Celebrim
Legend
Or that the Islamic faith didn't come into being until the 7th century, and before that there were all sorts of religious traditions in the Middle East, some of which are still around. Or that the tales from the Arabian Nights themselves in many ways resemble Beowulf, in that Beowulf is a story adapted during the middle of a culture in transition, and the story of Beowulf is a half-Christianized version of an older oral story from a pre-Christian culture and that likewise the Arabian Nights stories are compiled from stories collected all around the Indian Ocean basin and appropriated as partially converted Islamic literature. And then those tales were then appropriated and compiled by non-Arabic peoples into new collections containing new tales and framing, so that there is no 'authentic' Tales of the Arabian Nights. And those tales were appropriated back in and then out again and so forth, until no one knows or can unravel the full history of the text and state which culture actually owns which story, and which one is authentic and which one was a sort of 'minstrel show' itself trying to subtly demean or make pointed barbs toward or mock Arab and Islamic culture.
The most famous stories of the cycle - Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad - are in fact, if the French translator is to be believed, the product of a Marionite Christian oral story teller (if in fact the French 'translator' didn't just make them up). This oral story teller got no credit for the European best seller, but then again the French guy Galland also was cheated out of his work, as editions appeared with his name on it that he got no money for.
And that's to not even get into the bigger problem that no living person in the Middle East could properly claim to be the authentic guardian of the culture that produced the Tales of the Arabian knights, any more than any living person in American could properly claim to be the authentic guardian of Beowulf, because the cultures that produce both stories no longer exist. No one is a native speaker of Old English any more. No one really comes from pre-Norman Conquest half-Christianized Anglo-Saxon Medieval Europe. When you start claiming you personally own centuries old intellectual property out of some theory of communal intellectual property, you are advancing a theory of ownership that is based entirely on your feelings of kinship and not any reality of kinship much less reality of ownership. You yourself took no part in creating the intellectual property, yet you want to claim that you are somehow owed veto over how it is used based on vague self-identification. Your own culture probably buried the original culture that produced the art, yet somehow you claim you are entitled by some long right of blood to this art whose roots are actual alien to you. I'm reminded of the black suburban New Hampshire woman who grew up entirely north of the Mason-Dixon that accused me of cultural appropriation because the 'cotton fields' were her cultural heritage, negligent of the fact that my own mother dragged 100lb sacks of cotton through the red mud of Arkansas a child to help keep the family from literally starving when my grandfather was infirmed. Neither her nor I actually knew anything about the reality of picking cotton, but if proximity to poor sharecroppers is to be the test, I win hands down.
Anyone ever seen the credit card commercial where the family goes to Norway to explore their heritage, and it turns out they aren't Norwegian but Finns (or Swedes, or some such). And then they have to divest themselves of their literal ownership of Norwegian cultural trappings, get out the credit card and buy a new cultural identity? A good example of this would be my own life.
For my whole childhood I was raised with the cultural heritage of a Scot. I thought, childishly, that to some extent things about Scots were things about me, and conversely I was in some way entitled to being called Scottish by right of my birth. I had a proud Scot heritage, from the Wallaces, Burns, and Reynolds in my ancestry. Problem is, it was all based on a lie. When my family traced back its ancestry, it turned out that we were descend from two brothers who immigrated to the United States back in the 18th century. The brothers knew that in 18th century America, Irish people would have more limited opportunities that more privileged races like English and Scots, so they decided that they could pass themselves off as Scots. The told everyone that they were Scots, and were accepted into high social circles where they married well and were successful businessmen. They told their own wives they were Scots and not filthy Irishmen. They definitely told their wives parents. They told their children they were Scots. And they told their children, and they told their children. Their ancestors were still telling this to people to avoid anti-Irish discrimination in the mid-20th century, long after anyone remembered that it was a lie. In fact, I'm positive that some of my ancestors probably would have never agreed to marry a filthy Irishman. Irony, huh?
So what am I, a Scot or an Irish? Does the question or its answer even have meaning? Is either in this context even really 'a thing'? And regardless of the ancestry, would my inheritance of the heritage give anyone else a veto power over being inspired by the culture, art, and history of either nation? And what about growing up in Jamaica? Does speaking Petwa, and eating patties, box drink, and spice buns for lunch make me Jamaican enough to appropriate the stories of my childhood without asking permission?
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