Iraqi Martyrs in Palestine 1948

Prepared by the Palestinian Forum for Dialogue

http://www.palestinianforum.net

قبل 58 عاما حارب العراقيون من اجل فلسطين. و سقط منهم العديد على تراب الوطن. عرفناهم كعراقيين و لم نعرفهم كسنة و شيعة و تركمان و كرد و مسيحيين كما فعلت قوى الاجرام الامريكية. فمن اجل هذه العينة من شهداء العراق ، و من اجل العراقيين الابطال الذين اوقفوا الزحف الصهيوني نحو دمشق اثناء حرب 1973 : فلنصل من اجل توحيد هذا الشعب الذي وقع ضحية دكتاتور احمق سفاح و ضحية الهمجية الاستعمارية. فلندعو الله ان يهدي قادة هذا الشعب لما فيه خير لامتنا و لحقن الجرح العراقي النازف منذ ربع قرن. دماء هؤلاء الجنود الابطال الذين رفضوا اوامر قادتهم و استبسلوا في مقاومة العدو تدعونا ان نتوحد و ان نكف عن نشر البغضاء بين ابناء شعوبنا.

لا نملك لكم ايها العراقيون الا الدعاء

كوكبة من شهداء العراق عام 1948 - المصدر: مركز المعلومات الوطني الفلسطيني:0

http://www.palestinianforum.net/forum/showthread.php?t=53096

Commentary by Wafaa

This list of Iraqi martyrs was emailed to me by an Iraqi friend. It came so timely after an Iraqi known man in an email correspondence with me praised Egyptians' inclination for peace and acknowledged their suffering and their lost lives for the Palestinian cause and then concluded his remark by questioning "How many Iraqis died for Palestine?" in his effort to undermine and discredit Iraqis' outstanding work for Arab causes through the decades! Although I replied to him correcting his misjudgment and misunderstanding of the matter, I did not have with me the core evidence to back up my point. The link above includes a long list of the names of Iraqi martyrs.

In fact, if it weren't for the Iraqi army's involvement in the 1973 war, Damascus would have been under Israeli occupation.

Simultaneously, we should give CREDITS to the Palestinians for wonderfully documenting this list. Sadly, we, Iraqis, did not document the Arab martyrs (from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Algeria and Libya) who lost their lives for our Iraqi cause. Right before the 2003 war and during its first month, there has been an estimate of 7000 to 9000 Arab fighters who entered IRAQ to fight alongside IRAQIS, but what did we do for them? Many Iraqis went even as far as discrediting the number and considering it one of Saddam Hussein's and the Baath's propaganda. Few reports were coming from western media about these Arab fighters being kicked in the head by the Kurdish peshmergeh legs and other non-Kurdish militias even when they were dead. Thousands of them were murdered, yet were unknown and without any respect for their corps, this is aside from the fact that their parents never knew their fate! I acknowledge that the Arabs' stance has been passive, and sometimes shameful, since 2003. 

There is a memorial in Janeen, Palestine of the 200 Iraqi soldiers/officers who were killed in their fight against the European Jews near Janeen, with "Iraqi Martyrs of 1948 War" written on it. It was heart warming to learn about its existence. We, Iraqis, should have done the same for those who were killed for our, Iraqi, cause!

****************

Dear Wafaa
I don't know if the list of Iraqi martyrs in Palestine includes the ones who joined the Qawouqchi as volunteers even before the declaration of the war in 1948. I was an 8-year-old child when I joined the people gathering in a street in Al-Adhamiyah behind the Al-Adhamiyah Secondary School to celebrate the departure of one member of the Al-Sabti family to join the Salvation Army in Palestine. My cousin Omar Al-Bayaty from Kifri was a volunteer in the Salvation Army as wireless specialist soldier.

Albayaty Abdul Ilah

Tuesday, May 16, 06

Another Iraqi Professor Killed

On Thursday, March 30, 2006, American occupation soldiers shot dead 72 year-old Professor Qais Husamuddeen Jum'a. He was killed as he left the Agriculture College of the University of Baghdad passing through their check point. Jum'a had returned from Australia to supervise PhD students at the College.



