[camle]

many are descendants of the mongolg, who invaded and never left.

[camle]

many are descendants of the mongols, who invaded and never left.

sorry for the double post, my spelling is slower than my clicking, I'm afraid.

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[Alouette]

Then they can have their own casinos, and leave Israel alone.

The Israelis built the Palestinians a casino in Jericho. The Palis destroyed it.

[tkathy]

A better question might be, "Are the Arabs human???"

[ScudEast]

Great article! It does not, however, mention the Assyrians which is a bit of omission when talking about Iraq. The Assyrians ruled pretty much the whole region for a bit until they were supplanted by the Persians. Even more interesting to me at least is the fact that the Christian Assyrian Church of the East, formed by the Apostle Thomas was the first Christian church. According to this link they view this as their second "Golden Age" in which Assyrian culture, and the Christian religion was spread by their priests as far as China and Mongolia. Their culture was suppressed by the Arabs in the 13th century and their religion largely replaced but I bet there are still a whole bunch of Assyrians who do not consider themselves "Arabs" by any stretch of the imagination. The link, and the whole site is well worth a read although I have no info of the veracity of the facts on it.

[prairiebreeze]

Mohammad’s new religion of Islam sought world dominion through coerced unity, crushing cultural diversity.

This bears repeating.

Prairie

[stuartcr]

Why don't we just call everyone from that region, including the Israelites, middle-easterners?

[dennisw]

Just about the only real Arabs are the Saudis.Most of these other "Arab" clowns are called Arab because they speak Arabic and are Islamics. But they are not ethnically Arab. We call them Arab out of laziness.

[dennisw]

PING

[jveritas]

Great article my friend. As a Lebanese Christian I have never considered myself an Arab and this opinion is shared by the vast majority of Christians in the Middle East. However the Muslims in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt boast of being Arabs despite the fact that ethnically the majority of them are not Arabs. They want to be called Arabs in order to be associated with the ethnic blood of Mohammed who was an Arab from the desert of Arabia.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

With DNA, the person could be typed as to ancestry.

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a ping. Interesting ancient political history herein.

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