If I were to ask you, ‘What is an Arab?’ what would your response be? A person from the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, or perhaps North Africa? All your answers are simultaneously right and wrong. Most of the Arabs of the modern-day are having an identity crisis. This Arab Identity crisis is nothing but a result of the well-known September 11 attacks, and it became more severe after the Arab Spring in 2011.
If you ask some of the youth in any Northwest African country, “Are you an Arab?” Many of them will say, in the Arabic language, “No, I’m not an Arab.” The same thing applies to many Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians, etc. ‘Then what are you?’ You might ask. Some will claim to be Amazighs; others will say Phoenician, Aramaic, Assyrian, Coptic, and many more. They are not wrong either; they are just confused.
If you look at the bigger picture, there is something common among these people: they all speak Arabic. Arabic and its different dialects are spoken natively by nearly 420 million speakers around the world, most of them coming from 24 countries, including those that are not part of the Arab League. Nevertheless, millions of them disavow their Arab identity. It is not an exaggeration to say that many of them are ashamed to be recognized as Arabs. This is due to the Western mainstream media’s stereotypical image of the stupid rich Arab who has many wives and lives in a tent in the middle of the desert. Adding to that, the horny radical Islamist terrorist who is ready to blow himself up among the infidels just to go to heaven and get his 70 virgins. After this horrible image, you cannot blame them for rejecting their identity.
For a moment, you might think that I am insisting on calling them Arabs, and that is right because, like it or not, they are Arabs. But why is that so? It is simple: calling you an Arab here and now does not describe your ethnicity, race, or color. Clearly, it only says that you are one of a vast community of Arabic language speakers. Whether a black Sudanese, a white Levantine, or a light brown Yemeni—all who speak Arabic are Arabs. Think about it like calling someone from South America a Latino.
But you might ask, has it been like this from the beginning? The short answer is no. However, this concept itself has historical roots, and my evidence is that even modern-day Arabs consider Ishmael, the son of Abraham, an Arab. Not just an Arab, but some call him the father of Arabs. But why do they say so? Isn’t Ishmael Hebraic by blood? Yes, he is Hebraic, but his story shows that he grew up in Mecca among other Arabs, and he spoke their tongue. Accordingly, his bloodline became the Adnanites Arabs, also known as Ishmaelite Arabs or the Northern Arabs, who lived among the Qahtanites Arabs, also known as the Arabs of Arabia or the Southern Arabs. Both Adnanites and Qahtanites, though Semitic, differ in that Qahtanites are Southern Semitic, aligning them more closely with Ethiopian Semitic than Hebraics and Aramaic people.
The narrative of Ishmael and his descendants explains a lot, but the question remains: what about other Arabs? And what made them Arabs? In the pre-Islamic era, many of the tribes of Mecca used to participate in merchant caravans between Yemen and the Levant. One can see how that can have a huge impact on the people who live along the way of the caravans, especially in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula and the southern part of the Levant.
However, the pivotal transformation occurred in the post-Islamic era, starting with Early Muslim conquests in the 7th century until the 10th century after the collapse of the Emirate of Córdoba in modern-day Spain. The Muslim conquests brought with them prosperity and power, and that’s why they were welcomed by most of the locals, including many of those who chose not to convert to Islam.
Islam’s foundation in the Quran, revealed in Arabic, necessitated Arabic proficiency among its followers. Accordingly, a Muslim who spoke another language needed to learn Arabic to understand God’s message to him, and that is how it started. Believe it or not, during the Islamic Golden Age, Arabic was more popular than it is now. Many Persians and Turks used to speak it along with their mother tongues. The same thing applies to Levantine Aramaic speakers. While today, fewer Persians and Turks speak Arabic, and almost no Levantines speak Aramaic. While some groups have preserved their languages and identities, others have embraced Arab identity through linguistic assimilation. Efforts to resurrect ancient languages face challenges, and the success of such movements remains uncertain
It is important to mention that many religious minorities still speak their ancestors’ languages due to certain rituals that can only be performed in these languages, such as the Copts of Egypt and Aramaic and Assyrians of Syria and Lebanon. Unfortunately for them, once they leave their churches, they start speaking Arabic again because they need to communicate with their surroundings.
Cultural and racial diversity is a reality among Arabs, but we cannot underestimate a significant unifying factor, such as the Arabic language. It might take a generation or two to resolve the current identity crisis, but I believe it depends on the success of some Arab nations in becoming examples of prosperity, development, and, more importantly, the independence of decision-making. Only then will it motivate Arabic speakers, who lament the glories of their non-Arab ancestors, to take pride in identifying themselves as Arabs—instead of engaging in the current disputes over past history.