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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 (see diglossia). 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 the Arabic language^{[citation needed]}.

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 (see Who is an Arab?). However, this definition is disputed by many peoples of non-Arab origins; thus Egyptians for example may or may not identify as Arabs (see Egypt#Identity), but Egyptians enriched the Arabic language.

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

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a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is the citizen of an Arab country, whose father is an Arab, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples.

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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 Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine and Sudan. 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 and expulsion within a few decades. 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 Persian Gulf is particularly well-furnished: four Persian 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 Persian 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.^{[citation needed]} In Mauritania, Morocco, and Yemen, the rate is lower than the average, at barely over 50 %. On the other hand, Syria, 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. Overall, the gender disparity in adult literacy is high in this region, and of the illiteracy rate, women account for two-thirds, with only 69 literate women for every 100 literate men. The average GPI (Gender Parity Index) for adult literacy is 0.72, and gender disparity can be observed in Egypt, Morocco, and Yemen. Above all, the GPI of Yemen is only 0.46 in a 53% adult literacy rate [1]PDF (374 KiB).

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 [2] 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) [3]PDF (158 KiB).In 2004, the regional average of youth literacy is 89.9% for male and 80.1 % for female [4].

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

The United Nations published an Arab human development report in 2002, 2003 and 2004. These reports, written by researchers from the Arab world, address some sensitive issues in the development of Arab countries: women empowerment, availability of education and information among others.

Women in the Arab world are still denied equality of opportunity, although their disempowerment is a critical factor crippling the Arab nations’ quest to return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce, learning and culture, according to a new United Nations-sponsored report in 2008.^[1]

As of 2008, the US-based organization Freedom House rates only Comoros and Mauritania as Arab “electoral democracies”.^[2]

[edit] Non-Arab people in the Arab World

Within the most common definition of the Arab World, there are substantial populations who are not Arab either by ethnic or linguistic affiliation, and who often or generally do not consider themselves Arab as such. Nevertheless, most are as indigenous to their areas and many, if not most, actually resided in the area before the arrival of true Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula during which the spread of Islam took place. Certain populations have expressed resentment towards the term “Arab World,” and believe that their national and political rights have been unjustly brushed aside by modern governments’ focus on Pan-Arabism and promoting an Arab identity. In some cases this has led to severe conflicts between the ethnic nationalism of these groups and the Arab nationalism promoted by governments lead by Arab leaders, which sometimes amounted to denying the existence of or forcibly suppressing non-Arab minorities within their borders.

In the Maghreb (North Africa) most of the population speaks Arabic although there is a significant Berber minority. Arab and Berber identity in these countries is generally defined situationally by both language and ancestry. In Morocco, Berber speakers form about 70% of the total population; in Algeria, they represent about 55% of the population. In Libya, they form about 20% of the population.

There are much smaller isolated Berber communities in Mauritania and one oasis in Egypt‘s Western Desert. The nomadic Tuareg people whose traditional areas straddle the borders of several countries in the Sahara desert, are Berber. Government worries about ethnic separatism, and condescending attitudes towards the mainly rural Berber-speaking areas, led to the Berber communities being denied full linguistic and cultural rights; in Algeria, for example, Berber chairs at universities were closed, and Berber singers were occasionally banned from singing in their own language, although an official Berber radio station continued to operate throughout. These problems have to some extent been redressed in later years in Morocco and Algeria; both have started teaching Berber languages in schools and universities, and Algeria has amended its constitution to declare Berber a fundamental aspect of Algerian identity (along with Islam and Arabness.) In Libya, however, any suggestion that Berbers might be non-Arab remains taboo^{[citation needed]}.

In the northern regions of Iraq (15-20%) and Syria (5-8%) live the Kurds, an ethnic group who speak Kurdish, a language closely related to Persian, not Arabic, except insofar as like Persian, it has absorbed Arabic vocabulary. The nationalist aspiration for self-rule or for a state of Kurdistan has created conflict between Kurdish minorities and their governments.

Egypt‘s largest ethnic group are Egyptians who constitute over 98% of the population. The majority of Egyptians do not consider themselves Arabs (see Egyptians#Identity). Egyptian nationalism’s and anti-Arabism most notable advocate was Taha Hussein. It became the dominant mode of expression of Egyptian anti-colonial activists of the pre- and inter-war periods:

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What is most significant [about Egypt in this period] is the absence of an Arab component in early Egyptian nationalism. The thrust of Egyptian political, economic, and cultural development throughout the nineteenth century worked against, rather than for, an “Arab” orientation… This situation—that of divergent political trajectories for Egyptians and Arabs—if anything increased after 1900.[3]

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In 1931, following a visit to Egypt, Syrian Arab nationalist Sati’ al-Husri remarked that “[Egyptians] did not possess an Arab nationalist sentiment; did not accept that Egypt was a part of the Arab lands, and would not acknowledge that the Egyptian people were part of the Arab nation.”^[4] In 1946, Oxford University historian H. S. Deighton was still writing:

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The Egyptians are not Arabs, and both they and the Arabs are aware of this fact. They are Arabic-speaking, and they are Muslim —indeed religion plays a greater part in their lives than it does in those either of the Syrians or the Iraqi. But the Egyptian, during the first thirty years of the [twentieth] century, was not aware of any particular bond with the Arab East… Egypt sees in the Arab cause a worthy object of real and active sympathy and, at the same time, a great and proper opportunity for the exercise of leadership, as well as for the enjoyment of its fruits. But she is still Egyptian first and Arab only in consequence, and her main interests are still domestic.[5]

