Not all Middle Easterners are Muslim, Arab

By Bret Clevenger

Let’s play a little word game.

Arab. Muslim. Middle Easterner.

Synonyms, right? Wrong.

Webster’s dictionary defines an Arab as “A member of a Semitic people inhabiting Arabia.” A Muslim is a follower of the teachings of Islam, and a Middle Easterner is someone who lives in the geographic region.

The idea that the three are synonymous is far too common in the American population. Learning they are not is key to having peace in the region.

While a large part of the Middle East is made of Muslim Arabs, they are not the only group in the area, and even within those communities there are vast cultural, social and religious differences.

There are some countries such as Tunisia, which is in North Africa, that are primarily Muslim and Arab. However, countries like this are not common in the Arabic speaking world.

More typical of the region are countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Lebanon, for example, is only 60 percent Muslim, and that group is broken up into large factions of Shi’ite, Sunni, and Druse Muslims. There’s also a large Christian group in Lebanon – 39 percent to be exact, according to the CIA World Factbook.

All these groups have a long history of fighting with one another and certainly don’t present a unified Lebanon, let alone a part of a larger unified Middle East.

Syria, much like Lebanon, is made up of vastly different groups. Syria is 74 percent Sunni Muslim, 16 percent Alwait, Druse and other minority Muslim sects, and 10 percent Jewish.

Also, nearly one in 10 Syrian citizens is Kurdish or Armenian, not Arab.

You’ll find even more diversity in Iraq, where only an estimated 75 percent of the population is Arab. The other 25 percent is made up mostly of Kurds, with small Turkoman and Assyrian sects.

In Iran, the majority of the population is Persian, not Arab. In fact, Iran is only 3 percent Arab.

Then there’s Israel, which is most definitely a part of the Middle East, but is a Jewish state.

Even in Saudi Arabia, the literal Mecca of the Middle East, one in 10 citizens is Afro-Asian.

Confused?

Just assuming someone who “looks” Middle Eastern is Arab and Muslim is more than a conceptual problem, it can offend them too.

When I asked Philip Daniel, a senior English major who is an American-born Assyrian, about the frustrations he said: “I think it’s really annoying when people just assume I’m Arab and Muslim because of the way I look. Yes, my parents immigrated from Iraq, but I’m Assyrian and Catholic. I wouldn’t assume all Caucasians are white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, so I don’t think it’s asking too much to not have that kind of assumption put on me.”

Daniel has a point. Statistically, America isn’t much more diverse than most countries in the Middle East. Seventy-six percent of America’s citizens are Protestant or Roman Catholic. Also, the U.S. is 82 percent white according to the CIA world fact book. That sounds just about the same as Syria or Lebanon to me.

In America we embrace our religious and ethnic heritages and surely wouldn’t want all our ethnic and cultural differences lumped together under one blanket term.

People with ethnic backgrounds based in the Middle East are just as proud of their heritage and culture as those of us in America are.

Not all Americans are Christian Caucasian, and not all Middle Easterners are Muslim Arabs. In both regions people are diverse and proud of the diversity.

The golden rule applies here. Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.

Maybe applying that to understanding differences is the first step to a greater peace.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.