Arab-Americans

I think it’s interesting that the Mohammed video was likely the creation of Arab-Americans. According to the Wikipedia article, 63% of Arab-Americans are Christian and only 24% are Muslim.

Comments

[Anonymous]

I think the attacks had nothing to do with the video, I think that was liberal hamster spinning.

[PBUH]

All Christians deserve punishment.

[Conquistador]

Not surprising to me. Joseph Farah the founder of WorldNetDaily (source of birther conspiracies) is an Arab American Christian.

[sabril]

Putting aside the message, the movie is terrible and I'm glad to hear it wasn't a Jew who was responsible.

[Bad Santa]

I wonder why he said he is Jewish.

[Georgia Resident]

A lot of Christian "Arab-Americans" are only part-Arab. The muslims are more likely to be full Arab. Most are probably descended from pre-1924 immigrants from the Levant, who, from my anecdotal experience, look more similar to Europeans than, for example, Saudis.

"All Christians deserve punishment."

yeah go on and wage your holy war, and don't forget to wear many layers of underpants to preserve your genitals for the afterlife- as Israelis dicovered on human-bombs wannabees.

[Harris]

"All Christians deserve punishment."

yeah go on and wage your holy war, and don't forget to wear many layers of underpants to preserve your genitals for the afterlife- as Israelis discovered on human-bombs wannabees. A sane precaution.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

Steve Jobs was probably half Syriac Christian.

[KS]

"Steve Jobs was probably half Syriac Christian."

Why "probably"?

[not too late]

(source of birther conspiracies)

um, wasn't that the Hillary Clinton campaign?

[destructure]

The reason so many arabs in the US are christian rather than muslim is because muslims persecute other religions. Misrahi jews fled the arab countries, too. But most of them went to Israel.

[Conquistador]

"um, wasn't that the Hillary Clinton campaign?" -not

The birther crap came from the same crowd that believed in various Clinton conspiracies like the murder of Vince Foster, Bill Clinton's history as a rapist, and various other wingnut drivel.

[Tomas]

Steve Jobs was actually half Syrian Muslim:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8811345/Steve-Jobs-adopted-child-who-never-met-his-biological-father.html

"His biological parents met as 23-year-old students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

They were unmarried when his biological mother, Joanne Schieble, fell pregnant in 1954.

His biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim immigrant who later married Ms Schieble. He has said they did not want to put their baby up for adoption, but his girlfriend’s parents would not initially allow her to marry an Arab."

[lil mike]

Conquistador wrote: "The birther crap came from the same crowd that believed in various Clinton conspiracies like the murder of Vince Foster, Bill Clinton's history as a rapist, and various other wingnut drivel."

I remember when the birther stories started. They were first posted and spread by PUMA (Hillary supporters) websites. The first person I heard it from was a super liberal Hillary supporter in 2008.

[Conquistador]

@ lil mike

The birther crap has only gained traction with far right individuals, publications, and broadcasters, but somehow Hillary was behind it and used it to sway voters in a Democratic primary? Unbelievable. Do you really think Obama would give Hillary a job after all the headlines that generated? Reality is smear jobs often cite anonymous sources or try to conceal their point of origin by fabrication. Giving an attack the appearance of coming from the same side helps legitimize it. Partisan GOP sources pulled shit like this throughout the 90's against Clinton.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"Why "probably"?"

Most Arab Americans were Christian when Jobs were born, and apparently they still are.

"Steve Jobs was actually half Syrian Muslim:"

Didn't know his biological parents had been identified.

[Just Speculating]

"A lot of Christian "Arab-Americans" are only part-Arab. The muslims are more likely to be full Arab. Most are probably descended from pre-1924 immigrants from the Levant, who, from my anecdotal experience, look more similar to Europeans than, for example, Saudis".

Yes, Lebanese and Syrian Christians make up the majority of Arab Americans, who are usually more assimilated and economically successful than their Muslim counterparts.

By the way, Arab isn't a racial or ethnic term, but of a linguistic one.

[Black_Rose]

Are Arab-Americans considered NAMs here (based on the context no) since they are not Asian and are minorities? It seems NAMs simply means Hispanics and Blacks.

[HS: I guess that depends on whether Arabs are considered minorities, or Caucasian people from the Middle East.]

[Conquistador]

@ Black_Rose

I've asked that myself and I get mixed answers. My own take is Arabs are from Southwest Asia meaning they are technically Asians. We generally have a separate category for Muslims though but otherwise NAM = black and hispanic like you said.

[lil mike]

@ Conquistador

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/02/08/the-secret-history-of-the-birthers.html

[Just Speculating]

"Are Arab-Americans considered NAMs here (based on the context no) since they are not Asian and are minorities? It seems NAMs simply means Hispanics and Blacks".

There are some Arabs who could pass as European, probably because some of the crusaders became converts in the Levant during the Medieval times. Arab is not a race. Some Lebanese such as this guy wouldn't have problems blending in with Germans or White Americans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHI-An5stvE

[nebbish]

Levantines populations do not have the same genetic profile as more southern Arab populations despite sharing the Arab ethnolinguistic label. That is likely not entirely due to Crusader influence.

