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Islam is, for all its universalist claims, inherently Arab: prayers must be said in Arabic, the Qur'an must be recited in Arabic, etc. Throughout Islamic history this has created tensions among non-Arab Muslims who find that with this Arabic character of Islam inevitably comes an Arabization of their culture. Note also here the information about the persistence of slavery. A press release from Newswire, with thanks to Twostellas:
African Muslim Groups Protest Arab Rule, Expansion in Africa; Demonstration to Protest the visit of Mauritanian PresidentDemonstration to protest the visit of Mauritanian President
Maaouya Ould TayaWhen: Tuesday, April 5, from 1 PM to 3 PM EDT Where: In front of The State
Department, 2201 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. Details:African Muslims from Mauritania and Sudan are joining to protest the visit to the State Department of Ould Taya, Arab leader of Mauritania, an African country ruled and brutally controlled by Arab regimes. Taya is coming to United States to arrange oil trading with the Bush Administration. This protest builds on the growing cooperation of African Muslims from Sudan and Mauritania to protest Arab colonialism, slaughter and enslavement of black Africans.
Mansour Kane, a Mauritanian Muslim of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Mauritania, said, "Ould Taya's hands are dirty with the blood of thousands of non-Arab black people in Mauritania."
Mamadou Barry, of the African Liberation Forces, said two of the slogans of the demonstration will be, "No Arab expansionism in Africa," and "Stop the genocide in Darfur."
Kane said, "The Arabs enslaved blacks in my country hundreds of years ago. Today they still have Black Muslim slaves by the tens of thousands, and they are pushing the free Blacks off our land in the south."
Barry said, "Just like happened to our people hundreds of years ago, African Muslims in Western Sudan's Darfur region are being slaughtered and enslaved by Arab militia armed by the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum. We stand and fight with them."
Posted by Robert at April 4, 2005 8:03 AM
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I am happy to see these black Muslims finally speaking out, but one has to wonder why they remain Muslim.
Wonder what kind of response will be heard from the usual suspects -- CAIR, International ANSWER, etc.
Posted by: waterdragon52![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 4, 2005 12:41 PM
Gee, I thought this didn't happen and all - or at least that the US was the only country that ever used slaves. A shocker, yep, that's what it is, a reeeeeall shocker.
Geoff
Posted by: Geoff at April 4, 2005 1:17 PM
All Ould Taya need do is quote Mohammad to these protesting Black African Muslims, and tell them that "even though their heads are like raisins" they are still welcome to submit to the will of Arab Muslim invaders and their violent desert prophet.
That should mollify them.
Posted by: BigSleep at April 4, 2005 6:25 PM
This is very good. Fissures and resentments within Islam should be encouraged. Besides, those who resent the Arab supremacist ideology within Islam happen to merely be recongizing the truth -- there is such an ideology. Look at Darfur, where the attack is on "inferior" -- because non-Arab and black African -- Muslims.
Not a syllable of protest was uttered by any member of the Arab League when Arabs in Iraq murdered 182,000 Kurds. Not a syllable of protest either, about the denial (until just the other day) of cultural and linguistic rights to the Berbers in Algeria, punished even for speaking Tamazight.
No wonder that it is among the "Kabyles" -- the Berbers -- in France that one finds a higher percentage of apostasy than among the Arabs. In Indonesia, at some point, resentments over the hideous treatment of Indonesian domestic workers in Arab oil states could be made much of, and if enough people in Indonesia recognized the need to split off from Arab Islam, or even to create the conditions in which Islam itself have its image damaged -- in a kind of Ataturkism that relies on changes in public perception -- this could be helpful.
And then, of course, there is Iran. Let the fury at the Islamic Republic not be limited, but directed at Islam as the primitive "gift" of the "primitive" Arabs, a Trojan horse that helped bring Persian civilization lower. Emphasize how many Persian writers wrote about non-Islamic themes (wine, women, song), and how many helped prevent the linguistic imperialism of the Arabs (Firdowsi). Make the embrace of Zoroastrianism, unlikely as it may seem, become a fashionable alternative -- a statement of nationalism, that permits and even encourages the abandonment of Islam.
While many of the important figures in high Islamic civilization were Christians and Jews, some were Persian, a few from Central Asia, and a very few Arabs. Let that be emphasized. And Persian and Indo-Persian achievements -- such as miniature paintings -- were the result not of observing Islam, but of ignoring the rules of Islam.
And then, of course, there is the Sunni-Shi'a fissure that might, in Iraq, instead of being tamped down, be allowed to widen. To create a permanent split, running through Iraq, with Iran on one side and the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia, and the smaller Gulf states (with their own Shi'a populations), and Jordan, on the other --- what could be more useful?
Why are Ameridan soldiers risking their lives to make for a new improved altogether wonderful Iraq? Why are hundreds of billions of dollars, at a time when the price of oil, from which Iraq derives its own revenues, is soaring -- going from American taxpayers to pay for this by-now simple-minded and silly adventure, for which the costs are headed skyward while the benefits head below? A little hardheadness, a little cunning, at this point would be nice.
Posted by: Hugh at April 4, 2005 8:39 PM
What's perplexing is that half of the Muslims in the US are black Muslims (thanks to Malcom X). They converted in reaction to slavery under the white man, and of course a justifiable reaction, to their treatment by whites (even to the present).
But the history of black enslavement by Arabs has been a void, even to the present. Such as 21st Century African Slaves in Islam
In fact the slave traders in Africa were black Muslims, like those in Nigeria, who (still) practise slavery.
Blacks who return to their "motherland" and discover this reality are to put it mildly quite shocked.
Islam is racist to the core (Arab supremacy is it's core ideology, and Arabs are the chosen people because they were "selected" above all others to receive the Qur'an, so the ideology goes).
It is understandable how blacks could reject the white man's god, as they perceive it, but it is incomprehensible how they can accept the god of those who enslaved and enslave them.
I wonder if American Black Muslims know the truth of the history of enslavement by Arabs and Muslims, and if they do how do they handle their cognitive dissonance.
BTW Hugh, Iraq is pumping very little oil these days, thanks to sabotage by the Ba'athists and Wahhabi Jihadis. Check out Pipeline Watch
However OPEC, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, EXXON, Texaco,BP, and of course Haliburton (Cheney's firm) which received no bid contracts (on which they have overbilled and bilked the taxpayer) are cleaning up. And the pimpleheaded Americans are being taken for a ride.
I
Posted by: Giaour at April 4, 2005 9:56 PM
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