by yellarebbi
Like in the case of pedophilia-pederasty the practice of torture is widespread in the muslim world even in the most secular nations such as Turkey where the torture of kurdish prisoners is well documented.
Some so-called ‘moderate muslims’ protest that islamist groups such as GIA (Algeria) Janjiweed (Sudan), Taliban(Afghanistan) OR Iraqi alqaida who commited massacres of innocents, using the most abominable methods of torture and mutilation, do not represent true islam which is,according to them, a religion of peace, compassion and love. I am afraid I have to say that it is they (‘’the moderate muslams’’) who are false muslims because they do not follow the example of their prophet who was an examplar toruturer and mass murderer.the islamists who commited such horrendous acts of torture and mutilation follow the example of the prophet muhammad and his companions as layed down in his Sira,Hadith and the Koran.
someone may ask me here about France and her systematic use of torture during the algerian war. I would reply that I have no doubts that the french army officers were heavily influenced by the local islamic tradition.
therefore, as in the cases of pederasty-pedophilia and murder-assassination of artists the origins of this practice lie in the conduct of Muhammad himself, the ‘’compassionate’’ prophet of Allah the ‘’Merciful’’.
Besides being a pedophile, an ethnic cleanser, an assassin-murderer of poets and artists , muhammad was also a torturer no different from any islamic dictator-torturer of today’s islamic and arabic countries.
There are many koranic verses which call for torture of prisoners . among them I cite:
‘’strike off every fingertip of them.’’On the fingertips and underneath the nails are nerve ends that transmit extreme pain , which makes this torture technique a favorite among the torturers.
Praise and thanks are due to Allah-Muhammad for having been the first to have discovered and used this technique!!!!!
Another verse:
Koran 5:34:
“slay , crucify and cut the hands and feet of the captive-unbelievers..."
And there are many cases where Muhammad ordered prisoners to be crucified and dismembered in his presence, such as this one recounted in Sahih Bukhari
Volume 1, Book 4, Number 234:
Anas said, "Some people of 'Ukl or 'Uraina tribe…killed the shepherd of the Prophet and stole away all his camels. The news reached the Prophet early in the morning and he sent his men in their pursuit and they were captured and brought at noon. He then ordered to have their hands and feet cut off , and then have their eyes branded with heated pieces of iron,
They were put in an a ditch and when they asked for water, no water was given and they died a very painful slow death."
There is also the case a Jewish prisoner on the Kinana bin al-Rabi3 who was tortured to death under the orders of muhammad , as recounted in Sira of ibn Ishaq(muhammad’s biography by ibn ishaq):
‘’Kinana bin al-Rabi3, who had the custody of the treasure of Bani al-Nadir, was brought to the apostle who asked him about it. He denied that he knew where it was. A Jew came (T. was brought) to the apostle and said that he had seen Kinana going round a certain ruin every morning early. When the apostle said to Kinana, "Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?" he said Yes. The apostle gave orders that the ruin was to be excavated and some of the treasure was found. When he asked him about the rest he refused to produce it, so the apostle gave orders to al-Zubayr b. al-`Awwam, "Torture him until you extract what he has," so he kindled a fire with flint and steel on his chest until he was nearly dead. Then the apostle delivered him to Muhammad b. Maslama and he struck off his head, in revenge for his brother Mahmud. ‘’(Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, translated as, The Life of Muhammad, (tr. A. Guillaume), Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 515.)
Probably the most known form of ritual islamic torture is the islamic stoning . Muhammad himself stoned with his own hands many women and men . among the stoning hadiths suffice to cite the following:
Boukahri Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413:
Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar :
the Prophet once ordered a man and a woman who have committed sexual intercourse to be stoned to death ,..."
The foregoing is very embarassing to today’s muslim scholars, that is why you never find a mention of it in their writings , and the majority of muslims are still uneware of this dark side of their ‘’compassionate’’ prophet of their god, Allah the ‘’Merciful’’.
http://www.kabylia.info/muhammad-islam-torture/muhammad-torturer
Posted Sat, 08/29/2009 - 15:34 by yellarebbi
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
Hugh Fitzgerald: The Arabs, The Berbers & Africa
From New English Review, comes the following article:
The Arabs, The Berbers & Africa
by Hugh Fitzgerald
It is no mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers are concentrated, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs." (How many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?)
The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in Arabic, but chose French, is celebrated in France, especially among Berbers -- but unknown in this country, and his anti-Arab rage is not likely to cause his books to be included in the syllabuses of courses on "Francophone" literature given that so many such courses are now taught by French-speaking Arabs.
What is that cause? In the first place, it is linguistic and cultural. In Algeria, where the French rightly saw the Berbers as superior to the Arabs -- one French general wrote a book about the "Europeanness" of the Berbers -- the Berbers were not discriminated against, but as soon as the French left, the forced arabisation of the Berbers started up at once, as if the French interregnum, with the wider possibilities that French education made possible to both Berbers and Arabs, had never existed. Older people in Algeria speak and use French; the younger ones are forgetting. And meanwhile, the Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, Tamazight, in their schools or in their institutions, and even, at times, they could be punished for using it among themselves, on the street. Berber culture was officially ignored.
About twenty years ago, news of agitation began to reach the outside world. There were riots in Tizi-Ouzou that were reported in France, but hardly anywhere else in the Western world. In America, of course, we had all been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO propaganda (performed as a "public service" by the big oil companies, as part of their propaganda payoff to the Saudis for allowing them to find, produce, and then pay exorbitantly for the oil that happens to lie under the malevolent sands of "Saudi" Arabia), to believe that there is something called "the Arab world" and in this "Arab world" there are no Copts, no Armenians, no Assyrians, no Chaldeans, no Turkmen, no Mandeans, no Maronites, and of course no Berbers, no Jews (no, there never were any Jews in North Africa or the Middle East -- they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe), for everyone in the Arab world was an "Arab."
The discovery or re-discovery of a Berber identity (and how many of those North African "Arabs" should begin to realize that they are Berbers?) is or could be an important weapon in unsettling the world of Islam, and perhaps causing the Maghreb to see itself, as it should not as "Arab" but as the victim of Arab imperialism.
For what is Islam if not a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and what are the Berbers, if not the victims of that Arab imperialism, an imperialism far more potent and long-lasting than the European kind, for it attempts to efface the historic identity of whole peoples?
And it makes perfect sense that Berbers in the Kabyle would, having felt along their pulses the Arab imperialism of which Islam is the vehicle, would be more open to the efforts of Christian missionaries, or more likely, are not so much responding to missionary activity, but to their own observations as to what Christianity is like, and what Islam has brought them.
In this respect, one should not underestimate the fact that Berbers now live in France, that they make up most of the membership of such groups as the "maghrebins laiques," and that they, not the Arabs whose ethnic identity is so bound up with Islam, are capable, in some cases, not of identifying with the Arabs, but more closely with the French. And those Berbers communicate with Berbers at home, or through the Internet. And sometimes they return, to Algeria and Morocco, to see their families, and bring with them their own observations on the relative merits of the Islamic world, a world suffused with Islam, and the non-Islamic world, the one they have experienced in France.
The more the non-Arab Muslims of the world, and 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arab, come to realize -- and it would not be hard to help them to realize, for they will not be able to deny the facts, having experienced so much of it themselves -- that Islam is a vehicle for that Arab supremacism, the more likely it is that at least some of them will fall away. And others, who may stick with a kind of "non-Arab" Islam (as if such were possible) will, in so doing, at least help to divide, and therefore to weaken, the Camp of Islam.
Ideally, one would wish this Total System, that has held so many hundreds of millions in thrall, and thwarted over so many centuries so much human potential (think of the art, think of the science, that might have resulted in the absence of the dead hand of Islam on so many people, prevented from so many forms of artistic expression, so many avenues for free and skeptical inquiry that are necessary for the enterprise of science, so much dull fanaticism, so much boredom, so much violence, in posse and in esse) will be seen, by Berbers, by Kurds, by people in the subcontinent (why should Muslims in India not "rediscover" their own history, their Hindu, or Buddhist, or other non-Muslim roots?), by those in Malaysia and the East Indies, with its rich pre-Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist past?
Meanwhile, start reading those Berber sites. And hope that the French state, instead of Sarkozy's folly of "integrating" its Muslims by government-supported mosques, will try to work on the Berbers, work to make them see the light, work to help them to achieve their own destiny, one different from, and superior to, that of the Arabs whose method of domination comes from, is supplied by, Islam, Islam, Islam.
We should help those in North Africa (and in France) who know, are well aware, of their Berber identity. And they will point out, in the ways that they think most effective, that many of those "Arabs" are in fact one or two or five generations away from being Berbers. DNA is coming to the rescue. There is a genetic marker that, in studies by French geneticists in Tunisia, shows that Berbers and Arabs can be easily distinguished. Some who proudly identify themselves as "Arabs" will resist. But others may listen. And as they recognize the violence, the "culture of death" of Islam, as in Algeria, perhaps those who wish to make a break from Islam, and recognize that such a break is hardest of all for Arabs, and that another identity needs to be accepted, invented, believed in, will manage to discover, and embrace, their Berber "roots."
It seems fanciful, just as it seems fanciful that Iranians, those who are not merely disgusted with the mullahs running things, but are coming to be disgusted with Islam -- that "gift of the Arabs" --- itself, may wish to rediscover Zoroastrianism. Not because of any particular wonderfulness in what Zoroastrianism has to offer, but simply because it offers another identity (see Bernard Lewis's excellent "The Multiple Identities of the Middle East"), in a part of the world, and among people, who believe that "everyone simply has to be something." And that "something" cannot be, as it is in the advanced West, a collection of ideas or ideals -- as an American might define himself as loyal to the American Constitution, and wishing to defend the political and legal institutions of this country, fortunately fashioned by an inimitable group of geniuses, and fortunately, not yet made complete hash even by those who embody the degradation of the democratic dogma.
Many Frenchmen wrote about the differences they perceived between Arabs and Berbers. French photographers routinely took pictures of Berbers in their Berber dress; the Arabs were much less willing. French military men wrote about the Berbers as "un peuple europeen."
Some Berbers came not to resist their definition as "Arabs" the way some Copts and Maronites have had a false "Arab identity" pushed on them, or have semi-accepted it, an "identity" constructed out of nothing more than the fact that they are speakers, "users," of Arabic, and may have Arabic names forced on them over time. Indeed, there are differences between Arabs who have become Christians (as a few did in the 19th and early 20th centuries) and those Arabic-using Christians -- Maronites, Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeans -- who are not Arabs, but some of whom have, in order to survive in an ever-threatening Muslim sea, had to find their role as "Arabs" or even, in the manner of the Christian Syrian Michel Aflaq (one of the founders of Ba'athism), hyper-Arabs, as promoters of an Arab identity, pan-Arabism, the whole works -- as an alternative to Islam (they were fooling themselves, because pan-Arabism for Muslim Arabs was never a real alternative to Islam, but merely a temporary goal, a subset, of the goal of a reunified Muslim world).
Not every ill that befell the non-Muslims in the Muslim world, or non-Arabs in the Muslim Arab world, can be attributed to colonial powers. There were French then, during the time of the "presence francaise" that brought schools, hospitals, modern agriculture, and other elements of modern civilization, to North Africa (in Morocco and Tunisia, over about half-a-century; in Algeria, over a 132-year period) who were quite capable of distinguishing Berbers from Arabs, and it was not their pressure that caused some Berbers to forget their own identity, any more than it was France as the guarantor of the Christians in Lebanon and Syria who caused some to make themselves hyper-Arabs. Aflaq founded the Ba'ath party with two associates not when the French seemed to be there to stay, but when it was clear that they would, in a few years, be leaving.
Aflaq's "Ba'athism" came to dominate only two countries, and for two similar reasons. The first was Syria, with a large Christian population, and with a powerful military caste, the Alawites, who were not regarded as orthodox Muslims, were indeed disliked by orthodox Muslims for the obvious elements of syncretism in their worship (go to an Alawite village and see the pictures of Mary everywhere), Alawites who had been miserable under the Turkish rule but under that of the French formed part of the Troupes speciales, and were trained to fight, and when the French left, the Alawites remained in the army, and the air force (Hafez al-Assad) and gradually took over, in the way that people or groups always take over in the Muslim Middle East -- through the application, or threat, of military force. In Syria Ba'athism disguises, is the facade, for the rule by the Alawites.
In Iraq, Ba'athism took a different turn. There, the Sunnis knew that they were numerically far inferior to the Shi'a, but they were put in control of modern Iraq, by the British, and never lost their grip.
The Hashemite king, Feisal a Sunni, was put in control of Iraq, and aided throughout the 1920s by British troops, and such British civilians as the celebrated Gertrude Bell, until finally, the expense of suppressing the tribes, and the obvious hopelessness of it all, caused the British to leave. It was Winston Churchill who described Mesopotamia (Iraq) as an "ungrateful volcano." And when the British left, the local Arabs solemnly promised not to harm the local Christians, and five months after the last British troops pulled out, Muslim Arabs killed up to 100,000 largely helpless Assyrians. (William Saroyan wrote a book about it).
Everywhere Muslims spreading Islam are careful to present it as the vehicle for whatever grievance the potential local converts may have. If it is black prisoners in the United States, then Islam is presented as the vehicle both of "social justice" (see how Muslim ruling classes everywhere seize the national wealth, see how the poor are treated in Muslim countries), and against "racism.” And the Infidels do little or nothing. Have you seen any campaigns of deliberate counter-Da’wa anywhere in the prisons or elsewhere? It would be easy to show, and to keep showing, perhaps by organizing the “Lost Boys” of the Sudan, that anti-black racism, of the purest and most virulent kind, is found among the Arabs. Anyone who has studied in an Arab country returns amazed at what is said, and not a few are shaken. Anyone who looks into the history of African slavery soon discovers that the Arab slave trade began earlier, and ended later, than that of the Europeans – or rather, ended formally later, but actually continues, in several countries, to this day. Why is this not screamed from every housetop? Why have the countries of the advanced world, that have poured $400 billion into aid to black Africa, not tried to halt the spread of the most retrograde force, a force which encourages the habit of mental submission, and which, in its inshallah-fatalism, is in fact fatal to economic development, not tried to stop the spread of Islam? If they have the wellbeing of black Africans at heart, they must begin to understand, and to share their understanding, that Islam has been, is, and always will be, a force that hinders, with that inshallah-fatalism and that habit of mental submission, any possibility of either economic or intellectual development.
The evidence is there. What sustained the Muslims for centuries, at a low level, was simply the accumulated intellectual capital of those peoples whom they conquered, and slowly leached of life, and of property as well. Now North Africa and the Middle East are virtually without the non-Muslims who once provided a certain supply of Jizyah, and what sustains the Arabs and Muslims are two things, and only two things; the new disguised Jizyah of Western foreign aid (which should be ended, and used to meet the new expenses of monitoring Muslim populations in the West), and the manna of oil wealth, entirely undeserved, and the only conceivable way that the Arabs and Muslims might acquire great wealth – through an accident of geology. Are the peoples of black Africa misled into thinking that they, too, somehow share in that wealth?
