Post by Mecca on May 6, 2005 16:56:20 GMT -5
Ethnic cleansing of black Muslims by Arabs
By Iqbal Latif
The gross hypocrisy resident within mainstream mores of Islamic polity has led the nation of Islam into a collective rage of vanity and powerlessness. The enemy within is rarely found to be the culprit
We are silent spectators today of the demise of a vision of true egalitarianism and fraternity enjoined by Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in his famous Last Sermon.
“O People,” the prophet (pbuh) had said, “just as you regard as sacred this month and this day [the day of Hajj] and this city [Mecca], so, too, regard the life and property of every Muslim. All mankind is [descended] from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab. A white man has no superiority over black nor a black over white, except on account of piety and good deeds.”
Sudan, the latest tragedy that the world has woken up to, has long been a witness to tensions over water and farmland between nomadic Arab tribes and their African neighbours. It is a conflict between Muslims but the manner of its conduct has brought ignominy to the Islamic world.
Dotted alongside the charred Sudanese locations are unharmed, populated and functioning Arab settlements. In some locations, the distance between a destroyed Fur (black Muslim) settlement and an Arab village is less than 500 metres. The Arab killers and rapists in Darfur are Muslims. So are the victims — black African farmers. The Arabs have displayed a shocking reluctance to act in defence of non-Arab Muslims. They clearly consider the fate of the non-Arab Muslims as peripheral to the cause of Arab nationalism.
In Bosnia, too, where the Serbian minority rapidly gained the upper hand against the majority Muslims, thanks to arms supplied mainly by the government of neighbouring Serbia, significant humanitarian and military support to the Bosnian Muslims had come from non-governmental organisations and individuals in the Arab world. Arab politicians and governments, meanwhile, had maintained their cosy ties with Serbia. They viewed Miloševic not as the mastermind behind the cold-blooded massacre of 7,000 Muslim men in Saberenica but the saviour of the crumbling Yugoslav republic. The steady flow of Yugoslav arms to the Arab world was seen to be of greater importance than the fate of distant Muslims in the far-away Balkan region.
Today the Arab press is hysterical over civilian casualties in Iraq but simply ignores the genocide of Muslim population in Sudan. Is it because in this case it is Arab northerners who are systematically wiping out the black Muslims in the Darfur region? Whilst the Arab press affirms its nationalism and hatred for America, with headlines such as “America will pay the price sooner than it thinks. There are no limits to American injustice and highhandedness. Despite its power and tyranny America will not win because it has no humanitarian values,” one wonders why nobody condemned Saddam for 5,000 dead in a single day in the chemical attack on Halebja, or Assad, or 30,000 killed in Hama?
Some Arab governments — as well of their press and the public — have expressed great outrage against the United States for human rights violations in Iraq. Should they not first practice moral judgment on themselves and each other? Before they speak about an intimidating new-fangled colonialism, they should first show that they are competent to govern themselves by some means other than torment and carnage. While the Muslim world has suffered, they have blamed everyone but themselves. This state of denial and extreme ‘hypocrisy’ ill-equips Muslims to deal with problems of endemic terrorism.
The gross hypocrisy resident within mainstream mores of Islamic polity has led the nation of Islam into a collective rage of vanity and powerlessness. The enemy within is rarely ever found to be the culprit. There is no moral equivalence of crimes against humanity.
To rub salt in the victims’ wounds, the Arab League has issued a statement “reaffirming the ‘Arab states solidarity with the sisterly Republic of Sudan and their keenness to preserve its territorial integrity and sovereignty and reinforce all peace initiatives started by the Sudanese government with the international and regional parties’”. To express support for a government that is widely seen as the instigator is not only disappointing, it is true to form for these ‘Islamic’ regimes.
While we loudly condemn Israel, why are we hushed in our denunciations of Islamic regimes that slaughter thousands of Muslims? Does any League care about the black Muslims being slaughtered?
The current cycle of horror and devastation in Sudan continues to prompt more concern in Western countries than in the Arab world. Sudan was recently elected to serve a three-year term on the United Nations Human Rights Commission — a reward possibly for its government’s active support to the Arab Janjaweed militia’s efforts to make Darfur “Zurga-free”. The militia have been massacring the fleeing population, sparing no man, woman or child. The Arab militant’s quest to rid Darfur of the darker-skinned population is in every respect a throwback to systematic ethnic cleansing.
While none of the Muslim parliaments have denounced the massacre, the United States Congress has declared that the killings amount to genocide and urged President Bush to call the situation in Sudan “by its rightful name”. America’s willingness to stand up to the injustice in Bosnia, Kosovo and now Darfur is in sharp contrast to the reluctance of the Arab world to stand up and show solidarity with non-Arab Muslims.
One reads so often in the press that the plight of Muslims is aggravated by ‘vicious’ US meddling in their affairs. We are told that it is this unwelcome interference that prompts radical Muslim violence of which both America and Islam have been recent victims. Really? This is what makes “Rip Van Winkle of a nation” an apt description of the Islamic community.
