Petition to UN to End Dhimmitude:

http://www.petitiononline.com/dhimmi/petition.html

Posted by: Mike at December 28, 2004 10:05 AM

On ya Mike,

I have signed,

Cheers

Posted by: meredith at December 28, 2004 10:30 AM

The slaughter in Darfur:

This is Arab on black racism. Islamic scripture contains several derogatory references to black people such as when someone asked Mohammed what the devil looked like and Mohammed then pointed to a black slave. Also the verse which says that if a black man comes to you he hasn't got the sense of a donkey.

Furthermore Mohammed said that Islam would eventually split into 72 (or 73?) sects of which only one would be the true one which would earn the believer a place in paradise. This is why there is commonly civil war in Muslim countries, eg Algeria, Somalia and Afghanistan. When Osama Bin Laden was in the Sudan there were four attempts on his life by fellow Muslims who thought that he wasn't Islamic enough.

Also once people have a sense of homicidal mania towards one group they are prone to be moved by their hate to attack others, they are just in the mood for killing. This is why there is so much black-on-black violence in America amongst reverse racists.

Posted by: Elephant at December 28, 2004 10:43 AM

Really it is NOT difficult to comprehend and/or understand the Muslim on Muslim violence in Sudan. Anyone who has studied the history of Wahhabism is aware that Wahhabis have slaughtered hundreds of thousands of muslims since the forces of Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab and Muhammad ibn Sa`ud first murdered and pillaged their way across the Arabian peninsula two centuries ago. Shiites, Sufis and other Sunni sects were considered mushrikun, or "polytheists", and their lives were considered forfeit by the Wahhabis. What we're seeing in Sudan is no different than the Wahhabi waves of conquest in the early 19th and 20th centuries. The Sufis of Darfur have been declared infidels by the Wahhabis in Khartoum, so their lives are now forfeit, and their property booty for the taking. This is historically typical of the Wahhabi use of the tactic of takfir* to legitimize murdering muslims and stealing their property.
Of course this hasn't sat well with Shiites and Sufis. Sufi Sheikh Hisham Kabbani, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, labelled Wahhabism a "two-century old heresy".

Articles on Wahhabism:

"Ordinary Wahhabism" by Alexander Ignatenko
http://iicas.org/english/enlibrary/libr_04_01_02_is.htm

"Wahhabism: Understanding the Roots and Role Models of Islamic Extremism" by Zubair Qamar
http://www.sunnah.org/articles/Wahhabiarticleedit.htm

"Ikhwan", Britannica Online
http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/wahhabi/ikhwan.htm

"General Bashir’s Genocide, Again" By Nina Shea
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/shea200406300855.asp

I also highly recommend Dore Gold's penetrating analysis of Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia and the Global Jihad in "Hatred's Kingdom":
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895261359/103-4608995-6947827?v=glance

*takfir:
Definition: This is the act of identifying someone as a kafir - unbeliever. Some Muslims believe that the right to do this lies only with God.

Some, however, think that humans are allowed to make such an identification. Doing so has been an important part of Islamic fundamentalism - Muslims are not allowed to wage war on each other, but they can wage war on unbelievers. Thus, if a society or group can be labeled as unbelieving, it becomes religious acceptable to engage in even armed battle with them.

Posted by: Mike at December 28, 2004 11:41 AM

BTW, Stephen Schwartz has written extensively about Wahhabism and terrorism - google "Stephen Schwartz Wahhabism" for his articles on the subject.

Posted by: Mike at December 28, 2004 11:47 AM

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040830fa_fact1

 

That was around the time that she first heard frightening stories about the janjaweed, nomadic Arab bandits who rode on horses and camels, and enriched themselves by stealing livestock and attacking Africans. (“Jaan” means “evil” in Arabic, and “jawad” means “horse”; “janjaweed” means, roughly, “evil horseman.”)

http://election.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/08/60minutes/printable648277.shtml

Sudan ironically is Arabic, meaning "land of the blacks."

Janjaweed, by the way, has a translation, too. It means "evil on horseback."

These guys have a racist ideology that sees the Arab population as the supreme population that would like to see the subjugation of non-Arab peoples," says Prendergast. "They’re criminal racketeers that have been supported very directly by the government to wage the war against the people of Darfur."

Survivors say the attacks usually start at dawn, with bombs falling from planes of the Sudanese Air Force.

"And then here come the Janjaweed on camel or on horseback. They come rolling into the town, shooting and torching the village -- often bringing women to the side and raping women indiscriminately," says Prendergast. "And in order to ensure that the destruction is complete, the government either sends ground forces to oversee the operation, or the attack helicopters, which often are the most deadly things."

One of the things you notice is just how many kids there are, because most of the men are missing or dead. Ninety percent of the refugees are women and children.