Sources:
1. Witness student from the Agriculture College
2. http://abutamam.blogspot.com/2006/04/professor-qais-jumaa-killed-by.html

A letter From Baghdad

Dear All,

On the morning of Thursday, the 2nd of March, a car with three assassins inside, pulled beside Lt. Col. Air force pilot, Hussain Ali Marhoon, who was standing on the kerb with a friend awaiting the work’s bus not far from his home in the Yarmouk district of Baghdad; they shot them both, with one of the criminals getting out of the car to shoot him in the head from close range. Hussein Marhoon died instantly and his friend died in hospital in the afternoon. The incident took place about fifty meters away from two police cars who did not take any action against the assailants .

When we took him to the Baghdad mortuary, the attending doctor told us that he was the No. 20 victim so far that day; it was only nine in the morning!

Hussain was 41 years old , a handsome young man with blue eyes , fair complexion , tall and wide shouldered . He graduated as top of his 1987 air force college class , but did not undertake any active duties against anybody simply because the Iraqi air force was practically grounded during most of the subsequent period. Like all other Iraqi army officers, he was out of service since the occupation in April 2003 because of the dismissal of the Iraqi armed forces by Bremer. Six months ago he found a contract job with the housing association of the old war veterans commission, the job he was waiting to take the bus to when he was murdered.

He leaves a young widow, a 14 year-old son and a 12 year-old daughter, a grieving father and a heartbroken mother. He will be terribly missed by all his relatives, friends and associates . The crime was officially registered against " unknowns " and for " unknown " reasons ".

May God have mercy on his soul.
Falah The Taylor
Baghdad -- Iraq
---------------------
Comment by Wafaa: I received this letter recently via email from a friend in Baghdad.

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Peter Sluglett on IRAQI Jews via Email

Dear Wafaa,

Someone has shown me your letter to Nissim Rejwan. I think the record has to be set straight. I have been working on 19th and 29th century Iraqi history for the last 30 years.

In the Iraqi context, it’s nonsense to talk about ‘Jewish Arabs’. The correct terminology is ‘Arabic-speaking Jews.’ It’s like this. Arabs originate in the Arabian Peninsula. They begin to migrate out in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, and then do so in a big way in the 7th century, with the Arab conquests. Long before the Arab conquests, there were Jews in what is now Iraq. We cannot call them Arab Jews (unless we mean ‘Arabic-speaking Jews’) because their ancestors were there many centuries before the Arabs.

The Jewish population of Baghdad: this is the figure which everyone in the field accepts. The Ottoman salnames and censuses are the most reliable sources we have (because the Ottomans based jizya and other tax collection on them). Batatu’s book (1978) is the most reliable account that we have: it is impossible to write anything serious on Iraq without reading it. Batatu (d.2002) taught Political Science first at AUB and then at Georgetown.

Joel’s sentence, “But like most Arabic-speaking minorities” shocked me. Iraqi Jews are near entirely Arabs. They are nothing, but Arabs. Writing that Jews are Arabic speaking means that they speak Arabic, but not necessarily Arabs! Then she made another grave error by considering Arabic-speaking in IRAQ as a minority or several minorities when nearly 90% of the society spoke (and still speaks) Arabic regardless of whether they are Arabs or not.

This is based on a misunderstanding of English. ‘Arabic speaking minorities’ = ‘Arabic-speaking non-Muslim minorities’; (For instance, Maronites and Orthodox Christians and Druzes in Lebanon, Chaldeans, Suriani, Ashuri, Jews etc in Iraq). I have already explained that the Iraqi Jews are not and cannot be Arabs. Joel Beinin is a man (i.e. not ‘she’); he is a highly respected historian of the labor movement in Egypt and Palestine, a Professor of History at Stanford.

[On page xvi, Joel Beinin writes, “The first modern Arabic play in Mesopotamia was written in 1888 by a Christian.” Please note that in 1888 it was not called Mesopotamia.]

This is silly: it wasn’t called Iraq either!! Iraq referred only to the provinces of Baghdad and Basra.

Pan-Arab nationalism is a load of a-historical nonsense invented by Sati‘ al-Husri in the 1920s and has no relation whatever to the realities of Arab history. There was never a time, except perhaps between 700 and 850, when it would have been possible to talk about a united Arab world – after 850-900 the Arab world was ruled by different dynasties of Turkish (or Persian) origin. Furthermore, very few Arabs were attracted to Arab nationalism before WW1, since the Ottoman Empire was the only thing standing between them and European colonisation, a fact of which even Arab Christians were aware. When the Ottomans fell, sure enough, the Arab provinces were taken over by France and Britain.

