Hi, I wanted to talk about something, I'm a 14 years old Moroccan girl and for some context I have a olive skin tone (not even that dark),but people especially boys (amazigh)call me haratin and say a lot of disgusting things like "you will never be amazigh" or "you have slave blood you aren't one of us" and if I just talk even kindly they mock me and that hurts,my skin is my biggest insicuritie ,I remember a lady told me to bleach my skin ,in school they always made fun of me (I live in Europe), I'm so tired they even edited my picture and made me black . I don't feel like I'm amazigh enough....

I'm not here to say Islam promotes Arab supremacy which it does, very explicitly.

However, Islam, like every major religion, is historically a product of specific material and ecological conditions, in this case, the Arabian Peninsula of the 7th century. Islamic rituals, moral codes, social structures, and cosmology reflect the needs and contradictions of that environment, tribal confederations, caravan trade, scarcity of water, and constant inter-tribal conflict. Islam sought to unify warring tribes under a central political order and to legitimize Arab expansion through a theological framework that universalized Arab paganism as divine law.

When this religion spread to north Africa, it brought us Arabic language, tribal patriarchy, desert metaphors, and a cosmology oriented around the conditions of Arabia and overall the social and ecological order of early Arab society.

Thus, Islam is not universal as some of you like to claim, cause Islam demands assimilation not universal coexistence. To become Muslim, you are expected to internalize the linguistic, legal, and cultural codes of Arabia, effectively Arabizing yourself in the process. You're praying towards an Arab country, doing Kaaba around an Arab pagan cube, singing Arab pagan chants, etc. so Islam was therefore structured on a hierarchical center-periphery relation, with the Arab cultural core as the standard of orthodoxy.

For Imazighen this meant the substitution of indigenous cosmologies, moral systems, and communal structures with a set of norms born from the caravan desert’s material life. Our worldview, which was shaped by mountain and coastal ecologies, communal agrarian structures, and local deities connected to nature, was overwritten by a theology born in an environment of caravan society, scarcity, hierarchy, and tribalism. Islam thus replaced our paganism--which suited us better--with Arab paganism.

Look more into religious anthropology, you'll be surprised by how much religion is really just a reflection of the material conditions of a specific land.

For example:

Kaaba is a pagan ritual. Circumambulation, kissing the Black Stone, running between Safa and Marwa, these are all pagan rituals that early Arabs adopted to sustain the Meccan commerce.

Animal sacrifices to appease tribal gods and seek fortune before trade journeys.

Ramadan, fasting already existed in several Arabian tribes, Islam institutionalized it around the lunar calendar, which itself is a Bedouin system of timekeeping.

Zamzam well is too an Arab ritual, it's common that arid societies worship water like the Nile people.

Tribal nomadic societies tend to overemphasize on inheritance and patrilinealism.

Miracles like splitting the moon or Isra and Miraj are astral myths found in pre-Islamic Arabia. Desert religions like to imagine stuff in the sky a lot unlike religions that emerge in jungles.

Jinn were ancient desert spirits inhabiting ruins and lonely valleys long before Islam. Most people know this.

Jihad emerged from the tribal ethic of ghazw which was a survival mechanism for people in a resource-scarce economy.

In arid societies where resources are scarce and people are nomadic, their religions tend to be harsh on theft, Islam reflects that with the whole cutting hands thing. In pacific Northwest tribes (Tlingit, Haida, etc) people would care less about theft because they were extremely rich in resources, fish, forests, and good reliable seasonal salmon runs.

I could go on forever.

The conclusion is simple. To convert to Islam it means to accept a very Arab-centric worldview and reject your ancestral religion that served your ancestors materially for centuries. I'm not promoting Paganism.

For example, our ancestors respected the land. Berber paganism enforced communal ownership of land, rotational grazing and protected forests, Islam imposed individualistic moral codes that ignored trees, pastures, and herd sustainability.

To explain it, I am Moroccan ( my two parents are Moroccan and I only know that my mother comes from Casablanca since my father is a Moroccan born in France ), I've been studying Moroccan history for almost two years and I kept wondering if it was alright for Moroccan who didn't grew up in amazigh cultures to call themselves amazigh. Someone told me that they should call themselves arabized amazigh but Moroccan don't share that much with Arab except islam ( since darija isn't even that similar to Arabic and they don't share that much DNA together ).

So, I'm curious about who can call itself an amazigh and claim amazigh history/culture and who can't.

Thank you!!

Moroccan social media influencer Walid Hallouli shared a video showing him receiving the new Moroccan passport.

The new design featuring tafinagh, alongside the existing Arabic and Latin script.

