My Summary: From Proto-Semitic to Semitic to Neo-Semitic: The Maghreb’s Berber Foundations and Its Semitic Heritage and Connections to Egypt, the Levant, Arabia, and Mesopotamia — with the Central Role of Arabic Language

 

I could write and say much about this subject, but I will limit myself here to presenting my summary, drawn from my own genetic–linguistic–historical studies.

First, the main goal is to investigate the “essence of Semitism” which European Western thought wants to ascribe to a single race, even though most of it is neither Semitic in origin nor in culture. One finds that anyone who criticizes Zionism is accused of “anti-Semitism,” but we do not know since when Zionism became “Semitic” in history, civilization, language, or geography. Zionism was nothing but the pampered child of old and renewed European colonialism.

This note is a study in which genetics and linguistics have allowed us to achieve a deep and precise understanding that transcends, by light-years, the ideological inferiority or superiority complexes of many Arabists, Francophiles, and Berberists. It is a study through which we can explain the famous saying of Ibn Badis (“The Algerian people are Muslim and belong to Arabness”). Ibn Badis himself—like around 70% of Algerians—was Berber Amazigh. So how did he claim belonging to Arabness? It is simply because he saw no contradiction in that. And this is what I have personally been advocating for many years: there is no contradiction in being genetically Berber while at the same time culturally Arab. 

Thus, in this note we want to center Arab culture and the Arab World not around nationalism nor around religion, but around the Arabic language. For this reason I call for viewing the Maghreb as the Neo-Semitism, just as we can view the Mashriq as the Historical-Semitism, while we must view the Natufians and the carriers of the North African genome E as the Proto-Semitism.

And as we have shown elsewhere: it is the Neo-Semitism—and not the Historical-Semitism—that descends genetically from  Proto-Semitism. This may seem contradictory, but it is what is scientifically confirmed today, since the Maghrebi Berber-Amazigh genome finds its origins in the Levant, in the Natufians, from where it moved under the impact of the historical Semitic migrations from the Caucasus to Iraq, the Levant, Yemen, and the Arabian Peninsula. These historical Semitic migrations, at the same time, took what are today called the Semitic languages from those very same Natufians. In other words, Historical Semitism is Semitic in culture, not in genetics.

Thus, what is called the Berber expansion in the Maghreb actually preceded in time the Arab expansion in the Mashriq. Then, after the arrival of Islam, came the second Arab expansion toward the Maghreb, which led to the complete transformation of Egypt and the Maghreb into Arab culture.  This transformation did not occur, for example,  for those J1 lineages that migrated eastward into Iran— termed here Para-Semitic. Despite being J1, they are not considered Semitic, which shows that “Semitism” cannot be reduced to J1 genetics but is instead a cultural–linguistic phenomenon.

In this regard, Egypt and the Nile are closer in classification to the Maghreb—that is, the Neo-Semitism—than to the Mashriq (dominated by the Historical-Semitism). In fact, Egypt is the natural geographic and historical link between the historical Semitism and the new Semitism.

I also call here for including the Sahel countries—Chad, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, even Senegal, and Nigeria—and some East African countries such as Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya into the Arab World, once re-envisioned as the Hamito-Semitic World. Many of their populations belong linguistically to the Hamito-Semitic space, or what is also called the Afroasiatic sphere, and they also belong genetically to the North African E genome.

Indeed, it is scientifically certain today that the Hamito-Semitic / Afroasiatic sphere is organically tied to the North African genome E, and not to the historical Semitic genome J1.

Thus, for the Arab world to be liberated and truly evolve, it must not be seen as a national conglomerate but as a linguistic–cultural sphere: centered on the Arabic language (without excluding other Afroasiatic languages such as Berber, Hausa, Chadic, Ethiopian, Somali, etc.), and centered on Islamic culture without being confined to a religious sphere. Religiously, it must return to what I call Old Islam — the classical, spiritual Islam that spread across Africa and Asia without force — while moving away from what I term Older Islam: our distorted vision of Islam, tied to the fetishization of the first three centuries and the legacy of Ibn Taymiyya. 

In sum, the Hamito-Semitic, or Semitic World, must be centered on the Arabic Language and the spiritual heritage of Old Islam, not on ethnicity or nationality, and not on the ideological traps of Older Islam.

By Old Islam I mean the expansive, spiritual Islam that spread naturally and peacefully into Africa and Asia — through trade, learning, and Sufi practice — an Islam that was adaptive, inclusive, and civilizational. By contrast, Older Islam refers to our distorted modern fixation on the so-called “pure” Islam of the first three centuries, an idealization rooted especially in the thought of Ibn Taymiyya. This Older Islam is less a living faith and more an ideological construction, rigid and instrumental, used to control and divide. To move forward, the Semitic World must embrace the legacy of Old Islam while breaking free from the burdens of Older Islam.

Finally, I say that we should also seek to include Turkey, Iran, Greece, Malta, Spain, Portugal, and even those civilizations with deep historical contact with Islam, such as Russian World and Indian Subcontinent, as affiliated or honorary members of this Semitic World. 

And why not even include Israel—once occupation, apartheid, and the holocaust-in-progress against the Palestinian people have truly ended—since, unfortunately, the Jewish state lies at the very heart of this linguistic–cultural space. 

This Semitic World should be understood as the natural evolution of the Arab World into a broader civilizational sphere, and as a potential evolution of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation itself: from a political-religious bloc into a cultural–linguistic commonwealth centered on the Arabic language and the Afroasiatic heritage.