The majority of Lebanese are absolutely aware of their Phoenician ancestry. So are all Egyptians, Muslims and Christians, proud of their Egyptian heritage. Their Arab identity is a
cultural factor,a lingiuistic one in fact. Just take a look at the ideology of Pharaonism, supported by figures such Taha Hussein. Hugh makes it look as if All Arab Christians have no genetic relations to the Arabian Peninsula, even though many know themselves, the Ghassanids in Palestine and Syria,to be descendants of Arab tribes from Yemen. Arab migration to the Levant did not start with Islam. In fact, the much mentioned Assyrians and Arameans were migrants from what is now the Arabin Peniunsula."
--from a reader "karim"

The sheer craziness of this defies belief. I urge others to go to the best websites run by Lebanese Christians, such as www.eccelibano.com, to find discussions of the very thing that "karim" does not understand: that is, the Arab attempt, over the centuries, to convince the many non-Arab peoples it conquered, not least in the lands that constitute modern Syria and Lebanon, that because they used Arabic, they were Arabs. But arabization always followed islamization. If one takes on an Arab name, has the Arabic language imposed because the Qur'an must be read in Arabic, turns toward Arabia five canonical prayers every day, takes as the permanent and exemplary model, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, a 7th-century Arab and his customs and manners, then of course one is going to start thinking "I am an Arab." And it isn't just Arabs. How many of the so-called "Arabs" in North Africa are merely arabized Berbers, whose ancestors decided it was better to be an Arab than a Berber. And for that matter, we can see, in Pakistan, every third person being called "Sayeed" and thinking fondly that he is a descendant of the tribe of Muhammad, and others -- including Zobeir the slave-king in late 19th century Sudan, believing himself a descendant not only of Muhammad's tribe, but of one of his close relatives. Primitive peoples, primitive beliefs.

Egyptians were, under the ancien regime, more aware of themselves as "Egyptians" than as "Arabs." But surely that is a function partly of the British administration under Cromer, and the obvious prestige and greater power of the Western, non-Muslim world, a world in which the word "Arab" -- before OPEC trillions -- counted for less. And nowadays, long after Nasser booted out all the Greeks, Italians, Jews, and others, and seized their property, and Egypt became, permanently, a much less vibrant and vivid Yacoubian-Building place -- those non-Muslims will never return -- and the Copts were left alone to face the local Muslims, who more and more, as you know, decided to emphasize their Arabness and Islam. There was Hasan al-Banna, grandfather of Tariq Ramadan, whipping up Cairene crowds in the 1940s, to attack Coptic and Jewish-owned shops. There was Nasser himself, and his pan-Arabism. His appeal, and his dreams, certainly went beyond being an "Egyptian." The reader mentions, bizarrely, Taha Hussain and "Pharaonism" but fails to identify Taha Hussain as a dangerous free-thinker very critical of Islam, who sought to find an alternate narrative to de-emphasize the sole appeal of Islam to Egypt's Muslims. And you know he was forced to recant, forced into silence - or don't you?

As for this business of "all Lebanese" knowing that they are the descendants of Phoenicians, that is completely false. Lebanese Muslims, in fact, are constantly attacking those Maronites who make that perfectly-justified claim. The Arabs have convinced other non-Arab peoples, over centuries, that they are "Arabs" and these pseudo-Arabs have been intent on emphasizing an "Arab" identity. Go ahead, karim, go right to Nasrallah and tell him that he's the descendant not of Arabs, but of Phoenicians. Go on Al-Jazeera, or al-Manar, and insist that 1) we in Lebanon all recognize that we are descended from the Phoenicians and 2) our "Arabness" comes from the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arab invaders. Try it.

Of course, you want to have it both ways. First, you want to make others believe that the Egyptians and Lebanese and so on, are not real Arabs, not descended from Arabs, but, on the other hand, "Arabness" is purely a matter of language, so that if you speak Arabic, you are an "Arab." But that is what Maronites and Copts do not accept, nor Assyrians, nor Chaldeans. And more and more of them are refusing to accept the imposed identity insisted upon by others who call themselves Arabs. And the same thing is happening among Berbers, both in the Kabyle, and elsewhere in North Africa and among the Berbers in France: they are fed up with Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism. See the writings of Kateb Yacine. For that matter, see Anwar Shaikh (from the subcontinent), who has written, from the safety of Great Britain, "Islam the Arab National Religion."

On the one hand, you inaccurately claim that everyone in Lebanon recognizes that they are "descendants of Phoenicians" (those whose identity is Islamic and Arab do not, and you must know that) and that Muslims in Egypt still, today, as in 1920, mostly think of themselves as "Egyptians" (but the Ikhwan does not, and it is the Ikhwan that will inherit Egypt once the corrupt Mubarak and his glossy family-and-friends regime goes under). No, it is the Copts who think of themselves as "Egyptian" and some of the most advanced, secular (i.e., trying to get out from the straitjacket of Islam without becoming apostates) born-into-Islam Muslims have joined them. But the primitive Muslim masses in Egypt, thanks to all kinds of propaganda coming from the oil-rich Arabs, think of themselves as Arabs. A few weeks ago a brave Syrian "intellectual" appeared on Al-Jazeera, and obliquely belittled Islam by appealing to that sense of superiority of those in the north, outside the oil-rich Jazirat al-Arab, to those in the peninsula who had brought the gift of the "Bedouins" -- a clever way to obliquely cast doubt on Islam.

For that is the one thing you got right, that the "Arabs" in Egypt and Syria and Lebanon, and even Iraq, despise the rich but, as they see it, primitive and uncultivated Arabs of the Jazirat. Well, I find the pretensions of the Muslims in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and so on to high -- that is Western-level -- culture, touching and embarrassing, for they obviously have no idea what the West has made possible, in art and science, and in the development of ideas of individual autonomy and freedom, nor do they understand that in India and the Far East, there are civilizations that have likewise achieved high levels, coming at things differently but not held down by Islam, which for so many centuries has so stifled the very people who are, some of them without a choice, held in its mental or political thrall.