Egyptian NOT Arab!
It’s fair to say I grew up in an environment that convinced me of having a purely Arab identity. Referring to myself and other Middle Eastern people as Arab was very convenient, anyone I met from other Arabic speaking countries felt like brethren by virtue of being “Arab”.
My Arab identity was not of my parents making, actually it was public opinion and the prevalence of ignorance around me which assured me of my Arab-ness. I remember once I referred to myself as Arab in front of my father, I’ve rarely seen such a furious combination of anger and mentoring from my father .
My Dad: What!? What did you say? You’re not Arab, don’t ever say that, you’re Egyptian!
My father always had a great influence on me, every word he spoke was like Divine word to me… But in that moment I still had trouble accepting I wasn’t Arab, The influence of popular opinion was that pervasive.
I was especially curious and my fathers stern words weren’t pacifying enough for me so I had to ask, “but why?” So typical of a curious child, right? It was at that moment my father said something that I’ve carried with me in this debate until this day….
My Dad: Who settled America?
Young Me: The British.
My Dad: Bravo! And what language do they speak in America?
Young Me: English.
My Dad: Good, Good! Do you know who the Native Americans are?
Young Me: Yea the Indians.
My Dad: Exactly the Indians, they were there before the British and the British took over and now the Indians speak English right?
Young Me: Yea? (with my curiosity increasing)
My Dad: So why don’t we call the Native Americans Englishmen?
Finally I was able to understand and you should too. Replace “America” with Egypt, “English” with Arabic, “Indians” with Egyptians and “British” with Arabs.
In reality the word “Arab” is the second largest misnomer and most presumptuous ethnic label (after African American). Sadly in history, groups of people have given up their identities in order to accept a foreign one and I find myself ashamed when I listen to them talk about their ancestors as if they are a foreign and imperfect race. Phoenicians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syrians, Berbers, Philistines and many others all now calling themselves Arab.
These groups have become recognized as Arabs not because it was forced upon them to be called Arabs but because they gave into the cultural imperialism which is and was Arabization and called themselves Arab. The Iranians are a good example of a group who were too proud of their own rich history to call themselves Arab and to this day refuse to be called Arab and so called “Arabs” refuse to call them Arab.
So who is Arab? The answer is SOOOOOO much easier than you may think, especially if you’re having trouble accepting what I’m saying. Prepare yourself for a mind blowing revelation…People from the Arabian Peninsula ARE Arab, those include the countries of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
Declaring yourself as Egyptian has negative ramifications in the Arabized world though. We are often accused of nationalism (a faux pas both culturally and Islamically) and failing to unite the so-called Arab nations. I resent that accusation, I just want to be identified with my true ethnic identity and not one we’ve been borrowing for 1000+ years.
Huh? Are u serious buddy? u gotta be kidding, hilarious indeed, wether u and ur dad like it, ur arabs, u cant just deny urself, oh yes u can, like those idiots a while back who said we are pharoeans, not even egyptians, look, the point is, eif the arabs where still in a poll positions like they once where, everyone would have clamoured to be an arab, like people wana desperatly be ameircan nowadays, but its all good, one less vilage fool is one step on the right track for the true arabs out there
May 28th, 2007 at 3:17 ambtw the persians never were in danger of being called arabs, they simply are not, they dont speak the language and have a different culture, religions and all…until islam came and conquered them of course….u sound like a redneck american who thinks indians are arabs as well, dude get educated, an example of why u are wrong, the romans created the philistines, they were originally canaanites, phoencians etc, they are recognized today as a real group of people, this is history, it just happenes…
May 28th, 2007 at 3:19 ambtw the persians never were in danger of being called arabs, they simply are not, they dont speak the language and have a different culture, religions and all…until islam came and conquered them of course….
Eh…… and that is different from the Egyptians…. how? Exactly? :O
May 28th, 2007 at 3:45 amEgyptians are certainly not arabs … decendents from the pharoahs and they were all copts.