There was a very large and intelligent, because it focused on small-scale, doable projects, aid effort by Israel in black Africa. It was the most successful of all such foreign aid efforts. It was widespread. It was widely welcomed. But it came to an end, after the Six-Day War, under Arab pressure, and bribery – the same bribery that caused several dozen African states, under Arab command, to break diplomatic relations with Israel. Some of those African states no doubt thought that the Arabs would share just a little of that vast unearned wealth – if only to replace what Israel, a tiny country, had so remarkably provided. It was not to be. It will never be. The Arabs are trying in Africa to dominate the Continent. They are patient. They are methodical. In West Africa, where Islam is already dominant, as in uranium-rich Niger, they have transformed the easygoing, syncretistic practice of Islam to something much more akin to what can be seen in Saudi Arabia. And everywhere mosques are becoming subject to the strictures of those who pay for them, or pay the imams – and that usually means the Saudis. In some countries that once had a clear Christian majority, such as the Ivory Coast, the Christians are feeling besieged by Muslims who come in from the north, and the French government under Chirac supported not the local black Christians, and understood their fear, but rather attempted to appease the world’s Muslims.
In East Africa, when the black Africans rose up against their Arab masters in Zanzibar and Pemba some decades ago (the slave trade by the Arabs in East Africa had been centered there – indeed, the Sultan of Muscat and Oman had for a time ruled directly from Zanzibar), little was made of this in the West. No one discussed the long history of the Arab slave trade, with its practice of castrating black children when they were first caught, and then taking them by slave coffle or dhow to the slave markets of Islam, a trip which about 10% survived (see “The Hideous Trade” by Jan Hogedorn). And so the Arabs have continued their march southward. The Sudan had very few Arabs in the southern part one hundred years ago. But steadily they have taken territory, pushed back, killed, black Africans. 1.8 million non-Muslim blacks were killed, or deliberately starved to death, in the southern Sudan in the last two decades. Not content with that, not content with having seized complete control of the oil wealth that lies under the Christian and animist areas of the artificial state of Sudan, the Arabs are now trying to seize, by mass murder, the lands as well of the Muslim, but non-“Arab” blacks of Darfur. The campaign of mass rape, destruction of property, and killing of every man, woman and child they can get their hands on has been reported and reported, and reported. It has been reported without any understanding of Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism (the nicholas-kristofs of this world do not bother to figure out what is going on, what ideology prompts the Janjaweed and the Sudanese government that supports it, or the other Arab and Muslim governments that run interference for that Sudanese government), but are content with writing endless columns of easy anguish.
Egypt supports the Sudanese, while pretending not to, and so does the Arab League which welcomes the reduction, in the southern Sudan and from Darfur, of non-Arabs and non-Muslims to a state of hopelessness and surrender, where they continue to live at all. For Egypt and the Arabs have their eyes not merely on the Sudan, but on Ethiopia, the famous Christian kingdom, now rapidly becoming Islamized. Egypt has no intention of letting the Christian government of Ethiopia help its own people by, at long last, diverting some of the headwaters of the Nile for irrigation. The Egyptians think the Nile belongs, from its very source onward, to them and only to them. The water wars have been declared –but only by the Arab side.
Americans and other Infidel peoples should be supporting Ethiopian efforts to halt the spread of Islam, or of the purest kind of Islam, whether in Somalia or in Ethiopia itself, and to help Ethiopia remain a Christian kingdom that can help prevent the takeover of southern East Africa by Islam. Muslims owe their loyalty to the umma al-islamiyya, to fellow Muslims. It would make sense, in Africa, for the Americans not only to have handfuls of advisors and troops here and there, but to engage in propaganda. This propaganda, which happens to be the truth simply megaphoned to make a point, should describe in vivid detail the history of the Arab slave trade. It should explain to Africans that slavery is permanently sanctioned by both Qur’an and Sunnah, and can therefore never, within Islam, be banished. It should detail the continuing racism of the Arabs. And it should show how Islam stands in the way of economic and other kinds of development in two ways: in the encouragement of the habit of mental submission, central to Islam, and in the inshallah-fatalism that limits economic activity, and how Islam has relied on two kinds of manna: the Jizyah that is demanded from, or voluntarily supplied by, non-Muslims, and the oil wealth that has resulted from an accident of geology. And despite the ten trillion dollars that the Arab and Muslim states have received from oil revenues since 1973, not a single one has managed to create a real economy, not a single one has ceased to be hopelessly dependent on oil.
Islam, as it spreads, will merely guarantee that the countries and peoples of sub-Saharan Africa will be forced to endure the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Muslim states and societies – failures whose source can be found in Islam itself.
Do we wish black Africa well, or ill? If we do wish to help the peoples of black Africa, preventing or halting the spread of Islam makes sense. And it makes sense for us to help the Berbers regain their history, their language and their culture, and it makes sense for us, in other ways, as well.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/15319/sec_id/15319
(Feb. 2008)
The Arabs, The Berbers & Africa
by Hugh Fitzgerald
It is no mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers are concentrated, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs." (How many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?)
The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in Arabic, but chose French, is celebrated in France, especially among Berbers -- but unknown in this country, and his anti-Arab rage is not likely to cause his books to be included in the syllabuses of courses on "Francophone" literature given that so many such courses are now taught by French-speaking Arabs.
What is that cause? In the first place, it is linguistic and cultural. In Algeria, where the French rightly saw the Berbers as superior to the Arabs -- one French general wrote a book about the "Europeanness" of the Berbers -- the Berbers were not discriminated against, but as soon as the French left, the forced arabisation of the Berbers started up at once, as if the French interregnum, with the wider possibilities that French education made possible to both Berbers and Arabs, had never existed. Older people in Algeria speak and use French; the younger ones are forgetting. And meanwhile, the Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, Tamazight, in their schools or in their institutions, and even, at times, they could be punished for using it among themselves, on the street. Berber culture was officially ignored.
About twenty years ago, news of agitation began to reach the outside world. There were riots in Tizi-Ouzou that were reported in France, but hardly anywhere else in the Western world. In America, of course, we had all been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO propaganda (performed as a "public service" by the big oil companies, as part of their propaganda payoff to the Saudis for allowing them to find, produce, and then pay exorbitantly for the oil that happens to lie under the malevolent sands of "Saudi" Arabia), to believe that there is something called "the Arab world" and in this "Arab world" there are no Copts, no Armenians, no Assyrians, no Chaldeans, no Turkmen, no Mandeans, no Maronites, and of course no Berbers, no Jews (no, there never were any Jews in North Africa or the Middle East -- they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe), for everyone in the Arab world was an "Arab."
The discovery or re-discovery of a Berber identity (and how many of those North African "Arabs" should begin to realize that they are Berbers?) is or could be an important weapon in unsettling the world of Islam, and perhaps causing the Maghreb to see itself, as it should not as "Arab" but as the victim of Arab imperialism.
For what is Islam if not a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and what are the Berbers, if not the victims of that Arab imperialism, an imperialism far more potent and long-lasting than the European kind, for it attempts to efface the historic identity of whole peoples?
And it makes perfect sense that Berbers in the Kabyle would, having felt along their pulses the Arab imperialism of which Islam is the vehicle, would be more open to the efforts of Christian missionaries, or more likely, are not so much responding to missionary activity, but to their own observations as to what Christianity is like, and what Islam has brought them.
In this respect, one should not underestimate the fact that Berbers now live in France, that they make up most of the membership of such groups as the "maghrebins laiques," and that they, not the Arabs whose ethnic identity is so bound up with Islam, are capable, in some cases, not of identifying with the Arabs, but more closely with the French. And those Berbers communicate with Berbers at home, or through the Internet. And sometimes they return, to Algeria and Morocco, to see their families, and bring with them their own observations on the relative merits of the Islamic world, a world suffused with Islam, and the non-Islamic world, the one they have experienced in France.
The more the non-Arab Muslims of the world, and 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arab, come to realize -- and it would not be hard to help them to realize, for they will not be able to deny the facts, having experienced so much of it themselves -- that Islam is a vehicle for that Arab supremacism, the more likely it is that at least some of them will fall away. And others, who may stick with a kind of "non-Arab" Islam (as if such were possible) will, in so doing, at least help to divide, and therefore to weaken, the Camp of Islam.
Ideally, one would wish this Total System, that has held so many hundreds of millions in thrall, and thwarted over so many centuries so much human potential (think of the art, think of the science, that might have resulted in the absence of the dead hand of Islam on so many people, prevented from so many forms of artistic expression, so many avenues for free and skeptical inquiry that are necessary for the enterprise of science, so much dull fanaticism, so much boredom, so much violence, in posse and in esse) will be seen, by Berbers, by Kurds, by people in the subcontinent (why should Muslims in India not "rediscover" their own history, their Hindu, or Buddhist, or other non-Muslim roots?), by those in Malaysia and the East Indies, with its rich pre-Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist past?
Meanwhile, start reading those Berber sites. And hope that the French state, instead of Sarkozy's folly of "integrating" its Muslims by government-supported mosques, will try to work on the Berbers, work to make them see the light, work to help them to achieve their own destiny, one different from, and superior to, that of the Arabs whose method of domination comes from, is supplied by, Islam, Islam, Islam.
We should help those in North Africa (and in France) who know, are well aware, of their Berber identity. And they will point out, in the ways that they think most effective, that many of those "Arabs" are in fact one or two or five generations away from being Berbers. DNA is coming to the rescue. There is a genetic marker that, in studies by French geneticists in Tunisia, shows that Berbers and Arabs can be easily distinguished. Some who proudly identify themselves as "Arabs" will resist. But others may listen. And as they recognize the violence, the "culture of death" of Islam, as in Algeria, perhaps those who wish to make a break from Islam, and recognize that such a break is hardest of all for Arabs, and that another identity needs to be accepted, invented, believed in, will manage to discover, and embrace, their Berber "roots."
It seems fanciful, just as it seems fanciful that Iranians, those who are not merely disgusted with the mullahs running things, but are coming to be disgusted with Islam -- that "gift of the Arabs" --- itself, may wish to rediscover Zoroastrianism. Not because of any particular wonderfulness in what Zoroastrianism has to offer, but simply because it offers another identity (see Bernard Lewis's excellent "The Multiple Identities of the Middle East"), in a part of the world, and among people, who believe that "everyone simply has to be something." And that "something" cannot be, as it is in the advanced West, a collection of ideas or ideals -- as an American might define himself as loyal to the American Constitution, and wishing to defend the political and legal institutions of this country, fortunately fashioned by an inimitable group of geniuses, and fortunately, not yet made complete hash even by those who embody the degradation of the democratic dogma.
Many Frenchmen wrote about the differences they perceived between Arabs and Berbers. French photographers routinely took pictures of Berbers in their Berber dress; the Arabs were much less willing. French military men wrote about the Berbers as "un peuple europeen."
Some Berbers came not to resist their definition as "Arabs" the way some Copts and Maronites have had a false "Arab identity" pushed on them, or have semi-accepted it, an "identity" constructed out of nothing more than the fact that they are speakers, "users," of Arabic, and may have Arabic names forced on them over time. Indeed, there are differences between Arabs who have become Christians (as a few did in the 19th and early 20th centuries) and those Arabic-using Christians -- Maronites, Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeans -- who are not Arabs, but some of whom have, in order to survive in an ever-threatening Muslim sea, had to find their role as "Arabs" or even, in the manner of the Christian Syrian Michel Aflaq (one of the founders of Ba'athism), hyper-Arabs, as promoters of an Arab identity, pan-Arabism, the whole works -- as an alternative to Islam (they were fooling themselves, because pan-Arabism for Muslim Arabs was never a real alternative to Islam, but merely a temporary goal, a subset, of the goal of a reunified Muslim world).
Not every ill that befell the non-Muslims in the Muslim world, or non-Arabs in the Muslim Arab world, can be attributed to colonial powers. There were French then, during the time of the "presence francaise" that brought schools, hospitals, modern agriculture, and other elements of modern civilization, to North Africa (in Morocco and Tunisia, over about half-a-century; in Algeria, over a 132-year period) who were quite capable of distinguishing Berbers from Arabs, and it was not their pressure that caused some Berbers to forget their own identity, any more than it was France as the guarantor of the Christians in Lebanon and Syria who caused some to make themselves hyper-Arabs. Aflaq founded the Ba'ath party with two associates not when the French seemed to be there to stay, but when it was clear that they would, in a few years, be leaving.
Aflaq's "Ba'athism" came to dominate only two countries, and for two similar reasons. The first was Syria, with a large Christian population, and with a powerful military caste, the Alawites, who were not regarded as orthodox Muslims, were indeed disliked by orthodox Muslims for the obvious elements of syncretism in their worship (go to an Alawite village and see the pictures of Mary everywhere), Alawites who had been miserable under the Turkish rule but under that of the French formed part of the Troupes speciales, and were trained to fight, and when the French left, the Alawites remained in the army, and the air force (Hafez al-Assad) and gradually took over, in the way that people or groups always take over in the Muslim Middle East -- through the application, or threat, of military force. In Syria Ba'athism disguises, is the facade, for the rule by the Alawites.
In Iraq, Ba'athism took a different turn. There, the Sunnis knew that they were numerically far inferior to the Shi'a, but they were put in control of modern Iraq, by the British, and never lost their grip.
The Hashemite king, Feisal a Sunni, was put in control of Iraq, and aided throughout the 1920s by British troops, and such British civilians as the celebrated Gertrude Bell, until finally, the expense of suppressing the tribes, and the obvious hopelessness of it all, caused the British to leave. It was Winston Churchill who described Mesopotamia (Iraq) as an "ungrateful volcano." And when the British left, the local Arabs solemnly promised not to harm the local Christians, and five months after the last British troops pulled out, Muslim Arabs killed up to 100,000 largely helpless Assyrians. (William Saroyan wrote a book about it).
Everywhere Muslims spreading Islam are careful to present it as the vehicle for whatever grievance the potential local converts may have. If it is black prisoners in the United States, then Islam is presented as the vehicle both of "social justice" (see how Muslim ruling classes everywhere seize the national wealth, see how the poor are treated in Muslim countries), and against "racism.” And the Infidels do little or nothing. Have you seen any campaigns of deliberate counter-Da’wa anywhere in the prisons or elsewhere? It would be easy to show, and to keep showing, perhaps by organizing the “Lost Boys” of the Sudan, that anti-black racism, of the purest and most virulent kind, is found among the Arabs. Anyone who has studied in an Arab country returns amazed at what is said, and not a few are shaken. Anyone who looks into the history of African slavery soon discovers that the Arab slave trade began earlier, and ended later, than that of the Europeans – or rather, ended formally later, but actually continues, in several countries, to this day. Why is this not screamed from every housetop? Why have the countries of the advanced world, that have poured $400 billion into aid to black Africa, not tried to halt the spread of the most retrograde force, a force which encourages the habit of mental submission, and which, in its inshallah-fatalism, is in fact fatal to economic development, not tried to stop the spread of Islam? If they have the wellbeing of black Africans at heart, they must begin to understand, and to share their understanding, that Islam has been, is, and always will be, a force that hinders, with that inshallah-fatalism and that habit of mental submission, any possibility of either economic or intellectual development.
