I hate it when liberals falsely rewrite arabs into European history with claims like: "Well, pope Gelasius was North-African" or "St Augustine was an Arab" that intend to say that North-African is synonym for Arab. Those people weren't Arab. They were Berbers.
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Berbers are the natives of North-Africa. They existed in the Mediterranean cultural sphere with influences from people like the Phoenicians. Pope Gelasius, St. Augustine, king Ptolemy of Mauretania etc. were not Arabs. They lived before the Muslim Conquest of the area.
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Ptolemy (as the name tells) had Greek origins. He was the grandson of Cleopatra Philopator. Gelasius and Augustine (pictured) were plain Berber. After the muslim conquest Berbers gradually became an oppressed, forcibly islamized minority whose own culture was suppressed.
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There was of course some mixing under over a millennium of Arab rule, but Berbers have persevered as a minority. They have Berber ethno-nationalist movements, Berberist movements, that fight for homelands for different Berber nations. There are many of them, and they differ.
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Berbers like the Tuareg are from southern areas and have much darker features (on left) and can look like sub-Saharan Africans. Berbers in Morocco and Algeria have lighter features and often look like Europeans (right).
These people are still fighting for their culture. Berbers can't give their children traditional Berber names because authorities won't approve them, and in Libya Gaddafi banned teaching Berber language and called Berbers "children of Satan". I guess you see the problem here.
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While pretending to be all for oppressed minorities, liberals don't mind stealing the history of Berbers and giving credit of their notable ancestors for the Arabs who have oppressed these people for over a 1000 years. It's absolutely vile.
And just as a side note: many people seem to think that the football player Zinedine Zidane is ethnically French. He's a Berber of Algerian origin, more specifically a Kabyle, which is a subgroup of Berbers. As I said, they can easily be mistaken for Europeans by looks alone.