May 28th, 2007 at 6:21 amno wonder egyptians are hated all over the arab world!
I have never met more trashy people so full of bull shit more than the egytian lot and they are so jealouse because they know they are arab trash but can never improve.
whats next? egyptians did not commit terrorist acts?? HELLO????
May 28th, 2007 at 6:52 amMarkus if you believe you are a true Arab then go ahead and be Arab. Its very possible that you are. I’m sure 1400 years ago when the Arabs invaded Egypt Your Great Great Great Grandmother welcomed them with open legs. They might have even taken turns with her.
So by virtue of that…yes you have some Arab blood in you.
May 28th, 2007 at 10:50 amIf I were Egyptian, I’d be more Egyptian than the Pharaohs.
Islam aside, Egyptian history is so much more interesting than Arab history. Or rather, there’s so much more if it.
May 28th, 2007 at 3:41 pmshobrawy in typical egyptian trashy sense u attacked my great great great grandmother who was probably a descendant of jesus christ in palestine, but thats ok ur fuckin egyptian, ur too busy admiring camels, why doent everyone revert to their origins, im canaanite…not arab, would u like that? idiots like u did not exisit 10 years ago, everyone was arab, in this region cuz they are, and its not up to u to decide, orientalists did it, out of contempt of course they defined the arab and yes arabs come for many different backgrounds and extinct ethnicities, now if u want to play the history game go for it if it makes u feel better about urself, some people with low self esteem need therapy and maybe this is the best therapy for the egyptians, denying their mediocracy and acting liek the pharoes are alive again…..
May 29th, 2007 at 12:40 amsamir seriously?”they were all copts”? even though im christians, iv never seen such ignorant people as copts, they are racist and they do not know how to make peape with the majority of egyptians….deal with reality u are a minorty
May 29th, 2007 at 12:43 amfor those who blame islam for conquering their contries i say this….your ancestors accepted and embraced islam, and some of them became leaders of the islamic world, its ur people that made this choice, and i emphasise choice not force because its the truth they saw the benifits of a strong nation , Islam brought them prosperity at that time u cant deny it, have u ever heard of a coptic empire? no, the pharos lead the world at one point but that was only when the world was centered around the mediteranean , wether people from these regions are called arabs or monkeys the fact is all the great religions of the world and most of the great civilisations originated from here or were greatly influenced by arabs, if the great philosophers, scientists medical experts mathematicians, navigators etc called themselves arabs than who the hell are u to deny it, why dont u start a cult and fly ot the moon …serious idiots with huge inferiority compelexs thats what i call u….why dont want u to be arabs anways …i havent stopped laughing since i read this stupidity
May 29th, 2007 at 12:48 amin comment 9 i said peape, i guess its a freudian slip… a combo between poop and peace…..
May 29th, 2007 at 12:49 amAwesome D.B.!!
Probably my favorite post yet. I’m with you on every word you said. Egyptians are not, never were and never will be Arab. Your father is a smart man…a dying breed in Egypt. And I have never ever considered myself arab. Anyone that talks to me will quickly find out I’m Egyptian, though
Unfortunately, idiots like markus will never get it. And in typical arab fashion immediately starts attacking you instead of trying to engage in any kind of rational dialogue. By his response I think he does an admirable job of proving your point perfectly.
Anyway, Egyptians are Egyptian, true descendants of the Pharaohs that ruled the greatest civilization on earth for millenia and that will never change.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:06 amMarkus, with due respect, read the history books and find for yourself how Egypt became ‘arabized’ and who was living there at the time … and what they had to do to survive.
May 29th, 2007 at 10:35 amThe following link should help make sense out of all of this. Its ignorant to insist Egyptians are Arab. History proves otherwise and its really not that hard to understand.
http://www.answers.com/topic/egyptians
the first sentence states.
Further down you will find
I am quoting this NOT to suggest superiority but to highlight a continuously exisiting ETHNIC GROUP not nationality. and Further down you will see..
