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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, I have a silly question for Christian Arabs.
Is it true when Arab Christians pray you guys say Allah for God as well? It’s just Arabic for God in general and not something specific to Muslims only. That’s interesting to me because I know in Aramaic the word is ellah and Hebrew Elohim.

Also, how comfortable are you using the term Arab as an identifier? I’ve dated a Chaldean from Iraq and he was against identifying as an Arab , but I’ve met lovely Egyptian Copts, Lebanese Catholic, and even Jordanian Christians who laughed when I told them what my ex said and they completely identify as Arab and speak it at home

Yes, Arab Christians say Allah in our prayers but our prayers are basically exact translations of Christian prayers in other languages.

Whether Arab Christians are militantly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab depends on their individual experience. They have such a lousy experience in their home countries they hate the predominant feature: Islam. I know Lebanese Christians who were traumatised from the war and refuse to identify as Arab.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Furthermore, ugh yeah no the US has very little to do with the victory in the Western front. You guys didn't even want to get into the war, and only really joined in once it was clear that Germany was weak. The British did far more in the war than the US, and the Soviet Union was instrumental in ensuring that Germany fell. The US's contribution, in terms of manpower, was, frankly, negligeable.

A few flaws in your post:

The US joined the war when attacked by the Japanese. Hitler declared war on the us a few days later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States

I agree with you that American history greatly hides the massive contribution and sacrifice (11,400,000) of the soviets, without whom the war might have been very different. (this is not an endorsement of Stalin and the horrible USSR). But the fact is the US suffered 407,300 military deaths in WWII as opposed to the UK's 383,700, so to call it "negligeable" [sic] is simply untrue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Furthermore, ugh yeah no the US has very little to do with the victory in the Western front. You guys didn't even want to get into the war, and only really joined in once it was clear that Germany was weak. The British did far more in the war than the US, and the Soviet Union was instrumental in ensuring that Germany fell. The US's contribution, in terms of manpower, was, frankly, negligeable.

A few flaws in your post:

The US joined the war when attacked by the Japanese. Hitler declared war on the us a few days later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States

I agree with you that American history greatly hides the massive contribution and sacrifice (11,400,000) of the soviets, without whom the war might have been very different. (this is not an endorsement of Stalin and the horrible USSR). But the fact is the US suffered 407,300 military deaths in WWII as opposed to the UK's 383,700, so to call it "negligeable" [sic] is simply untrue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

As stated above I was referring to the Western Front, not the Eastern Front. And sure even thought they (ie US and Germany) declared war on each other, the US did not enter the Western Front until much later (November 1942), which was more than 3 years after the start of the war.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make (in response to that overly offended poster), and as you kind of said so yourself, is that the US was not the key driver of WW2 (as he would like us to believe), and very much overstate the contributions it did (specifically in regards to the Western front)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Furthermore, ugh yeah no the US has very little to do with the victory in the Western front. You guys didn't even want to get into the war, and only really joined in once it was clear that Germany was weak. The British did far more in the war than the US, and the Soviet Union was instrumental in ensuring that Germany fell. The US's contribution, in terms of manpower, was, frankly, negligeable.

A few flaws in your post:

The US joined the war when attacked by the Japanese. Hitler declared war on the us a few days later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_declaration_of_war_against_the_United_States

I agree with you that American history greatly hides the massive contribution and sacrifice (11,400,000) of the soviets, without whom the war might have been very different. (this is not an endorsement of Stalin and the horrible USSR). But the fact is the US suffered 407,300 military deaths in WWII as opposed to the UK's 383,700, so to call it "negligeable" [sic] is simply untrue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

As stated above I was referring to the Western Front, not the Eastern Front. And sure even thought they (ie US and Germany) declared war on each other, the US did not enter the Western Front until much later (November 1942), which was more than 3 years after the start of the war.

Anyway, the point I was trying to make (in response to that overly offended poster), and as you kind of said so yourself, is that the US was not the key driver of WW2 (as he would like us to believe), and very much overstate the contributions it did (specifically in regards to the Western front)

I did not “kind of say so” so please don’t put words in my mouth.

If you are specifically talking about the western front then your point is even weaker.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my assistants was Lebanese Christian.

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

Iranians are not Arab. But I have met Iranian Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahais and other religious minorities.

I have met Indians who are from Iran in India. Jews, Parsis (Zoroasthrians), Bahais, but never Iranian Muslims. Maybe they were hiding in plain sight. We are also familiar with Nau Roz.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, I have a silly question for Christian Arabs.
Is it true when Arab Christians pray you guys say Allah for God as well? It’s just Arabic for God in general and not something specific to Muslims only. That’s interesting to me because I know in Aramaic the word is ellah and Hebrew Elohim.

Also, how comfortable are you using the term Arab as an identifier? I’ve dated a Chaldean from Iraq and he was against identifying as an Arab , but I’ve met lovely Egyptian Copts, Lebanese Catholic, and even Jordanian Christians who laughed when I told them what my ex said and they completely identify as Arab and speak it at home

Yes, Arab Christians say Allah in our prayers but our prayers are basically exact translations of Christian prayers in other languages.

Whether Arab Christians are militantly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab depends on their individual experience. They have such a lousy experience in their home countries they hate the predominant feature: Islam. I know Lebanese Christians who were traumatised from the war and refuse to identify as Arab.

According to Islam, Christians and Muslims worship the same God...

[Anonymous]

^ sorry, it sounded like I was being doubtful - I'm just not either so I feel like it's strange to say "and we do!"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, I have a silly question for Christian Arabs.
Is it true when Arab Christians pray you guys say Allah for God as well? It’s just Arabic for God in general and not something specific to Muslims only. That’s interesting to me because I know in Aramaic the word is ellah and Hebrew Elohim.

Also, how comfortable are you using the term Arab as an identifier? I’ve dated a Chaldean from Iraq and he was against identifying as an Arab , but I’ve met lovely Egyptian Copts, Lebanese Catholic, and even Jordanian Christians who laughed when I told them what my ex said and they completely identify as Arab and speak it at home

Yes, Arab Christians say Allah in our prayers but our prayers are basically exact translations of Christian prayers in other languages.

Whether Arab Christians are militantly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab depends on their individual experience. They have such a lousy experience in their home countries they hate the predominant feature: Islam. I know Lebanese Christians who were traumatised from the war and refuse to identify as Arab.

Thanks for answering!
We tend to think about Arabs as a an ethnoreligion like Jews but an Arab is not a religion or a religious marker and ironically the Pan Arabist movement was created by Arab Christians In the 19th century perhaps as a way to stand up to the Turks .

Perhaps as a foil to any Pan Islamist movements

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

As long as we have to keep erecting monuments to Americans killed in European wars, will attack any freeloading Euro we want.