Culture is every aspect related to literature, arts, and the heritage of the nation. Every nation has its own cultural spirit that is different from the other nations. The heritage is everything related to knowledge, sciences, values and social norms. Every nation remains conserving its unity until it completely abandons its heritage and hence losing its existence as a nation. But the Arabs are still unable to successfully deal with their rich heritage that differentiates them from other peoples on the globe.
The Arabic culture is one of the most precious and important cultures in the world as after its roots have been entrenched with its poetry, proverbs and literature depicting the life of the Arabs and reflecting their way of thinking.
The Arabs worked on transferring the knowledge and science of the ancients and excelled in building the basics of sciences in addition to their continuous tender in the literature and arts. The Arabic culture has been subjected to the attacks of the others who tried to abuse the Arabic language and the Arabic social values by replacing intruding values that are brought from other western cultures.
The Arabic culture is one of the greatest cultures in the human history and it is qualified to resume its role by supporting the values of goodness, justice, equity love and peace and by rejecting everything that may distort the humanity including every aspect of evil, racism and oppression.
The Arabic culture consists of two main components which are the Arabic language and Islam, hence comes the naming by some scholars as the Arabic Islamic culture. As mentioned above, the Arabic language was rich in its contribution in the Arabic literature from poetry, novels, prose, stories, legends, sayings and proverbs and here is some poets and writers that enriched the Arabic literature throughout the history Bashar ibn Burd, al-Jahiz, Imru’ al-Qais, Nizar Qabbani, Ahmad Shawqi…
Regarding the religion, like any other divine or human religion, Islam has deeply influenced the culture of the Arabic nation through its tenets of faith, rites of worship, moral values, and legislative provisions. However, we see the values and provisions of Islam in the daily life of Muslims in their behavior, their relationships and their way of treating each other. Islam highlighted the notions of peace, respect, equity and brotherhood and we see all of this in the respect for the women, kids and the elderly as well as in the strong links between the family members. Moreover, the majority of the Arabs practice Islam making it an obligation to pray five times a day, to fast the holy month of Ramadan and going to Hajj if it is possible.
As far as the customs and traditions, the Arab world has its own customs and traditions that are different from those in the other parts of the world. As for the clothing, it is advised that both man and women wear respectable clothes basically the women who should cover every part of their bodies using old traditional garments or modern clothes like scarf and veil but due to the European colonialism, some European ways of clothing are spread all over the Arab world but it is hard to find women with short clothes.
In most Arab countries the society is hierarchical in the sense that the older has more influence than the younger, which means the father or the grand father has a total control over the sons, their wives and their grand children. In the same token, the older son has the same power as his father or grandfather if the latter is absent. Also, the uncle or the aunt has also control over nephews. It is respect for the older that makes the society organized in such a way.
The Arabs care for their food and drinking. The religious holidays are symbolized with sweets and the slaughtering of animals basically for religious events.Thus; you can find plenty of delicious food that varies depending on the place and the time. In Ramadan for example, you can find all types of food on the table of the same family every day. This makes it typical to Muslim Arabs to have a variety of food in every meal. However, wine and alcoholic drinks are religiously forbidden in most countries of the Arab world. But, you can still find bars and places serving wine in some countries, but you never find it in a family context.
Online Arabic lessons for kids: dinolingo.com