Sometimes bored Posts are the Best Posts

I've been sitting here thinking about a blog to write and could not come up with anything. So, in my bored state of mind I typed into a google search, "Interesting Things About the Middle East." After searching around for a while I found something that I thought to be significant and of importance to this class. The website page was entitled "10 Things that Everyone Should Know about the Middle East."  While I knew most of these things, I definitely needed a reminder for a few, especially #1. The Website Page is here. Below is the list of the 10 things that Everyone should know about the middle east. Enjoy!

1. Arabs are part of an ethnic group, not a religion. Arabs were around long before Islam, and there have been (and still are) Arab Christians and Arab Jews. In general, you’re an Arab if you 1) are of Arab descent (blood), or 2) speak the main Arab language (Arabic).
2. Not all Arabs are Muslim. There are significant populations of Arab Christians throughout the world, including in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Northern Africa and Palestine/Israel.
3. Islam is a religion. A Muslim (roughly pronounced MOOSE-lihm) is someone who follows the religion. So you wouldn’t say someone follows Muslim or is an Islam, just as you wouldn’t say someone follows Christian or is a Christianity.
4. Shia Muslims are similar to Roman Catholics in Christianity. They have a strong clerical presence via Imams and promote the idea of going through them to practice the religion correctly. Sunni Muslims are more like Protestant Christians. They don’t really focus on Imams and believe in maintaining a more direct line to God than the Shia.
5. People from Iran are also known as Persians, and they are not Arabs.
6. Arabs are Semites. We’ve all heard the term anti-Semitism being used — often to describe Arabs. While antisemitism does specifically indicate hatred for Jews, the word “Semite” comes from the Bible and referred originally to anyone who spoke one of the Semitic Languages.
7. According to the Bible, Jews and Arabs are related [Genesis 25]. Jews descended from Abraham‘s son Isaac, and Arabs descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. So not only are both groups Semitic, but they’re also family.
8. Sunni Muslims make up most of the Muslim world (roughly 90%). ¹
9. The country with the world’s largest Muslim population is Indonesia. ²
10. The rift between the Shia and Sunni started right after Muhammad’s death and originally reduced to a power struggle regarding who was going to become the authoritative group for continuing the faith.