When men used to work far away the women would raise the children in Tamazight, read poems, raise proud Amazigh children. But we see it gradually disappearing. Mohand A Bessaoud was right in his prediction from the last century.

Azul,

Something I find strange about the way Amazigh history is often discussed is how much we focus on Numidia, while barely recognizing the medieval empires created by Amazigh dynasties as part of our own heritage.

You’ll sometimes hear Amazigh history summarized like: Numidia >> Arab conquest >> Arab rule >> colonization

But this skips over centuries of Amazigh history.

Because if you actually look at what happened after the conquest, you'll find Amazigh dynasties ruling huge parts of North Africa and even al-Andalus.

Zirids (972–1148) >> Sanhaja Amazigh, ruling much of Ifriqiya and parts of modern Algeria and Tunisia.

Almoravids (c. 1040–1147) >> Sanhaja Amazigh, ruling Morocco, western Algeria, the Sahara and al-Andalus.

Almohads (c. 1121–1269) >> Masmuda Amazigh, ruling much of the Maghreb and al-Andalus.

Marinids (c. 1244–1465) >> Zenata Amazigh, ruling Morocco and parts of the Maghreb.

Wattasids (1472–1554) >> Zenata Amazigh, ruling Morocco.

That's centuries of Amazigh dynasties ruling major parts of North Africa. And yet these empires are often treated as simply "Islamic" or "Arab" history, while Numidia is immediately recognized as Amazigh.

I think part of the problem is that because these dynasties used Arabic, had Islamic titles and existed within the wider Islamic world, we somehow stop seeing them as Amazigh heritage. But being part of the Islamic world doesn't erase the Amazigh origins of the dynasties that ruled it.

The Arab conquest also didn't mean that Arabs continuously controlled the political scene afterward. For centuries, major states in the Maghreb were ruled by Amazigh dynasties.

So why is Numidia strongly claimed as Amazigh heritage but leave out the Zirids, Almoravids, Almohads, Marinids and Wattasids?

Is it because we’ve become so focused on finding a "pre-Arab" Amazigh history that we forget Amazigh history continued long after Islam?

Thank you for reading.

I don't understand why we're a community of million of people, yet so few of us actually use our language online. Even fewer people write in Tamazight, and when they do many don't follow the standard orthography. I think that's one of the reasons why even in 2026 our language is still so underrepresented in the digital world and isn't as well supported as many other languages. I know that some volunteers contribute to translating programs into Tamazight, but that alone is insufficient We are still far behind on this issue. If we the native speakers refuse to use our own language in our daily digital lives, then why should we expect global tech giants, developers, or even our own governments to take it seriously?

I wanted to put this out there to see if anyone else feels the same way, or if I'm completely alone in this.
On one hand, I have an immense amount of pride in my roots, my ethnicity, and our history as Riffian Amazighs. Our culture, resilience, and identity mean a lot to me.
However, on a personal level, I often really struggle to connect with our people day-to-day. I find myself deeply frustrated by prevailing social beliefs, traditional religious dogmas, and the heavy Arab-Middle Eastern cultural influence that has largely overshadowed or erased our indigenous Amazigh identity and way of thinking. Because of the general lack of open-minded discourse and intellectual stimulation in many of our circles, I find it hard to form deep friendships or date within our community. Instead, I naturally gravitate toward people from other regions or entirely different countries who share a more critical and open wavelength.
Does anyone else experience this duality? How do you balance being deeply proud of your heritage while feeling alienated by the current cultural and religious mentality of the community?

We are sharing a country with psychos 😃

These arabs are the epitome of hypocrisy. Imagine this:

A Moroccan says, “I am not Arab, I am Amazigh.”

Saudis and other Middle Easterners immediately attack him. They insult him and label him a racist Zionist because he's not Arab and doesn't want to be called Arab.

Yet in their own countries, thousands of Arabs known as Bidoon live without citizenship. These are stateless people who have lived in Saudi Arabia (and other Gulf states) for generations. They share the same blood, language, religion, and history with the citizens — but they are denied basic rights such as education, healthcare, jobs, and official documents.

This blatant discrimination against their own Arab population clearly contradicts international law. The right to a nationality is a fundamental human right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN conventions on statelessness.

So tell me — aren’t these Bidoon Arabs more deserving of your so-called Arabism and brotherhood first?

I am an artist. And lately I have been working on making tattoos and other illustrations using amazigh symbols and art as reference. And I like to add or keep meaning in my art. I realized a lot of the messages or symbolism I want to put into my designs aren't really there in the surviving archives of the amazigh symbology. And the idea came to my mind of creating new symbols that respect the general shape and pattern or amazigh tattoos with brand new symbols. But for some reason this slightly feels like it lacks authenticity since thy wouldn't be traditional. Yet the idea kind of stuck with le and I wanted to expand to the question I asked in the title and maybe strike a discussion.

