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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lou Weed who wrote (224690)	3/19/2007 10:25:08 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

does that mean that they are 100% Arab or is there a minority that consider themselves Persian? Well Nadine points out that Arab is a language, not a "race" or ethnic group, so its hard to say. Of course, I don't know if Nadine is the best source for all things Arab :-). Since they share a long border it's likely that some Iraqi Shias are of Persian descent. Whether they consider themselves Arab, Persian, Mongolian, Turkoman, or Swedish, I don't know.....

To: Lou Weed who wrote (224690)	3/19/2007 11:45:27 AM
From: one_less	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Moktada Al-Sadr is an Arab and a fiercely anti-Persian racist regarding Persian leadership in Iraq. "Not all Iranians are Shiite, and not all Shiites are Iranian. Iran has influence over some but not others," he said. "The majority of Shiites don't support the Iranian regime and they're not Persians. There's very strong animosity between Arabs and Persians." It would be easy to form an alliance between Iran and Iraq based on the Shi'ite cooperation, except that he Sunni Arabs would rather fight than cooperate. It wouldn't be easy for Iran to view Iraq as an annex, even without the Sunni resistance. The majority of Shi'ites in Iraq are Arab and prejudiced against Persians, and of course we know how the Sunni Arabs feel about it. Then there is the other billion or so Muslims in the world who have opinions on what should happen as well as the rest of the world who figures to have a stake in the matter. Persians may speak Farsi as their first language, if they have immigrated to Iraq, but most well educated Persians speak Arabic as a second language, especially the Iraqi Persians. "...which talks about Shiite legislators switching to Farsi so as not to be overheard by Sunnis. It is considered offensive in any culture for a group to switch to an exclusive language, while excluding individuals from involvement. Islam forbids it. I don't think it is going to be a big problem and I doubt very seriously if the official language of Iraq would become Farsi.