Dear "The More Educated Anne": You need an Education

Submitted by An Educator (United States), Oct 9, 2008 at 17:35

You are all confused. Iraq is, indeed, a (predominantly) Arab and Arabic-speaking country. Arabs and Arabic are ethnically and linguistically Semitic. I think you meant Iran, which is not an Arab-populated or Arabic-speaking nation. Their main language is Farsi (aka Persian). Iranians are mostly the descendants of the ancient Persians and/or Parthians, an Indo-European ethnic group, as is their language. Most of the Muslims in the world are not Arabs, nor do they speak or understand Arabic, except by rote memorization of the Koran without understanding the words they are repeating. For example, the Indonesians, who are almost all Muslims, are not Arabs, do not speak or understand Arabic. The same is true of the Turks. (Similarly, most non-Israeli Jews who learn to read and pronounce Hebrew do not understand that language or what they are saying.)

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