Is anyone who speaks English is a British..!!? Is anyone who speaks French is a French..!!?.. Of course NO. So why people in Middle East who speak Arabic are considered to be Arabs..?
According to Steve Tamari,
“Like other peoples around the world, most speakers of Arabic did not identify themselves as belonging to a particular national group until quite recently. Modern Arab nationalism is a product of 19th and 20th century transformations. Before the rise of nationalism, most Arabic-speakers identified themselves as members of a particular family or tribe”
So the nationalism movement specially last century was the fuel to this misunderstand.. I’m not against this movement, but I’m against the confusion of the meaning of the word Arab.
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If we check the independence dates of most of Middle Eastern countries (or Arab countries, as some call them)… they were around 1940s-1970s… There are three reasons for that:
- The Nationalism movement: since most of Middle East was under control of British or French… so natives people in this area has same enemy and fought against same empires… and moreover, the nationalism movement in one country would be the fuel in for another country… (for example; Jamal Abdel Nasser (President f Egypt)…he supported the militants in Algeria, Yemen, Palestine…with weapons and money..Also during 1973 war, Algeria helped Egypt and Syria to buy weapons, from Soviet Union, for the war against Israel)
- The World War II: during this period, both England and France were involved in WWII and they were not in good shape to keep more soldiers in the lands which they occupied in Middle East.. so they were kind of weak, and they best option for them is to leave Middle East and concentrate in one war (WWII)
- The Jewish State (Israel): The new born of Israel in 1948 was the flame for Middle Eastern conflict, until this day… People in Middle East found a new country established in their lands, and people who used to live there were deported…
In the book “The Arabs in History” by Bernard Lewis;
“The earliest classical reference is in Aeschylus, who in Prometheus mentions Arabia as a remote land whence come warriors with sharp-pointed spears. The ‘Magos Arabos’ mentioned in the Persians as one of the commanders of Xerxes’ army may possibly also be an Arab. It is in Greek writings that we find for first time the place-name Arabia, formed on the analogy of Italia, etc. Herodotus and after him most other Greek and Latin writers extend the terms Arabia and Arab to the entire peninsula and all its inhabitants including the southern Arabians, and even the eastern desert of Egypt between the Nile and the Red Sea. The term at this time thus seems to cover all the desert areas of the Near and Middle East inhabited by Semitic-speaking peoples.”
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“The first Arabian use of the word Arab occurs in the ancient southern Arabian inscriptions, those relics of the flourishing civilization set up in the Yemen by southern branch of the Arab peoples and dating from the late pre-Christians and early Christians centuries. In these, Arab means Bedouin, ofter raider, and is applied to the nomadic as distinct from the sedentary population.”
So according to this , North African nations, although most of them speak Arabic, they are not originally Arabs.. The bible also did not call them Arabs.. In Numbers 12:16 “And afterward the people removed from Hazeroth, and pitched in the wilderness of Paran”. This was after Moses and Israelites left Egypt and dwelt in Paran… According to Dictionary of Holy Bible by Augustin Calmet, ” Paran, in Arabia, near the city of Paran”. Also Heinrich Kurtz, in History of The Old Covenant , Volume 3; ” Upon Num. x. 12, “the childern of Israel took their journeys out of the wilderness of Sinai (the “place of burning” or “graves of lust”), which was reached in three days (Num. x. 33), was the desert of Paran.”
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So Moses took his people the desert of Paran after leaving Sinai. According to that, Arabia’s land start from desert of Paran…so the Mountain of Sinai and desert of Paran were like the boarders for Arabia… This will bring us to the same point, North African countries (such as; Morocco, Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Libya..etc) they are not part of Arabia.
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