"When the Janjaweed come in, and there is interaction between the Janjaweed and the local people, the Janjaweed are shouting ethnic slogans. They are saying, 'You blacks, you Zurga,' sort of like an equivalent of 'nigger.' Get out. You’re slaves. You’re a hyena. Never come back,'" says Power.

"When rape is committed, often the same epithets are issued. 'You’re gonna give birth to a light-skinned child now.' They see their task, those who are racially motivated, as one of purification."

Fifty thousand people have died so far. That’s 50,000 too many.

In the meantime, the World Health Organization estimates another 6,000 people die every month in the Darfur genocide.

Posted by: Informed Christian at December 28, 2004 12:12 PM

I am posting this to clear up the misconception about the black Nuba tribes in Sudan. Islam came recently to them(this book never explained how), but traces of their old religion remain.

... "The Kujur was from a time and a religion before Islam came to the Nuba Mountians. One day, my father told me all about the "old religion." He said that in the time of his father's father, they treated the Kujur as a true Holy Man. If there was anything to decide in the village, they always asked the Kujur first. They believed he was the man through whom the Gods spoke to the Nuba. At this time, there was not one God, but many Gods. The God of the Hills, the God of the Sun, the God of the Moon, the God of the Rain, the God of the Forest and the God of the Wind. Then, Islam came and replaced the old religion, and the Kujur became less important.

"But the old religion had not really been forgotten in our village. One day, when there had been no rain for many weeks, an old woman went around to all the houses announcing that she was going to "talk to the Kujur about the rains." She said that each women should be ready the next morning with a handful of seeds to be blessed by the Kujur. Early the next day, I watched all the old women going to Kujur's house. They spent about two hours there and I could hear the Kujur shouting and mumbling his prayers and his spells. And then, quite suddenly, it started to rain.

"People came running out of their huts and gazed up at the sky in disbelief. Along with other children, I started to play and dance and sing the rain song. I spotted the old women coming out of the Kujur's house. I don't think the old women really wanted to pray to the new God, to Allah. They still believed in the old ways. Having shown the rest of the village that the Kujur could still make it rain, they looked very smug. They walked through the village swinging their big hips and ignoring everyone completely. I was confused. I knew that I was a Muslim and that we did not believe the Kujur or the old religion. But I had now seen proof that the Kujur could make it rain. I went to ask my father for an explanation.

""Ba, did the Kujur really make it rain?"

""Yes, the Kujur's made it rain," my father said, smiling at me. Then he added, "But of course the Kujur could only do this with the help of Allah."

"So while my village was nominally Muslim, in truth both religions coexisted peacefully side-by-side." ...

Nazer, Mende and Damien Lewis. "Slave: My True Story". (Publicaffairs, New York, 2003) 59-61.

This book chronicles the slavery of a black Sudanese Nuba girl. She complained of the Arabs not letting her speak Nuba in school or as a household slave; she complained of the Arabs taking her people's language, but she never complained a word in the book about the Arabs replacing the Nuba's religion with their Islam, she remained a pious muslim.

Posted by: Nikephoros_Phokas at December 28, 2004 12:19 PM

Like the Nuba of Southern Sudan, the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa tribes of Darfur practice a form of Sufism that somewhat incorporates their animist traditions. Little wonder this is viewed as heretical by the puritannical Wahhabis in Khartoum.

Posted by: Mike at December 28, 2004 2:24 PM

THE "REAL" WAHHABI MYTH

 I read with some concern the messages posted here (1,
2)
by Mike.

 While I would agree that Wahhabism is a virulent form of the
disease, Sufism nevertheless is still the disease and this disease
is fatal whether in milder or virulent forms.

So let us not make spurious and false distinction between mild and aggresive
forms of the disease for now.

The important thing is that it is the disease and that it
is fatal.

Let us just think of it as LETHAL / NON-LETHAL.

 

This is what I call the "Real" Wahhabi Myth.

The "Wahhabi Myth" is what apologists (defenders) of Wahhabism 
label those who accuse it of being an extremist sect.

The "real" Wahabbi Myth is the argument that Wahhabism is
an aberration of "True" Islam, the religion of peace.

This is the real myth. It is the same as the "MODERATE MUSLIM MYTH"
which claim that there are these fictitious "moderate" muslims who
are good and are not intolerant.

These are all false distinctions.

Wahhabi / Non-Wahhabi

Moderate / Extremist

 

There is really only one distinction that is real and important for
now and that is

Muhammadeanism cult (including its deliberate or unwitting supporters)

and

The Rest.

 

There are Muhammadeans (Muslims) and then there are the Rest.

Just because there are infightings among them don't change the fact
that they are all Muhammadeans.