The evidence is there. What sustained the Muslims for centuries, at a low level, was simply the accumulated intellectual capital of those peoples whom they conquered, and slowly leached of life, and of property as well. Now North Africa and the Middle East are virtually without the non-Muslims who once provided a certain supply of Jizyah, and what sustains the Arabs and Muslims are two things, and only two things; the new disguised Jizyah of Western foreign aid (which should be ended, and used to meet the new expenses of monitoring Muslim populations in the West), and the manna of oil wealth, entirely undeserved, and the only conceivable way that the Arabs and Muslims might acquire great wealth – through an accident of geology. Are the peoples of black Africa misled into thinking that they, too, somehow share in that wealth?
There was a very large and intelligent, because it focused on small-scale, doable projects, aid effort by Israel in black Africa. It was the most successful of all such foreign aid efforts. It was widespread. It was widely welcomed. But it came to an end, after the Six-Day War, under Arab pressure, and bribery – the same bribery that caused several dozen African states, under Arab command, to break diplomatic relations with Israel. Some of those African states no doubt thought that the Arabs would share just a little of that vast unearned wealth – if only to replace what Israel, a tiny country, had so remarkably provided. It was not to be. It will never be. The Arabs are trying in Africa to dominate the Continent. They are patient. They are methodical. In West Africa, where Islam is already dominant, as in uranium-rich Niger, they have transformed the easygoing, syncretistic practice of Islam to something much more akin to what can be seen in Saudi Arabia. And everywhere mosques are becoming subject to the strictures of those who pay for them, or pay the imams – and that usually means the Saudis. In some countries that once had a clear Christian majority, such as the Ivory Coast, the Christians are feeling besieged by Muslims who come in from the north, and the French government under Chirac supported not the local black Christians, and understood their fear, but rather attempted to appease the world’s Muslims.
In East Africa, when the black Africans rose up against their Arab masters in Zanzibar and Pemba some decades ago (the slave trade by the Arabs in East Africa had been centered there – indeed, the Sultan of Muscat and Oman had for a time ruled directly from Zanzibar), little was made of this in the West. No one discussed the long history of the Arab slave trade, with its practice of castrating black children when they were first caught, and then taking them by slave coffle or dhow to the slave markets of Islam, a trip which about 10% survived (see “The Hideous Trade” by Jan Hogedorn). And so the Arabs have continued their march southward. The Sudan had very few Arabs in the southern part one hundred years ago. But steadily they have taken territory, pushed back, killed, black Africans. 1.8 million non-Muslim blacks were killed, or deliberately starved to death, in the southern Sudan in the last two decades. Not content with that, not content with having seized complete control of the oil wealth that lies under the Christian and animist areas of the artificial state of Sudan, the Arabs are now trying to seize, by mass murder, the lands as well of the Muslim, but non-“Arab” blacks of Darfur. The campaign of mass rape, destruction of property, and killing of every man, woman and child they can get their hands on has been reported and reported, and reported. It has been reported without any understanding of Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism (the nicholas-kristofs of this world do not bother to figure out what is going on, what ideology prompts the Janjaweed and the Sudanese government that supports it, or the other Arab and Muslim governments that run interference for that Sudanese government), but are content with writing endless columns of easy anguish.
Egypt supports the Sudanese, while pretending not to, and so does the Arab League which welcomes the reduction, in the southern Sudan and from Darfur, of non-Arabs and non-Muslims to a state of hopelessness and surrender, where they continue to live at all. For Egypt and the Arabs have their eyes not merely on the Sudan, but on Ethiopia, the famous Christian kingdom, now rapidly becoming Islamized. Egypt has no intention of letting the Christian government of Ethiopia help its own people by, at long last, diverting some of the headwaters of the Nile for irrigation. The Egyptians think the Nile belongs, from its very source onward, to them and only to them. The water wars have been declared –but only by the Arab side.
Americans and other Infidel peoples should be supporting Ethiopian efforts to halt the spread of Islam, or of the purest kind of Islam, whether in Somalia or in Ethiopia itself, and to help Ethiopia remain a Christian kingdom that can help prevent the takeover of southern East Africa by Islam. Muslims owe their loyalty to the umma al-islamiyya, to fellow Muslims. It would make sense, in Africa, for the Americans not only to have handfuls of advisors and troops here and there, but to engage in propaganda. This propaganda, which happens to be the truth simply megaphoned to make a point, should describe in vivid detail the history of the Arab slave trade. It should explain to Africans that slavery is permanently sanctioned by both Qur’an and Sunnah, and can therefore never, within Islam, be banished. It should detail the continuing racism of the Arabs. And it should show how Islam stands in the way of economic and other kinds of development in two ways: in the encouragement of the habit of mental submission, central to Islam, and in the inshallah-fatalism that limits economic activity, and how Islam has relied on two kinds of manna: the Jizyah that is demanded from, or voluntarily supplied by, non-Muslims, and the oil wealth that has resulted from an accident of geology. And despite the ten trillion dollars that the Arab and Muslim states have received from oil revenues since 1973, not a single one has managed to create a real economy, not a single one has ceased to be hopelessly dependent on oil.
Islam, as it spreads, will merely guarantee that the countries and peoples of sub-Saharan Africa will be forced to endure the political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures of Muslim states and societies – failures whose source can be found in Islam itself.
Do we wish black Africa well, or ill? If we do wish to help the peoples of black Africa, preventing or halting the spread of Islam makes sense. And it makes sense for us to help the Berbers regain their history, their language and their culture, and it makes sense for us, in other ways, as well.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/15319/sec_id/15319
(Feb. 2008)
Thursday, October 1, 2009
WHO--AND WHAT--ARE THE ARABS?
We hear much about the "Arabs," and with much concern and tears (from the "nations") about the so-called "Palestinian" Arabs.
What are they? The "Ishmaelites"--as the one who thought up the Moslem "religion" (a political ideology disguised as a spiritual faith) claimed to be?
The following excerpts are from THE ORIGIN AND IDENTITY OF THE ARABS by Avraham Sándor at THINK-ISRAEL http://www.think-israel.org/imninalu.araboriginidentity.html
NOTE: These are only excerpts--Please refer to the original linked to above for the complete story
The "Arabs"
Arab myths concerning the Patriarchs
Historic and archaeologic evidences show that the ancient Arabian peoples did not leave any written testimony of themselves before they received the influence of Assyria, around the 8th-7th century b.c.e., and all what we know about them until then has been recorded by external sources and accounts of eyewitnesses. The peoples of Arabia had no records of their own genealogies, which have been artificially invented in Islamic times as well as the alleged pre-Islamic history without any real knowledge concerning location and period, besides the imaginary character of the events. There are many examples that show the inaccuracy of Islamic traditional concepts, based on hearsay from unreliable sources. Just to mention a couple of them, one is that the qur'an identifies Miryam the sister of Aharon with Miryam the mother of Yeshua as if she was the same person, when actually there are about 1400 years that separate the two Miryams; another is that in sura "al-qasas" (38), Haman is said to be Pharaoh's vizier, mistaking both time and place, because actually Haman was a minister of the Persian king when there was no longer any Pharaoh in Egypt. The same sura asserts that Pharaoh intended to build a tower, a story based on Josephus' account about Nimrod (Antiquities, I: 4). There are hundreds of resounding errors like these which are not to be listed here since it is not the intention of this essay to make any process to religious conceptions, but only to present the historic truth.
Concerning the two Arabian forefathers, we can say that Qahtan may be well identified with the Biblical Yoqtan, but Adnan seems to be rather legendary, and as allegedly is only one of Ishmaels' descendants -- not even one of his twelve sons -- he cannot be the ancestor of all the Northern Arabians. The geographic distribution of the Ishmaelites indeed leave a vast "empty" space between them and the Yoqtanite peoples, namely, the whole Central Arabia. The southernmost Ishmaelite tribe was Teyma', whose capital was located about 400 kilometres north from Yathrib (Medinah). Yet, Arab traditions assert that Ishmael was with his father Avraham in Mekka (that is more than 700 kilometres south of Teyma'), a claim that is utterly groundless, without the least hint of possibility to find any historic support.
The only existing written record concerning the person of Ishmael is found in the Bible, witnessing that he dwelled in the region of Paran, north of Midyan. This account was written by Mosheh, who spent half of his life in the very land where Ishmael lived and had undoubtedly more accurate information than the Arab writers that invented the tales about Avraham and Ishmael more than 2000 years after Mosheh. The Scriptures as well describe Avraham's movements in a very accurate way, from his departure from Ur haKashdim to Haran, then to Canaan, his journeys to Egypt and Gherar, his expedition to rescue his nephew, and every place where he sojourned -- none of them is in Arabia. He kept attached to his Akkadian family settled in Northern Mesopotamia and not to any allegedly sacred place in Arabia. Having described all Avraham's movements in detail, would Mosheh not mention a trip involving a distance over 1000 kilometres away from Canaan (and the same length for the way back)? And supposing, for the sake of argument, that Avraham actually travelled to Mekka, if Mosheh ignored such a journey it undoubtedly means that it was completely irrelevant, without any Divine purpose.
The fact is that the name of Ishmael was unknown in Central Arabia in pre-Islamic times, and the Arabic form Isma'il, beginning with an aleph shows that it passed through the Greek and is not directly derived from the Semitic/Aramaic original name Yishmael, with an initial yod -- the change of a consonant/semivowel into a vowel is explained only if a Semitic name has been translated into a western language and then from the western form into another Semitic tongue, which is the case of Hebrew into Greek and then into Arabic. Indeed, there is no mention of Avraham or Ishmael in any ancient Arabian inscription, neither Sabean nor Minean, nor Safaitic, nor Lihyanite, nor Thamudic and not even Nabatean.
The Arabs got acquainted with the existence of Avraham and Ishmael only through the Jewish and Christian sources from which Islam drew its own scriptures. Therefore, according to overwhelming historic, archaeologic, scriptural and scientific evidence, neither Avraham nor Ishmael have ever been in Arabia from Midyan southwards.
Arabs today--the ideological heirs of the Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem--decide that the Temple never existed and that Jews have neither connection to it nor to Jerusalem: PMW: No Jewish connection to Western Wall: PA academic - Just the usual denial of reality that leads to nothing but further conflict. It's also a pure case of inversion where the truth is that the Muslim exaltation of Jerusalem is a purely political a-historical invention derived for no other reason than to make sure no one else gets it. This is the kind of guy a lot of universities here in the West would love to have in as a guest for "balance" and a different perspective.
Continued at . . .
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/08/pmw-no-jewish-connection-to-western-wall/
Sunday, September 27, 2009
What Arab Civilization?
by Peter BetBasoo
[excerpt]
Islam the religion itself was significantly molded by Assyrians and Jews (see Nestorian Influence on Islam and Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World).
Arab/Islamic civilization is not a progressive force, it is a regressive force; it does not give impetus, it retards. The great civilization you describe was not an Arab/Muslim accomplishment, it was an Assyrian accomplishment that Arabs expropriated and subsequently lost when they drained, through the forced conversion of Assyrians to Islam, the source of the intellectual vitality that propelled it. What other Arab/Muslim civilization has risen since? What other Arab/Muslim successes can we cite?
You state, "and perhaps we can learn a lesson from his [Suleiman] example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions." In fact, the Ottomans were extremely oppressive to non-Muslims. For example, young Christian boys were forcefully taken from their families, usually at the age of 8-10, and inducted into the Janissaries, (yeniceri in Turkish) where they were Islamized and made to fight for the Ottoman state. What literary, artistic or scientific achievements of the Ottomans can we point to? We can, on the other hand, point to the genocide of 750,000 Assyrians, 1.5 million Armenians and 400,000 Greeks in World War One by the Kemalist "Young Turk" government. This is the true face of Islam.
Arabs/Muslims are engaged in an explicit campaign of destruction and expropriation of cultures and communities, identities and ideas. Wherever Arab/Muslim civilization encounters a non-Arab/Muslim one, it attempts to destroy it (as the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan were destroyed, as Persepolis was destroyed by the Ayotollah Khomenie). This is a pattern that has been recurring since the advent of Islam, 1400 years ago, and is amply substantiated by the historical record. If the "foreign" culture cannot be destroyed, then it is expropriated, and revisionist historians claim that it is and was Arab, as is the case of most of the Arab "accomplishments" you cited in your speech. For example, Arab history texts in the Middle East teach that Assyrians were Arabs, a fact that no reputable scholar would assert, and that no living Assyrian would accept. Assyrians first settled Nineveh, one of the major Assyrian cities, in 5000 B.C., which is 5630 years before Arabs came into that area. Even the word 'Arab' is an Assyrian word, meaning "Westerner" (the first written reference to Arabs was by the Assyrian King Sennacherib, 800 B.C., in which he tells of conquering the "ma'rabayeh" -- Westerners. See The Might That Was Assyria, by H. W. F. Saggs).
Even in America this Arabization policy continues. On October 27th a coalition of seven Assyrian and Maronite organizations sent an official letter to the Arab American Institute asking it to stop identifying Assyrians and Maronites as Arabs, which it had been deliberately doing.
There are minorities and nations struggling for survival in the Arab/Muslim ocean of the Middle East and Africa (Assyrians, Armenians, Coptics, Jews, southern Sudanese, Ethiopians, Nigerians...), and we must be very sensitive not to unwittingly and inadvertently support Islamic fascism and Arab Imperialism, with their attempts to wipe out all other cultures, religions and civilizations. It is incumbent upon each one of us to do our homework and research when making statements and speeches about these sensitive matters.
I hope you found this information enlightening. For more information, refer to the web links below. You may contact me at keepa@ninevehsoft.com for further questions.
Thank you for your consideration.
Peter BetBasoo
Excerpt from [a] letter . . . sent to Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard Corporation, in response to a speech given by her on September 26, 2001.
Complete letter at http://www.ninevehsoft.com/fiorina.htm
and at
http://www.joinourfight.com/joinourfight/dispatcher?userAction=10&countryCode=US&articleId=4
[excerpt]
Islam the religion itself was significantly molded by Assyrians and Jews (see Nestorian Influence on Islam and Hagarism: the Making of the Islamic World).
Arab/Islamic civilization is not a progressive force, it is a regressive force; it does not give impetus, it retards. The great civilization you describe was not an Arab/Muslim accomplishment, it was an Assyrian accomplishment that Arabs expropriated and subsequently lost when they drained, through the forced conversion of Assyrians to Islam, the source of the intellectual vitality that propelled it. What other Arab/Muslim civilization has risen since? What other Arab/Muslim successes can we cite?
You state, "and perhaps we can learn a lesson from his [Suleiman] example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions." In fact, the Ottomans were extremely oppressive to non-Muslims. For example, young Christian boys were forcefully taken from their families, usually at the age of 8-10, and inducted into the Janissaries, (yeniceri in Turkish) where they were Islamized and made to fight for the Ottoman state. What literary, artistic or scientific achievements of the Ottomans can we point to? We can, on the other hand, point to the genocide of 750,000 Assyrians, 1.5 million Armenians and 400,000 Greeks in World War One by the Kemalist "Young Turk" government. This is the true face of Islam.
