Fat Arabs

[QC]

It's become an article of faith here at DU that Arabs are never fat, or, more correctly, that fat guys are never Arabs.

This sounds a bit strange to me, so I decided to take a look around PubMed and see if there's anything to this very novel idea.

There's not.

According to two professors at the College of Medicine and Medical Sciences in Bahrain:

At least one-third of Arabs are obese, as defined by body mass index (BMI) more than 30 kg/m2 and this figure is rising steadily despite increased interest in fitness.... The prevalence of obesity ranges between 16-25% in men and 17-43% in women.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10673848

Turns out there's quite a few "people of size" on the West Bank:

The prevalence of obesity was 36.8 and 18.1% in rural women and men, respectively, compared with 49.1 and 30.6% in urban women and men, respectively.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12532166

Even the Bedouins have recently become fatter:

...diabetes and obesity have become major public health problems among Bedouins.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12440231

According to a study conducted at King Saud University:

Obesity was more common among other Arabs (43.8%) and Saudis (36.4%) than Indians (27.6%) and Westerners (30.1%).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8053380


I think we can lay this new theory to rest.

[Spinzonner]

1. It would be more meaningful for the purposes

of the particular issue at hand to determine the statistics for terrorists, insurgents, etc.

I dont imagine they are very cooperative to pollsters and the like, however.

[QC]

5. Of course this is a small sample size, but Khalid Shaikh Mohammed

is apparently a rather hefty man. (He also bears a disturbing resemblance to Ron Jeremy.)

[Spinzonner]

8. Uggh

I'll never be able to wathc those infomercials again.

(Not that I watched them for long before, mind you)

[RafterMan]

15. Nope, you're wrong.

The photo you posted *is* Ron Jeremy.

This is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed:


The fucking terrorist.

[wellstone_democrat]

24. damn, it looks like a "hair bra" the guy's got!

Weirdest damn chest hair pattern I've seen...

[Solly Mack]

2. Not only can people in the middle east be fat....they can also have blue

eyes, blonde hair and *gasp* "white" complexion

[QC]

3. I hear that some of them even wear tennis shoes! n/t

[Solly Mack]

4. No!!! wow...they'll be playing tennis , itself, next!

boggles the mind...

[ikojo]

10. Middle Easterners are blond and blue eyed only

when it comes to portraying Jesus in the movies.

In all other instances, especially when they are portraying Arabs (who inadvertantly are always terrorists) or Jews they are dark and very swarthy in appearance.

[Solly Mack]

12. lol..true..stereotypes do abound

ever wonder how people who can only see a blue-eyed jesus reconcile their vision of people in the ME?

well, besides their self-satisfied hypocrisy that is...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. The Middle East is historically a melting pot

Remember the National Geographic "cover girl" from Afghanistan with the blue eyes? Yet there are also Afghans who look East Asian.

I once had a student from Turkey who had blue eyes, freckles, and blond hair.

Remember the scene in Lawrence of Arabia when Lawrence is captured, and the interrogators discover that he's blond and blue-eyed? They don't ask, "Are you Europan?" They ask, "Are you a Circassian?"

[Sparkle]

37. She had green eyes....

[Dookus]

46. That's one of the most stunning photos ever..

did you ever see the National Geographic where they returned to Afghanistan and found her? She aged a lot, but still has those unmistakeable eyes.

[Must_B_Free]

18. "white" complexion

We didn't see their complexion, we saw their hands.

regardless of their complexion, noone in the middle east has hands that are not tanned by the sun, unless they wear gloves. Same is true of anyone from Hawaii and Florida, invalids excluded.

[Quahog]

32. Latex gloves?

Seriously, these guys were hiding their identities with masks, who's to say they weren't wearing latex gloves? You surely can't tell one way or the other given the quality of that video.

[outinforce]

36. This Is

Nonsense.

No one -- except invalids -- in Florida has hands not tanned by the sun?

Nonsense.