If Egyptians are Arab it would be impossible to be occupied and ruled by yourself now wouldnt it?
May 29th, 2007 at 11:27 amshobrawy… love your post!!!! I couldn’t have sid it better myself… Arabs are tribes and beduins, which is cool, but it is not the way egyptians are… we are just different. Different culture… etc. so no matter how much insulting words they want to use, we will never suddenly turn into a beduin tribal culture. Religion and language have nothing to do with it… it is just who we are!!
May 29th, 2007 at 1:53 pmLOL!
Ohhhh God.
May 29th, 2007 at 4:18 pmGreat post. That explanation your dad gave about the native americans is exactly how my dad explained it to me. I actually got into an argument with some Palestinian guy on another blog about this issue. I realized it was kind of useless arguing with him primarily because he thinks the arabs are the “saviors” of North Africa and Coptic is apparently nothing more than glorified Latin. Idiot. From what I’ve read Egyptians were never considered to be Arabs by anyone in the Arab world, including themselves, until Nasser took over and started his panarabism agenda.
And for all those of you who think that Egyptians are Arab, please explain the difference between the Native Americans and the Egyptians. Why are Native Americans still considered to be Native Americans and not English by everyone on the face of the planet, but Egyptians are Arabs? What is the difference?
May 29th, 2007 at 11:18 pmGreat Post! Masr lil Masryeen!
May 30th, 2007 at 9:48 am“We salute the Arab Republic of Egypt”
Actually “Arab” has different meanings in different contexts, but primarily it refers to people who speak Arabic.
“An Arab (Arabic: عرب ) is any member of the Semitic speaking group of people whose cultural, linguistic, and in some cases, ancestral origins trace back to the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula.”
May 31st, 2007 at 11:04 amExactly! Thats why Egyptians are not Arabs because they are not Semitic people they are Hamitic.
May 31st, 2007 at 11:26 amI hope you don’t mind that i linked to this post on my blog. I did under Interest Me, Best post ever.
Great post, love it, love it, love it.
May 31st, 2007 at 2:56 pmDB: “Semitic speaking group of people ” Arabic is a semitic language.
May 31st, 2007 at 7:01 pmI really don’t think language is a good barometer for one’s ethnicity Cairogal. If that were the case than we would be saying the Mexicans and 95% of the people in South America (except for Brazil of course) are “Spaniards” and part of the “Spaniard World”. Not to mention the Cubans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, etc. I haven’t seen that happen yet. The Egyptians as well as almost all the people in N. Africa have been culturally arabized. I think there is a difference between that and being ethnically arab.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:19 amL: I agree with you that is it not a barometer for ethnicity. As does part of the definition I provided. Basically, Arabic just means “people who speak it”, and it sometimes used specifically to speak about those with roots in the Arabian Gulf. Those who are not of tribal origin on the peninsula who are called “arabs” are then just people who speak Arabic.
The conflict, though, starts from within. Every morning before school starts in Egypt, kids line up to sing the national anthem. In some schools, a group of children stand around the flagpole and shout 4 times in unison (in Arabic) “We salute the Arab Republic of Egypt.”
June 1st, 2007 at 11:02 amYes, great, great post ya Shobrawy. The so called “Arab” Republic of Egypt is a forced name. I DON’t accept it and never will. Our country is EGYPT and that’s it, and EGYPTIANS ARE NOT ARABS!!! Arab haters like the trash markus can go to hell.
June 4th, 2007 at 1:01 am“I DON’t accept it and never will.”
You’re certainly not alone in that sentiment, Tamer, but if Egyptians aren’t consistent from within, it’s hard to expect the non-Egpyptian world to know the difference.
