people to deaths of Balbir Singh Sodhi, Adel Karas (neither of whom were even Muslims) and other brown skinned people in the days following the attack on 9/11.
Sometimes it's even more overtly politically motivated, as with arguments that suggest that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people and that the word didn't even appear until the 1948 invasion. This despite the fact that the Greeks wrote of Palaistinê (Παλαιστίνη) several millenia ago... and demands for an independent Palestine issued by the Syrian-Palestinian congress in 1921. All of this negative stereotyping, even when conciously recognized and rejected, can end up poisoning our subconscious. Test yourself here to test your own biases toward Arabs, Muslims and other people. And if you want to watch some Hollywood depictions of Arabs, Middle Easterners and Muslims, check out any of the following:
The Sheik (1921), A Son of the Sahara (1924), A Song of Love (1923), The Son of the Sheik (1926), A Café in Cairo (1924), The Desert Bride (1928), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Arab Conspiracy (1976), Black Sunday (1977), Raid on Entebbe (1977), Midnight Express (1978), The Black Stallion (1979), Back to the Future (1985), Iron Eagle (1986), Death Before Dishonor (1987), Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987), Dadah is Death (1988), Navy SEALs (1990), Not Without My Daughter (1990), The Delta Force (1991), True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1996), Return to Paradise (1998), Rules of Engagement (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001).
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Video update: english version
The sign of The Almighty's arrival: A face in the sky video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIsZ9bXqhxA
You are aware, I hope, that the word Palestine comes from the Latin pronunciation of the word Philistine, who were Phoenician (Greek) descendants of the traditional enemies of the Israelites. After the destruction of the temple in 70AD, the Romans exiled all the Jews from the region and renamed the area "Palestine" in order to further humiliate the Jews. The Arabs invaded in the 600s and have been there ever since. The real Palestinians, the Philistines, are extinct.
Now, now Sara, don't let us be distracted by Evil Jooo conspiracies. We all know the Jewish religion was invented in 1938 and celebrated by sneaking the ruins of this so-called "Temple" underneath an ancient Arab mosque.
Oh my god!! The sand people (a.k.a tusken raiders) from tatooine are musulmans. Islam is the most extended religion across the universe, it reached a galaxy far far away.
@Sara
DNA studies show that both Jews and Palestinians share a similar genetic mixture, suggesting Arab ancestry was absorbed into both, not that it displaced it. Haplogroup J1 and J2 are especially common to Jews and Palestinians.
Geneticist Michael Hammer from the University of Arizona in Tucson found that the Y chromosome in Middle Eastern Arabs was almost indistinguishable from that of Jews.
Another geneticist noted that Palestinians and Jews are "descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times", albeit religiously first Christianized then largely Islamized, and all eventually culturally Arabized.
Arabs are not disrespected in Iran.
Iran has many ethnic communities, Arabs make up 2% and those 2% are treated very kindly by all.
great blog, lots of cogent points
One would be daft to ignore the recurrent migrations, conquests, and general movements of peoples throughout the ages. These have led to the distribution of a variety of racial phenotypes and languages, namely the spread of the Aryan race out of the Pontic Steppe beginning circa 3000 BC give or take a few centuries, but not to ignore later movements of Semitic, Asiatic, and especially the later Turkic migrations over much of Asia. Of course there are numerous peoples and languages who have sadly evaded record and have gone extinct as they have been absorbed into other populations. however, to return to the case of blond-haired, blue-eyed "Arabs" there have been influxes of Aryan peoples throughout central Asia for millennia, long before the Arab and Turk conquests. Though language does not explicitly define race, it shold be noted that the Pamiri's speak an Indo-European language and possess Indo-European physical traits (i.e. light hair and eyes). thus, they represent a remnant of the original settlers of central Asia and a part of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Aryan Family. Moreover, I argue that the original Indo-Iranians (including the Persians) like their Celto-Latin and Germanic cousins to the west and their Tocharian cousins to the east, were originally, in fact, blondish-red-haired with eyes of the blue/grey/green type.
I don't understand how or why Azeris, Pamiris, Pashtuns, Turkmen, and Turkish people are classified under "Indigenous Middle Easterners."
This is completely false, as they are Central Asian groups and have no Semitics backgrounds whatsoever.
Also, the picture for the Berber woman is a very inaccurate portrayal. Berbers are predominantly very light skinned, and have more occurrences of light colored eyes than even Europeans. The woman in the picture looks like she is of black African background.
I think it would be wise to just discuss the Arab related things about the Middle East, and leave other ethnic groups out of it.