Arabs/Muslims are engaged in an explicit campaign of destruction and expropriation of cultures and communities, identities and ideas. Wherever Arab/Muslim civilization encounters a non-Arab/Muslim one, it attempts to destroy it (as the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan were destroyed, as Persepolis was destroyed by the Ayotollah Khomenie). This is a pattern that has been recurring since the advent of Islam, 1400 years ago, and is amply substantiated by the historical record. If the "foreign" culture cannot be destroyed, then it is expropriated, and revisionist historians claim that it is and was Arab, as is the case of most of the Arab "accomplishments" you cited in your speech. For example, Arab history texts in the Middle East teach that Assyrians were Arabs, a fact that no reputable scholar would assert, and that no living Assyrian would accept. Assyrians first settled Nineveh, one of the major Assyrian cities, in 5000 B.C., which is 5630 years before Arabs came into that area. Even the word 'Arab' is an Assyrian word, meaning "Westerner" (the first written reference to Arabs was by the Assyrian King Sennacherib, 800 B.C., in which he tells of conquering the "ma'rabayeh" -- Westerners. See The Might That Was Assyria, by H. W. F. Saggs).
Even in America this Arabization policy continues. On October 27th a coalition of seven Assyrian and Maronite organizations sent an official letter to the Arab American Institute asking it to stop identifying Assyrians and Maronites as Arabs, which it had been deliberately doing.
There are minorities and nations struggling for survival in the Arab/Muslim ocean of the Middle East and Africa (Assyrians, Armenians, Coptics, Jews, southern Sudanese, Ethiopians, Nigerians...), and we must be very sensitive not to unwittingly and inadvertently support Islamic fascism and Arab Imperialism, with their attempts to wipe out all other cultures, religions and civilizations. It is incumbent upon each one of us to do our homework and research when making statements and speeches about these sensitive matters.
I hope you found this information enlightening. For more information, refer to the web links below. You may contact me at keepa@ninevehsoft.com for further questions.
Thank you for your consideration.
Peter BetBasoo
Excerpt from [a] letter . . . sent to Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett Packard Corporation, in response to a speech given by her on September 26, 2001.
Complete letter at http://www.ninevehsoft.com/fiorina.htm
and at
http://www.joinourfight.com/joinourfight/dispatcher?userAction=10&countryCode=US&articleId=4
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Conte de la péninsule arabique
afrique-du-nord.com
http://www.afrique-du-nord.com/article.php3?id_article=1813
A) De l’authenticité du corpus coranique.
La révélation s’est faite en arabe qoraïchite, une des variantes des "patois" arabes et yéménites. Les premiers transcripteurs ont été les compagnons, notamment Ubbay ibn Kab et surtout Ziad ibn Thabit. Ils se sont attachés à consigner par écrit les sourates. Leurs transcriptions ont dans la plupart des cas été faites avec l’aide des récitants qui connaissaient chacun des sourates ou morceaux de sourates (versets plus ou moins longs). On les consigna donc sur des morceaux d’os de chameau, des morceaux de cuir, des feuilles de palmiers, etc.
Les successeurs de Mahomet, les premiers califes (Abu Bakr, Omar et Othman et Ali) vont tour à tour collecter les différentes transcriptions. Ainsi, après la mort de Mahomet, il y eut ce qui peut être considéré probablement comme une première « compilation », faite par Ziad à la demande d’Abu Bakr, le beau-père de Mahomet et 1er calife. Elle le fut "sur des feuilles", sans autre précision. La collecte de ces feuilles est sujette à controverse : pour certains auteurs de hadiths, c’est Abu Bakr qui en fut le premier détenteur, alors que pour d’autres, dont le fameux Bukhari, ce serait Othman, le troisième calife. Celui-ci en aurait fait la version officielle et définitive qu’on a appelé depuis la vulgate othmanienne. Celle qui serait encore en vigueur chez les sunnites. Mais nombre de versions (différentes pour la plupart) existent, en cette période où chacun semble vouloir être calife à la place du calife (comme l’Iznogoud de la BD) et successeur de celui qui n’a pas de successeur. Tandis que pour les chiites, la collecte en aurait été faite par le gendre de Mahomet, Ali. Comme j’ignore presque tout du chiisme, je n’en dirais pas plus.
En 644, Omar, second calife et lui aussi beau-père de Mahomet, tente de faire détruire tous les autres "corpus", dans le but de contrer les chiites, sauf évidemment ceux détenus pas Hafsa : personne ne songerait à s’attaquer à la veuve de Mahomet. Il n’y parvint qu’à moitié mais le temps a continué le travail pour lui : le fruit du labeur de copiste de certains compagnons, ayant échappé à la destruction, a été égaré pour toujours.
Ibn Mussad, un des récitants de Mahomet, connaissait une soixantaine de sourates par coeur. Il refuse à son tour de détruire son corpus, ayant constaté des différences dans le classement des sourates, ainsi que de nombreuses modifications dans le texte. Il sera considéré ainsi comme chiite. Abu Mussa aussi apporte sa contradiction : son texte recensé comporte de nombreuses variantes qu’il était en outre le seul à mentionner. Ibn Abbas, cousin de Mahomet, avait l’habitude de tout consigner sur Mahomet et ses compagnons. Ses écrits contredisent en beaucoup de points ceux de la vulgate othmanienne. Il est considéré par les Soumis comme l’exégète le plus complet et le plus grand des savants de son époque. Ils omettent simplement de signaler qu’il se révéla surtout être un petit brigand des sables qui, en abandonnant son poste de gouverneur de Bassorah, est parti avec ... la caisse, comme un vulgaire voleur. Lui le grand Uléma ! Parmi les collectionneurs, il faut aussi citer Asma, fille de Umays, dont on reparlera à propos des hadiths.
A la mort de Omar, les feuilles qu’il détenaient revinrent à sa fille (et veuve de Mahomet), la belle Hafsa. En plus de sa beauté, elle était une des très rares femmes de l’époque à être instruite, ce qui était suffisant pour instiller un doute sur des manipulations possibles. Ce n’est que 20 ans après sa mort que le calife de Médine, Marwan, fit détruire les feuilles qu’elle hérita de son père, arguant de ce prétexte : "je crains qu’avec le temps, quelques sceptiques n’émettent des doutes sur la véracité de ces feuilles". Donc, pour supprimer le doute, le plus simple est de supprimer la cause du doute, les feuilles ! Pour guérir une maladie, supprimons le nom de la maladie. Mais il avait pressenti le danger bien réel : les fameuses feuilles de Hafsa contredisaient trop la vulgate othmanienne.
Que dire dans ces conditions de cette "vulgate officielle" qui ne cessait pourtant pas d’être remaniée et qui comportait tant de variantes ? Sachant que tout ce beau monde avait chacun une lecture bien personnelle, qui était interprétée par chacun des autres comme sans valeur, ce qui a conduit les Soumis à se rebeller les uns contre les autres. Pourtant Dieu ne leur avait-il pas enjoint de ne pas s’entretuer, de garder leur cif tranchant pour les Juifs, les Chrétiens et les insoumis ? Une solution, il faut réviser la vulgate d’Othman. On s’attela alors à ce travail (ce tripatouillage) qui consiste entre autres à introduire la notation des voyelles brèves (ces signes placés au dessus ou en dessous des lettres), on ajouta les signes diacritiques (ce qui équivaut pour le français à placer des signes comme cédilles et trémas), on rectifia les fautes d’orthographe et les erreurs de transcription dues aux copistes, etc. C’est lors de ces révisions qu’on donna aussi des titres aux sourates. Autre modification, des plus importantes : à l’époque Abbasside, vers 750, on changea complètement de style en adoptant le style de Coufa au détriment de l’originel, le style du Hedjaz. Les graphies anciennes vont disparaître complètement.
Toutes ces révisions ne peuvent pas être sans conséquences sur le sens initial du "message" originel ! D’autant que s’ajoutent à cela tant de conflits sociaux, de conspirations, de conjurations qui ne sont pas sans effet sur le texte, en perpétuelle remise en cause. Guerre de clans et conflits entre Aïcha et Ali, vendetta des Ommeyades contre Othman, conjuration des Alides contre le même Othman, encerclé dans sa "Maison", révolte des "Ambitieux" menés par Muawiya, et surtout les batailles restées célèbres comme celle des Chameaux (Aïcha y assista sur un chameau protégé d’une "armure de fer", d’où le nom), bataille de Siffin, extermination des Kharijites (les Sortants) lors de la bataille de Nawrawan, etc, sans oublier l’assassinat d’Ali, dans sa ville de Coufa, à l’intérieur-même de ce lieu réservé au culte de Dieu qu’est la mosquée. La suite ne sera guère mieux. C’est dans ce climat délétère que se dégagèrent les 4 écoles religieuses du sunnisme, la hanafite, la malékite, la shafiite et la hanbalite.
En résumé, les transcriptions détenues tour à tour par Abu Bakr et Omar furent jugées incomplètes et imparfaites par la plupart des prescripteurs. Vinrent ensuite les guerres entre les différents courants, guerres idéologiques et guerres d’ambitions, guerres entre tribus et clans, avec le cif et avec le verbe. En plus de tous les tripatouillages non recensés et non répertoriés, tous les marchandages, les règlements de compte, etc... Plus d’autres tripatouillages supposés, par les adeptes d’Ali. Ainsi, de tout ce fatras et cet imbroglio va sortir l’orthodoxie des Mahometans. Il faut aussi savoir que près de 3 siècles séparent lapremière collecte faite par Othman de la version "complète et officielle" du "Chefs des Lecteurs" de Baghdad, Ibn Muhajid, mort en 936. Les différentes versions intermédiaires ont par ailleurs été sujettes à d’interminables querelles entre grammairiens, entre exégètes et entre grammairiens et exégètes, au fur et mesure que le système d’écriture se diversifie et se complique.
B) De l’authenticité des hadiths.
Pour les hadiths, il faut savoir que leurs transcriptions ont été faites sur une échelle de temps très longue, presque 2 siècles. Les premiers transcripteurs sont les compagnons, qui s’attachent à consigner par écrit les actions, comportements quotidiens, paroles, gestes, allusions, etc de Mahomet.
Où on reparle de Asma : elle fut la troisième épouse de Abu Bakr avant d’être mariée à Ali, dont la première épouse est Fatima, fille de Mahomet (ces mariages croisés, "en famille", étaient monnaie courante à l’époque !) . Personnage important, car il était admis que Fatima lui aurait conté plusieurs traditions liées à son père. Elle est ainsi devenue une des principales sources de hadiths. Avec Aïcha, la prolixe, qui meurt 46 ans après son prophète de mari et qui, à ce titre, est considérée comme une source très précieuse. Où il apparaît qu’on peut faire confiance aux femmes, malgré la sourate qui veut que leur témoignage ne peut être valide que si elles sont 2 à le faire simultanément ! Ne chipotons pas, considérons qu’en tant que veuve de Mahomet, Aïcha a gagné ses galons de conteuse crédible. Ces récits, étoffés au fil du temps, constituent avec le texte coranique ce qu’on dénomme la sunna (la tradition), que chaque sunnite se doit donc de suivre aveuglément. Ainsi, si Mahomet urine d’une certaine manière ou mastique une datte pour en faire une bouillie à donner au nourrisson, cela est consigné et les Soumis devront reproduire son geste à travers les temps et toute la Umma devra s’y conformer. Les récits ainsi rapportés forment les hadiths, transcrits vaille que vaille à travers ces presque 2 siècles.
Face au danger d’éclatement de l’islam par les nombreuses guerres et querelles internes, il devint urgent de les recenser et d’en vérifier l’authenticité. Le mot est lâché : authenticité ! Comment faire pour certifier un texte quand les protagonistes sont morts. On imagina une chaîne de "garants", qui devaient être composée d’au moins 3 personnes : un "exégète" (compagnon, épouse, ami), un témoin oculaire et un participant, la chaîne pouvant aller jusqu’à 4 ou 5 rapporteurs (ou même plus ?), qui pouvaient être un transmetteur, un affranchi ou encore un élève d’un des "lecteurs" de Mahomet ). Ainsi, un hadith authentifié peut commencer de cette manière : "Untel a dit à Untel, qui l’a rapporté à Untel, qui l’a transmis à Untel que le Prophète ...". Chaîne à 4 garants. Pour qu’il soit considéré comme sahih (sain) donc être authentifié, il suffit que le premier Untel soit une épouse, un compagnon (nom donné aux premiers convertis d’avant Médine) ou un ansar (compagnon d’après la période médinoise). Peu importe alors si le dernier rapporteur a vécu 30, 40 ans ou plus après le premier. Les transmetteurs n’étaient pas contemporains de Mahomet, ils vécurent pour certains au VIIIème et IXème siècles de l’ère chrétienne, tel Hafs ben Suleyman, mort en 874, ou encore Hisham ben Amar, mort en 860.
On comprend aisément que les transcriptions, les chaînes de garants, les polémiques aient donné des textes pour le moins sujets à caution, où le hasard et les modifications aléatoires jouent un rôle trop important, loin de la volonté déclarée d’établir un texte véridique. Pour un esprit rationnel enclin au pragmatisme, la question d’authenticité dans ces conditions ne peut être certifiée, compte tenu de tous les aléas liés aux transcriptions ainsi qu’aux sources. Et dans ce cas, on ne parlerait alors que de probabilités. Mais il n’en va pas de même pour les Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Daoud, Tirmidhi et les autres ! Et, si Bukhari et Muslim sont considérés comme "rigoureux", c’est-à-dire intègres dans les limites plus qu’aléatoires qu’ils sont fixés eux-même, il en va tout autrement pour d’autres, tel Tirmidhi, pourtant reconnu, qui ne s’embarrasse pas de fioritures en n’exigeant pas un garant reconnu ou encore comme al-Nasaï qui se satisfait d’un garant qui ne serait pas déclaré incrédible par tous les autres. Pourtant, les hadiths de Tirmidhi sont considérés sahih et al-Nasaï était un élève de Abu-Daud.
Voilà ce bel ensemble qui est appelé Sunna, composé de ce texte "véridique", cette "parole descendue de Dieu", par Dieu lui-même "derrière un voile", ou par l’intermédiaire de l’ange Gabriel aux 600 Ailes, dans "la langue inaltérable et inaltérée" du désert arabique, au VIIème siècle de l’ère chrétienne, avec son chapelet de traditions tout aussi abracadabrantes ... et qui perdurent jusqu’à ce jour. Un ensemble de textes pour idolâtres et uniquement pour eux. Mais, au fait, l’idolâtrie n’est-elle pas contraire aux principes édictés par ce Dieu "plein de sagesse et de bon sens" ? Un ensemble de textes qui a pour fondement, pour fondation, un livre où ne figure pas une seule fois le mot honneur mais où il a été donné neuf noms à l’enfer :
An Nar ( sourate 2 verset 24)
Al Jahim (sourate 2 verset 119)
Jahannama (sourate 2 verset 206)
As Saïr (sourate 4 verset 10)
As Samum (sourate 52 verset 27)
Saqar (sourate 54 verset 48)
Sidjine (sourate 83 verset 7).
Hawiyah (sourate 101 verset 9).
Al Hutamah ( sourate 104 verset 4)
Afin que les Soumis n’oublient pas de se frapper le front contre le sol, pour y échapper !
