What is the point of owning guns?

[molly bloom]

Wut? Arabs are white.

I'm curious to know how many countries in which the majority of the population is Arab that you've been too.

And comparing some labourers from the Indian sub-continent where complexions differ from very dark to very fair and all points in between to one Arab is absurd.






Clearly Nehru was an Arab. Or Caucasian. Or both.

Do you even know any Arabs?

Yeah. And Iranians too. Even met a few Berbers.

[MikeH]

Katie Price these days MOBY

[molly bloom]

Anwar Fitz-O'Sadat was Egypt's first president of Black Irish stock.



Hassan II O'Shaughnessy of Morocco was distantly related to the Kennedys.

[Felch]

Are Sicilians white?

[Guynemer]

I was wondering when someone was going to post that.

[Felch]

I'm just killing time until Archer comes back.

[molly bloom]

I was wondering when someone was going to post that.

I finished reading 'The Sicilian Vespers' on Sunday- an excellent read:

Lucera, a Muslim Colony in Medieval Italy.

Readers may be familiar with the famous incursions of Islam into Europe: the swift move onto the Iberian Peninsula and then into France (where Muslim forces were finally turned back at the Battle of Tours in 732); and much, much later, the last Ottoman attempt to take Vienna in 1683. Perhaps less known is the Arab/Muslim presence in Sicily in the 900s, the subsequent Emirate of Sicily (part of the Fatamid caliphate, the capital of which was Cairo), and then the Christian reconquest of Sicily by the Normans between 1060 and 1090. That reconquest led to the anomalous presence of a Muslim enclave on the southern Italian mainland in the town of Lucera.

It is fair to say that when the Normans retook Sicily, there followed a period of relative tolerance. Muslims paid an extra “freedom of religion” tax, just as Christians had paid it when Islam had ruled the island—but that was the extent of religious “oppression” under the Normans. The tolerance extended for a while even into the period of the Hohenstaufen dynasty that followed the Normans. But by that time, the Christian west was up to the third or fourth Crusade, and religious intolerance was gaining momentum that still has not slowed perceptibly. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1194-1250), the young king of Sicily, was not yet the mighty Holy Roman Emperor, diplomatic Crusader, kidnapper of monks, invader of Rome and all-around ferocious enemy of the Papacy [see The Papal States]. The young Frederick couldn’t resist Christian calls to crack down on the “infidels” of Islam on his home island of Sicily.

Crack-downs in the form of increased taxes led to a revolt by Muslims throughout Sicily in 1224. The next year, however, the rebel Muslim forces surrendered to Frederick. The island’s proximity to north Africa and the real threat of armed Arab intervention from that quarter caused Fredrick to exile most of the Muslim population to towns on the mainland: Girofalco in Calabria (well inland and SW of the modern town of Catanzaro), Acerenza in Lucania (about 50 miles above the “sole” of the boot, smack in what is still the middle of nowhere, NE of Potenza), and Lucera (inland from the Adriatic “spur” of the boot, near the modern town of Foggia, about 75 miles east of Naples). The first two sites were tantalizingly close to Sicily and for a few years, exiled Muslims simply wandered away and set out on the road “home” to Sicily. That stopped in 1239 when Frederick closed Girofalco and Acerenza and decreed that all Muslims (including most of those left on Sicily) would be confined to Lucera. The exiles also included some of the Muslim population of the island of Malta, then part of the kingdom of Sicily (as, earlier, it had been part of the Emirate of Sicily.)

http://ac-support.europe.umuc.edu/~jmatthew/naples/Lucera.htm

[Imran Siddiqui]

I'm just killing time until Archer comes back.

[Al B. Sure!]

Molly is an idiot

Sadat was Sudanese. He was not an Arab.

And why are you comparing them to Irish? White people extend well beyond the British Isles, you know, or do you not consider Slavs, Iberians, Armenians, Greeks, etc. white?


If 1930's German encyclopedias put Arabs as 'Europaeid', what does that mean?




The US census bears this out as does the Equal Employment Opportunity commission:

http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/eeo1survey/2007instructions.cfm

White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

[regexcellent]

Who cares?

[Docfeelgood]

[SlowwHand]

Who cares?

In case you haven't noticed, Alby is OCD to the max.

[Docfeelgood]

In case you haven't noticed, Alby is OCD to the max.

He just needs someone to talk to.

[molly bloom]

Molly is an idiot

You've no idea how much you calling me that hurts me, Al. I may never recover.

Sadat was Sudanese. He was not an Arab.

Would that be the Arab Republic of Sudan then ? That country with Arab culture, and Arabic as a language ? Just wondering. That Anwar Sadat I'm thinking of was born in Egypt though, wasn't he ?

And why are you comparing them to Irish?

The black Irish thing should clue you in to the not quite serious intent. Or perhaps not...

I'm actually comparing your absurd notions of 'whiteness' and 'race' with a nationality/race renowned for its pale skin, melanin deficiency, freckles, red hair, et cetera... My countryfolk helped contribute to the ethnic diversity of places as different as Iceland, Morocco and Montserrat.

I notice you had no problem comparing one pale Arab with some dark skinned Indians- as if that proved anything beyond your own obtuseness.

The lovely Persis Khambatta:



In any culture where everyday exposure to the sun through work outdoors darkens your complexion, pale skin is often a sign of membership of the ruling class, or wealth- and that goes from present day Nigeria to Elizabethan England. Hence the use of potentially harmful skin whitening creams from Africa to India.

White people extend well beyond the British Isles, you know,

Imagine that. I've never been outside Ireland.

do you not consider Slavs, Iberians, Armenians, Greeks, etc. white?

More to the point, why would I care what an individual from any of those peoples chose to call themselves ? Pushkin was part Slav, part Ethiopian, to pick an obvious example. He was proud of his black skinned Ethiopian ancestry.

If 1930's German encyclopedias put Arabs as 'Europaeid', what does that mean?

Right- if in doubt fall back on 1930s' race science. How forward looking of you. What's next, you discover penicillin ?

Who cares?

Well racists do, for a start. It's why Obama had so much trouble with the whole birth certificate crowd, despite having white American ancestry.

I've no idea why Al wants every Arab to be classed as white, even if, as in the case of the Republic of the Sudan, two of the leading Arab groups of immigrants intermarried with the indigenous dark skinned Nubian indigenes. You could also look at Libya and Morocco where intermarriage between groups has left self-identified Arabs with dark complexions- King Hassan II, for instance.

[Dr Strangelove]

White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

Hmmmmm................ It seems they forgot about 1 / 7 th of the human population, the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. They're Caucasian too, though it could be argued that southern Indians fall into a category that's neither Caucasian nor Oriental.