The Mahdi Times The Mahdi Times July 2014 | Page 28

Given that the Arabic language is a
Semitic language, which forms part of
the Afro-Asia language family, which
originated in Africa, one can rightly view
Arabic as an African language. Of the
official languages of the African Union
that include English, French, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Arabic, Arabic language
is the only Afro-Asiatic language spoken.
The rest are Euro-Aryan English,
French, Spanish and Portuguese.

country, who is in sympathy with the
aspirations of the Arabic speaking
peoples.” The Arab League’s definition
of an Arab leaves no room for any
racialist twist on the meaning of Arab
and Arabic. These words simply
denote ethnicity. Yet again, based upon
this definition, there are more Black
Africans who have a legitimate claim to
the Arabic ethnicity than anywhere else
in the world.

See Uwechia Jide; Hamito-Semitic
Africa:
http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/
2006/04/10/hamito-semitic-africasemites-of-africa-ii/. See also Peter T.
Daniels, Origin of Semitic:
https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail
/ane/2004-January/011842.html.

Viewed from a political perspective,
someone who is a resident or citizen of
a country where Arabic is an official or
national language, or is a member of the
Arab League or is part of the wider Arab
world is an Arab. This definition would
cover more than 300 million people.
Under this definition, there are more
Arabs in Africa than anywhere else in
the universe. Most of those Arabs that
live in Africa are Black Africans, from
Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia,
Eretria, Kenya Tanzania, Egypt, Algeria
and Morocco. Many of them trace their
ancestry to Yemen.
On its formation in 1946, the Arab
League defined an “Arab” as: “… a
person whose language is Arabic,
who lives in an Arabic speaking

According to Habib Hassan Touma
(1996, p.xviii), “An ‘Arab’, in the
modern sense of the word, is one who
is a national of an Arab state, has
command of the Arabic language, and
possesses a fundamental knowledge
of Arabian tradition, that is, of the
manners, customs, and political and
social systems of the culture.”