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TFI Arabia

Arabia - Overview

The Arab world (Arabic: العالم العربي; Transliteration: al-`alam al-`arabi) is a term to define all of the Arabic-speaking countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. It consists of 22 countries and territories with a combined population of some 325 million people spanning two continents.

Language, politics, and religion
The Arabic language forms a unifying feature of the Arab World. Though different areas use local dialects of Arabic, all share in the use of the standard classical language. This contrasts with the situation in the wider Islamic World, where Arabic retains its cultural prestige primarily as the language of religion and of theological scholarship, but the populace generally do not speak Arabic languages.

The linguistic and political denotation inherent in the term "Arab" is generally dominant over genealogical considerations. Thus, individuals with little or no direct ancestry from the Arabian Peninsula could identify as, or be considered to be, Arabs partially by virtue of their mother tongue.

The Arab League, a political organization intended to encompass the Arab World, defines as Arab,

• “ a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples. ”

 
The Arab League's main goal is to unify politically the Arab populations so defined. Its permanent headquarters are located in Cairo. However, it was moved temporarily to Tunis during the 1980s, after Egypt was expelled due to the Camp David Accords (1978).

The majority of people in the Arab World adhere to Islam and the religion has official status in most countries. Shariah law exists partially in the legal system in some countries, especially in the Arabian peninsula, while others are secular. The majority of the Arab countries adhere to Sunni Islam. Iraq, however, is a Shia majority country (65%), while Lebanon, Yemen, Kuwait, and Bahrain have large Shia minorities. In Saudi Arabia, the eastern province Al-Hasa region has Shia minority and the southern province city Najran has Ismalia Shiite minority too. Ibadi Islam is practised in Oman and Ibadis make up 75% population of the country.

There are sizable numbers of Christians, living primarily in Lebanon, Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Jordan, Sudan, and Syria. Formerly, there were significant minorities of Arab Jews throughout the Arab World; however, the establishment of the state of Israel prompted their subsequent mass emigration. Today small Jewish communities remain, ranging anywhere from ten in Bahrain to 7,000 in Morocco and more than 1,000 in Tunisia. Overall, Arabs make up less than one quarter of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims, a group sometimes referred to as the Islamic world.

Some Arab countries have substantial reserves of petroleum. The Gulf is particularly well-furnished: four Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar, are among the top ten oil or gas exporters worldwide. In addition, Algeria, Libya, Iraq, Bahrain, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Sudan all have smaller but significant reserves. Where present, these have had significant effects on regional politics, often enabling rentier states, leading to economic disparities between oil-rich and oil-poor countries, and, particularly in the more sparsely populated states of the Gulf and Libya, triggering extensive labor immigration.

According to UNESCO, the average rate of adult literacy (ages 15 and older) in this region is 66%, and this is one of the lowest rates in the world. In Mauritania, Morocco, and Yemen, the rate is lower than the average, at barely over 50 %. On the other hand, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan record a high adult literacy rate of over 90%. The average rate of adult literacy shows steady improvement, and the absolute number of adult illiterates fell from 64 million to around 58 million between 1990 and 2000-2004. 

Literacy rate is higher among the youth than adults. Youth literacy rate (ages 15-24) in the Arab region increased from 63.9 to 76.3 % from 1990 to 2002. The average rate of GCC States was 94 %, followed by the Maghreb at 83.2% and the Mashriq at 73.6 %. However, more than one third of youth remain illiterate in the Arab LDCs (Comoros, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen).In 2004, the regional average of youth literacy is 89.9% for male and 80.1 % for female.

The average population growth rate in Arab countries is 2.3%.

States & Territories

• Algeria
• Bahrain
• Comoros
• Djibouti
• Egypt
• Eritrea
• Iraq
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Lebanon 
• Libya
• Mauritania
• Morocco
• Oman
• Palestine
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia 
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Syria
• Tunisia
• United Arab Emirates
• Western Sahara
• Yemen

Modern Boundaries
Many of the modern borders of the Arab World were drawn by European imperial powers during the 19th and early 20th century. 

Modern Economies
As of 2006, the Arab World accounts for two-fifth of the gross domestic product and three-fifth of the trade of the wider Muslim World.

The Arab states are mostly, although not exclusively, developing economies and derive their export revenues from oil and gas, or the sale of other raw materials. Recent years have seen significant economic growth in the Arab World, due largely to an increase in oil and gas prices, which tripled between 2001 and 2006, but also due to efforts by some states to diversify their economic base. Industrial production has risen, for example the amount of steel produced between 2004 and 2005 rose from 8.4 to 19 million tonnes. However even 19 million tons pa still only represents 1.7% of global steel production, and remains inferior to the production of countries like Brazil.