La prochaine fois, je vous conterai les histoires plus crédibles de "vreruc y-uggi ad y-ekk imensi, yebbwi-as taghat-is wecen" ou de ce petit garçon que ses parents essayent de perdre avec ses frères dans la forêt. A lire sans le moindre esprit critique, sinon on n’y croit pas !
Electron libre.
Sources parmi d’autres : L’islam cet inconnu par Roger Caratini, éd. Michel Lafon (2001) - al-islam.com (site officiel du Ministère saoudien du culte) - islammedia.free.fr - islamreligion.com
Les commentaires reçus :
Heureux enfants !
http://www.afrique-du-nord.com/article.php3?id_article=1813
16 juillet 2009
http://www.afrique-du-nord.com/article.php3?id_article=1813
A) De l’authenticité du corpus coranique.
La révélation s’est faite en arabe qoraïchite, une des variantes des "patois" arabes et yéménites. Les premiers transcripteurs ont été les compagnons, notamment Ubbay ibn Kab et surtout Ziad ibn Thabit. Ils se sont attachés à consigner par écrit les sourates. Leurs transcriptions ont dans la plupart des cas été faites avec l’aide des récitants qui connaissaient chacun des sourates ou morceaux de sourates (versets plus ou moins longs). On les consigna donc sur des morceaux d’os de chameau, des morceaux de cuir, des feuilles de palmiers, etc.
Les successeurs de Mahomet, les premiers califes (Abu Bakr, Omar et Othman et Ali) vont tour à tour collecter les différentes transcriptions. Ainsi, après la mort de Mahomet, il y eut ce qui peut être considéré probablement comme une première « compilation », faite par Ziad à la demande d’Abu Bakr, le beau-père de Mahomet et 1er calife. Elle le fut "sur des feuilles", sans autre précision. La collecte de ces feuilles est sujette à controverse : pour certains auteurs de hadiths, c’est Abu Bakr qui en fut le premier détenteur, alors que pour d’autres, dont le fameux Bukhari, ce serait Othman, le troisième calife. Celui-ci en aurait fait la version officielle et définitive qu’on a appelé depuis la vulgate othmanienne. Celle qui serait encore en vigueur chez les sunnites. Mais nombre de versions (différentes pour la plupart) existent, en cette période où chacun semble vouloir être calife à la place du calife (comme l’Iznogoud de la BD) et successeur de celui qui n’a pas de successeur. Tandis que pour les chiites, la collecte en aurait été faite par le gendre de Mahomet, Ali. Comme j’ignore presque tout du chiisme, je n’en dirais pas plus.
En 644, Omar, second calife et lui aussi beau-père de Mahomet, tente de faire détruire tous les autres "corpus", dans le but de contrer les chiites, sauf évidemment ceux détenus pas Hafsa : personne ne songerait à s’attaquer à la veuve de Mahomet. Il n’y parvint qu’à moitié mais le temps a continué le travail pour lui : le fruit du labeur de copiste de certains compagnons, ayant échappé à la destruction, a été égaré pour toujours.
Ibn Mussad, un des récitants de Mahomet, connaissait une soixantaine de sourates par coeur. Il refuse à son tour de détruire son corpus, ayant constaté des différences dans le classement des sourates, ainsi que de nombreuses modifications dans le texte. Il sera considéré ainsi comme chiite. Abu Mussa aussi apporte sa contradiction : son texte recensé comporte de nombreuses variantes qu’il était en outre le seul à mentionner. Ibn Abbas, cousin de Mahomet, avait l’habitude de tout consigner sur Mahomet et ses compagnons. Ses écrits contredisent en beaucoup de points ceux de la vulgate othmanienne. Il est considéré par les Soumis comme l’exégète le plus complet et le plus grand des savants de son époque. Ils omettent simplement de signaler qu’il se révéla surtout être un petit brigand des sables qui, en abandonnant son poste de gouverneur de Bassorah, est parti avec ... la caisse, comme un vulgaire voleur. Lui le grand Uléma ! Parmi les collectionneurs, il faut aussi citer Asma, fille de Umays, dont on reparlera à propos des hadiths.
A la mort de Omar, les feuilles qu’il détenaient revinrent à sa fille (et veuve de Mahomet), la belle Hafsa. En plus de sa beauté, elle était une des très rares femmes de l’époque à être instruite, ce qui était suffisant pour instiller un doute sur des manipulations possibles. Ce n’est que 20 ans après sa mort que le calife de Médine, Marwan, fit détruire les feuilles qu’elle hérita de son père, arguant de ce prétexte : "je crains qu’avec le temps, quelques sceptiques n’émettent des doutes sur la véracité de ces feuilles". Donc, pour supprimer le doute, le plus simple est de supprimer la cause du doute, les feuilles ! Pour guérir une maladie, supprimons le nom de la maladie. Mais il avait pressenti le danger bien réel : les fameuses feuilles de Hafsa contredisaient trop la vulgate othmanienne.
Que dire dans ces conditions de cette "vulgate officielle" qui ne cessait pourtant pas d’être remaniée et qui comportait tant de variantes ? Sachant que tout ce beau monde avait chacun une lecture bien personnelle, qui était interprétée par chacun des autres comme sans valeur, ce qui a conduit les Soumis à se rebeller les uns contre les autres. Pourtant Dieu ne leur avait-il pas enjoint de ne pas s’entretuer, de garder leur cif tranchant pour les Juifs, les Chrétiens et les insoumis ? Une solution, il faut réviser la vulgate d’Othman. On s’attela alors à ce travail (ce tripatouillage) qui consiste entre autres à introduire la notation des voyelles brèves (ces signes placés au dessus ou en dessous des lettres), on ajouta les signes diacritiques (ce qui équivaut pour le français à placer des signes comme cédilles et trémas), on rectifia les fautes d’orthographe et les erreurs de transcription dues aux copistes, etc. C’est lors de ces révisions qu’on donna aussi des titres aux sourates. Autre modification, des plus importantes : à l’époque Abbasside, vers 750, on changea complètement de style en adoptant le style de Coufa au détriment de l’originel, le style du Hedjaz. Les graphies anciennes vont disparaître complètement.
Toutes ces révisions ne peuvent pas être sans conséquences sur le sens initial du "message" originel ! D’autant que s’ajoutent à cela tant de conflits sociaux, de conspirations, de conjurations qui ne sont pas sans effet sur le texte, en perpétuelle remise en cause. Guerre de clans et conflits entre Aïcha et Ali, vendetta des Ommeyades contre Othman, conjuration des Alides contre le même Othman, encerclé dans sa "Maison", révolte des "Ambitieux" menés par Muawiya, et surtout les batailles restées célèbres comme celle des Chameaux (Aïcha y assista sur un chameau protégé d’une "armure de fer", d’où le nom), bataille de Siffin, extermination des Kharijites (les Sortants) lors de la bataille de Nawrawan, etc, sans oublier l’assassinat d’Ali, dans sa ville de Coufa, à l’intérieur-même de ce lieu réservé au culte de Dieu qu’est la mosquée. La suite ne sera guère mieux. C’est dans ce climat délétère que se dégagèrent les 4 écoles religieuses du sunnisme, la hanafite, la malékite, la shafiite et la hanbalite.
En résumé, les transcriptions détenues tour à tour par Abu Bakr et Omar furent jugées incomplètes et imparfaites par la plupart des prescripteurs. Vinrent ensuite les guerres entre les différents courants, guerres idéologiques et guerres d’ambitions, guerres entre tribus et clans, avec le cif et avec le verbe. En plus de tous les tripatouillages non recensés et non répertoriés, tous les marchandages, les règlements de compte, etc... Plus d’autres tripatouillages supposés, par les adeptes d’Ali. Ainsi, de tout ce fatras et cet imbroglio va sortir l’orthodoxie des Mahometans. Il faut aussi savoir que près de 3 siècles séparent lapremière collecte faite par Othman de la version "complète et officielle" du "Chefs des Lecteurs" de Baghdad, Ibn Muhajid, mort en 936. Les différentes versions intermédiaires ont par ailleurs été sujettes à d’interminables querelles entre grammairiens, entre exégètes et entre grammairiens et exégètes, au fur et mesure que le système d’écriture se diversifie et se complique.
B) De l’authenticité des hadiths.
Pour les hadiths, il faut savoir que leurs transcriptions ont été faites sur une échelle de temps très longue, presque 2 siècles. Les premiers transcripteurs sont les compagnons, qui s’attachent à consigner par écrit les actions, comportements quotidiens, paroles, gestes, allusions, etc de Mahomet.
Où on reparle de Asma : elle fut la troisième épouse de Abu Bakr avant d’être mariée à Ali, dont la première épouse est Fatima, fille de Mahomet (ces mariages croisés, "en famille", étaient monnaie courante à l’époque !) . Personnage important, car il était admis que Fatima lui aurait conté plusieurs traditions liées à son père. Elle est ainsi devenue une des principales sources de hadiths. Avec Aïcha, la prolixe, qui meurt 46 ans après son prophète de mari et qui, à ce titre, est considérée comme une source très précieuse. Où il apparaît qu’on peut faire confiance aux femmes, malgré la sourate qui veut que leur témoignage ne peut être valide que si elles sont 2 à le faire simultanément ! Ne chipotons pas, considérons qu’en tant que veuve de Mahomet, Aïcha a gagné ses galons de conteuse crédible. Ces récits, étoffés au fil du temps, constituent avec le texte coranique ce qu’on dénomme la sunna (la tradition), que chaque sunnite se doit donc de suivre aveuglément. Ainsi, si Mahomet urine d’une certaine manière ou mastique une datte pour en faire une bouillie à donner au nourrisson, cela est consigné et les Soumis devront reproduire son geste à travers les temps et toute la Umma devra s’y conformer. Les récits ainsi rapportés forment les hadiths, transcrits vaille que vaille à travers ces presque 2 siècles.
Face au danger d’éclatement de l’islam par les nombreuses guerres et querelles internes, il devint urgent de les recenser et d’en vérifier l’authenticité. Le mot est lâché : authenticité ! Comment faire pour certifier un texte quand les protagonistes sont morts. On imagina une chaîne de "garants", qui devaient être composée d’au moins 3 personnes : un "exégète" (compagnon, épouse, ami), un témoin oculaire et un participant, la chaîne pouvant aller jusqu’à 4 ou 5 rapporteurs (ou même plus ?), qui pouvaient être un transmetteur, un affranchi ou encore un élève d’un des "lecteurs" de Mahomet ). Ainsi, un hadith authentifié peut commencer de cette manière : "Untel a dit à Untel, qui l’a rapporté à Untel, qui l’a transmis à Untel que le Prophète ...". Chaîne à 4 garants. Pour qu’il soit considéré comme sahih (sain) donc être authentifié, il suffit que le premier Untel soit une épouse, un compagnon (nom donné aux premiers convertis d’avant Médine) ou un ansar (compagnon d’après la période médinoise). Peu importe alors si le dernier rapporteur a vécu 30, 40 ans ou plus après le premier. Les transmetteurs n’étaient pas contemporains de Mahomet, ils vécurent pour certains au VIIIème et IXème siècles de l’ère chrétienne, tel Hafs ben Suleyman, mort en 874, ou encore Hisham ben Amar, mort en 860.
On comprend aisément que les transcriptions, les chaînes de garants, les polémiques aient donné des textes pour le moins sujets à caution, où le hasard et les modifications aléatoires jouent un rôle trop important, loin de la volonté déclarée d’établir un texte véridique. Pour un esprit rationnel enclin au pragmatisme, la question d’authenticité dans ces conditions ne peut être certifiée, compte tenu de tous les aléas liés aux transcriptions ainsi qu’aux sources. Et dans ce cas, on ne parlerait alors que de probabilités. Mais il n’en va pas de même pour les Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Daoud, Tirmidhi et les autres ! Et, si Bukhari et Muslim sont considérés comme "rigoureux", c’est-à-dire intègres dans les limites plus qu’aléatoires qu’ils sont fixés eux-même, il en va tout autrement pour d’autres, tel Tirmidhi, pourtant reconnu, qui ne s’embarrasse pas de fioritures en n’exigeant pas un garant reconnu ou encore comme al-Nasaï qui se satisfait d’un garant qui ne serait pas déclaré incrédible par tous les autres. Pourtant, les hadiths de Tirmidhi sont considérés sahih et al-Nasaï était un élève de Abu-Daud.
Voilà ce bel ensemble qui est appelé Sunna, composé de ce texte "véridique", cette "parole descendue de Dieu", par Dieu lui-même "derrière un voile", ou par l’intermédiaire de l’ange Gabriel aux 600 Ailes, dans "la langue inaltérable et inaltérée" du désert arabique, au VIIème siècle de l’ère chrétienne, avec son chapelet de traditions tout aussi abracadabrantes ... et qui perdurent jusqu’à ce jour. Un ensemble de textes pour idolâtres et uniquement pour eux. Mais, au fait, l’idolâtrie n’est-elle pas contraire aux principes édictés par ce Dieu "plein de sagesse et de bon sens" ? Un ensemble de textes qui a pour fondement, pour fondation, un livre où ne figure pas une seule fois le mot honneur mais où il a été donné neuf noms à l’enfer :
An Nar ( sourate 2 verset 24)
Al Jahim (sourate 2 verset 119)
Jahannama (sourate 2 verset 206)
As Saïr (sourate 4 verset 10)
As Samum (sourate 52 verset 27)
Saqar (sourate 54 verset 48)
Sidjine (sourate 83 verset 7).
Hawiyah (sourate 101 verset 9).
Al Hutamah ( sourate 104 verset 4)
Afin que les Soumis n’oublient pas de se frapper le front contre le sol, pour y échapper !
La prochaine fois, je vous conterai les histoires plus crédibles de "vreruc y-uggi ad y-ekk imensi, yebbwi-as taghat-is wecen" ou de ce petit garçon que ses parents essayent de perdre avec ses frères dans la forêt. A lire sans le moindre esprit critique, sinon on n’y croit pas !
Electron libre.
Sources parmi d’autres : L’islam cet inconnu par Roger Caratini, éd. Michel Lafon (2001) - al-islam.com (site officiel du Ministère saoudien du culte) - islammedia.free.fr - islamreligion.com
Les commentaires reçus :
Heureux enfants !
http://www.afrique-du-nord.com/article.php3?id_article=1813
16 juillet 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Berbers, Islam & Christianity
From http://www.north-of-africa.com/article.php3?id_article=594
3 July 2009
No mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs" (how many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?)
The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in Arabic, but chose French, is celebrated in France, especially among Berbers-but unknown in this country, and his anti-Arab rage is not likely to cause his books to be included in the syllabuses of courses on "Francophone" literature given that so many such courses are now taught by French-speaking Arabs.
What is that cause? In the first place, it is linguistic and cultural. In Algeria, where the French rightly saw the Berbers as superior to the Arabs — one French general wrote a book about the "Europeanness" of the Berbers — the Berbers were not discriminated against, but as soon as the French left, the forced arabisation of the Berbers started up at once, as if the French interregnum, with the wider possibilities that French education made possible to both Berbers and Arabs, had never existed. Older people in Algeria speak and use French; the younger ones are forgetting. And meanwhile, the Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, the Berber language, Tamazight, in their schools, in their institutions, and even, at times, they could be punished for using it among themselves, on the street. Berber culture was officially ignored.