[Just Speculating]

@ nebbish

"Levantines populations do not have the same genetic profile as more southern Arab populations despite sharing the Arab ethnolinguistic label. That is likely not entirely due to Crusader influence".

True, but there are some people in the Levant who look Alpine, which is the stock of White people found in the median regions of Europe such as Germany. This phenotype which is found in Lebanon could be a result of the Germanic crusaders. Other than that, many Levantines share a similar genetic profile with Greeks and Anatolian Turks on the coastal areas.

Then you have Arabs who are from North Africa with a variety of genetic makeup originating from the early Southern Arab conquerers, Berbers, Spanish Moors and a tinge of subsaharan Black.

I once met a beautiful Moroccan woman who seem to have an admixture of all these elements, but with a predominantly Moorish "Spanish" look. She would do well in a place like Southern Spain, Brazil or Puerto Rico with celebrities such as Ricky Martin. In fact she looks something like her:

http://cdn.noveleros.com/photos/co/167967_prof.jpg

[Just Speculating]

Regarding the Islamic Conquests of Spain, the Arabs and their Berber cohorts left very little genetic material in the Iberian peninsula. According to some of the genetic studies out there, only about 1 in 10 Spaniards have any genes coming from North Africa. This is debatable, as the numbers could be a lot less.

I would make the case that genes from Spain flow southward to North Africa, after the Inquisition when the Christian expelled their Muslim co-religionists in large numbers. The Moors were mostly Spanish converts to Islam. Not surprisingly, there are many people in Morocco and Algeria with Spanish ancestry (coming from the Moors who were expelled from Spain a few centuries ago). Many of them are almost physically indistinguishable from the Spanish populations in Southern Spain.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

"I would make the case that genes from Spain flow southward to North Africa, after the Inquisition when the Christian expelled their Muslim co-religionists in large numbers."

The gene flow between Europe and the Middle East has overwhelmingly been from Southern Europe to the Near East, not the other way around. North Africa was colonized by Rome and then it was occupied by German Visigoths. The Levant was dominated by Rome and then Byzantium and Greece had major colonies along the coast of Turkey as far back as 7th century B.C.. Crusader influence is likely minimal outside of Lebanon.

[nebbish]

Just Speculating,

Perhaps you're thinking of the appearance of groups like the Kabyle Berbers, who are said to be very Europoid. I haven't seen designated Kabyle samples covered in genetic analyses. Moroccans from both the north and south of the country demonstrate predominantly the Northwest African ancestral component in ADMIXTURE analysis from the Dodecad site:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BtnJCDJuGVc/TnEQC_nOYGI/AAAAAAAAAlk/JW52BJlD82w/s1600/_9.png

In the Dodecad average ADMIXTURE profile of Spanish samples, there is a small Northwest African ancestral component. North Africa may not have had much genetic influence on Spain (and some of it may be much older than the Moorish conquests), but there appears to have been some genetic influence.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-m5emkUFdgys/TgRIBluaAmI/AAAAAAAAAic/i3y0AGPK3Gw/s1600/ADMIXTURE_10.png

[nebbish]

"The gene flow between Europe and the Middle East has overwhelmingly been from Southern Europe to the Near East, not the other way around."

That can only be argued for the historic period. There is strong evidence of Neolithic demic diffusion from the Near East into Europe, establishing a genetic cline from southeast to northwest. The interesting finding from recent studies of ancient DNA is that R1b, which had hitherto been presumed to be a marker of paleolithic European ancestry, may actually be a relative newcomer to Europe. Dienekes' analyses clearly show a strong "Mediterranean" or "southern European" genetic component in Western Europe, and some portion of the mutations assigned to that component ultimately derive from the Middle East.

[ogunsiron]

Neolithic people from the northern levant had a huge, huge demographic impact on Europe in the last 10000 years. There's a simple reason why so many people in Lebanon and Syria look like europeans. It's because *most* europeans ( from south to north, from east to west) are descended from agriculturalists whose roots are in the upper fertile crescent area. The europeans least related to the levantines are the north-east folks like the Finns and Estonians. It looks as if the megalithic builders were pretty much all levantine descendents.

[Just Speculating]

@ nebbish

Yes, the Kabyle Berbers are Europid in appearance. It is said that the ancestors of the Kabyle Berbers and a Semitic race from the Middle East also made their way into Spain in prehistoric times, therefore the "Middle Eastern" or "Semitic" genetic component of the Spanish is not due to the Moorish conquests, but something from an earlier period.

I'm just using observation to based my "theories" as to why some North Africans can pass as Spaniards. Taking historic facts into consideration, one would think that the expulsion of tens of thousands of Moors into North Africa, who were originally from the Iberian peninsula, and were probably genetically identical to their Christian counterparts should introduce a new set of genes south of them. If you visit Southern Spain, which was the stronghold region of the Muslims for nearly a century, you will notice that the phenotypes of the natives are similar to the people south of them in Morocco and Algeria. I would argue that the gene flow was from Spain into North Africa.