Basic Trope: The assumption that all Muslims are Arabic or of Arabic descent.
- Straight: Troper Tales is set in America and has a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant protagonist named John. The Muslim characters Ahmed, Fatima, Amira, and Hasan are all Arab or Arab-American.
- Exaggerated: All non-Arab Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Pakistan are full of Arabs too, and no one in the work questions it.
- Downplayed:
- Persian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Muslims are seen in the background of the story and are shown to exist, but they have no role in the story.
- Persian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Muslims are shown, but they also speak Arabic and follow Arab traditions.
- Justified: John was raised in an environment of Muslim immigrants, but because they all come from Arabic speaking Middle Eastern countries, he never unlearned the assumption until he meets Christian Arabs and Persian Muslims.
- Inverted:
- It is assumed that all Arabs are Muslim, even if Fatima is Christian and Hasan is Jewish.
- Fr. Abd-el Masih ibn Boutros el Khouri is constantly forced to explain he is not a Muslim even when he's wearing a Roman collar (and his name screams "I'm a Christian from a long line of Christians" in Arabic.)
- And Fr. Abd-el Masih is a character in a show that centers around a community of Arab Melkite Christians in Australia where every Arab character is a Christian (and they frequently interact with a community of Bosnian Muslims.)
- If Fr. Abd-el Masih does convince others that he really is a Catholic priest, then he has to explain why he has a wife and kids, but that's another trope note
- All non-Arabs are assumed to be not Muslim especially if they lack Arabic-sounding names, Islamic-appropriate clothing like hijab, and/or Middle Eastern features. Ratna, Ma, Yalwa, & Tomislav (an Indonesian, Hui Chinese, Nigerian, & Bosniak respectively) were invited to a bar but all of them refused by stating that they're Muslims.
- All Europeans, North and South Americans are assumed to be Christian. Despite the fact that Sigurd (Norwegian) is a Norse neopagan, Julieta (Mexican) follows traditional Mazatec religious practices, Anisa (Albanian) is Muslim, and Levi (German) is Ashkenazim.
- All Asians are assumed to be Buddhists despite the fact that Rajesh (Indian) is a Sikh, Togawa (Japanese) is a Shintoist, Arman (Indonesian) is Muslim, Jose (Filipino) is Christian, and Dinh (Vietnamese) practices folk religion.
- Subverted: Ahmed is an Arab whose family is from Egypt, but Fatima is Pakistani, Amira is Indonesian, and Hasan is Iranian. John just assumed they were all Arab.
- Double Subverted: Until it turns out Fatima, Amira and Hasan are all ethnically Arab anyway, just not nationals of an Arab country.
- Parodied: Upon moving to Egypt and speaking one word of Arabic, John is instantly accepted as a member of the Muslim faith, much to the confusion of the Egyptian Coptic Christians watching the scene.
- Zig-Zagged: All Muslim characters shown in a work are Arab, but John does travel to Bangladesh at one point, only for the characters he meets turn out to all be ethnic Arab Muslims living there anyway, but said Arabs in Bangladesh point out just knowing Arabic won't get him around the country.
- Averted:
- The assumption that the four Muslims are Arab is never brought up.
- The work goes out of its way to present the racial and cultural diversity of the Muslim world more realistically by including non-Arab Muslims.
- Neither Arabs nor Muslims are shown in the story.
- Enforced: "How do we make John more like an uncultured American?" "Have him think all the Muslim characters are Arab!"
- Lampshaded: "Pretty sure speaking Arabic won't get you that far in Kazakhstan."
- Invoked: For whatever reasons, Christian Arabs convert themselves to Islam.
- Exploited: Jebran is an Arabic Christian, but in order to avoid John's revolting pork dishes without hurting his feelings, claims to be Muslim to get out of eating it. John believes him under the grounds Jebran is Arab.
- Defied:
- The main Muslim cast members consist of a Persian, Kazakh, Indonesian and Pakistani, and all four of them speak different languages and have notable cultural differences, with being called an Arab being a major Berserk Button for all four of them.
- John does research about non-Arab Muslim-majority countries to avoid mistaking people from the said countries as Arabs.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: The mosque that Amira goes to has announcements written in another language besides Arabic.
- Played for Horror: Non-Arab Muslims don't exist because they all have been killed by an Arab supremacist serial killer.
Oksim bil'lah, you have to understand my brother, not All Muslims Are Arab!