The main economic organisations in the Arab World are the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), comprising the states in the Gulf, and the Union of the Arab Maghreb (UMA), made up of North African States. The GCC has achieved some success in financial and monetary terms, including plans to establish a common currency in the Gulf region. Since its foundation in 1989, the UMA's most significant accomplishment has been the establishment of a 7000 km highway crossing North Africa from Mauritania to Libya's border with Egypt. The central stretch of the highway, expected to be completed in 2010, will cross Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In recent years a new term has been coined to define a greater economic region: the MENA region (standing for Middle East and North Africa) is becoming increasingly popular, especially with support from the current US administration.

Saudi Arabia remains the top Arab economy in terms of total GDP. It is Asia's eleventh largest economy, followed by Egypt and Algeria, which were also the second and third largest economies in Africa (after South Africa), in 2006. In terms of GDP per capita, Qatar is the richest developing country in the world.

Geography
The Arab World stretches across more than 12.9 million square kilometers (5 million square miles) of North Africa and the part of North-East Africa and South-West Asia called the Middle East. The Asian part of the Arab world is called the Mashreq. The North African part of the Arab World to the west of Egypt and Sudan is known as the Maghreb.

 
Maghreb Arab World
Its total area is the size of the entire Spanish-speaking Western Hemisphere (12.9 million km²), larger than Europe (10.4 million km²), Canada (10 million km²), China (9.6 million km²), the United States (9.6 million km²), Brazil (8.7 million km²). Only Russia – at 17 million km², the largest country in the world – and arguably Anglophone North America (eighteen million square kilometers) are larger geocultural units.

The term "Arab" often connotes the Middle East, but the larger (and more populous) part of the Arab World is North Africa. Its eight million square kilometers include the two largest countries of the African continent, Sudan (2.5 million km²) in the southeast of the region and Algeria (2.4 million km²) in the center, each about three-quarters the size of India, or about one-and-a-half times the size of Alaska, the largest state in the United States. The largest country in the Arab Middle East is Saudi Arabia (2 million km²).

At the other extreme, the smallest autonomous mainland Arab country in North Africa and the Middle East is Lebanon (10,452 km²), and the smallest island Arab country is Bahrain (665 km²).

Notably, every Arab country borders a sea or ocean, with the exception of the Arab region of northern Chad.

Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula (in Arabic: شبه الجزيرة العربية šibh al-jazīra al-ʻarabīya or جزيرة العرب jazīrat al-ʻarab) is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia consisting mainly of desert. The area is an important part of the Middle East and plays a critically important geopolitical role because of its vast reserves of oil and natural gas.

The coasts of the peninsula are, on the west the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, on the southeast the Arabian Sea (part of the Indian Ocean), and on the northeast, the Gulf of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Persian Gulf.

Its northern limit is defined by the Zagros collision zone, a mountainous uplift where a continental collision between the Arabian Plate and Asia is occurring. It merges with the Syrian Desert with no clear line of demarcation.

Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula includes parts of Iraq and Syria. Politically, however, the peninsula is separated from the rest of Asia by the northern borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The following countries are politically considered part of the peninsula:-

• Bahrain, an island nation off the east coast of the peninsula
• Kuwait
• Oman
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia
• Jordan
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen

With the exception of Yemen and Jordan, these countries (called the Arab Gulf states) are among the wealthiest in the world.

In 2008 The Arabian Peninsula population has been stated as 69,550,249.

Pan-Arabism
Pan-Arabism is a movement for unification among the Arab people and nations of the Middle East (excluding non-Arab countries). It is closely connected to Arab nationalism. Pan-Arabism has tended to be secular and often socialist, and has strongly opposed colonialism and Western political involvement in the Arab world. Pan-Arabism is a form of cultural nationalism.

In contrast to pan-Islamism, pan-Arabism is secular and nationalistic as many prominent pan-Arabs, such as Aflaq (Greek Orthodox) were not Muslim. Tariq Aziz, an Aramaic-speaking Chaldean Christian and the once deputy prime minister of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, was another prominent pan-Arabist. However, in de-emphasizing the role of Islam, pan-Arab ideology has been accused of inciting prejudice against and downplaying the role of non-Arab Muslim peoples such as the Turks, Persians, and Kurds, amongst others

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