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It was not until the Nasser era more than a decade later that Arab nationalism, and by extension Arab socialism, became a state policy and a means with which to define Egypt’s position in the Middle East and the world. Before Nasser, Egypt, which had been ruled by Britain since 1882, was more in favor of territorial, Egyptian nationalism and distant from the pan-Arab ideology. Egyptians generally did not identify themselves as Arabs, and it is revealing that when the Egyptian nationalist leader [Saad Zaghlul] met the Arab delegates at Versailles in 1918, he insisted that their struggles for statehood were not connected, claiming that the problem of Egypt was an Egyptian problem and not an Arab one.^[6] The Egyptians’ attachment to Arabism, however, was particularly questioned after the 1967 Six-Day War. Thousands of Egyptians had lost their lives and the country became disillusioned with Arab politics.^[7] Nasser’s successor Sadat, both through public policy and his peace initiative with Israel, revived an uncontested Egyptian orientation, unequivocally asserting that only Egypt and Egyptians were his responsibility. The terms “Arab”, “Arabism” and “Arab unity”, save for the new official name, became conspicuously absent.^[8]

Today, many Egyptian intellectuals continue to believe that Egypt and Egyptians are simply not Arab, emphasizing indigenous Egyptian heritage, culture and independent polity; pointing to the failures of Arab and pan-Arab nationalist policies; and publicly voicing objection to the present official name of the country. Examples of contemporary prominent Egyptians who oppose Arab nationalism or the idea that Egyptians are Arabs include Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass,^[9] popular writer Osama Anwar Okasha, Egyptian-born Harvard University Professor Leila Ahmed, Member of Parliament Suzie Greiss,^[10] Egyptian intellectual Sayed el Qemni, in addition to different local groups and intellectuals.^[11] This understanding is also expressed in other contexts,^[12][13] such as Neil DeRosa’s novel Joseph’s Seed in his depiction of an Egyptian character “who declares that Egyptians are not Arabs and never will be.”^[14]

Egyptian critics of Arab nationalism contend that it has worked to erode and/or relegate native Egyptian identity by superimposing only one aspect of Egypt’s culture. These views and sources for collective identification in the Egyptian state are captured in the words of a linguistic anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in Cairo:

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Historically, Egyptians have considered themselves as distinct from ‘Arabs’ and even at present rarely do they make that identification in casual contexts; il-‘arab [the Arabs] as used by Egyptians refers mainly to the inhabitants of the Persian Gulf states… Egypt has been both a leader of pan-Arabism and a site of intense resentment towards that ideology. Egyptians had to be made, often forcefully, into “Arabs” [during the Nasser era] because they did not historically identify themselves as such. Egypt was self-consciously a nation not only before pan-Arabism but also before becoming a colony of the British Empire. Its territorial continuity since ancient times, its unique history as exemplified in its pharaonic past and later on its Coptic language and culture, had already made Egypt into a nation for centuries. Egyptians saw themselves, their history, culture and language as specifically Egyptian and not “Arab.”[15]

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Most Egyptians consider themselves Arabs on a cultural basis.^[16][17]

Somalia is a Muslim country, but many Somalis just recognize themselves as Somali instead of Arab despite centuries-old ties to Arabia.^[18] Although Somalia joined the Arab League in 1974, accords Arabic official language status, and Arabic is spoken by Somalis in commerce, religion and education, the country’s primary language is Somali. The population also predominantly consists of ethnic Somalis with small communities of Indian, Iranian, Indonesian, Italians, Britons, and Portuguese.

Djibouti, whose demographics are approximately 60% Somali and 35% Afar, is in a similar position. Arabic is one of the official languages, 94% of its population is Muslim, and Djibouti has a close proximity on the Red Sea and Arabia.

The Arab world is also home to significant populations of Turkmen, Assyrians/Syriacs, and Armenians, a high percentage of whom do not identify as Arab.

Many Jews in Israel have roots in Arab countries, from where most left in the first decades following the creation of Israel 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Since most modern borders of the Arab world are products of Western imperial powers, they often ignore distinct ethnic and geographic boundaries. Thus, in addition to regions with large Arab populations being located in non-Arab countries (such as the Turkish province of Hatay, populated mainly by indigenous Iskanderun Syrians, and the Iranian province of Khuzestan or Arabstan, as it’s called by its own people, populated mainly by Iranian Arabs), many peripheral states of the Arab world have border-straddling minorities of non-Arab peoples, as is the case with the non-Arab Black Africans of southern Sudan and southern Mauritania.

Many Arab countries in the Persian Gulf have sizable (10 – 30%) non-Arab populations, usually of a temporary nature, at least in theory. Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman has a sizeable Persian speaking minority. The same countries also have Hindi-Urdu speakers and Filipinos as sizable minority. Balochi speakers are a good size minority in Oman. Countries like Bahrain, UAE, Oman and Kuwait have significant non-Muslim / non-Arab minorities (10 – 20%) like Hindus and Christians from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and the Philippines.

Many non-Arab countries bordering the core Arab world states have large Arab populations, as is the case in Chad, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Mali, Niger, and Senegal.