When I was younger, I was constantly being told by grandparents and older relatives that our biggest problem as a generation was our lack of an Arab identity. Back then, I just scoffed and told them they were old, didn’t understand us, hated progress and just wanted to hold us back and tie us down with norms and ideals that were no longer relevant.

I have, however, revised my position. We do have an issue with our cultural identity. And in no way will I be able to break it down in one article. Whether we are looking at third culture kids around the GCC, or growing up as an Arab in the West, or kids who come from traditional families but possess modern devices that connect them to different parts of the world. There is no escaping the influx of Western ideals that are slowly but surely changing the way we perceive ourselves. But what we are failing to understand is that these ideals are also a social construct, one that doesn’t necessarily apply to our own cultural journey.
Have we internalized our own self-hate as a society? Maybe it is a product of constantly comparing ourselves to Western, white, Eurocentric ideals and deeming ourselves wanting and unworthy. Or more simply, perhaps, we feel like we don’t belong. It is utterly confusing. How many times have you been with a group of people and heard someone say “alajaneb” are better than us? How many stories have you heard of friends, relatives and friends of friends who have immigrated abroad, and suddenly they’ve forgotten their roots, deeming Arab countries as uncivilized land masses? How many times have you disdainfully been labelled as a ‘chicken nugget’ for speaking broken Arabic, or preferring your McChicken over Machboos diyay? It is almost always taken as a blanket statement, pointing at Western absolute superiority, precisely your affiliation to it, and our utter failure as a people to understand our collective identity as Arabs.
Our sense of collective identity is continuously evolving, and with education, we see more and more Arab youth preaching how it is time to decolonize our minds. And they are not wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with embracing new notions and ideals, as long as we fully understand ours first, what happened to it, who emerged victorious, and how history is changing our notion of self-perception.
To only value our culture after it has been stolen, appropriated, and then exported back to us is sad. Take the darra3a or nafnouf, it only became cool when Western designers repackaged it and sold it to us as the sexy, flowy kaftan. Or the humble hummus, which has been around for millennia, is now cool again, and we’re following the lead of chefs on the other side of the world and adding beetroot and avocados to it to make it “cool”. There’s no shame in growth, fusion and evolution, but to only hype things up after they have been accepted by others is limiting our own self-worth.
Even our social interactions have been viewed through a Western lens, judged and deemed strange and ‘oriental’. We look at model Hollywood parents who are caring and conscientious, while still allowing their kids more freedom than we dared dream of, and feel that our relationships are constricting and “wrong”. Sadly, we are just missing the point and ignoring the nuances and idiosyncrasies of different societal models. There should not be a singular model of love. In the Arab world, parents might show love by providing shelter and financial aid, long after the kids have graduated and might see that this gives them the right to be more controlling. Our identity is constantly evolving with changing socioeconomic tides, which has a direct effect on how people interact.
The same way that fruit and food in some East Asian countries are a form of affection. We can not compare our culture to a foreign one, because

just like individuals, our collective norms, tastes, biases, taboos and preferences evolved and changed over time. Things that served us became more prominent and things that no longer worked, disappeared over time.
We may have declared our independence and watched as colonial soldiers sailed away, but our minds were never freed. To condemn our culture and praise a foreign one without giving it much thought is a form of intellectual slavery that needs to be reckoned with.
There has been a lot of debate and conversation on social media addressing the topics of cultural appropriation and appreciation, which has helped a lot of us rethink the way we look at our places of origin, our motifs, traditional dress and how they were colonized and taken advantage of. It is time we own our heritage, with pride, and help move it towards a future of our own choosing within a narrative of our own writing.
Photo by Uday Mittal on Unsplash.