Zionism is equally fallacious in historical terms; two wrongs do not make a right!

Finally, your remarks about the Sunnis: All the people whose names I’ve quoted have been writing about Iraq or the Middle East since the 1970s. You will not find any reputable scholar who thinks that the Sunnis Arabs are a majority, although, as you say, the terms ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shi‘i’ do not occur in the censuses. I assure you that this is not an invention by the Americans since 2003, it’s what anyone writing on Iraq has been saying for the past 70 years.

The picture is roughly this, in percentages:

Kurds 24
Turcomen 6
Other non-Arabs (Armenians, Assyrians etc) 3

Arabs 67
Of which Arab Sunni provinces and Arab 27
Sunni parts of Baghdad
Arab Shi‘is and Shi‘i parts of Baghdad 40

Of course this can’t be absolutely accurate, but if you take half the population of Baghdad, and add all the obviously Shi‘i areas south of Baghdad (find me the Sunnis between Baghdad and Basra) that’s more or less what you end up with.

If you want to see what I, or Beinin, or Batatu have published, look us up on the Harvard University Catalog: (Hollis catalog). We all have doctorates, we’re all professionals, and have been in the field for many years.

Peter Sluglett
History Department, University of Utah

/////////////////

Subject: RE Jewish Arabs
Date: 10/26/2005 1:57:54 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Joachim Martillo
To: Sluglett
CC: president@utah.edu


In a message dated 10/25/2005 11:55:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Professor Sluglett writes:

<<In the Iraqi context, it’s nonsense to talk about ‘Jewish Arabs’. The correct terminology is ‘Arabic-speaking Jews.’ It’s like this. Arabs originate in the Arabian Peninsula. They begin to migrate out in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, and then do so in a big way in the 7th century, with the Arab conquests. Long before the Arab conquests, there were Jews in what is now Iraq. We cannot call them Arab Jews (unless we mean ‘Arabic-speaking Jews’) because their ancestors were there many centuries before the Arabs.>>


Dear Professor Sluglett:

Some friends of mine passed your email to me because I am an expert in the period that you address in the above paragraph.

I am completely astounded that anyone with any sort of training in history would try to equate ancient Arabs of 4th-7th century Arabia with the modern Arabic population.

It is a combination of primordialism and essentialism that went out of style with the defeat of the German Nazis, who tried to equate modern Germans with ancient Germanic and Teutonic tribes.

All the populations of the Middle East that spoke some form of Semitic or Egyptian language were Arabized with the development of the early Islamic empires, and those populations included all the Aramaic-speaking populations that practiced some form of Judean religion. All these populations together evolved into the ethno-linguistic groups that are commonly called Arab today.

It is a major error to describe any populations before the 10th century as Jewish. Modern Rabbinic and Karaite Judaism do not crystallize until the time of Saadya Gaon. There are several cumbersome terminologies to describe various categories of Judean or earlier Judahite populations, but one point is clear as Shaye Cohen of Harvard University has carefully pointed out. "Judean" lost all ethnic or territorial sense by the 3rd century CE. I would argue that his time frame is several centuries too late, but any attempt to trace modern Eastern European Yiddish-speaking populations to ancient Greek and Aramaic-speaking populations of the Roman Empire that practiced some form of 2nd Temple Judaism belongs more to the realm of essentialist and primordialist propaganda than it does to genuine scholarship.

Because you pretend to be a scholar in Middle East Languages and Area Studies, I have appended a very simple introduction to the terminology necessary to discussing Judaica coherently since the development of Zionist ideology.

Patrick Geary has written a basic history book entitled The Myth of Nations. You should read it, for the very elementary points that he makes applies as much to the Middle East and North Africa as it does to Europe.

Joachim Martillo

//////////////////////////////////////


Wafaa's reply to Joachim Martillo after he forwarded the commentary by Peter Sluglett (see Below),

Richard Sullivan
INEAS
In a message dated 10/27/2005 1:06:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Sluglett@aol.com writes:

<<I accept, and am grateful for, your criticism and detailed information on the 'Jewish Arabs', a subject I should not have raised since what I know about is the 19th and 20th century, and I defer to your evidently greater knowledge of the earlier period.

