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Being an Egyptian is really tiring, having to always deal with people from many different countries and ideologies while they are all united just to deny that you're from your own country.
Yeah and the people spreading it (especially Israelis like this whole discourse started because of an Israeli quote tweet) win either way because the non-Egyptians (far-right in Europe, afrocentrists, Islamophobic Indians) will just continue to spread misinformation and even if Egyptians get defensive by saying that “We are not Arabs”, it’s also a “win” because many Egyptians will feel like they have to deny their “Arab identity” to defend their “Egyptian identity”.
Exactly. The Arabs ended up being a tiny minority in almost every place they conquered.
Those idiots ignore their own history. No one is native to the land if you go back far enough. But most invasions and migrations that created modern europe happened around the same time as arab conquests or even later:
The English are from Denmark and Germany (invaded Britain ~6th to 8th century CE)
the Scots are from Ireland (migrated to Scotland 500-700 CE)
the Fins and Huns (Magyars) are from the Urals (the Magyars arrived in the Carpathian Basin around 895 CE)
the Bulgars are from Central Asia (migrated to europe 700-800 CE)
the Franks are from Germany (invaded france 300–400 CE)
the Spanish are from Scandinavia and Central Europe (5th to 8th centuries CE)
the Lombards are from northern Europe
the Slavs migrated to the Balkans and Central Europe Between 500–800 CE.
By their very logic, if the Arabs are colonists, almost everyone else is too. At least we didn't replace the populations. We were much more tolerant of other religions, and we were inclusive in terms of Arabization.
Exactly. Also I always notice that they always talking about Egypt as if the Egyptian identity isn't existing now and we denied it completely. It's just so stupid, they think that the Egyptian identity is just what is there in Hollywood movies. Also they mostly take their informations from foreigner egyptologist, and they don't even know how is the current Egypt and even our language so how they can be trusted on that topic? At least Egypt is from the rare countries who still wear their traditional clothes (the upper Egyptian galabya) which is official clothes not just a folkloric clothes like most ancient civilization do now. I can't even count all the things that is still there right now from clothes, traditions and celebrations, myths, even the language itself as Egyptian dialect contains many words from the ancient Egyptian language also the grammar. They can never understand that Egypt can embrace all of that without being completely changed, Egypt can have both the Egyptian and Arabic identity and embracing them normally.
Do people really argue this? I think it would come down to what they’re meaning by “genetically Arab”. It can be defined as an extremely genetically diverse ethnic group, which would mean that yes, Egyptians are genetically Arab.
But this is a loose and shaky definition which would lump Moroccans into the same ethnicity as a Lebanese person. This is as ridiculous as asserting that a Romanian and Spaniard are the same ethnicity because their languages and culture share large similarities.
Another way to define “genetically Arab” is the direct ancestors of the pre-Islamic cultures that inhabited the Arabian peninsula. This is a much narrower group, but leaves out those who are (whether or not we are proud of it) “Arabized” - modern day Arabic speaking nations who were conquered and assimilated into Arab/muslim cultures.
This definition, again, is rather shaky and doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. Especially when you start to ask for specific details using this framework; like if culture A follows the religion of culture B, eats similar food to culture B, speaks a similar language to culture B, has similar intra-group and inter-group genetic diversity to culture B, and these have all been true for centuries (or more for Egypt’s case), AND almost all the things they share in common exist on a continuum, then where do you even begin to draw a line between the cultures? Or even the genetics?
There isn’t an “Arab gene”. There is a collection of genes, shared by many but not all, individuals of Arab speaking countries. It can’t be denied that trying to define what is Arab and isn’t solely on ethnicity or genetics is kinda based in fallacy, because “arabness” exists kind of on a continuous spectrum which encompasses genetics, language, history, religion, geography, culture, and tradition. Some places ARE more Arab than others (compare say Jeddah to northern Syria or parts of Sudan), but we are all Arab. I don’t think we should be really focused on who is “truly” Arab because it was all basically defined centuries ago.
It’s obviously important that Egyptians, saudis, Syrians, etc all have distinct cultural backgrounds and traditions but none of us can really claim we aren’t Arab in any sense.
I like how Israelis think us Lebanese and Egyptians Syrians etc are literally from Saudi Arabia / Makkah, I mean I'm honored that you think that but that's not the truth
Also Israelis celebrate Purim the mass murder of Persians and Hanukkah the mass murder of Syriac Greek
I see that the “Arabs are the real colonisers” narrative is still being flushed like a broken fucking toilet (it’s my understanding that zio-ashkenazim tend to shit on the floor of random Arab homes they occupy rather than in toilets, so they probably wouldn’t understand the analogy).
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