Response to Serge

Take a look at the first (long, and quite articulate) comment on my previous post. Serge makes a number of good arguments that merit discussion, so I’m going to take the opportunity he provides to clarify and expand upon a few of the points he questions.

“The Arab Question” (A refutation of Gamal Abd al-Nasser and Golda Meir)

In nearly every instance, the myth of “pure” ethnicities is busted by the facts of history; any student of history understands that the very concept of cogency, to say nothing of uniformity, among a so-called ethnic group is complicated to a large degree by the movement of people across political, national and ethnic borders throughout spans of centuries. If, for example, all Europeans (and a good deal of non-Europeans as well) are descended from Charlemagne, then whatever ethnocentric ideological delusions we may uphold in our minds, the fact remains that we are all, to some degree, a) related, and b) Frankish.

The Epic Tale of the House of Hashim, Part 1: From Empires, Kingdoms

The House of Hashim, or the Hashemite dynasty, is the royal family that had ruled Jordan since its inception in 1921. The Hashemites claim descent from the prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima, and as such carry some heavy credentials. What follows is a little history lesson.

In 1908, the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire appointed the Hashemite notable Hussein bin ‘Ali Sharif of Mecca and Emir of the Hejaz. During the first World War, Hussein initially supported his Ottoman overlords and their ally Germany, but once he discovered that the Ottomans were planning to depose him after the war, he turned on his superiors and is now rightly hailed as the leader of the great Arab Revolt of 1916.