Howewver, while I know that Iraqi Jews always thought of themselves as Iraqis , I am not sure that they thought of themselves as Arabs (who just happened to be Jewish) -- unlike, for example, the Greek Orthodox population of Syria who are quite unambiguously Arab in their own self-identification. Under the Ottoman Empire, of course, people thought in sectarian and religious terms (Muslims, Christians and Jews), but while it's clear that Iraqi Jewish novelists, poets and so on between 1920 and 1950 felt that they were participants in Arab culture (since they spoke Arabic -- and only Arabic) I wonder whether - after the foundation of the state in 1920 - they thought of themselves as Arabs. Frankly, I rather doubt it, but I'm ready to be proved wrong !
Peter Sluglett>>

Most Iraqi Jews considered themselves Arabs, but the Industrial west and western Ashkenazi Jews didn't care or paid attention to this reality. They always made their own assumptions, distorted facts and worse yet invented their own "facts" and terminology to fit their agenda about various matters related to the East.

When Jewish Arabs lived in IRAQ, until they had to flee to Israel (a country that treated them horribly), they considered themselves Arabs. Many continued to consider themselves Arabs and even spoke Arabic or Arabized Hebrew even while living in Israel at least until the defeat of neighboring Arab countries in confronting Israel. Peter Sluglett or any of the western so-called scholars did not live in IRAQ in that era to witness that reality. They copy each other's findings, writings and statements often without listening to far better sources; the people themselves and their stories, concepts and behaviors.

Peter Sluglett should listen to the commentary by Iraqi Jews in Samir's documentary, "Forget Baghdad", should read the scholarly writings of Naeem Giladi who currently lives in NY and should also read the writing of the great Iraqi Jew, Ahmed Soussa, who never left IRAQ and converted to Islam later in his life, not because he wanted to stay in Iraq. He also should read the carefully written and well analyzed writings on the subject by Prof. Ella Shohat who also lives in NY. Jewish Arabs like the late Sameer An-Naqqash (Iraq) and David Shasha (Iraq/Syria) would have given Sluglett and other such history teachers a good piece of their mind. So it was not just a matter of speaking Arabic as mentioned in Sluglett's response and Joel Beinin's forward in Nissim Rejwan's book.

When Arabs began to lose in confronting Israel and when they began to be more divided and in trouble with each other politically, many began to disassociate themselves from Arab nationalism or from the Arab community and ceased telling publicly that they were Arabs for obvious reasons.

Jewish Arabs in the industrial west began to associate themselves with the Jews rather than Arabs because their causes get better funded with the Jewish and/or Zionist communities/organizations than with those of the Arabs! Additionally, the Jewish Arabs, whether living in the industrial west or Israel, have not been recognized and treated well, and with the terrible treatment of foreigners especially Arabs in general for decades and the privileges and power Jews have in the industrial west, it is understood why Jewish Arabs
disassociate themselves from Arabs.

However, all of the above mentioned scenarios did not and will not change the fact that they were/are as nothing, but ethnically Arabs whether they like to admit it or not.

Regards,
Wafaa, Founder
INEAS

//////////////////////////////////////

Subject: Re: Jewish Arabs
Date: 10/27/2005 2:36:12 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Sluglett

I have written the foreword to Abbas Shiblak, Iraqi Jews: a History of Mass Exodus (London, Saqi Books, 2005), so I am not entirely unaware of the points that you make.

However, I am still not sure that, their own self-perception, Iraqi Jews fall into quite the same category as, say, Syrian or Iraqi Christians who, (unless they are of Armenian or Assyrian origin) are clearly Arab in their own self-identification. Thus, while Arab Christians certainly regard themselves as Arabs who happen to be Christians, I wonder (since this is a question of self-perception, not necessarily of 'reality') whether Jews from Arab countries regard themselves as Arabs who just happen to be Jews. That they regard themselves as Iraqis or Egyptians I have no doubt.

Incidentally, you all seem to put a lot of stress on Israel and the various nonsenses which the Zionists may or may not have concocted. Tnis is not part of my concern. If you read anything I have written -- and if you are at all interested in 19th and 20th century Iraqi history you will see that I have written quite a lot on Iraq, both with my late wife Marion Farouk-Sluglett before her death in 1996 and by myself subsequently, you will see that it is all solidly grounded in empirical evidence.

