The "Arab World" Mentality, Get Rid of It
With their television and newspapers they say we are part of the āArab World.ā They tell me: āYouāre Arab.ā They tell my father to tell me: āweāre Arab.ā They tell me āArabic is the language of heaven."Ā But I donāt feel Arab. I have little in common with a Saudi or an Egyptian. My last name isnāt Arab. My physical features arenāt Arab. The food my mother cooks isnāt Arab. My language contains Arabic, but thereās something else in it that isnāt Arabic.Ā I am Amazigh, and Iām tired of being told that I am something I am not. I am not part of your āArab Worldā or your āArabā Spring, I am simply what I am.Ā The language, writing, culture and religion of my ancestors has been erased from my identity, almost completely. My fatherās ancestors are Rifis and my motherās are Soussis. Yet they still want to convince me that somehow, thousands of kilometers away from the Arabian peninsula, I am Arab? Was my country empty of identity before it became āArabā? Is it a coincidence that the so-called āfirst king of Moroccoā also happens to be the first Muslim king? Were the kings before that not kings because they werenāt Arab or Muslim? Why do Tarik Ibn Ziyad or Ibn Battuta, both Amazighs, have Arab names? Who changed them?Ā There are many other people like me. Many arenāt even Amazigh; some are Kurdish, or Armenian and others are African. What we all have in common is that we happen to find ourselves trapped in an imaginary world called the āArab World."Ā This āArab Worldā is just another form of Orientalism created by the same āArabsā who complain about it when it comes in other forms from the West. They cry to Westerners: āweāre not all the same!ā while beating us into conformity: āYouāre Arab!ā āYouāre Muslim!ā and if we say: āNOā then they (society) turn over our case to them (the regimes) to oppress us into conformity. Donāt be complicit in the āArab Worldā mentality, erase that term from your diction.
As a person who has Kurdish friends and who sympathises with them, and knows about the Amazigh, and something about their language and customs, I stand with this.
