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Comment by School-Cotton | Hacker News Reader

> Arab or Christian

You mean Muslim or Christian (either of which can be Arab).

This is so annoying. It’s not rocket science to understand that Arabic is a language and you are only an Arab if your cultural language is Arabic.

Not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs.

It’s like saying that all who speak English are Christians. And all who are Christians speak English.

There are also many Arabic speaking Christians who don’t consider themselves to be Arabs culturally, and who definitely reject the label “Arab”.

They can choose to label themselves however they see fit, however under the guise of israeli law they are no different and are treated the same way as "Arab muslims" which speaks to the enormity of the racist jewish laws.

Most of the people I’m referring to aren’t in Israel, so Israeli law isn’t really relevant.

What do they call themselves?

The ones that I have known best called themselves "Armenians".

In Egypt they're called Copts.

Lebanese?

(Too deep so I can't reply to sibling...)

And there are Arabic speaking Muslims who don't consider themselves Arabs (e.g. in north Africa), as well as Arabic speaking christians who are Arabs (e.g. in Iraq).

Click on the permalink and then you can reply to infinity ;-)

Just imagine your from Africa and everyone in the Media talks about "Africa" as if Morocco and for example Tanzania can be compared ;)

Happens with everyplace. Like when college kids go on their first overseas trip to Spain and come back talking about how "people in Europe" eat dinner late or are less prudish or whatever. As if Barcelona is just like Tallinn and Zagreb.

You're not wrong. At the same time, there was/is a long period in history (centuries?) where "Christian" used as a general moniker that was more nationalist than religious. "The Christian world" etc.

Similarly, not all Christians in Israel or Ghaza are Arabs (though the vast majority are). I didn't want to list all somewhat significant ethnic minorities, so I thought Arab (Muslim, Christian, Druze, etc) + (non-Arabic) Christians (including Armeneans, Arameans, Copts, Assyrians and many other small groups, together making up something like 10k people)

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