Iqbal Latif is an international businessman
Source: www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-8-2004_pg3_5
By Iqbal Latif
The gross hypocrisy resident within mainstream mores of Islamic polity has led the nation of Islam into a collective rage of vanity and powerlessness. The enemy within is rarely found to be the culprit
We are silent spectators today of the demise of a vision of true egalitarianism and fraternity enjoined by Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in his famous Last Sermon.
“O People,” the prophet (pbuh) had said, “just as you regard as sacred this month and this day [the day of Hajj] and this city [Mecca], so, too, regard the life and property of every Muslim. All mankind is [descended] from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab. A white man has no superiority over black nor a black over white, except on account of piety and good deeds.”
Sudan, the latest tragedy that the world has woken up to, has long been a witness to tensions over water and farmland between nomadic Arab tribes and their African neighbours. It is a conflict between Muslims but the manner of its conduct has brought ignominy to the Islamic world.
Dotted alongside the charred Sudanese locations are unharmed, populated and functioning Arab settlements. In some locations, the distance between a destroyed Fur (black Muslim) settlement and an Arab village is less than 500 metres. The Arab killers and rapists in Darfur are Muslims. So are the victims — black African farmers. The Arabs have displayed a shocking reluctance to act in defence of non-Arab Muslims. They clearly consider the fate of the non-Arab Muslims as peripheral to the cause of Arab nationalism.
In Bosnia, too, where the Serbian minority rapidly gained the upper hand against the majority Muslims, thanks to arms supplied mainly by the government of neighbouring Serbia, significant humanitarian and military support to the Bosnian Muslims had come from non-governmental organisations and individuals in the Arab world. Arab politicians and governments, meanwhile, had maintained their cosy ties with Serbia. They viewed Miloševic not as the mastermind behind the cold-blooded massacre of 7,000 Muslim men in Saberenica but the saviour of the crumbling Yugoslav republic. The steady flow of Yugoslav arms to the Arab world was seen to be of greater importance than the fate of distant Muslims in the far-away Balkan region.
Today the Arab press is hysterical over civilian casualties in Iraq but simply ignores the genocide of Muslim population in Sudan. Is it because in this case it is Arab northerners who are systematically wiping out the black Muslims in the Darfur region? Whilst the Arab press affirms its nationalism and hatred for America, with headlines such as “America will pay the price sooner than it thinks. There are no limits to American injustice and highhandedness. Despite its power and tyranny America will not win because it has no humanitarian values,” one wonders why nobody condemned Saddam for 5,000 dead in a single day in the chemical attack on Halebja, or Assad, or 30,000 killed in Hama?
Some Arab governments — as well of their press and the public — have expressed great outrage against the United States for human rights violations in Iraq. Should they not first practice moral judgment on themselves and each other? Before they speak about an intimidating new-fangled colonialism, they should first show that they are competent to govern themselves by some means other than torment and carnage. While the Muslim world has suffered, they have blamed everyone but themselves. This state of denial and extreme ‘hypocrisy’ ill-equips Muslims to deal with problems of endemic terrorism.
The gross hypocrisy resident within mainstream mores of Islamic polity has led the nation of Islam into a collective rage of vanity and powerlessness. The enemy within is rarely ever found to be the culprit. There is no moral equivalence of crimes against humanity.
To rub salt in the victims’ wounds, the Arab League has issued a statement “reaffirming the ‘Arab states solidarity with the sisterly Republic of Sudan and their keenness to preserve its territorial integrity and sovereignty and reinforce all peace initiatives started by the Sudanese government with the international and regional parties’”. To express support for a government that is widely seen as the instigator is not only disappointing, it is true to form for these ‘Islamic’ regimes.
While we loudly condemn Israel, why are we hushed in our denunciations of Islamic regimes that slaughter thousands of Muslims? Does any League care about the black Muslims being slaughtered?
The current cycle of horror and devastation in Sudan continues to prompt more concern in Western countries than in the Arab world. Sudan was recently elected to serve a three-year term on the United Nations Human Rights Commission — a reward possibly for its government’s active support to the Arab Janjaweed militia’s efforts to make Darfur “Zurga-free”. The militia have been massacring the fleeing population, sparing no man, woman or child. The Arab militant’s quest to rid Darfur of the darker-skinned population is in every respect a throwback to systematic ethnic cleansing.
While none of the Muslim parliaments have denounced the massacre, the United States Congress has declared that the killings amount to genocide and urged President Bush to call the situation in Sudan “by its rightful name”. America’s willingness to stand up to the injustice in Bosnia, Kosovo and now Darfur is in sharp contrast to the reluctance of the Arab world to stand up and show solidarity with non-Arab Muslims.
One reads so often in the press that the plight of Muslims is aggravated by ‘vicious’ US meddling in their affairs. We are told that it is this unwelcome interference that prompts radical Muslim violence of which both America and Islam have been recent victims. Really? This is what makes “Rip Van Winkle of a nation” an apt description of the Islamic community.
Iqbal Latif is an international businessman
Source: www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-8-2004_pg3_5