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In a World That Dehumanises Arab Men, Softness Is Defiance

BYZineb Squalli

June 11, 2025

I love how Arab men love.

They love rough, they love quietly. Sometimes they fight for it; sometimes they barely whisper it into existence. Their love isn’t always declared but folded into the everyday: the “Sit down, I’ve got you” at a crowded restaurant, the way they quietly take your bag, hand you their jacket, and insist on greeting your mother because “What will she say if I don’t?”

I’ve seen my father crouch down to catch a little boy, cradle him in his arms, and play with his toy. I heard my friend blurt out “You’re the smartest person I know, you will find your way.” I’ve felt a hand brush a strand of hair from my face, while listening intently to my latest, most ridiculous ramble. I’ve been ushered home by friends—half-asleep, shivering in the freezing night—refusing to let me get there alone.

Arab men love the way they’ve been taught: cautiously, reverently, and in fragments. They love like they can: respectful touches, bashful smiles, tentative hands. They love the way they know: overlapping feelings, waterfalls of conflicting adoration, harsh words slipping into realisation, scrambled apologies tangled in pride, prayers whispered through clenched teeth.

In a world where dehumanization paves the road to violence, there are few things more valuable to society than the most humane of acts— the realest form of expression that is love. Where portraying a people as incapable of love is the first step in denying them their humanity, there is nothing more powerful, more radical, than Arab men loving. For when you strip a people of the ability to love, it becomes unbelievably easier to justify their suffering and accept decades of uncalled violence, allow racism, and support bigotry. When you succeed in undermining the ways certain societies love, you automatically render them incompatible with civilization, denying them empathy, dignity, survival.

All structures of domination rest on this lie: that we are somehow alien to the very idea of modernity, strangers to tenderness, incapable of civilized love. And somehow, even within our own communities, this lie has taken root. It can be incredibly hard to advocate for loving the Arab way without being pinned for a conservative.

I’ve had friends of mine longing to get away from Arab men, dreaming out loud of Prince Charmings not just looking white but loving white. I myself have fallen into this trap: the idea that white is right. That love should look like grand gestures, fiery passion, Romeo and Juliet type of love stories.

The truth is, we have stopped believing in our own way of doing things; we have stopped romanticizing our way of loving; stopped seeing the beauty in it. When we do show adoration, it must, for some obscure reason, be theirs. We became slaves of the system that alienates and excludes us; defenders of this spiteful cycle that paints us as haters rather than lovers, destroyers than nurturers, avengers than forgivers. We bought into the myth that our love was lesser—harsher, uglier, wrong. And there seems to be no way of escaping it, we’re too convinced that our ways are archaïc; too embedded in violence.

And yes, some Arab men have weaponized this distortion, folding toxic masculinity and the unwavering conviction that patience is a feminine trait into the blueprint of how to love. So, when we ask ourselves how we have let hatred towards women fester in too many corners of our societies– because yes, we have– we must acknowledge that we have been led to believe that this is how Arab men love: a perverted, twisted, ugly, violent, jealous, weak love.

But we must be clear: violence is not love, and the warped forms of it we sometimes see seeping through our communities today are not a reflection of Arab men’s capacity to love, but of the poisons societies have swallowed. Wicked Arab men do exist (as they do in every culture), and their cruelty towards women and children should, under no circumstances, be excused. But, they should be questioned—understanding and reflecting on societies’ poisons are the only ways of finding an antidote.

Because beneath the propaganda, the lies, the shame, the hatred placed upon them by the imperious West, Arab men hold within them the strongest, most enduring way of loving I’ve ever encountered.

But why? Why do their whispers of affection land deeper than a thousand words screamed from the top of the Eiffel tower? Why is their bashfulness so endearing? Their trials and errors so entertaining? Why is their love so rhythmic? Because love—real, raw, imperfect love— is resistance.

It is resistance against oppression, hatred, racism, xenophobia, discrimination, and the doxa. I see in the purity of their love a refusal to be reduced to violence alone. It is a reclamation of who we are, and what the West has been so vehemently against: Arab people in power, Arab people knowing who they are, relishing in it, being proud of it.

Arab men loving is Arab men proving love has no limitations, no ifs and buts, no conditions. Love is universal and multi-faceted. It is the strongest tool we own. Arab men loving is Arab men being the most humane they can be—without any care of what imperialists expect them to be.

It’s reaffirming their identity and complexity, owning their history: a history that puts poetry as its core and infatuation at its heart (dare I say). A history of men rendered mad by their love, vulnerable by their love, warriors by their love; men worshipping God, and paying tribute to beauty, falling on their knees in prayers and words of devotion. A history of men going against kings and whole societies for their love.

I once saw a man cradle his granddaughter’s limp body in his arms. I saw his tears. I saw her face. I saw him hold her even closer. I heard him sob “she’s the soul of my soul.”

I shared the video. We all did.

I had experienced love before: the familial, friendly, romantic kind. But I had never heard of a love so pure. A love so tender. A love so true. The soul of all our souls.

Love, Z.

This piece was initially commissioned as part of a collaboration between MILLE WORLD and Kalam Aflam.

In a World That Dehumanises Arab Men, Softness Is Defiance

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In a World That Dehumanises Arab Men, Softness Is Defiance

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