Peter Sluglett
///////////////////////////////


Subject: Re: Jewish Arabs
Date: 10/27/2005
To: Sluglett


In a message dated 10/27/2005 2:36:12 PM Eastern Standard Time, Sluglett writes:

<<However, I am still not sure that, their own self-perception, Iraqi Jews fall into quite the same category as, say, Syrian or Iraqi Christians who, (unless they are of Armenian or Assyrian origin) are clearly Arab in their own self-identification. Thus, while Arab Christians certainly regard themselves as Arabs who happen to be Christians, I wonder (since this is a question of self-perception, not necessarilyof 'reality') whether Jews from Arab countries regard themselves as Arabs who just happen to be Jews. That they regard themselves as Iraqis or Egyptians I have no doubt.>>

Yes, as I indicated earlier, they are Arabs and they consider themselves Arabs and part of Arab history, definitely.

Below are sources emailed to us after I sent my commentary this morning. The sender asked that we forward it to you.

Regards,
Wafaa, Founder
Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies (INEAS)
///////////////////////////


Subject: Re: Jewish Arabs
Date: 10/27/2005 2:43:57 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: Sheilamusaji

Salaam,

We have had a number of articles on The American Muslim website on the subject of Jewish Arabs (by a Jewish Arab, David Shasha)

A Jewish Voice Left Silent: Trying to Articulate 'The Levantine Option', David Shasha http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2003jan_comments.php?id=253_0_17_0_C

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Arab - The Last Jews of Baghdad, David Shasha http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2005jan_comments.php?id=553_0_31_0_C

Eclipse of SUFFEH, David Shasha http://theamericanmuslim.org/2005jan_comments.php?id=552_0_31_0_C

Masking Identity: Sephardim as Ashkenazim, David Shasha http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2005august_comments.php?id=948_0_44_30_C

On the Use of the Term Arab Jew, David Shasha http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2005august_comments.php?id=947_0_44_30_C

Restoring the Andalusian-Arabic Tradition in Western Civilization, David Shasha http://theamericanmuslim.org/2004oct_comments.php?id=499_0_37_0_C

and we have an article coming up in the November issue "Rediscovering the Arab-Jewish Past"

It would seem clear that there are at least some who consider themselves Arab-Jews.

You are welcome to share this information.'

God bless,
Sheila Musaji

Gary Leupp Corresponds with Wafaa'

 The Definition of 'Arabs'

Please note that there are errors in Gary Leupp's article. I appreciate from both Uruknet and Counterpunch to make sure to correct them in his article or delete them.

Leupp's writes, " Iraq was Persian (Iranian) territory then. We call its people “Arabs” today because they speak the Arabic language, just as we call Moroccans and Egyptians and Syrians “Arabs” for the same reason. But the original Arabs inhabited the Arabian Peninsula and what today is the kingdom of Jordan."

This is a history distortion typically committed by professors at the politically incorrect universities of Harvard, Tufts, Boston University and the like. We call them Arabs today because they speak Arabic language? What kind of "scholarly" conclusion is this when the majority of Iraqis today are Arabs ethnically and not just because they speak Arabic. So why aren't we calling them all English (all over Australia, The USA and Canada) if they all speak English? Then he makes another error: "..just as we call Moroccans and Egyptians and Syrians "Arabs" for the same reason"

Leupp needs to know that the Egyptians and Syrians are called Arabs because the vast majority of them are Arabs, descendants of Arab tribes with history predating that of the Persians (in both Syria and Yemen). Arab tribes existed all over the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and beyond from as early as the Abrahamic era or as known biblical time.

It is also shocking to read in his writing the term "original Arabs" as if there are original and copy Arabs. Leupp seems to come from the school of Bush and his neocons, by stating that Iraqis were (and are) not Arabs, and that courageous Persians, Parthians, Jews and anybody else, but Arabs, were the ones who defeated the Roman Empire. This is similar to what the Bush administration and mainstream media have been stating to distort the truth about IRAQ's Arab majority today.

Little does Leupp know that the current courageous Iraqi resistance against the American empire is made of mainly Arabs not Arabic speakers. From which corrupt source did he come to the conclusion that original Arabs come from the Arabian Peninsula and Jordan only? This is how the enemies of Arabs want to portray them as just few millions (in other words a minority) who only live in Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula, two countries that are comprised of mostly deserts in order to fit this with the western description of Arabs being originally and only nomads riding on camels. The rest are not Arabs because they are copies; they are Egyptians, Syrians and Moroccans! If I forward Leupp's nonsense to Egyptians and Syrians, he would never hear the end of it.

