Who Are Muslims? Who Are Arabs?

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Who Are Muslims? Who Are Arabs?

By Thomas Keyes
Oct. 20, 2006

One thing that I’ve encountered again and again in the US is that people don’t really have the faintest conception of what an Arab is. I’ve found many people, even among useless-knowledge. com’s contributors, who don’t even know that Iranians are not Arabs. There are a few Arabs in Iran, 3% according to CIA’s World Factbook, but the majority are of Indo-Iranian stock. I’ve met people who think Turks are Arabs, but Turks are of Turkic or Turko-Mongolian stock. I’ve even heard people refer to Pakistanis and Bangladeshis as Arabs, but the majority of them are of Indo-Iranian stock. And I’ve noticed that many Americans cannot tell the difference between Arabs and Indians either, though they are light-years apart ethnically. Indians are generally of Indo-Iranian or Dravidian stock. Finally, I surely hope that Americans don’t think Indonesians are Arabs. Indonesians are of Austronesian stock, grouped with Pacific Islanders and Malagasy, the people of Madagascar. These descriptions I have used are well-established ethnolinguistic designations.

So what is an Arab? Basically, I’ve encountered three different ideas of what constitutes an Arab. A commonplace notion among Arabs themselves is that the “true Arab” is the Bedouin. This is a somewhat romantic idea in my opinion. It is an appealing idea for people that live in the concrete jungle. Another conception of Arabs includes only people whose ancestors arose in Arabia. When the original Arabians conquered Egypt, Iraq, Morocco and Syria, those countries were already inhabited by non-Arabs. Egyptians, for example, had lived in Egypt at least 3500 years before the coming of the Arabs. So most of today’s Egyptian are not pure Arabs, if we use this second conception. It would be difficult to estimate blood percentages today. The third conception of Arabs includes all the people who are native to countries where Arabic is the principal language. These are Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Iraq.

The words “Muslim” and “Arab” are not synonyms, or even near-synonyms. Below I have listed the six Islamic countries that have populations of at least 50,000,000. Of these six, only one—Egypt—is an Arab country, and then only if we use the broadest conception of the word “Arab”. For each, I have given the population, the percentage of Muslims and the dominant ethnic group:

Indonesia…245,000,000… Muslim 88%…Austronesian 84%

Pakistan…165,000,000…Muslim 97%...Indo-Iranian 96%

Bangladesh…147,000,000… Muslim 83%…Indo-Iranian 98%

Egypt…79,000,000…Muslim 90% …Arab 98%

Turkey…70,000,000… Muslim 99.8%…Turkic 80%

Iran…69,000,000…Muslim 98%...Indo-Iranian 51%; Arab 3%

A visual examination reveals that these people are indeed of different ethnicities. No one could look more “Arab” than the late Anwar Sadat. Here is his picture:

http://www.filmlabpdx.com/Kennerly/pictures/sadat.JPG

Here are some typical Iranian men:

http://www.sanynet.ne.jp/~mtskobe/furn/Iranians.jpg

Here are some typical Turks:

http://www.rockpalast.de/bilder/bizarre00/new_bomb_turks.jpg

Here are some typical Pakistanis:

http://gregoryterlecki.com/PakistaniYoungMen.jpg

And finally, here are some Indonesians, who are closely related to Filipinos:

http://www.opendoorsuk.org/media_photos/tsunami_indonesia/HTML/aceh_men_singing-js_std.jpg

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About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far.

I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents.

Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com

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