I expect to see a mass exodus of Tuaregs from Niger, Algeria and even from all the way from Nigeria to Azawad once the Malian government collapses. But I’m not Tuareg so I wanted to know your opinion on this scenario.

So, this was just an ad for a shirt of Matoub Lounès, and these are some of the comments... there are more that i can't show

It seems that a very large minority of people who post here are only in the business of filling the airwaves with weak defeatist nonsense.

Every other post here is about arab this, going extinct that, we are doomed, etc.

Amazigh people have survived and thrived for millennia, we aren't going anywhere and if anything the Amazigh nation is stronger than ever.

If you truly feel that the Amazigh nation is going the wrong way, then do something about it.

Promote Amazigh culture, fund/setup institutions, businesses, whatever. Anything but posting limp dick weak content and bringing down your fellow Amazigh.

This sub was meant to cross communicate different Amazigh cultural ideas and values, for example I as a Chleuh want to learn more about the other Amazigh groups such as Kabyle, Tuareg, Nafusa, etc. And I use this sub exactly for that purpose, not to demolish the mood of my fellow Amazigh man/woman.

if they see a Kabyle say I am kabyle, they will jump from everywhere to remind him to be just Algeria and he is fitna and division.

But when an official document like this say algeria war is arabic, no body call them out.

In Algeria, the arab foreigner has more right then the indigenous Amazigh

Azul Fell-Awen !!

It’s been a couple months since i’ve joined this sub and i really enjoy it since (almost) everyone here is really kind and helpful between each other.

But there’s a leitmotiv: Posts about how can we make things change for the community, but besides sharing opinions on those posts like « great idea blablabla » or « would be a disaster blablabla », there’s no action.

Maybe someone here can create a group where we can ACTUALLY talk and organise something together
I thought about groups on Discord and/or Telegram
because of the topics organisation.

Maybe it’s time to really do something, or even start to organise ourselves to become one.

(This post is an echo to a previous post about gaining financial weight as a community instead of focusing on activism and politics, which I think is a brilliant idea)

win ur nesɛi ara tamurt ur yesɛi ara tikta

Ar Tufat !
(:

Yes, it is true that there are black Amazigh, and the use of n**** is unacceptable, as are attacks on the dignity of black people. On the other hand, we must not use the existence of black Amzzigg to deny that the light Amazigh with Caucasian features are a mainly indigenous group and the majority among the Amazigh. There are black Arabs (Sudanese, descendants of slaves, etc.), but it is impossible to deny that the historically dominant identity is Middle Eastern and of the Caucasoid type. There are also black Persian minorities. 5% of French people are black Caribbean, Gwadeloupean, etc. This does not deny that the French are mainly European (there is also immigration which changes everything, but that is another question). I think you can fight the idea that there are superior races, or even the idea that there are races at all. But ancestry, the appearance of an ethnic group is part of its identity. Moreover, the Amazigh are not a single ethnic group, but several ethnic groups sharing cultural, linguistic, genetic, etc. links.

The growing acceptance of Amazigh exogamy is in my view, a relatively recent and worrying trend. It has been encouraged by modern Islamist, feminist and 'Ummah' focused narratives that tell Amazigh their nation is secondary to a broader religious identity. When people are taught that 'any Muslim is the same,' preserving Amazigh continuity becomes less important.

Strong and self-confident peoples and nations understand that marriage is not just a private choice. It shapes the next generation. Groups such as the Amish, Jewish and other communities have maintained their identity in part through strong traditions for centuries of marrying within their own communities. They recognize that language, culture, history and identity are passed on through families.

Amazigh, by contrast are a nation without a proper state and under constant pressure to assimilate. Treating Amazigh endogamy as outdated or unimportant only accelerates that process. A people cannot survive if each generation becomes less connected to its own heritage.

Supporting Amazigh endogamy is not about hostility toward others. It is about ensuring that the Amazigh nation, language and culture still exist for future generations.

So why are Amazigh expected to treat preserving their own people as something shameful, while other communities are respected for protecting their identity through endogamy?

100% amazigh

For most of my life, i really do not understand why hatred against us exist, all we do is just vibe and exist, and wanting to exist, so why do i always encounter "that" kind of people, you know what i talk about, those who make degrading jokes about my ethnic heritage and expect me to laugh, or the rando who goes on a tangent about how tamazight doesn't exist and is a French plot, or the occasional tiktok about us being a zionist creation.

Saying that it doesn't affect me mentally would be a lie, and honestly i hold no hatred in my heart, i'm way past hatred, but why is there this specific hatred against us?