About twenty years ago, news of agitation began to reach the outside world. There were riots in Tizi-Ouzou. Reported in France, but hardly anywhere else in the Western world. In America, of course, we had all been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO propaganda (performed as a "public service" by the big oil companies, as part of their propaganda payoff to the Saudis for allowing them to find, produce, and then pay exorbitantly for the oil that happens to lie under the malevolent sands of "Saudi" Arabia), to believe that there is something called "the Arab world" and in this "Arab world" there are no Copts, no Armenians, no Assyrians, no Chaldeans, no Turkmen, no Mandeans, no Maronites, and of course no Berbers, no Jews (no, there never were any Jews in North Africa or the Middle East — they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe), for everyone in the Arab world was an "Arab."
The discovery or re-discovery of a Berber identity (and how many of those North African "Arabs" should begin to realize that they are Berbers? There is, by the way, a genetic marker that, in studies by French geneticists in Tunisia, shows that Berbers and Arabs can be easily distinguished) is or could be an important weapon in unsettling the world of Islam, and perhaps causing the Maghreb to see itself, as it should not as "Arab" but as the victim of Arab imperialism.
For what is Islam if not a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and what are the Berbers, if not the victims of that Arab imperialism, an imperialism far more potent and long-lasting than the European kind, for it attempts to efface the historic identity of whole peoples?
And it makes perfect sense that Berbers in the Kabyle would, having felt along their pulses the Arab imperialism of which Islam is the vehicle, would be more open to the efforts of Christian missionaries, or more likely, are not so much responding to missionary activity, but to their own observations as to what Christianity is like, and what Islam has brought them.
In this respect, one should not underestimate the fact that Berbers now live in France, that they make up most of the membership of such groups as the "Maghrebins Laïques," and that they, not the Arabs whose ethnic identity is so found up with Islam, are capable, in some cases, not of identifying with the Arabs, but more closely with the French. And those Berbers communicate with Berbers at home, or through the Internet. And sometimes they return, to Algeria and Morocco, to see their families, and bring with them their own observations on the relative merits of the Islamic world, a world suffused with Islam, and the non-Islamic world, the one they have experienced in France.
The more the non-Arab Muslims of the world, and 80% of the world’s Muslims are not Arab, come to realize — and it would not be hard to help them to realize, for they will not be able to deny the facts, having experienced so much of it themselves — that Islam is a vehicle for that Arab supremacism, the more likely it is that at least some of them will fall away. And others, who may stick with a kind of "non-Arab" Islam (as if such were possible) will, in so doing, at least help to divide, and therefore to weaken, the Camp of Islam.
Ideally, one would wish this Total System, that has held so many hundreds of millions in thrall, and thwarted over so many centuries so much human potential (think of the art, think of the science, that might have resulted in the absence of the dead hand of Islam on so many people, prevented from so many forms of artistic expression, so many avenues for free and skeptical inquiry that are necessary for the enterprise of science, so much dull fanaticism, so much boredom, so much violence, in posse and in esse) will be seen, by Berbers, by Kurds, by people in the subcontinent (why should Muslims in India not "rediscover" their own history, their Hindu, or Buddhist, or other non-Muslim roots?), by those in Malaysia and the East Indies, with its rich pre-Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist past?
Meanwhile, start reading those Berber sites. And hope that the French state, instead of Sarkozy’s folly of "integrating" its Muslims by government-supported mosques, will try to work on the Berbers, work to make them see the light, work to help them to achieve their own destiny, one different from, and superior to, that of the Arabs whose method of domination comes from, is supplied by, Islam, Islam, Islam.
By Forkinsocket
Article taken from: New English Review, Friday, 18 January 2008
your comments:
Berbers, Islam & Christianity
4 July 2009, par Opine
Interesting article -
For recall - Berbers brought Christianity to Europe, and Europeans made North-Africa Arab. Peoples of north-africa may have seen in the Jihad a value, back in the 7th century, but correct the coran and took what’s of value, making fit within the local cultural. In places like Morroco, they translated it to Tamazight, pure and simple. The mixup came with Napoleon 3, who dreamed of his Ismic Kingdom, and though I haven’t read it anywhere, he was a Jihadist by all means who praised Islam. Islam or Arabs haven’t done anything to local peoples, it is their Neo-Republican governments who made it a point to islamize and arabize. It may be by necessity, or more perhaps by sponsorship, because the fact is, this is the case of Algeria: Those who ended-up stealing the liberation from France were somehow prisoners, in "costody", and in cahuts with the Baathists, the product of French and British Governments - i.e. The relays, for remote control. It is this dictators, with chanceleries in western capitals that commit the genocide. I am Kabyle, have lived outside Algeria most of my life, and no Arab has ever shocked me with the denial of my identity, as I state it. It is always, somebody else, "a westerner" who has long abandoned his own identity for food, who would insist. Go figure !
The snakes
answer this message
Berbers, Islam & Christianity
4 July 2009, by Tifirelest
Thanks Opine for your comment, here is a set of interresting comments, the questions here interesting and they denote that our history as Berbers is completely ignored by the world!
The Berber question in North Africa
answer this message
Berbers, Islam & Christianity
5 July 2009, by Opine
Interestingly enough, the group which composed this is the "JIHADWATCH" - Whoever that is - Jihad is the only thing of value in the Coran, but since, I believe that book is a misforged story, the jihad is what attrackted all arabs or moslims’ allied, such as the US and others in Afganistan in the 80s. Now, that said, one needs to explain to me WHY SOME FOLKS ESTABLISH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH A REGIME SUCH AS THE ONES IN North Africa, and encourage us to fight them - That’s all we do all the time. Clever, but not this time around ! These regimes FEED and GROW the Jihadist, and YOU FOLKS you FEED AND GROW these REGIMES !
As they say,
Deal with it !
answer this message
http://www.north-of-africa.com/article.php3?id_article=594
3 July 2009
No mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs" (how many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?)
The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in Arabic, but chose French, is celebrated in France, especially among Berbers-but unknown in this country, and his anti-Arab rage is not likely to cause his books to be included in the syllabuses of courses on "Francophone" literature given that so many such courses are now taught by French-speaking Arabs.
What is that cause? In the first place, it is linguistic and cultural. In Algeria, where the French rightly saw the Berbers as superior to the Arabs — one French general wrote a book about the "Europeanness" of the Berbers — the Berbers were not discriminated against, but as soon as the French left, the forced arabisation of the Berbers started up at once, as if the French interregnum, with the wider possibilities that French education made possible to both Berbers and Arabs, had never existed. Older people in Algeria speak and use French; the younger ones are forgetting. And meanwhile, the Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, the Berber language, Tamazight, in their schools, in their institutions, and even, at times, they could be punished for using it among themselves, on the street. Berber culture was officially ignored.
About twenty years ago, news of agitation began to reach the outside world. There were riots in Tizi-Ouzou. Reported in France, but hardly anywhere else in the Western world. In America, of course, we had all been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO propaganda (performed as a "public service" by the big oil companies, as part of their propaganda payoff to the Saudis for allowing them to find, produce, and then pay exorbitantly for the oil that happens to lie under the malevolent sands of "Saudi" Arabia), to believe that there is something called "the Arab world" and in this "Arab world" there are no Copts, no Armenians, no Assyrians, no Chaldeans, no Turkmen, no Mandeans, no Maronites, and of course no Berbers, no Jews (no, there never were any Jews in North Africa or the Middle East — they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe), for everyone in the Arab world was an "Arab."
The discovery or re-discovery of a Berber identity (and how many of those North African "Arabs" should begin to realize that they are Berbers? There is, by the way, a genetic marker that, in studies by French geneticists in Tunisia, shows that Berbers and Arabs can be easily distinguished) is or could be an important weapon in unsettling the world of Islam, and perhaps causing the Maghreb to see itself, as it should not as "Arab" but as the victim of Arab imperialism.
For what is Islam if not a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and what are the Berbers, if not the victims of that Arab imperialism, an imperialism far more potent and long-lasting than the European kind, for it attempts to efface the historic identity of whole peoples?
And it makes perfect sense that Berbers in the Kabyle would, having felt along their pulses the Arab imperialism of which Islam is the vehicle, would be more open to the efforts of Christian missionaries, or more likely, are not so much responding to missionary activity, but to their own observations as to what Christianity is like, and what Islam has brought them.
In this respect, one should not underestimate the fact that Berbers now live in France, that they make up most of the membership of such groups as the "Maghrebins Laïques," and that they, not the Arabs whose ethnic identity is so found up with Islam, are capable, in some cases, not of identifying with the Arabs, but more closely with the French. And those Berbers communicate with Berbers at home, or through the Internet. And sometimes they return, to Algeria and Morocco, to see their families, and bring with them their own observations on the relative merits of the Islamic world, a world suffused with Islam, and the non-Islamic world, the one they have experienced in France.
The more the non-Arab Muslims of the world, and 80% of the world’s Muslims are not Arab, come to realize — and it would not be hard to help them to realize, for they will not be able to deny the facts, having experienced so much of it themselves — that Islam is a vehicle for that Arab supremacism, the more likely it is that at least some of them will fall away. And others, who may stick with a kind of "non-Arab" Islam (as if such were possible) will, in so doing, at least help to divide, and therefore to weaken, the Camp of Islam.
Ideally, one would wish this Total System, that has held so many hundreds of millions in thrall, and thwarted over so many centuries so much human potential (think of the art, think of the science, that might have resulted in the absence of the dead hand of Islam on so many people, prevented from so many forms of artistic expression, so many avenues for free and skeptical inquiry that are necessary for the enterprise of science, so much dull fanaticism, so much boredom, so much violence, in posse and in esse) will be seen, by Berbers, by Kurds, by people in the subcontinent (why should Muslims in India not "rediscover" their own history, their Hindu, or Buddhist, or other non-Muslim roots?), by those in Malaysia and the East Indies, with its rich pre-Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist past?
Meanwhile, start reading those Berber sites. And hope that the French state, instead of Sarkozy’s folly of "integrating" its Muslims by government-supported mosques, will try to work on the Berbers, work to make them see the light, work to help them to achieve their own destiny, one different from, and superior to, that of the Arabs whose method of domination comes from, is supplied by, Islam, Islam, Islam.
By Forkinsocket
Article taken from: New English Review, Friday, 18 January 2008
your comments:
Berbers, Islam & Christianity
4 July 2009, par Opine
Interesting article -
For recall - Berbers brought Christianity to Europe, and Europeans made North-Africa Arab. Peoples of north-africa may have seen in the Jihad a value, back in the 7th century, but correct the coran and took what’s of value, making fit within the local cultural. In places like Morroco, they translated it to Tamazight, pure and simple. The mixup came with Napoleon 3, who dreamed of his Ismic Kingdom, and though I haven’t read it anywhere, he was a Jihadist by all means who praised Islam. Islam or Arabs haven’t done anything to local peoples, it is their Neo-Republican governments who made it a point to islamize and arabize. It may be by necessity, or more perhaps by sponsorship, because the fact is, this is the case of Algeria: Those who ended-up stealing the liberation from France were somehow prisoners, in "costody", and in cahuts with the Baathists, the product of French and British Governments - i.e. The relays, for remote control. It is this dictators, with chanceleries in western capitals that commit the genocide. I am Kabyle, have lived outside Algeria most of my life, and no Arab has ever shocked me with the denial of my identity, as I state it. It is always, somebody else, "a westerner" who has long abandoned his own identity for food, who would insist. Go figure !
The snakes
answer this message
Berbers, Islam & Christianity
4 July 2009, by Tifirelest
Thanks Opine for your comment, here is a set of interresting comments, the questions here interesting and they denote that our history as Berbers is completely ignored by the world!
The Berber question in North Africa
answer this message
Berbers, Islam & Christianity
5 July 2009, by Opine
Interestingly enough, the group which composed this is the "JIHADWATCH" - Whoever that is - Jihad is the only thing of value in the Coran, but since, I believe that book is a misforged story, the jihad is what attrackted all arabs or moslims’ allied, such as the US and others in Afganistan in the 80s. Now, that said, one needs to explain to me WHY SOME FOLKS ESTABLISH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH A REGIME SUCH AS THE ONES IN North Africa, and encourage us to fight them - That’s all we do all the time. Clever, but not this time around ! These regimes FEED and GROW the Jihadist, and YOU FOLKS you FEED AND GROW these REGIMES !
As they say,
Deal with it !
answer this message
http://www.north-of-africa.com/article.php3?id_article=594
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Muhammad’s Monsters: The War of Islam against Minorities in the Middle East and North Africa
from north-of-africa.com
16 July 2009
The rapid and triumphal Islamization of the Middle East beginning in the seventh century, west to North Africa, north to the Caucasus, and east to China, is one of the most profound, permanent, and awesome conquests in history. This military and religious campaign welded a collective consciousness and consti¬tuted a political strategy whose primary concepts included: Muslim holy war (jihad), the Islamic territorial abode (dar al-Islam), and martyrdom (shuhada) on the one hand, juxtaposed to infidels (kuf¬far), tolerated non-Muslim scriptuaries (ahl al-dhimma), and the non-Islamic territorial abode of warfare (dar al-harb). The mission of Islam was spearheaded by the “sword of Muhammad” in order to impose Allah’s last revelation over all mankind and throughout the world. Among the various methods employed, in particular in the Middle East terrain but not only, were deportation, colo¬nization, conversion, repression, and at times massacre of native populations.1
The transformation of the broad Mideastern environment was a process of many centuries that culminated in the defacing and refashioning of many lands and peoples. Byzantine Asia Minor, Armenian Anatolia, and much of Kurdistan, became Muslim Turkey. The Sudan as the land of Kush, Nubia, and Black Africa assumed an Islamic and Arab face. Lebanon’s Pheonician and Christian heritage has been swamped by Islam and Arabism. Mesopotamia, Assyria, and part of Kurdistan were in the grip of Arab-Muslim Iraq. The pre-Islamic Berber/Imazighen/Kabyle character of North Africa struggles in the face of integralist and violent Islam. And Israel, reverberating with the Hebrew-Jewish legacy in the Holy Land, confronts the Islamic contention that Palestine is a sacred waqf domain belonging to the Muslims alone.
While the debate continues regarding the actual historical treatment meted out by Muslims to non-Muslims, Jews and Christians in particular,2 the spirit of our times in the late 20th and early 21st century is dominated overwhelmingly by Islamic fundamentalism linked to a comprehensive Muslim assault for glory and power. The names of Ayatollah Khoumeni (Iran), Osama bin-Laden (Afghanistan), Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah (Lebanon), and Hasan Turabi (Sudan), are some from among the heroic revolutionaries in the Muslim pantheon of iconic figures. Resonating into the boroughs of London, the arrondissements of Paris, and the neighborhoods of Jersey City, Detroit, and Chicago, Islamic movements and mes sages carve out their territory of influence in the quest for ultimate domination within the public domain of discourse and politics.