 

 

 

On the subject of Sufism being a heterodoxy, I would agree with the
Wahhabis and say that it is indeed a heresy. I do not believe that
the Muhammadean (Islamic) religious texts supports it doctrines (from what
little of Sufism that I currently know of).

 

Posted by: Informed Christian at December 28, 2004 3:33 PM

Cool petition, I just signed. Is this being passed anywhere else? The UN is pretty dense in the noggin', and they won't do anything without thousands and thousands of names.

Just a thought.

Posted by: DCWatson at December 28, 2004 9:13 PM

Abu Khawla suggests that pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism are opposed to each other. But surely the first is simply a subset of the other, and arose at a time when pan-Arabism was dream enough; pan-Islamism simply an impossiblity. OPEC oil money has changed all that -- or at least the perception.

In any case, Islam has always been a vehicle for Arab imperialism. Anwar Sheikh, V. S. Naipaul, Ali Sina, and Ibn Warraq have all pointed this out. Franck Salameh, who has written a doctoral thesis on the use of Arabic as an instrument of "arabization" -- a way of convincing Arabic-users (and until this century, and Ataturk's Qur'an in Turkish, no one read it in a language other than Arabic) that they were Arabs, and should forget any other non-Arab past which might once have meant something to them.

Despite all the rhetoric about the universalism of Islam, complaints about the Arab indifference or hatred of non-Arab customs and cultures are not infrequent -- google "Malaysian intellectual" and "Arab culture" and "Jihadwatch" and see what comes up. Everywhere that Arabs have come into contact with non-Arab Muslims, they have not hesitated to prohibit the culture of those non-Arabs, or to persecute or kill them. The suppression of Berber culture, the attempt to forbid the use of the Berber language, has caused great anguish in the Kabyle region of Algeria; the Berber writer Kateb Yacine was scathing about the Arabs and their policy of forced arabization. The Kurds were murdered in great numbers by Iraqi Arabs -- what ought to have been noted was not only the complete indifference of the Arabs of Iraq to this (and their participation in taking over former Kurdish lands), but the indifference of every Arab outside Iraq, and of the Arab League itself, which did not utter a single syllable about the massacre of Kurds.

In Afghanistan, the "Arabs" of Al Qaeda lorded it over the local Afghans -- treating them as entirely expendable, and certainly of a lower order than the Arabs.

And this is not surprising. For the Sunna -- the customs and ways of 7th century Arabs, or rather of Muhammad and his Companions -- makes up, with the Qur'an, the entire model of behavior, the compleat guide, for all Muslims. You must read the Qur'an in Arabic, even if you cannot understand it. Ideally, you will take an Arabic name -- whether you are Chinese from Xinjiang, or Pakistani from Karachi. Arabness is better than anything else; for the Arabs are the "best people," in whose language the Qur'an was revealed.

When the Infidel world realizes that this resentment of non-Arab by Arab, based on real Arab attitudes of domination and superiority, can be exploited so as to split the Muslim world, a great advance will have been made. One wonders just how long that obvious means of dividing the adherents of this dangerous belief-system will take to be recognized, and acted upon -- one more reason to end, within the next few months, the Light-Unto-the-Muslim Nations Project in Iraq that has now become such a waste, and such a diversion, and such a threat to American military morale (for to the extent that the soldiers think, they cannot remain unaware of just how much hostility is directed at them merely for being infidels, a hostility that cannot diminish even if American largesse and good works are pocketed (glumly, begrudgingly, as if by entitlement).

Posted by: Hugh at December 28, 2004 10:19 PM

I fear this will be a bit OT.

Mike: I signed the petition.

As for Wahhabism and Sufi'ism, I can't understand why anyone thinks Sufi'ism is "pacific". Sufi orders like the Naqshbandi, Qadariyya and others were at the heart of resistence to both the Tsars and Soviets in the Caucasus and Central Asia; to the Chinese along the Silk Route; and against the Spanish, USA, and independent Philippines in Mindanao.

Of course, in Christianity, a Quaker pacifist is only a violent Leveller or Ranter who got the worst of a run-in with Cromwell's Ironsides.

Hugh: The slight majority of the Xinjiang population is not "Chinese" in the sense of descending from the ancient Hua-Xia cultures of the North China Plain and Wei Valley. A slight majority of Xinjiang people are Turkic and Muslim. The region also has speakers of East Iranian languages in its SW corner; Mongol and Tuvin Lama Buddhists in the north; and Hui (Chinese-using Muslims) scattered all over. The ethnic differences from "China Proper" are among the reasons why Islamic dissent in Xinjiang has taken on a strongly separatist cast, while Muslim dissent in places like Henan, Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan, Beijing, Tianjin, and Guilin tends to seek greater religious liberty inside China. Under the Republic before 1949, there was a strong Chinese patriotism among the Hui, which continued to mark Hui relocated to Taiwan.
Chiang's government estimated China's population to be around 10% Muslim (ranging, however, from Arab wannabes in almost purely Muslim villages in the NW to people who didn't offer pork to their ancestors), and during the 1950's and '60's regularly accused the Communists of an anti-Muslim "genocide" when population figures showed a much lower Muslim aggregate calculated from ethnic groups historically Muslim. One problem in such counting is that many Chinese Muslims considered themselves of "Han" (Chinese majority group) ethnicity, but Muslim by religion (i.e., if the Christians and Buddhists aren't a separate ethnic group due to the foreign origins of their religions, Muslims shouldn't see themselves as such, either).

