I’m Arab and Christian- why are people always so surprised ?

[Anonymous]

I get that the large majority of Arabs are Muslim .. but he was Jesus of Nazareth, not Jesus of New Jersey!

[Anonymous]

What country are you from? Of course there are also Jews in India, just rare compared to everything else.

[Anonymous]

OP here- There are about 5000 Jews in India for a population of over 1.4 billion.
I’d say about 10% of Arabs are Christian . Egypt alone has about 10 million Copts. I’m from one of the Levantine countries.
In the US, the majority of Arab Americans are Christians but somehow people are still perplexed at the combination.

[Anonymous]

People are just ignorant.

[Anonymous]

Americans don't really know about world stuff

[Anonymous]

I'm super ignorant. I have no idea what holidays people who are Arab celebrate. I also can't keep track of how Arabs and Muslims are different despite it being explained to me a hundred times. I have a lot of learning disabilities and some information will just never stick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm super ignorant. I have no idea what holidays people who are Arab celebrate. I also can't keep track of how Arabs and Muslims are different despite it being explained to me a hundred times. I have a lot of learning disabilities and some information will just never stick.

Arab is ethnicity and Muslim is religion.

[Anonymous]

European here. Because Americans are deeply, deeply ignorant about what goes on outside their borders, as well as minorities inside their own borders.

I think it's due to the fact that the USA is a vast place and the most powerful country in the world, and has been since WWII ended. People do not feel the need to educate themselves on the rest of the world, because they have enough domestic news to contend with, and don't think they depend on other countries to find jobs (they actually do depend on other countries for rare earths, drugs, semiconductors, foodstuffs, etc, but they don't know that). Their schools teach them that they are the masters of the world. In high school, you'll be lucky to reach the very few that take AP World History, and my son tells me that they don't teach that sort of stuff in there anyway.

In my wealthy European country, we learn about many facts about other nations, and most importantly, the TV news is highly informative, with a large international news segment. It's because we know we depend on other countries! European countries are also much smaller than the USA, so the domestic segment doesn't need to be the only news segment.

[Anonymous]

There are many Arabs in Israel who are Muslims; yet I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume someone who is Israeli is Jewish.

Most states with a high percentage of its populace being Arab are Islamic and most Arabs (over 90%) identify as Muslims.

Yes, Americans are usually uninformed about the world, but I don’t think this is a wild assumption.

I assume that people from Thailand are Buddhists and people from Poland are Catholics unless otherwise indicated. Of course I am aware that there are non-Catholic Poles and non-Buddhist Thais.

[Anonymous]

I think you want to feel like we’re all perplexed when we’re actually not. Maybe one person in your life was confused and now you’ve turned it into a thing.

[Anonymous]

Our family is Lebanese Catholic, so I feel you, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:European here. Because Americans are deeply, deeply ignorant about what goes on outside their borders, as well as minorities inside their own borders.

I think it's due to the fact that the USA is a vast place and the most powerful country in the world, and has been since WWII ended. People do not feel the need to educate themselves on the rest of the world, because they have enough domestic news to contend with, and don't think they depend on other countries to find jobs (they actually do depend on other countries for rare earths, drugs, semiconductors, foodstuffs, etc, but they don't know that). Their schools teach them that they are the masters of the world. In high school, you'll be lucky to reach the very few that take AP World History, and my son tells me that they don't teach that sort of stuff in there anyway.

In my wealthy European country, we learn about many facts about other nations, and most importantly, the TV news is highly informative, with a large international news segment. It's because we know we depend on other countries! European countries are also much smaller than the USA, so the domestic segment doesn't need to be the only news segment.

Is your country part of NATO? How much does it spend on defense?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:European here. Because Americans are deeply, deeply ignorant about what goes on outside their borders, as well as minorities inside their own borders.

I think it's due to the fact that the USA is a vast place and the most powerful country in the world, and has been since WWII ended. People do not feel the need to educate themselves on the rest of the world, because they have enough domestic news to contend with, and don't think they depend on other countries to find jobs (they actually do depend on other countries for rare earths, drugs, semiconductors, foodstuffs, etc, but they don't know that). Their schools teach them that they are the masters of the world. In high school, you'll be lucky to reach the very few that take AP World History, and my son tells me that they don't teach that sort of stuff in there anyway.

In my wealthy European country, we learn about many facts about other nations, and most importantly, the TV news is highly informative, with a large international news segment. It's because we know we depend on other countries! European countries are also much smaller than the USA, so the domestic segment doesn't need to be the only news segment.

Is your country part of NATO? How much does it spend on defense?

Stop attacking people based on how much their country contributes to NATO. I've seen you do that on multiple threads.

The USA has an existential strategic interest in keeping NATO alive, so that's where it puts its money. If it didn't want to do that, it would stop funding it at that level. So take that up with your government.

[Anonymous]

One of my assistants was Lebanese Christian.

A friend had a Muslim father and Christian mother. He was raised in Iran.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:European here. Because Americans are deeply, deeply ignorant about what goes on outside their borders, as well as minorities inside their own borders.

I think it's due to the fact that the USA is a vast place and the most powerful country in the world, and has been since WWII ended. People do not feel the need to educate themselves on the rest of the world, because they have enough domestic news to contend with, and don't think they depend on other countries to find jobs (they actually do depend on other countries for rare earths, drugs, semiconductors, foodstuffs, etc, but they don't know that). Their schools teach them that they are the masters of the world. In high school, you'll be lucky to reach the very few that take AP World History, and my son tells me that they don't teach that sort of stuff in there anyway.

In my wealthy European country, we learn about many facts about other nations, and most importantly, the TV news is highly informative, with a large international news segment. It's because we know we depend on other countries! European countries are also much smaller than the USA, so the domestic segment doesn't need to be the only news segment.

Sheesh. Why don't you live in your wealthy European country if the US is such a backwater and full of hayseeds.