This is so in the remaining bastions of the (so-called) Christian West and with every greater immediacy and fury within and a bit beyond the Middle East. In May 1998, Libyan leader Muammar Qadhdafi declared that Jews and Christians hate Muslims and insult Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. In the light of this charge, and that by Saddam Hussein of Iraq that Israel defiles Muslim and Christian sanctuaries, the Islamic world is expected to take the road of jihad in order to achieve peace and justice in the world.3 The mujahid bin-Laden, evoking the slogan of the “Great Islamic Republic” throughout the Middle East, repeated the militant refrain in Peshawar in September 2000, calling for war against Jews in Palestine and Christian Americans in Saudi Arabia.4 A year later, the September 11, 2001, Islamic terror attacks in the United States brought home the seriousness and immediacy of bin-Laden’s intentions. His al-Qaidah movement had struck ruthlessly at the political and economic centers of American power.
Meanwhile, attacks in the Far East against Christians and churches in Indonesia, and in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast in Africa, in the year 2000 signaled the scope of the Islamic offensive. The Pakistani “Army of the Righteous” stated the need for jihad against non-Muslims, especially Jews and Hindus, while the march of Allah’s soldiers continued in Bosnia and Kossovo, Chechnya and Kashmir, Palestine and Lebanon.
Of special importance in this regard is the Christian character of Lebanon and the Jewish ethos of Israel as primary targets of Islam’s war against the traditional infidel communities. In 1980, at an Islamic Summit Conference in the Pakistani city of Lahore, the goal was set to have the Middle East totally Islamic with the elimination of the Christians of the Orient and the Jews of Israel. This imperialistic if not genocidal intention appears high on the Muslim agenda until today, considering the pace and direction of events in both occupied Lebanon and intifada-infested Israel.
In an interesting development, the Tibetan Dali Lama condemned both Christians and Muslims in January 2001 for their practice of actively seeking converts. The non-aggressive religions of Hinduism and Buddhism apparently fear for their future. But it is evidently clear that the truly aggressive religion in this era is not Christianity, but rather putative and militant Islam with its explicit agenda of expansion worldwide.
Islam in its formative historical stage surfaced as a conquering and colonizing religious movement that arrogated public space and political power for itself alone. This serves as a model for reproduction in any future era thereafter, subject to the exigencies of power opportunities that are available to the Muslims. There are no fixed frontiers to delimit the scope of the future expansive drive, nor are there any moral or juridical restrictions in pursuing the war. Rather, the exaltation of battle by whatever means is designed to vindicate Islam’s global primacy. The horrors of victory, perhaps for the victors and the vanquished alike, are tangential to the satisfaction of exacting tribute and earning respect from the cringing adversaries of Islam. In this scenario, the minorities in the Middle East are fated, as capitalists for Marx, to disappear in the dustbin of history.
1. Dhimmis:
(a) Jews
Islam in its koranic and traditional self-consciousness considered the monotheistic religious communities of Jews and Christians worthy of no more than a “protected and tolerated” status under Muslim rule. However, with the modern political founding of a Jewish State of Israel and a predominantly Christian state of Lebanon, the normative hierarchy of power was overturned when the inferior, subjugated dhimmi minorities arrogated the right to govern themselves, and even to dominate Muslims as less-than-equal citizens in both Israel and Lebanon. An uncompromising Muslim response was deemed necessary, and certainly legitimate, to re-establish the primacy of Islam in these two Mideastern countries.
Both Pan-Arab nationalism and local Palestinian nationalism had rejected the Zionist claim to Jewish statehood in 1948 and developed a variety of political and military approaches to undermine and unravel Israel’s existence. Islam, though active in the pre-1948 struggle, emerged more recently as an alternative and yet complementary Palestinian framework of belief and dedication, mobilization and warfare, against the rebellious al-yahud of irremediable and obstreperous character. Though a majority in their land and state, the Jews of Israel would be reduced to their minority status in order to re-confirm Muslim primacy.
There were different ways by which the integrity of Jewish identity and the security of Jewish life were disparaged and denied in the past. Jews in Arab lands were considered at times no more than “Arab Jews” in a sweeping assimilative embrace. Living within the parameters of Islamic civilization seemed emblematic of Jews being virtual “Muslim Jews.” But the stridency of the modern Palestinian Muslim movements, with their doctrinal rejection of Israel and their violent mode of armed struggle, sharpened the active war of Islam against the Jewish people.
Modern Zionism, as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, is defamed in the Muslim world as a colonial aggression and invasion that must be repelled by the defensive jihad of Islam.5 According to the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Article 13 of its covenant, any concession of the land of Palestine is a concession of the religion of Islam. This linkage of politics and religion is a central theme in classical Islam culled for active application. When the liberation of Palestine is achieved through jihad, the rule of Allah will descend and shape the moral and religious life of the Muslims, as the alien Jews will be defeated. Sheikh Ahmad Yasin of Hamas had stated in 1989 that “the solution [to the conflict] is a Palestinian Islamic state on all of Palestine where Arabs, Jews, and Christians will live under Islamic rule.”6 This recalls the model of the dhimma (the apocryphal/historical Muslim pact with infidels) that dogmatically denies equality, dignity, or independence to non-Muslim minorities.
The outburst of Intifada al-Aqsa in September 2000 revealed the surging energy of Palestinian Muslims to confront Israel in a spirit of sacrifice and devotion, with hundreds dead and many more hundreds wounded in the fi rst few months thereafter. Jerusalem, as the third holiest city in Islam, was the political target in this new phase of warfare. The Aqsa mosque situated on the Jewish Temple Mount (Har Ha-bayit), known by the Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, evoked a koranic image and the legend of Muhammad’s nocturnal visit to the Holy City. Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, Arafat-appointed mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, called for “sacrifice until Allah’s victory” and considered the Jews as cowards. To liberate al-Aqsa at the cost of child martyrs is an honor to the parents of the shuhud.7
The Islamic ethos of warfare throughout Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and even within pre-1967 Israeli borders as well, merged from within with the national Palestinian ethos of “armed struggle” (PLO Covenant, Art. 9). It also converged from without with the religious furor emanating from the Islamic Republic of Iran and its promotion of terrorism globally, the virulent Islamic hostility in Egypt to Israel, and Hizbullah’s Shi`ite victory against the Israeli army in south Lebanon, from which the IDF withdrew in late May 2000. In December of that year at a “Jerusalem Day” celebration in solidarity with the Palestinian intifada, Hizbullah’s Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah referred to Israel as “a cancer that needs to be removed at its roots.”8 The intense conviction of religious truth that fills Muslim hearts and minds bolsters the Islamic and Palestinian ambition of politicide against Jewish Israel. The Jews who survived as a pseudo-tolerated minority have no right to assert themselves as a sovereign majority people.
For its part, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority established in the context of the Oslo Accord from 1993 continues its animosity and rejection of Israel in the traditional Islamic idiom. The school texts used in the educational system in Palestinian-controlled areas, as in the towns of Ramallah, Kalkilya, and Hebron, portray Jews as “the enemies of the prophets and the believers,” morally stained by “fanaticism” and “treachery,” and committed to “racial discrimination.” The Western Wall is not a Jewish site, but part of the Haram precinct, and the land of Palestine belongs to the Muslims and their brother Christians [sic.].9 The formal and written PLO commitment to peace with Israel was not followed by the promotion of a message of accommodation, respect, and co-existence. Israel, demonized as the predator and pariah from the past, remained castigated as the Palestinians’ enemy even after the peace process was launched in Washington. War against the Jews characterized, as before, the new era of peace.
(b) Christians
The “religious and ethnic cleansing” by Islam of what once was the Christian Orient, or largely the Byzantine Orthodox Middle East, is but a euphemism for cultural and human genocide and the willful decimation of primordial native peoples. Once the majority population, Christians in the beginning of the 21st century constitute just three percent of the region’s inhabitants, numbering approximately 15 million, facing more than 350 million Muslims in Turkey, Iran, and all the Arab countries. The religious and historical cradle of Christianity has long become the Muslim-Arab heartland, and even symbolic Bethlehem and Nazareth, which long retained Christian majorities, have succumbed to Muslim majority domination. The basic trend among Eastern Christians in the 20th-century was immigration to the West. This population movement was stimulated by endemic physical insecurity, indiscriminate plunder, religious persecution, and political discrimination directed against virtually all the Christian communities across the region. In fact, the same forces of exclusion and oppression operate in the beginning of our 21st century as well.
• The Armenian genocide of 1915-16 by the Turks, which led to the death of a million and a half people, merits primary mention due to the scope of this horrific crime against humanity. The ancient Armenian people had be come a small and vulnerable minority in its homeland. The historical nexus of circumstances and incompatibilities gave birth to a policy of deportation with instances of fanatical Muslim mobs crying “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), as they burned and butchered the defenseless Christians in the cities of Ayntab and Birecik.10 Turkish nationalism and Islamic passion turned on the Armenians with a satanic ferociousness.
• The massacre at Simel in Iraq of some 600 Assyrian Christians - though Assyrian sources claim close to 3,000 were murdered in the immediate vicinity - in early August 1933 marked the denouement in the history of an ancient Eastern community. Claiming independence in the area of the Lower Zab and Nineveh area but promised only minority guarantees after World War I, the Assyrians were abandoned by the British to the new Iraqi regime, Sunni by religion and Arab by national consciousness.
Meanwhile, in the area of Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey in the 1990s, Muslim fundamentalists under the name Hizbullah spread their net of terror, seized Christian villages, forced women to wear the veil, and murdered priests. Abouna Symeon, a monk, related that the Muslims say, “We should go back to Europe where Christians come from . . . as if our ancestors weren’t here for centuries before the first Muslim settled here.”11 More recently, an Assyrian Suryani priest, Yusuf Akbulut, in Diyarbekir, was put on trial for calling on Turkey to recognize the Ottoman murder of the Armenians during World War I, and charging also that the Turks had used the Kurds to kill Christians.
Hiding the truth of the past has served in conjunction with destroying any future hope for the ancient Christian communities of the Fertile Crescent, across Armenia, Assyria, and Kurdistan, in the mountains of Hakkiari and Urmia, in the valley of Sapna and the village of Amadiya. Assyrian refugees in London prefer to refer to their lost homeland as “Mesopotamia,” recalling the Assyrian Kingdom from 612 B.C.E., rather than call it Iraq with its Arab Muslim significance under the ruthless Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein.12
Under the mournful circumstances, the dream of a national revival and return can filter but in the recesses of Assyrian imagination while divorced from the political realities of the contemporary Middle East.
The Maronites of Lebanon, with a profound historical religious and national presence in the mountain stronghold of Bsharre and Zghorta, Jubail and Kesrouan, have been confronted by the resurgence of militant Islam in recent decades. Faced with Palestinian terrorists and Syrian occupiers, Lebanon’s Christians also struggled with Iranian-supported Shi`ite movements that, in particular Hizbullah, seek to establish an Islamic Republic. Sheikh Fadallah and other religious authorities consider the Khoumeini revolution in Iran a precedent, certainly an inspiration, for their spiritual and political aspirations in the “land of the cedars.”
The outbreak of Lebanese-Palestinian warfare in April 1975 began, appropriately enough in this Islamic zeitgeist, with PLO shooting at a church ceremony in the East Beirut Christian neigh borhood of Ayn Rummanah, killing four Maronites. Palestinian massacres of Christians followed in 1976 in Damour, exhibiting gang-rapes and mutilated bodies, and in Ayshiyyah, exhibiting burnt bodies in the church. The fighting and slaughter continued, and hundreds of thousands of Christians fled the country. Beginning in the 1980s, Hizbullah conducted warfare against native Christians and the Israeli military presence in south Lebanon. When Sheikh Nasrallah’s own son was killed in battle in 1997, he expressed his paternal sadness but added that according to Islam, true life begins in Paradise with the martyr’s death.13 Meanwhile, in the northern city of Tripoli, where the Islamic Unity movement (Tawhid) is active, the 90 percent Sunni majority harassed the Christian shopkeepers and pasted pictures of Muslim leaders on public walls.
Lebanon, constituted after World War I as a primarily Christian state, symbolized the strengths and hopes of Christians through out the region. But the downfall of Lebanon in recent decades is a sobering indication of the advance of Islamic power and Arab influence. Noteworthy in its irony, in addition, is the fact that both small Israel and Lebanon, as the two Western-oriented democratic countries in the region, and representing the Judaic and Christian civilizations in the ancient Orient, have been victimized by the forces of a ferocious brand of Islam. A popular Arab-Muslim refrain regarding the mournful fate of the Jews and the Christians threatens “first the Saturday people and then the Sunday people” targeted by Islam stalking its prey.
Egypt is the home of the largest single Eastern Christian community, overwhelmingly, of the Orthodox Copt church, that is estimated at over five million within a total population of ap proximately 70 million people. The spirit of Arab nationalism and Islamic revivalism have contributed manifestly to shaping the public domain as culturally inhospitable, discriminating in employment and political office-holding, restrictive in religious privileges and practice, and threatening the physical security of Christians.
Egypt has a deep Islamic identity, not only an overwhelming Muslim majority population, in a period of intense popular religious consciousness. The Muslim Brotherhood represents the sweep of Egypt’s national Islamic identity, and other militant and violent groups actively engage in escalating the tone in Islamic discourse. The constitutional amendment which in 1980 recognized that “the Islamic shari`ah [law] is the principal source of legislation,” and the assassination of President Sadat as a “heretic” by the jihad organization, were each in their own way acts that demonstrated Islam grabbing the political high ground in Egyptian society. The Christians, by implication, felt the increasingly suffocating and intimidating atmosphere.
The Copts of Egypt have requested that the state authorities grant them human and minority rights. But Copts have for many years been excluded from high political, administrative, and military posts. They have called for media broadcasting whose message would recognize their legitimate place in Egyptian life; but instead, public figures call for imposing the traditional jizya poll-tax on Christians, while Sheikh Omar Abd-el Rahman, of the 1993 Twin Towers bombing notoriety, reportedly issued fatawat to kill the Christians of Egypt.
The language of political oppression and linguistic doublespeak employed in Egypt, and then internationally, identifies Muslim assaults against Christians as mere “sectarian tension” (fitna ta`ifiyya) in a way intended to hide the identity of the aggressor and the victim.14
The starkest instance of recent years was the pogrom against the Copts in Kosheh and neighboring communities in Upper Egypt in late December 1999-early January 2000. What began as an argument between a Christian fabric merchant and a Muslim customer ended with the killing of 22 Copts. Chillingly reminiscent from other times and peoples was a rumor instigating the violence to the effect that Christians had poisoned the wells. In March it was reported that the Kosheh killers had been acquitted in court.15 Traditional Islamic legalism frowns upon convicting a Muslim who injured or even murdered a dhimmi.
The condition of the Copts is deteriorating in all domains of Egyptian society. Other examples include attacks against churches, as at Kaser Rashwan in El-Fayoum province in August 2000, im position of Friday and not Sunday as the day off from school as in the Christian village of El-Biadieah in March that year, forced conversions of Christians to Islam, and political intimidation of Christian figures like the patriarch of the Coptic Catholic Church to publicly support the Mubarak regime.
