Kalt is a CHUPA…HONK!!
But probably not for very long.
MEBuckner-
I wish to request permission from you to use
Fighting Ignorance since 1999
[sub]unfortunately, ignorance keeps fighting back[/sub]
as my sig. That’s a great line.
May I ask what countries are considered Arab?
Just out of curiousity, and so I don’t make a mistake.
[channelling George Carlin]Go ahead, John. Ask![/channelling George Carlin]
For those who don’t get it: that’s a reference to George Carlin’s routine in which he describes the new tense in the English language: “First Person Removed.”
Well, normally all the countries which make up the Arabian peninsula. This is the area referred to as the “Middle East”. I believe the list would be as follows: Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen. Israel is in the Middle East but I guess one probably wouldn’t call it an Arab country. Five north African countries are also usually included in the term, namely: Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
Oh, sorry, I forgot to list Bahrain.
Are you sure these countries are called Arabic because they are in the Arabian Penninsula? Or is the penninsula called that because it is populated by Arabs?
My understanding is that Arabs are those who speak Arabic. Egypt, yes; Iran, no etc.
That’s my general understanding. “Arabs” are not a perfectly definable set of people, anyway. You can’t say there are perfectly “Arabic” countries the same way you cannot say there are perfectly “white” countries.
But I’m oretty damned sure Pakistan isn’t Arabic. They don’t speak Arabic, they’re a different culture and ethnicity from Arabs. To say they’re Arabic is equivalent to saying that George W. Bush is Greek.
I suspect that the Arab Christians in Syria, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territory would disagree with your inclusion of “Muslim” into the definition of what an Arab is.
Hey Kalt, click your herels and say, “Arabs are not Muslims and Muslims are not Arabs” three times. You will be on your way to the truth.
Ahem. Grecian.
[sub]I am a Republican. I intended to vote for Bush. I support and respect him. But I’ll make a joke whenever I can.[/sub]
Perfectly white? What about Iceland? 
Even though this is a Pit thread, I don’t know that calling Kalt a Chupa is technically correct.
Chupa means ‘sucker’ and is (when used in this sense) a shortening of Chupacabra (literally ‘blood sucker’) and a name for a mythical beast that sucks the blood of goats.
I don’t think that is what Kalt does to goats, but I have no proof.
Certainly!
[sub]I mean, you may ask, and you may use it as your sig line–two answers for the price of one.[/sub]
Hey Cheap, Kalt is a CHUPA and he knows it…HONK…
so kalt posts this on Oct 15,
and then, in this very thread, on Oct 16,
Now, why is it we need a pit thread about someone clinging to his ignorance this hard?
Well, Iran isn’t in the Arabian peninsula. There are in fact two ways to define “Arab” - either geographically or linguistically. Geographically, the Arab countries are those in the Middle East and in North Africa. Most of the people living in these countries are considered, in the Arab world, to be of “Arab descent”. If you define “Arab” according to those who speak Arabic, the list is as follows: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros Islands, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Arabic is spoken to some degree in all of them, although it is not necessarily the first language. These countries make up the official League of Arab States. The people living in some of these countries are considered, in the Arab world, to be of “African descent”. These two ethnicities look different, for the most part, so there is probably some way to account for or define “Arab lineage”, if you go far back enough in time, but I’m not really informed enough to do it. Maybe someone with a better knowledge of history would be able to fill us in. Personally, I tend to use the geographic definition, and don’t refer to or think of my Sudanese friend as “Arab” (although I suppose I could ask her whether she considers herself “Arab”). But it would probably be more correct, at least politically, to use the second definition.
I don’t think Arab is really a quesiton of “descent”, but of language and culture. Many people who were not descendants of the original Arabian tribes of the Peninsula “converted” to being Arabs after those tribes conquered the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and other North African states, etc.
Also, even “Arabians” have a lot of “racial” variation: compare Saudi King Fahd with Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar. (Of course this just goes to show how slippery and ultimately useless “racial” classifications are.)
