This research explores the core question of anthropology since its very outset: what does it mean to be human? It investigates how intellectuals in Arab countries have addressed the common features of humanity across religious and cultural differences through conflicting understandings of our innate nature (fiṭra). It looks at how the assumption that all human share similar experiences shape people’s subjectivity, in particular when it comes to love and to beauty. It explores people’s efforts to create bonds through common citizenship, family belonging, neighbourhoods, and friendship ties, and how they relate these more exclusive ties to the general notion of being human. Ultimately, the research explores the epistemic implications for anthropology of recognising that we participate with our interlocutors from Arab countries in the same effort to include humanity in all its diversity in the horizon of our knowledge, as an outcome of sharing a common world.