What is AfrAbia?

Ali A Mazrui initially used the word AfrAbia in 1992 (Mazrui, 1992). In the new world order, Arabism and Africanity were united with Islam in a fusion that spanned the Sahara Desert and the Red Sea. He went so far as to say that the Red Sea has no right to separate Africa from Arabia. Islamization and Arabization of North Africa took place during the same period as Arabization, which attempted to counteract the geographical barriers created by the formation of the Red Sea thousands of years earlier. He explained that one way to stop the establishment of global apartheid was to seek reconciliation between Arabs and Africans, and for both the white and pan-European movements to join forces to advance global solidarity. Thus, AfrAbia incorporates both Arab League nations and African Union countries. The two overlapping territories of Africa and the Arab world are cross-culturally connected by historical and geographic influences. AfrAbia incorporates nations of both the Arab League and the African Union. The two overlapping territories of Africa and the Arab world are cross-culturally connected by historical and geographic influences.

References:

Mazrui, A. (1992). Afrabia: Africa and the Arabs in the New World Order. Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 20(3). http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/F7203016755 Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9896d35t

On the Concept of Afrabia

AFRABIA: AFRICA AND TilE ARABS IN TiiE NEW WORLD ORDER

Who are the AfrAbians?

Cultural AfrAbians

•are those whose culture and way of life have been deeply Arabized but have fallen short of their being linguistically Arabs.

•Most Somali, Hausa (West and Central Africa), and some Waswahili are cultural Afrabians in that sense.

•Their mother-tongue is not Arabic, but much of the rest of their culture bears the stamp of Arab and Islamic impact.

Ideological AfrAbians

•are those who intellectually believe in solidarity between Arabs and Africans, or at least between Arab Africa and black Africa.

•Historically, such ideological Afrabian leaders have included Kwame Nkrumah, the founder president of Ghana; Gamal Abdel Nasser, arguably the greatest Egyptian of the 20th Century; Sekou Toure, the founding father of post-colonial Guinea (Conakry), and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

•Such leaders refused to acknowledge the Sahara Desert as a divide; they insisted on visualizing it as a historic bridge.

Geographical AfrAbians

•are those Arabs and Berbers whose countries are concurrently members of both the African Union and the Arab League.

•Some of these countries are overwhelmingly Arab, such as Egypt and Tunisia, while others are only marginally Arab, such as Mauritania, Somalia and the Comoro Islands (south-eastern coast of Africa).

Genealogical AfrAbians

•These are those who are biologically descended from both Arabs and Black Africans.

•In North Africa they have included Anwar Sadat, the former President of Egypt. Anwar Sadat’s mother was Black, and his father was Arabic. He was racially mixed.

•People live at country borders: Egypt-Libyia, Egypt-Sudan, Ashkenazi Jewish in Tunisia (Jews in Carthage and in Kairouan)