[El Supremo]

6. Gulf Arabs

When I worked in the middle east I saw a notable difference in various country's blubber ratio.

The Gulf Arabs (ones from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Quatar) were much fatter than Arabs from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

Note that there is a distinct correlation as to wealth between these two groups.

[ForrestGump]

25. Golf Arabs?

Maybe those weren't running shoes...maybe they were golf shoes. :o

[benddem]

7. In Saudi Arabia

many many many Saudi's (arabs) are obese.

[Warpy]

9. Iraq had a war. 12 years of saanctions, then another war

Although prosperous Arabs are at least as fat as the rest of us, the Iraqis have little reason to be.

Er, unless they're Chalabi's men.

[QC]

13. Who said they had to be Iraqis?

If it is al Qaeda, which remains to be seen, then they're a pretty cosmopolitan group, drawing members from all over the world. They also seem to have enough money to buy food.

[Maddy McCall]

11. Good work, QC

It's almost RACIST for people to perpetuate stereotypes of Arabs as skeletally thin brown people who "don't scream like Americans" and who "don't move like Americans."

I think people are just searching for an explanation for the gruesome murder that will make more sense to them than believeing it could have been committed by the people who apparently committed it.

Thanks for looking up the info on Middle Eastern obesity. (You might have to look up the next one on skin tones, since we all *know* the murderers had "white hands" :eyesroll: )

[QC]

16. Thanks! n/t

[Rowdyboy]

14. Thank you for your work in debunking such trash

Racial stereotypes are always repulsive.

While I would never put anything past the Bush regime, it is much more likely that these are people who genuinely hate us and wish to pay us back for our invasion and punish us for our mistreatment of their brothers and sisters.

[Must_B_Free]

19. he failed

he forgot about the sun. ever live in florida? or visit even?

[QC]

20. Where did I bring up the sun?

This thread is about the "they can't be Arabs--they're fat!" canard. I produced four studies (out of quite a number available) that demonstrate that Arabs can be, and often are, just as chubby as anybody else.

[starroute]

21. Insisting some Iraqis are white is more racist than saying they aren't

It isn't racist to say that different nationalities have differing characteristic appearances. What is racist is to consider it an insult to say that Iraqis tend to be wiry in build and swarthy of complexion -- as though whiteness and stockiness were signs of natural superiority.

It isn't racist to say that Iraqis don't stand the way Americans do. It is racist to assume that the way Americans stand is the human norm and that anyone who doesn't follow that pattern must be inferior.

Turks and Afghans both have a certain admixture of Central Asian genes and can sometimes be quite European in appearance. Iraqis do not and tend strongly to be of what used to be called the Mediterranean type.

And the question about the video isn't whether Middle Easterners can be pudgy or not. (You just have to look at Moqtada al Sadr to know they can.) It's about a certain kind of broad-shouldered, barrel-chested body build that is typically western or northern European.


(Actually, physical anthropologists tend to consider Europeans as being of a relatively archaic physical type, comparable in its ruggedness of face and body to the Ainu or Australian Aborigines. Middle Easterners are typically of a more delicate type that appeared fairly recently in human evolution.)

[QC]

22. Yes, it would be racist to say those things.

But no one did.

[prodigal_green]

44. huh?

Who said anything about superiority?

This is equivalent to saying that anybody who claims Arabs speak Arabic are racist.

To say that different cultures do not have different mannerisms is just plain ignorant. There is no suggestion of one being better than the other, but there are differences in the way people move (kinesics) and they way they interact with each other physically (haptics). It is ignoring these cultural differences which leads to a lot of misunderstanding among people. Assuming that there is one way that human beings behave is silly. Personal space, for example, is very different among different cultures. Eye contact and patterns of pause and response in conversation are very different among different cultures. Example: in the US, when a speaker glances away from his/her audience, that means he/she is done with a thought and it is OK for the other person to respond. In the UK, the opposite occurs, when a person is finished with a thought, he or she "punctuates" it by making direct eye-contact with the listener, thus indicating that is is the appropriate time for the person to respond. Both cultures share a similar background and similar language, but this subtle difference can lead each to believe the other is rude or interrupting in conversation.