June 4th, 2007 at 2:30 amit doesn’t matter what you think you are…the perception of Egyptians as Arabs by most of the world will remain the same for some time to come.
the native American example was faulty. do non-native americans, other americans, call themselves english? they’re all american, and they all speak english. that is the extent of their labelling. just like we all say we’re egyptian, and speak arabic.
that said, most people in egypt cannot be sure they have no gulf ancestry, if you think that is important in deciding this issue. there’s a lot more to be said on this question,actually, but the responses have made too little sense to adequately address them…
June 10th, 2007 at 3:50 amEgyptians are arbs have always been Arabs and wuill always be Arabs! And the pyramid builders were Arabs
The Arabs of the pennisula were a relatively new nation made up of miscellenious near eastern elements.
Their subcontious was made up of the memories of the pharoas, babylonians and other various levantine cultures.
They were not an allien entity that came down from a startrec galaxy.
They were part of the system! the entire ancient near easte history was made up of successive waves of desert nomads and steppes Endo-European tribes settling down in the fertile valleys adopting indigenous cultures- while in the mean time they revitalise the origin.
The entire Judeo-christian heritage is ´driven from ancient Arab sources.
The old testament stories are Babylonian in structure and character. It is almost a copy and paste.
Christianity is is an egyptian invention- actually it is the last phase of the egyptian isis cult.
what i,m trying to say is that Arabs originated from within the sytem- and it happened to be their destiny to wrapp up with an overarching unified framework called the Arab culture.
you may very well compare the relation between the pennisula arabs to their near eastern predessors to the relation between the various Indo-Iranian groups that inhabited the Iran like Elamits, Parthians, Sassanides……etc.
To make the point clear of course there are considerable differentials among different Arab countries, they are, however, insgnificant when get to comapre them the provinicial varriations in India(1500 languages of different origins , 50 religons ) or china.
when it comes to Egypt in particular i would like to inform you that the ancient Egyptian language had 100,000 common words with Arabic, the same structre i.e a sentence starts with a verb, they had a biplural, the feminine noun ends with at……..the same argument goes for Babylonian, Assyrian, syrianic and Aramaic…….
In other words the difference between ancien near eastern languges and contemporary Arabic is more or less similar to those between ancient and contemporary chinese…………
As for the hamitic things: Ancient Egyptuians are classifed by anthropologists as “northern hamites” which is very different from the negroid eastern hamites of nubya, ethiopia and sudan.
Northern hamites and semites are actually one group!
There is a subconscial western grudge against Arabism therefore, it is a western trend to cut the continuity of Arab history and cut it.
June 12th, 2007 at 3:09 pmwe all know very well that history is writen by the conquerer, and there is a systematic tendency among mainstream western scholras to write off the arabic contributions to humanty and disregard as much as academic integrity allows. The babylonian and someric influence on the greeks is diregarded. However, the former argument is not applicable as far as the indo_European Aryan PERSIAN CULTURE is concerned. And the ancient Egyptian civilisation is degraded and put aside as either a new age thing, Afrocentric hallucinations, scifi, or simply a mere oddity more or less!
We all know that the Somerians the Babylonians, Phoenecians, Ammorites, Egyptians were all great civilsations that grew and flourished within almost the same time span within the same geographical boundaries and geopolitical system in the ancient world thousands of years ago.
According to Gamal Himdan: the Arab world which is the region stretching from m morocco to Iraq ws inhabited by the same stock of mediterenian peoples in the age that perceded the conversion of savanas to deserts. when the Arab worldbecame desert:people were spread all over the region which lead to local varriations. Nevertheless, the ntire Arab world remains VERY HOMOGENOUS:
here is a link about the genetics of Egyptians:
http://www.geocities.com/enbp/genetics.html.
Moreover, NATIONAL GOGRAPHIC CONDUCTED AN EXPERIMENT WHERE THE dna of king tut and morphological structure was used to animate his real face:
Guess what? they guy looked typically like a contemporary Arab man: he could be from anywhere, Egypt, Iraq, saudi Arabia, Yemen or morocco
June 12th, 2007 at 3:20 pmby the way Iranians have a very inferior culture and civilsation.
