Kapitan Arab or Kapten Arab or Head of The Arabs is a position in the colonial Dutch East Indies appointed with the task of leading the ethnic Arab-Indonesians, who usually lived in concentrated clearly defined-living areas. The role was to provide liaison between his community and the government, to provide statistical information to The Dutch East Indies government on issues related to Arabs, to disseminate government regulations and decrees, and to ensure the maintenance of law and order.

Arab Indonesians or, colloquially known as Jama'ah, are Indonesian citizens of mixed Arab – mainly Hadhrami – and Indonesian descent. The ethnic group generally also includes those of Arab descent from other Middle Eastern Arabic speaking nations. Restricted under Dutch East Indies law until 1919, the community elites later gained economic power through real estate investment and trading. Currently found mainly in Java, especially West Java and East Java, they are almost all Muslims.