Likewise, Americans are much more relaxed in their stance and assume greater personal space than Arabs. This is not racist, it is learned, cultural behavior. Americans from different parts of the United States behave differently too. New Yorkers move quickly, make less frequent eye-contact and seem to "crowd" non-New Yorkers because we too assume less personal space than our mainland counterparts. We are thus considered rude by the rest of the country.

[JCMach1]

23. There are many lilly white fat Arabs... I keep telling you guys

Come visit and I will introduce you to a few...

[Karenina]

28. This thread tickles me so!

The issue is not about fat Arabs or black folks with blue eyes. What's presented is "BARBARIC AlQ ARABS BRUTALLY MURDER INNOCENT AMERICAN JEW."

It's a perfect message for American consumption to fuel their sense of moral superiority. WORKS EVERY TIME.

I cannot view such a video myself, however from reports I've heard here many who have remark immediately that SOMETHING IS AMISS. Wait, WHO are these guys, anaway? The first things people notice are skin color and body language. The first words spoken reveal MUCH MORE.

Remember way back in the wayback that Shoshanna's unit had to vouch to her being American to the FOOL in charge of their rescue? The idiot should have been STRIPPED of his rank. One would think the answers to name rank and serial # would be enough... :eyes:

The discussion here more reflects American attitudes about skin color and race.

[Solly Mack]

29. That's the point QC was making

people jumping to conclusions based on their attitudes of middle easterners... QC's example was based on the assumption that there are no fat ME'ners.


I expanded on the assumptions of race and skin color.

[Karenina]

33. Woik wit me here, Solly

The challenge to the real identity of the BARBARIANS was a clumsy reference to the FIRST THING PEOPLE NOTICE. I doubt it was just the skin color that set off TB71's sirens and claxons, however that was the easiest discrepency to articulate. It was a direct challenge to the IMMEDIATE American ASSUMPTION that the BARBARIANS were those "dirty brown Arabs." I'm waiting on a positive ID for the accents. RUSSIAN? Heh? :freak:

Don't mind me. ;-) :loveya:

[Solly Mack]

35. Ok. I follow you there

I've been withholding judgement, either way, on who the killers are
..until a better picture emerges of just what happened. I, personally, have no clue to their identity. I do believe something is out of sync with the story...the accents being just one "odd" thing.

but I do understand that, while as you say, skin color was the easiest (discrepency) to articulate...it's never good to assume there are "No" fat arabs and "No" "white" arabs when forming a basis for why something may be a lie.... some posts the other day were just so sure that no such people existed...based on their assumptions of what someone from the middle east looks like....which was what I was reacting to..the absolute conviction that such middle easterners didn't exist.

and I think automatically assuming the killers are arab is pretty much the same thing as asserting the other..especially with so many conflitcing stories emerging.

:pals:

[Karenina]

39. Thanks, Solly.

It's a subtle point I'm trying to make as the initial outburst that got the Ami ball rolling MAY have been made by someone who KNOWS ALL THAT.
Lemme go check it out...

[QC]

34. That was precisely my point.

I'm glad to know that we agree.

[bushgottago]

26. Arabs might be fat but ....

... terrorist are thin. I've never seen a fat terrorist.

[ForrestGump]

27. Ever heard of Carlos the Jackal?

[bigbillhaywood]

41. Oops..delete.

[QC]

30. You can see one in post #5. n/t

[theboss]

31. How many terrorists do you hang with?

That's a silly statement.

[Karenina]

40. Ladies and gentlemen

Exhibit A.

[QC]

42. Also be sure to check out the photo of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed above.

He appears to be a man who enjoys a good meal.

[prodigal_green]

45. How many terrorists have you seen?

and have you alerted the authorities?

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[friendofbenn]

43. "arabs are never rich"

hah