They were basically some barbarians who came out on the world stahge in the year 600B.C or something, they sacked the Arab world from the Like mongols.
Their culture is nothing but an adotation of the much superior samitic Arab Baby7lonian Iraqi culture.
Later on the Arabs of from the pennisula settled the score with the barbars and liberted the Arab world from their evil
June 12th, 2007 at 3:30 pmI forgot to mention as well that Egyptians were the ancestors of the pennisula Arabs.
As for what is called the Arabs form the Arabian peninsula..the jeudo Arabian mythology concieves Ismael the grandfather of the Arabians to be the son of an Egyptian MOTHER HAGER and a banished IRAQUI IBRAHIM!!!!
so from the very first begining and at a subcontial mythological level, arabism is a noble unifying project
The sedentry or yemense or KA7TAN Arabs formed the nucleus of Arabism . Later on, nomadic tribes who were some sort of middle eastern racial and cultural mix were pushed to the desert adopted the ka7tani culture and became the second branch of the Arabs the 3dnanyeen Arabs!
Egyptians racially influenced the pennisula Arabs through the tribes in north west Arabia and palestine, as both reginos were part of Egypt for thousands of years.
Amr Ibn Al AAS said about Egyptians: that they are the most genrous and the closest ethnically to the inhabitants of the [Arabian pennisula]
June 12th, 2007 at 3:36 pmhey you amre,,,,
September 29th, 2007 at 4:55 amIranians had graet persian empire at the time you arabs were living in tribes of saudia arabia desert,so go and study history ,I agree that egiptians are not arabs .
the people who feal inferior to the others try to offend other nations.do u really feel inferior to egyptians and persians?
amre you are a retard and you have half your facts wrong.I mean its one thing to call egyptians arabs but to call ancient egyptians arabs thats bullshit.You are so full of yourself goung on about how arabs are superior to every one,by the way egyptians were building the pyramids while your people were still in trees SO FUCK OFF
January 22nd, 2008 at 4:51 amand christianity was brought to egypt by the romans not invented.christian and muslim alike we are all egyptians and I for one am tired of being treated like shit by arabs the sooner we move apart from arabs(no dis respect but we want our own identity) the sooner we can move forward and focus on our own country instead of helping countries like somalia and palestien which rich arab countries wont even look at twice and at the same time look at egypt like trash.Where was egypt before arab nationalism by abdul nasser? It was a high reputation world class country.
I would think we are arab by sheer virtue of our culture. That is we speak arabic but also our customs are very arabic in nature. We are not just arabian arabs, we are egyptian arabs. There’s a difference. I don’t think we can deny arab influence in the way we act everyday.
First of all the word arab really doens’t mean anything. An arab was basically a bedouin who would move around and would get educated/cultured by the superior powers around him. Such as egypt, iran, babylonian and what not. Therefore, the arabs from the arabian peninsula, were greatly affected by the surrounding countries. As a matter of fact the arabic symbols and systems came out of the ancient egyptian symbols and systems. Therefore those arabs you were talking about are nothing but the remanants of the other powers around them especially Egypt that has had SOOO much influence in the neighboring regions over the way the symbols and systems of information are organized. So we could say that Egypt had a big role in actually bringing forth the Arabs. Evidence from that is that the quran mentions Egypt everywhere, meaning that the arabs were very familar with Egypt in their traditions, such as poetry and literature. This suggests that the arabic paradigm was very much influenced by the neighboring egyptian one. So that means that a part of the arabic psychology and education came from egypt. Egypt would also influence other countries in the region and they would influence them back. Therefore there’s a huge linke between arabic and egyptian. Later on when the byzantinian came and conquered egypt, they mistreated egyptians and so our little arabic sons from the coasts of egypt and arabia came over and threw over the empire. I think what I am trying to say is that arabs and egyptians might’ve not been exactly the same but they were very much in contact and similar in many ways. In essence as we progressed we influenced the regions around us and embelished the cultures around us. The transition from egyptian to arabic was smooth since the arabs were in part created by the egyptians and were part of what we were and are. Therefore arabic and arabs are part of egyptians. Egyptians were always therefore part arabs.
