Arabs

The Arabs are a semitic people from the Middle East. The majority of Arabs, especially those in the region, practice Islam.

Arabs in In High Places
In an alternate where the Great Black Deaths wiped out 4/5 of the population of Europe, the Arab world soon came to dominate international trade and culture, physically controlling the Middle East, North Africa and Southern Europe, including Italy, Spain, Portugal and southern France. Arabic was the lingua franca. As Islam also was the dominate religion, technology and scientific exploration remained stunted into the late 21st century.

Arabs in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
During World War II, Arab nationalists in various countries supported the Axis with the hope throwing off foreign rule. This proved a fatal miscalculation.

Following their victory, Greater German Reich and Italy initiated a large scale genocide of Arabs in the Middle East since Arabs were considered by the Nazis as "semitic as the Jews". The Reich pushed its ally Italy into helping with this program.

The remaining handful of Arabs were enslaved by the Reich as they had done earlier to the Slavs. The Middle East was divided between the Reich and Italy.

Arabs were used along with Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Serb slave laborers by German industry for "dirty" or dangerous work.

Arabs in Southern Victory
The Arabs were subjects of the Ottoman Empire. They tended to be restive subjects.

Arabs in Worldwar
The Arabs became unwilling subjects of the Race when its Conquest Fleet invaded and conquered the Middle East along with Africa, Australia, South America and much of Asia. The Race set up its capital in Cairo, Egypt.

Tosevites opposed the Race militantly for a combination of reasons that included religion nationalism, and bigotry against Jews.

Previous to the Race's landing, the strongest political movement among Arabs was "Arab Nationalism", which in the 1930's made considerable strides towards ending European colonial rule, and seemed well on the way to gaining complete independence within a decade or so. The replacement of European rule by that of the Race drastically changed the situation for the Arabs. The Race had no intention of ever giving up rule over any portion of Tosev. Moreover, the Race saw the Arab lands as a particularly desireable piece of real estate, with their hot, semi-arid climate reminiscent of Home.

Liberation from the Race's rule became for Arabs a very distant possibility, requiring great patience and endurance in an open-ended, generations-long struggle. For that, the Islamic religion, ensuring its believers of an evetual Heavenly aid and of a place in Paradise for those who fall in the struggle, proved a stronger force than Arab Nationalism, and by the 1960s, it came to the fore as a mobilizing force in the Arab societies.

Uprisings began in earnets with the arrival of the Race's Colonization Fleet. The proximate cause the Race's attempts to impose the cult of emperor-worship on its Tosevite subjects. Much of the Middle East rebelled under the leadership of Ruhollah Khomeini (ironically, himself not an Arab). The rebellion was eventually crushed and the Ayatollah was banished to Argentina.

However, the embers of dissent continued, with repeated waves of Arab-Muslim opposition to the Race manifesting themselves in both armed actions and rioting. This had among other things the effect of making Jews in Palestine more ready to accept the Race's rule as a lesser evil, and put aside their own nationalist aspirations which were very prominent before the Race's landing.

Arabs in "Occupation Duty"
The Arabs were the inhabitants of the mostly desert peninsula located south east of the lands of the Philistines and the Moabites and south of Turkish-dominated Babylon. The Arabs' westernmost outpost was Amman. Originally divided into numerous tribes, the Arabs eventually managed to unite and create a single state, which in modern times became rich and powerful with the discovery of plentiful oil in its territory. The Arabs traditionally worshiped four gods: Aluzza, Allat, Manah and Hubal - known collectively as "The Four".

The Arabs tended to support their fellow-Semites, the Moabites, in their rebelliousness against Philistine rule, though this support did go as far as open war against the Philistines. One of the slogans which Antenor saw on the walls of Hierosolyma stated "The Sword Buddha and the Four with Chemosh!" - expressing the hope that the Arabs (as well as the Turks) would come actively to the Moabites' help. This possibility made Antenor worried, since the Ellenes of Syria - the only allies which the Philistines could rely upon - were far smaller and poorer than either the Arabs or the Turks.