That entire paragraph I quoted above in Leupp's article is irrelevant to his article and primitive. It seems it was included to brainwash the reader about the insignificance of Arabs and to prove that they are a minority rather than presenting facts.

I am ccing a historian so that she hopefully comments on some of the damaging paragraphs in Luepp's article. I include the link below as well to read the entire article, in case there are more errors.

Please confirm receipt of this email. I appreciate that you, at least, delete this paragraph from Gary Leupp's article. If males keep writing history, then let history at least be corrected and modified by females.

Regards,
Wafaa
////////////////////

Two Paragraphs from Gary Leupp's article:
A Lesson from Roman HistoryAn Earlier Empire's War on Iraq
GARY LEUPP, CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp10042005.htmlhttp://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=16435&s2=05

October 4, 2005

The Roman emperor Trajan reigned from 98 to 117 and brought the empire to its maximum extent. He is generally considered to be one of the “good emperors” who ruled from 96 to 180, and indeed his administration was marked by relative tolerance (towards Christians, for example) and efficiency. Among his mistakes, however, was an attack on the Parthian Empire beginning in 115 or 116. He personally led his troops into Mesopotamia (what we now call Iraq) capturing the capital of Ctesiphon on the Tigris near modern Baghdad. He reached the Persian Gulf and in Edward Gibbon’s words, “enjoyed the honour of being the first, as he was the last, of the Roman generals, who ever navigated that remote sea.” A man of boundless ambition, he dreamed of sailing from there to far-off India.

Iraq was Persian (Iranian) territory then. We call its people “Arabs” today because they speak the Arabic language, just as we call Moroccans and Egyptians and Syrians “Arabs” for the same reason. But the original Arabs inhabited the Arabian Peninsula and what today is the kingdom of Jordan. Trajan had annexed the later (then called Arabia Petraea) about 106, bringing a large Arab population into the empire for the first time. Meanwhile he drew other Semites into the fold. By conquering Mesopotamia, with a population of perhaps a million Jews, he brought almost all the world’s Jews under Roman rule. (See Norman F. Cantor, The Sacred Chain: The History of the Jews, 1994).) (We tend to assume that the Jews were all concentrated in Judea, but there were according to Philo one million Jews in Alexandria, Egypt in the early first century, while Josephus writing later in the same century wrote that the Syrian cities of Antioch and Damascus had huge Jewish populations. At the time there were at least 10,000, and perhaps as many as 40,000 Jews in Rome itself.)

-------------
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades
////////////

Subject: Re: Gary Leupp on Counterpunch & Uruknet. info -- Errors in Article
Date: 10/7/2005 1:32:33 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: gleupp@imap.tufts.edu


Dear Wafaa:

There is too much confusion in your letter in address in a short response. My being a male historian of European ancestry at Tufts should not factor into the conversation, and your association of me with Bush and his neocons indicates a complete lack of familiarity with my work. Obviously the point of the passage you question is that in Roman times, many areas whose peoples we today call "Arab" were populated by non-Arabs, such as Persians, Jews, Syrians, Phoenicians, Berbers, etc. but that at some point they became "Arab" in a cultural and linguistic sense. So in speaking about the people of Mesopotamia in the second century CE I am not necessarily referring only to Arabs. Surely there is a point of differentiating between "original Arabs" (although I might have chosen a better term) and those of varied ethnic backgrounds whose identity as Arabs stems from language. You are no doubt familiar with the hadith: "Being an Arab is not because of your father or mother, but being an Arab is on account of your tongue. Whoever learns Arabic is an Arab." And you may know that the Arab League defines an Arab as "a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples."

As for the Iraqis courageously resisting US occupation, I don't know the details of their DNA makeup, or what component of the gene pool is "Arab" in the sense you use the term. That's not really relevant to my historical piece. I certainly see no reason to alter it on the basis of your comments.
With best wishes,
Gary Leupp
////////////////////////////////////////

Dear Gary Leupp:

See my comments in red under each paragraph of your email reply below.

Regards,
Wafaa
Al-Wafaa News

In a message dated 10/7/2005 1:32:33 PM Eastern Standard Time, gleupp@imap.tufts.edu writes:


<<Dear Wafaa:
There is too much confusion in your letter in address in a short response. My being a male historian of European ancestry at Tufts should not factor into the conversation, and your association of me with Bush and his neocons indicates a complete lack of familiarity with my work. >>

There was no confusion in my letter. So to indicate that there was "too much confusion" is an exaggeration, if not an error. I did not associate you with Bush and the neo-cones. I meant that you used their (and the media's) tactics and writing style in the piece of information you provided about Arabs.

