Arabs are fun!

It's always heartbreaking to me when I read something negative towards Arabs or Muslims (or anyone for that matter).   But for the last decade it's been hugely anti-middle eastern in the western world.  Since 9/11 people have gone on an all out anti arab campaign:  we shouldn't be learning arabic in american schools, building mosques, celebrating anything arab related...they are all terrorists apparently.  What kind of forward thinking is that?

How can you punish an entire class for a couple idiots?  The "race" wasn't behind them...they didn't even support them...in fact they were even more upset with the events and being pulled into it than we can imagine.  It's a shame that this pattern follows every culture at some point in time or another.

People may be shocked to learn Arabs are A LOT like Americans...

"Much like America today, the Arab world of the seventh to the thirteenth centuries was a great cosmopolitan civilization. It was an enormous unifying enterprise, one which joined the peoples of Spain and North Africa in the west with the peoples of the ancient lands of Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia in the east.

It was the rapid expansion of Islam that initially brought this empire together. Alliances were made, trade routes were opened, lands and peoples were welded into a new force. Islam provided the dynamism, but it was the Arabic language, which provided the bond that held it together.

Islam spread to lands more distant than North Africa and the Fertile Crescent, but it was in this area that a common Arab culture emerged.

To be Arab, then as now, was not to come from a particular race or lineage. To be Arab, like American, was (and is) a civilization and a cultural trait rather than a racial mark. To be Arab meant to be from the Arabic-speaking world — a world of common traditions, customs and value — shaped by a single and unifying language.

The Arab civilization brought together Muslims, Christians and Jews. It unified Arabians, Africans, Berbers, Egyptians, and the descendants of the Phoenicians, Canaanites, and many other people. "

I appreciate the fact that underneath it all, we are all so similar.  We have hearts that love, smiles that can brighten anyones day and we are all connected.  

Maybe today we can share a little extra kindness :)

OH!  Here are a couple fun pictures from our weekend in Dubai and the actual point of my post being that Arabs are super FUN!!  (I fall into tangents from time to time)

Okku- Omar's birthday celebration #1

Manoushe breakfast at the Rifai's!

Sunset on the Persian Gulf

Such sweet boys! haha