My main point was exactly that Muslim, Middle Eastern, Semitic and Arabic are not synonyms and that the Middle East is far more diverse than it is often depicted. Azeris, Pamiris, Pashtuns, Turkmen, and Turks are all non-Semitic people native to the "middle east" as it is understood by many people. Central Asia and the Middle East overlap in many definitions.
This is based on a serious misunderstanding of Amazigh (Berber) peoples. While many are "lighter skinned," not ALL are--which is the point the author of this well thought out article is trying to make. Peoples of the Sahel may also identify as Berber, either through absorption or the fact that the region has long been diverse. I mean, what...are you going to show up and tell that girl she is NOT a Berber? Because you said so? You've decided what identity she should have? Absurd! The point of this entire post was to not just discuss the "Arab" related things of the political/social themed "Middle East" and to show that the region has long been much more complex than popular media portrayals. When we shed these Orientalist western fantasies, let's leave behind the other Western simplistic notions like "race" as well. AFRIDI said: Also, the picture for the Berber woman is a very inaccurate portrayal. Berbers are predominantly very light skinned, and have more occurrences of light colored eyes than even Europeans. The woman in the picture looks like she is of black African background.
@Diversity: Thank you, you get it! I'm hoping that, with Western media attention turning to Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Jordan that we START to get a little more representation of nuance and diversity in the Middle East and North Africa.
You begin by criticizing those that lazily and ignorantly interchange terms like the Middle East, the Arab world and the Islamic World, yet you spend the rest of the blog doing just that. Your article is littered with innacuracies:
-The largest Arab population outside of Arabia is certainly not Brazil, most likely it is Egypt.
-Most Lebanese are not Christian, the Lebanese are majority Muslim, Christians are a small minority.
-Druze are not non-Muslims because Druze is simply a form of Islam.
-Most of your listed "Non-Arabic/non-Jewish Indigenous Middle Easterners" are either not indigenous or do not reside in the Middle East, a large proportion of them reside in Northwest Africa, or came into the Middle East from Central Asia during the Middle Ages.
It seems you know very little about the Middle East and it's history, and even less about Islam. If you really want to know about Islam, which, despite your contentions to the contrary, is by far the most dominant ideology in the Middle East, I would suggest you read Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad.
@EXPLORETHEMED
41% of Lebanese are Christian... that's "a small minority?"
Druze developed from Islam but Druze don't consider themselves Muslim. Sikhism also developed from Islam. Are Sikhs Muslims in your world? Are Muslims Jews? Islam developed from Judaism after all.
Northwest Africa and Central Asia are part of the Middle East according to many definitions.
And thank you but I'm not interesting in reading biographies of Muhammad.
And I'm truly sorry that my point that the Middle East is more diverse than suggested in most media turned you into such a condescending and falacious douchebag. Good day :)
Wow, you clearly do not have an extensive or factual knowledge of the middle east, of islam and its followers, or almost any of the people and religions you mentioned. It's ironic because of your contempt of the ~lazy Western media~, yet your work is mostly incorrect and biased. Save the sermon. Can't see or admit your errors, huh?! You sound like the condescending and fallacious* douchebag here, also bitter.
First of all I am from Lebanon, yes Christians in Lebanon are not a small minority !!! and about Druze they are part of Islam !! yes a different part of Islam but they are part of it.
I think that whatever you do you will not fully understand Islam, Arabs, or the Middle East. there are a lot of misunderstanding of a lot of ideas. The middle east Fabric is Intertwined but you should not mislead the reality of the Arab origins.
You all should read between the lines and the real purpose of all this!! this is all a fight over the land (Muslim/Jew) and Jews try to show that the Land is not for the Arab and that it is for the Jew. So do you want to know the reality of things ???
Israel and Jews are doing the impossible to prove that the land is for them and that their roots are from the middle east and on the other side they say that Arabs and Palestinians are not originally from their. The reality is that Palestinians and Lebanese are originally Phoenician even before Arab or Islam. So in Lebanon the roots lead to the Phoenicians. This is our History and roots why the Jews now want to steal our origins!!! Even they try to steal our Heritage. Jews say that their origins are Phoenician and say that famous Lebanese Food like Homos and Tabouly is from their Heritage !!!
I am a Lebanese, Muslims and Christians live in harmony and peace
If you want to know my personal opinion I think that the west will never know the true image of Islam!! Do you know that the true Muslim believes in the Christ and that the Christ will return to the earth and saves mankind.
Think again, not everything you see on the TV is Reality, it is a distorted reality !!
ALLAH THE ALMIGHTY IS ALREADY ON EARTH !!!
The sigh of His arrival: A face in the sky video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_OAauYfPwE
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Please refer to someone incharge fitted whatever doctrine you are.
This is an exceptionally distinguished essence fitted all mankind. Thanks, Krulayar