<<Obviously the point of the passage you question is that in Roman times, many areas whose peoples we today call "Arab" were populated by non-Arabs, such as Persians, Jews, Syrians, Phoenicians, Berbers, etc. but that at some point they became "Arab" in a cultural and linguistic sense.>>

Jews can be Arab too. There is an estimate of nearly one million Jewish Arabs from various parts of the Arab world some of whom still live in the Arab world and some are not. As a professor, I think you committed a serious error when you included Jews (in general) in the list of non-Arabs. The same can be said about the Syrians. You need to do your homework better with regard to pre-Islamic Arab history of Syria in Palmyra and the time of the Arabian queen Zenobia.

Then you made another error: Persians and Berbers (the way you included them in the lines above) never became Arabs. Everybody knows this fact except westerners who often confuse them with each other. Arabs, Persians and Berbers know that Persians and Berbers are not Arabs EVEN in "A CULTURAL and LINGUISTIC SENSE," especially in the case of Persians. I cannot tell you the many times your western writings have upset Arabs and Persians alike
when they were confused with each other, i.e. some sources indicate that Omar Khayyam is an Arab or that Rumi is a Persian (when he is half Arab), and so on and so forth.

<<So in speaking about the people of Mesopotamia in the second century CE I am not necessarily referring only to Arabs. Surely there is a point of differentiating between "original Arabs" (although I might have chosen a better term) and those of varied ethnic backgrounds whose identity as Arabs stems from language. You are no doubt familiar with the hadith: "Being an Arab is not because of your father or mother, but being an Arab is on account of your tongue. Whoever learns Arabic is an Arab.">>

It is extremely important to factor in the huge time difference between our era of the 20/21 centuries and that of the Prophet Mohammed. What he called for was completely different from what people are identifying with and why during our era!

The Islam Prophet Mohammed brought was that of tolerance to non-Arabs, and was inclusive of non-Arabs. It was also a religion that required prayers to be conducted in Arabic, the language of the Qur'an. So to encourage non-Arabs to join in one Moslem community, and to make sure that it is not comprised of only Arabs, and for non-Arabs not to feel excluded as well as to ensure that non-Arabs pray in Arabic, that hadith (Prophet saying) was a testimony for that notion. That is different from how and why the issue of who is an Arab and non-Arab perceived in modern time and how you argued it in your article..

<<And you may know that the Arab League defines an Arab as "a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples.">>

To use the Arab League's definition or the Prophet's Hadith to prove that the Syrians and Egyptians are not Arabs was interesting indeed, but it is NOT a valid point. Neither they were good examples for your claim of the so-called original Arabs, who according to you only existed in Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula.

<<As for the Iraqis courageously resisting US occupation, I don't know the details of their DNA makeup, or what component of the gene pool is "Arab" in the sense you use the term. That's not really relevant to my historical piece. I certainly see no reason to alter it on the basis of your comments. With best wishes,Gary Leupp>>


Do you see how your western perception of things just kicked in? DNA Make up? This is a 20/21-century perception of things and contradictory to your attempt to quote someone who said something about it nearly 1500 years ago; I mean about quoting the hadith of the Prophet.

Do you have a DNA make up to back up your claim that so-called original Arabs existed only in Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula? I did not appreciate your sarcasm about the gene pool and the DNA.

If you teach all of these contradictions and distortions at Tufts University, I think you and the University should be sued.

Everybody inside and outside of IRAQ (including the propagandists in this country and the non-Arab Iraqis) know that the courageous Iraqi resistance has been masterminded and executed by mainly Arabs.

In conclusion, yes I still think the terrible paragraph in your article about Arabs and non-Arabs should be altered or deleted. I include it below and hope that counterpunch and uruknet websites delete it, not only because it has errors, but because it is irrelevant to the subject of your article.

Best Regards,
Wafaa


Leupp's writes, " Iraq was Persian (Iranian) territory then. We call its people “Arabs” today because they speak the Arabic language, just as we call Moroccans and Egyptians and Syrians “Arabs” for the same reason. But the original Arabs inhabited the Arabian Peninsula and what today is the kingdom of Jordan."