Arab world
The Arab world comprises 22 countries stretching from Morocco in the west to Oman in the east. They have a combined population of 300 million people and their combined economies surpass $1 trillion annually.
The majority of people in Arab countries profess Islam, but sizable numbers of Arab Christians live in Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. Overall, Arabs make up less than one third of the world's 1 billion Muslims - sometimes referred to as the Islamic World.
The Arab League is a political organization intended to encompass the Arab world.
In terms of states, official and semi-official, one might include as part of the Arab world:
- Algeria
- Bahrain
- Chad (in part)
- Egypt
- Iraq
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Lebanon
- Libya
- Mauritania
- Morocco
- Oman
- Palestine
- Qatar
- Saudi Arabia
- Sudan (in part)
- Syria
- Tunisia
- United Arab Emirates
- Western Sahara
- Yemen (formerly North Yemen and South Yemen)
The Arabic language forms a unifying feature of the Arab world: though different areas use local dialects of Arabic, all share in the use of the standard classical language. This contrasts with the situation in the wider Islamic world, where Arabic retains its cultural prestige primarily as the language of religion and of theological scholarship, but the populace generally uses non-Arabic languages.
A noticeable minority of Arabs (and the majority of Arab Americans) profess Christianity.
