General Bashir’s Genocide, Again

The world didn't much care about the Sudanese jihad against Christians in the southern part of the country, even though it went on for years and reached genocidal proportions. But when it became a racial issue with the attack on Darfur, well, now it was taking a shape that the media establishment could understand. However, Nina Shea of Freedom House has shown in NRO (thanks to Andrew Bostom for the link) that these conflicts are two sides of the same coin -- and both are motivated by jihad ideology:

In both the south and in Darfur, the policies of the regime — which is an Arab Islamist military dictatorship — against ethnic African villagers have had racial and ethnic overtones and involved struggles over resources. But more significantly, the regime has been motivated in both cases by a radical Islamist agenda. Bashir attempted to Islamicize and Arabize the south through the forcible imposition of sharia (Islamic law). He launched, by his own definition, a "jihad" against the south when it resisted.

Though the tribes of Darfur are Muslim, they are not of the hardline Salafist movement favored by Khartoum's National Islamic Front government, an offshoot of the radical Muslim Brotherhood (now is based in Saudi Arabia after being crushed in Egypt, its birthplace). The Darfur Muslims do not speak Arabic, their women wear colorful African garb, and they do not follow the strict criminal code of Khartoum's Wahhabi-style sharia, which calls for the flogging of those who drink alcohol, the body-part-amputation of thieves, the stoning of adulterers, and the execution of blasphemers.

For years Khartoum has treated the black, Sufi Muslims of Darfur as second-class citizens, systematically discriminating against them in providing development opportunities, government services, and positions of power. When they rebelled against this policy of extreme marginalization, they became — in the view of a regime that conflates religion with politics — "apostate." Under Islamist rules, apostates are to be put to death or taken as slaves. In 1992, six pro-government Sudanese imams issued a fatwa making this explicit: "An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them." Though the fatwa was intended at that time for the Muslims of the central Nuba province and the Christians and animists of the south, it equally applies today to the Muslims of Darfur.

This underscores the fact that the conflict against global jihad is one that self-proclaimed moderate Muslims should take up energetically -- if, that is, their moderation is genuine.