It’s not like native american and english because they had no relation with each other. Arabism was just the next step in stabilizing the region and bringing it together. It was the next step from Egyptian Pharaonism. It was more of an EVOLUTION of the culture rather than a revolution. So I would please request to say that we are egyptian arabs. NOT JUST ARABS, but the best arabs. Because of egypt, arabic became pretigious and reached a status of power. We made arabism a great thing, because we were part of its creation. We still have a huge influence in the music, literature and intellectual thought of the arabic world to this day!! We’ve always held a tradition in influencing and shaping the cultures of the world around us. WHY KILL THAT POWER, WHY KILL WHAT WE CREATED??
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:05 pmmore so the hamitic bullshit, please go to this website
http://www.raceandhistory.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/1588
“In the Babylonian Talmud, which reflected the areas where the relationship between the Jews and dark skinned Africans that they encountered was more antagonistic, the idea of the ‘Curse of Ham’ was shifted to include the fact that Ham was cursed with blackness and myriad of other inborn deficiencies as a result of his blackness – sexual unnaturalness, treachery and laziness. ”
“The concept of the Hamite shifted in the 19th century with the intervention of not only scientific racism but also the discovery of the wonders of Egypt by French explorers and archeologists in the time of Napoleon. While it had long been considered, (given the fact that European concepts of race and origins were largely Judeo- Christian) that Egypt was a black land and thus “hamitic”, the discovery of the wonders of Egyptian civilization and of course the knowledge passed on the by Greek historians and legends that they owed much of their knowledge to Egypt, meant that there now had to be some real intellectual acrobatics to ‘whiten’ Egypt.”
NA7NO UMMAL DUNYA. We created arabs, there were arabs in egypt. Arabism was just a social class revolution but only a cultural evolution. Part of arabs is egyptian, that is since that part of arabs is egyptian, this part is also part of egyptian. Therefore egyptians were always part arab. The arabs that were part egyptian just amalgated with the upper egyptian culture and created a new paradigm better than the old. An evolution on who we are and a stabilization of the region. We are not saudi arabians, we are not gulf countries, we are not the levantine but we can’t deny our essential link with them. And the fact that we can both mutually benefit from each other as we have been doing for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Arabism only seeks to stop the white countries from dominating us because their idealogy is incompatible with ours. They’ve already cursed us by calling hamites, the curse of blackness HAHAHA. If we give in, we will forever be sand niggars as they call us. Or camel jockeys. Abd nasser just wanted us to be powerful but he was too ahead of his time, he needed to refine the infrastructure of the arab world economically before implementing that ideal.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:36 pmmodern day egypt is an arab country. not only that it is the center of arab culture. so why would egyptians want to turn their backs on the very culture that they dominate. It isnt about DNA, it is about language, culture, customs, identity etc. I have ancestors from turkey, but there is nothing turkish about me. I dont speak the language and nor have i even been there. I am an egyptian though. BTW, most of the ancient egyptians, arabian arabs, and other people of the middle east are all of the same race anyhow.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:08 amLovely post. Please add my email address to your list and email me the updates if possible. I always like to read your blog and comment on it.
August 14th, 2008 at 1:10 amI’m Egyptian NOT Arab Only Because I’m Coptic
October 27th, 2008 at 7:03 pmheidi montag nude
March 22nd, 2009 at 2:42 pmI’m Egyptian. I consider myself Arab. Arab is the race, not the ethnicity. It’s like how someone identifies (correctly) their ethnicity as German, and their race is white. I also use the term Middle Eastern to describe myself and I couldn’t be prouder.
March 27th, 2009 at 7:28 pm