The Turkic peoples of Xinjiang, however, have generally seen themselves as something separate from China; and under the Qing, thought of themselves as more tributary than integral to the Empire. In the 1940's, when the Nationalist government was weak, they had an unrecognized Eastern Turkistan Republic (Sharki Turkistan), which was destroyed by the collaboration of Stalin and Mao.

Posted by: Kepha1 at December 28, 2004 11:43 PM

It is not only the Arabs that supress other cultures (non-Arab) cultures. The Turks do it too. It was only a few years ago that the ban on Kurdish language was lifted. However the Kurds are not so good themselves either though.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/17/weu117.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/17/ixnewstop.html

"The Kurds, who make up a fifth of Turkey's population of 70 million, are being permitted for the first time to learn their long-banned language at private courses launched across the region this year."

The Kurds maybe the victims this time around but if the situation were to be reversed they would probably be worst.

"But travel further east into the heavily Kurdish hinterland and a starkly different Turkey begins to emerge.

Nearly 40 per cent of women are illiterate and dozens are murdered by male relatives each year for "dishonouring" their families with such crimes as leaving home unaccompanied.

One marriage in 10 is polygamous, even though polygamy is banned, and a 15-year separatist rebellion has left a trail of destruction and death.

Stretching across a third of the country and bordering Syria, Iraq and Iran, Turkey's Kurdish region is very poor and deeply conservative."

"very poor and deeply conservative (Muhammadean)" goes hand in hand.

Posted by: Informed Christian at December 29, 2004 12:19 AM

It is not only the Arabs that supress other cultures (non-Arab) cultures. The Turks do it too. It was only a few years ago that the ban on Kurdish language was lifted. However the Kurds are not so good themselves either though.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/12/17/weu117.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/12/17/ixnewstop.html

"The Kurds, who make up a fifth of Turkey's population of 70 million, are being permitted for the first time to learn their long-banned language at private courses launched across the region this year."

The Kurds maybe the victims this time around but if the situation were to be reversed they would probably be worst.

"But travel further east into the heavily Kurdish hinterland and a starkly different Turkey begins to emerge.

Nearly 40 per cent of women are illiterate and dozens are murdered by male relatives each year for "dishonouring" their families with such crimes as leaving home unaccompanied.

One marriage in 10 is polygamous, even though polygamy is banned, and a 15-year separatist rebellion has left a trail of destruction and death.

Stretching across a third of the country and bordering Syria, Iraq and Iran, Turkey's Kurdish region is very poor and deeply conservative."

"very poor and deeply conservative (Muhammadean)" goes hand in hand.

Posted by: Informed Christian at December 29, 2004 12:22 AM

Informed Christian & Kepha-
Please note that my posts are intended to point out how Omar al-Bashir & Co. rationalize and legitimize the genocide of Darfuri muslims - nowhere do I make any value judgements concerning Sufism or its adherents.

Posted by: Mike at December 29, 2004 12:31 PM

Mike wrote here, in reply to what I wrote earlier, the following

"Informed Christian & Kepha-
Please note that my posts are intended to point out how Omar al-Bashir & Co. rationalize and legitimize the genocide of Darfuri muslims - nowhere do I make any value judgements concerning Sufism or its adherents."

Posted by: Mike at December 29, 2004 12:31 PM

I would like to point out Mike that nowhere did I allege that you made "any value judgements concerning Sufism or its adherents."

All I said was that I read "with some concern", precisely because you did not make any so-called "value judgements concerning Sufism or its adherents."

Since you did not make any "value judgements", in a way, it made it seems as though you were propagating the "REAL WAHHABI MYTH", (i.e. that only the Wahhabis were bad and that the Sufis and the rest of Muhammadeans were "good.")

That was my concern and I was pointing that out there when I worte that.

Having read your article here, I now have an additional conern since you used the words "value judgements." It is very disturbing to here such language since it used almost exclusively by self-contradicting post-modern relativists, who go around preaching that everything is "relative" while at the same time claiming thir relativism to be absolute (i.e. not relative itself). I hope you are not one of those people.

Posted by: Informed Christian at December 30, 2004 12:02 PM