The Sudan in Black Africa, and its southern zone in particular, is the focus of another case in the war of Islam against Christianity in these troubled times. Since 1955, a civil war between the Arab-Muslim north and the African-Christian/animist south has left two million dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees in neighboring countries. In addition, more than three million Sudanese, overwhelmingly in the south, were at risk in the year 2000 from famine and drought. It was the proclamation of Islamic law in 1983 by General Numeiri, and the doctrinaire role of the National Islamic Front led by Hasan Turabi thereafter, that signaled the intensification of the life-and-death struggle for freedom and identity for the southerners. Headed by American-educated John Garang from the large Dinka tribe, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and its military SPLA wing, then renewed the guerrilla war against the Khartoum regime, in the hands of Gen. Omar Hassan Al-Bashir since seizing power in 1989. The long war is largely forgotten by the world.
A complex web of cultural, religious, and economic issues sheds light on the longevity and horror of the suffering and struggle. The historical 19th-century slave trade in southern Sudan, conducted by unrepentant Arab traders/missionaries,16 continues in the throes of present-day warfare with the government’s purpose to break the popular back of the southern rebellion and convert the captives to Islam. Abducted boys, uprooted from their native environment, are brought north to Khartoum and forced to become Muslims, while some are sent back to the south for missionary or military purposes.17 The war in the south down to Equatorial province and Juba, the local capital, is unrelenting, with the Sudanese Army and its Muslim militias unwilling to tolerate an end other than the complete domination of the southerners, if not their physical - certainly cultural and religious - annihilation. We note that prior to the British withdrawal from Sudan in 1955-56 the south officially spoke English (not Arabic), had Sunday and not Friday as the day of rest, and freedom for Christianity was the dominant motif of the educational and religious milieu. But the independence of Sudan in 1956 signified the enslavement of the south.
The discovery of oil in the southern area of Bentiu complicated and exacerbated the north-south conflict, for it girded the military loins of Khartoum to preserve control over the region. Yet the SPLA, joined with Nubian and other opposition forces within the National Democratic Alliance, pursues the struggle in the area of Kassala in the east in an attempt to cut off Khartoum from its hinterland and then force a political settlement acceptable to southern aspirations and interests. Meanwhile, the program of Islamization and Arabization remains at the core of the Sudan government’s strategy, a policy of ethnic cleansing as Arab tribesmen push African inhabitants further south, especially away from the oil site of Bentiu. International oil interests and large numbers of Chinese security personnel stationed in support of the Khartoum regime bode ill for the southern struggle.
The vision of a new Sudan, as proposed by John Garang, is an idyllic image of a pluralistic country that recognizes autonomy for the south, freedom of religion for non-Muslims, and national unity for the country as a whole.18 But when land falls under dar al-Islam and is sanctified for Muslim rule, it is inconceivable that it would be voluntarily relinquished in a magnanimous act for conflict-resolution. Moreover, it is an Islamic imperative to expand into lands not yet populated by Muslims and transform them through mosque construction, religious conversion, and dhimmi subjugation. This is indeed the historical script and political prescription concerning the events transpiring in the Sudan during many decades of continued warfare.
2. Heterodox/Heretical Non-Muslims
(a) Alawites/Nusairis
According to legend, a Shi`ite from southern Iraq called Ibn-Nusair fashioned a radical interpretation of Islam’s origins and dogmas in the tenth century in a way that launched a new sect. His doctrine concerning the deification of `Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law in Mecca, on the one hand, and the existence of a trinity of celestial powers on the other, stood in absolute contra diction to orthodox Islamic belief.19 There arose, therefore, a new community of faith with highly syncretic features of Christian and pagan and perhaps Persian vintage, worshiping nature, promoting mixed dancing with unveiled women, as a schismatic Shi`ite sect set free from its presumably initial Islamic moorings. There were never mosques in the Nusairi mountain enclave in northwestern Syria, no sign of prayer, and no pilgrimage to Mecca.
This minority had apparently turned into an apostate community from Islam, and that act of heresy was met by hostility and rejection by the religious and political authorities in the Muslim East. A fatwah by Ibn-Taimiyya in the 14th-century considered the Nusairis an aberration and forbade to bury them in Muslim cemeteries or to eat meat from their slaughtered animals. In his view, the Nusairis were more infidel than Jews and Christians.20 Efforts by the Mamluks and the Ottomans to have them accept Islam failed.
In the 20th century, the Nusairis, now commonly known as Alawites, sought recognition for their separate identity within their own regional autonomous zone in Syria; and yet alternatively, depending on the political situation, they wanted acceptance from knowledged Alawites as Muslims and later in the early 1970s, under far different political circumstances, Imam Musa Sadr in Lebanon declared that the sect is part of the Shi`a branch of Islam. This religious maneuver remained, we may assume, farcical in the eyes of the large Muslim Sunni population in Syria where Hafi z al-Asad, a son of the Alawites from the mountain village of Qardaha, ruled with an iron fist. The Muslims considered Asad’s Baathist regime an atheistic anathema in the hands of a heretical minority dictatorship that represented only 12 percent of the Syrian population.
Events in Syria, like the massacre of 20,000 people in the stir of Muslim Brotherhood rebelliousness in Hama in 1982, illustrated the incongruity of Alawi rule over a society suffused with Islamic faith and Arab nationalist fervor. The fact that Asad, prior to his death in June 2000, was successful in transferring power to his son Beshar does not assure the long-term ability of the Alawite sect to impose its domination over the Muslims of Syria. Th e day of reckoning may come when Islam, as in its imperial past, recovers Damascus and the country from its apostate rulers from the mountain.
(a) Druzes
The appearance of the Druze sect in early 11th-century Egypt was a manifestation of a Shi`ite-Fatimid/Isma`ili faith and regime that elevated the caliphal fi gure of Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah to divine status. This fundamental distortion of orthodox Sunni Islam led to the persecution (mihna) of the new community, which then set its sights on acquiring a safe haven in the southern mountainous area of Lebanon, in Jabal `Amil and Wadi al-Taym. Th e new Druze religion departed from Islam, though at times the adherents pretended to be regular Muslims (taqiyah), but actually divorced themselves from Koran and shari`ah law. Religion had given birth to this new com munity, leaving the Druzes hardly more than allegorical Muslims, with monotheistic faith but without the doctrinal and behavioral paraphernalia of Islam.21 The Bani Ma`aruf, as they call themselves, consider their particular monotheism within an existing mono theistic Middle East to be a special brand, as a philosophical and syncretic quality fills the Druze spiritual universe with a fragrance of depth, eclecticism, and unadulterated purity.
The history of the Druzes is one of an introverted, secret sect surrounded, and sometimes endangered, by the Sunni Muslim majority in Lebanon, Syria, and beyond. Their religious leaders (Uqqal) preserved the collective integrity of this small minority group and, with lay military chieftains, always fought attempts, as in the effort by the Ottoman Turks at the turn of the 20th century, to impose Islam upon the Druzes in the southern Syrian Hawran region. At a minimum, the Druzes were put under Muslim religious authorities even though they claimed that they are independent of the shari`ah.
After Israel’s establishment, the Druze minority in the Carmel and Galilee areas was allowed to administer their own communal courts, no longer subordinated to Islamic law. This development was a result of the Jewish-Druze relationship which had begun in the 1930s, and reflected traditional Druze anxiety with Sunni Muslims, in this case the Palestinian Arabs. The Druze ended up agreeing to full conscription into the Israeli army. In the background of this fascinating military brotherhood between two small Mideastern peoples is the symbiosis in the biblical tale of Moses and Jethro his father-in-law, whom the Druze claim as their spiritual ancestor.
(a) Alevis
This highly mysterious group, which may number as much as ten or more million people in Turkey, seems to be an off shoot of Shi`ism but with an extreme emphasis on the divinity of “Ali.” De void of basic Islamic practices, like fasting in the month of Ramadan or mosque attendance, the Alevis reject shari`ah law and assume the proprietorship of an esoteric religious tradition, which may have absorbed Christian and pagan ideas. They also do not intermarry with Sunnis in Turkey.
When Muslim fundamentalism surfaced powerfully in Turkish society and politics, the Alevis cautiously maintained a low public profile. At the end of the 1990s, however, and though generally considered of non-Turkish ethnic identity, they adopted a more visible presence in Turkish cities and towns, erecting houses of worship known as cemevi, as in Ankara the capital.22 They may consider that the constitutional character of Turkey as a secular republic will always buttress them while containing the challenge of Islam as a rival political doctrine. This will then allow the wayward Alevis the opportunity to feel free to declare their religious identity without inviting any menacing Islamic response.
3. Non-Arab Muslims
(a) Kurds
The imperial rule of Islam dominated Kurdistan and its millennial-old native Kurds in the days of the Abbasid caliphate, the Ottoman sultanate, and the Safavid dynasty, and so, too, under their successor states - Iraq, Turkey, and Iran - in later and contemporary periods of Middle Eastern history. In the heights of their rugged mountain hearth the Kurds, subjugated by the Arab conquest, accepted Sunni Islam but in a way that their core collective identity remained rooted in their particular cultural, ecological, and ethnic way of life. Religious and national identity are often fused, as for Eastern Orthodoxy and Russian identity, or Catholicism and Irish nationality. In the Middle East, Arab nationalism has a Sunni Islamic hue, as if to be an Arab is to be a Muslim, or to be an Iranian is to be a Shi`ite.23 What then of Muslim Kurds?
The consequences of this linkage between nationality and religion are for certain minorities, like Muslim Kurds, harsh and fatal. Such a minority is, at one and the same time, denied any independent or honorable national significance while subordinated to the overarching religious community of which it is a member but that is dominated by another people. In the words of Firat, a Kurd, in a private communication from January 2001:
“Islam is actually the main reason that the Kurds can not unite [because they are nominal Muslims with other non-Kurd Muslims under the common faith of Islam], and one of the main reasons that Kurds do not have a country of their own [as they are subjected, as in Iraq and Syria, to the pan-Arab political framework].”
Kurds were traditionally not considered mainstream, observant, and loyal Muslims by dominant Muslims like the Arabs. First, we have the exceptional case of the Yezidis in the valley of Lalish north of Mosul, with their pre-Islamic faith or apostasy from Islam, worshiping the peacock angel Melek Tawus, who as recently as the 1990s feared the construction of a mosque in Dohuk, northern Iraq, as a sign of impending religious persecution.24 Secondly, saint worship and holy shrines were more predominant than shari`ah conformity and mosque attendance for the Ahl-e Haqq Kurdish adherents, as in Kermanshah in western Iran. Thirdly, Sufi mystical orders, like the Qadiri and Naqshbandi, muted formal Islamic commitment in favor of spiritual and moral exercises. Fourthly, popular Kurdish culture, it seems, only tangentially conformed to Islamic norms and probably more often diverged from them, as eccentrically engaging in mixed bathing.25
In the 20th century, the Kurds demanded and fought in vain in their pursuit of statehood as an expression of the surge of ethno nationalism in their ranks. Conducting minority insurgency with great tenacity over many decades in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq produced, however, no political gain. With a fundamental denial of the very existence of the coherent ethnic-linguistic community of over ten million Kurds in the country, Turkey practiced a harsh policy of cultural repression and physical deportation. The indictment and imprisonment of sociologist Ismail Besikci became the cause célèbre in the struggle for Kurdish recognition in the 1980s. In Iraq, three million Kurds fought a guerrilla war under the charge of Mustafa Barzani, but the campaign collapsed in 1975. The variety of Kurdish parties/militias - KDP, PUK, PKK - continued armed struggle across the Kurdistan homeland, but division within and brutal re pression without left the Kurds subjugated to the repressive states under which they live. In 1988, Saddam Hussein’s forces unleashed the Anfal campaign to destroy his non-Arab Kurdish compatriots The gassing of 5,000 villagers in Halabja became the symbol of Iraq’s “final solution” policy against the Kurds. In 1992, in the aftermath of the Gulf War and the liberation of Kuwait from Iraq’s clutches, the Kurds were able to establish a regional administration, but not more than that, with its capital in Arbil.
(b) Amazighen - Berbers/Kabyle
The struggle of the native Imazighen (especially Berbers in Morocco and Kabyles in Algeria) against the Arab-Muslim invasion of North Africa from the seventh and eighth centuries continued with out interruption into the period of the contemporary state-system. Based on an ancient oral language (Tamazight) rooted in the historical geography of Kabylia, the Rif, and Atlas mountains in particular, preserving an indigenous culture of ethnic fidelity and customary law, this minority of 15 million people persists, some times rebels, but lacks independence and statehood. These Berber communities adopted Sunni Islam early on, but their commitment to the faith was traditionally considered weaker than love of their Berber hearth and their tenacity in maintaining Berber identity at all costs. They apparently lent money at interest, despite the Islamic prohibition, and considered saints rather than learned ulema the venue for sanctity and blessing.26
The Algerian war for independence from French colonial ism (1954-62) found Kabylians, like Belkacem Krim, Ramdane Abane, and Hocine Ait-Ahmed, in the forefront of the armed FLN struggle. They dedicated their energies for a free Algeria that would accommodate the Berber minority, its language and culture, as a respectable component of the country’s national profile. Instead, Algeria with a certain jacobin centralized apparatus was soon defined as an “Arab-Muslim” entity that conjured up an old-new cultural-linguistic colonialism. Furthermore, the connection between language and sanctity regarding the dominant role of Arabic as the state language marginalized the Berber tongue as a parochial folk fossil. It was virtually impossible to speak Berber in the Algerian public domain, though approximately eight to nine million speak it in their homes.
It was this repressive situation that led Mouloud Mammeri in the 1970s to initiate his struggle for legitimizing the Berber language and poetry as expressions of a revived culture. So, too, the courageous efforts of Lounes Matoub, who never felt Arabic to be his own language, to speak and sing in his native though stigmatized Berber dialect as an act of resistance. But Matoub, aged 42, was murdered in June 1998, perhaps by state security forces, perhaps by Islamic terrorists, with the civil war in Algeria raging since 1992, and targeting any and everyone.27 Known for his anti-Islamist sentiments and proud Kabyle identity, Matoub once recalled how it was intimidating to utter a word in the Berber language on a bus in Algiers. He made an effort not to learn Arabic, and at his funeral the mourners chanted, “We are not Arabs!”
The Berber minority has been defiant in the face of violence and repression, demanding “democracy and culture” in a pluralistic ethnic Algeria. The people of Kabylia demonstrated in late April 2001 to commemorate the “Berber Spring” from 1980 in a proud act of ethnic self-affirmation. But in confrontations with the Algerian security forces, 126 unarmed youth were killed. The Berbers face both Islamic and state terror with terrible human losses.
In Morocco, where the Berbers traditionally enjoyed liberty in the rural Bled es-Siba areas, the war against French rule in the 1950s arose within a context of national and Islamic unity of the entire population. Yet independence meant the Arabization of Morocco in rejection of the French and Berber languages - even though the Berber proportion of the total population is estimated as high as 40 percent. The Alawite monarchy served as a unifying Arab-Islamic institution, and assumes this political pretension for the new king Muhammad VI, since his ascension to the throne in 1999. Inasmuch as the dynasty claims descent from Muhammad the prophet of Islam, and the king identifies himself in the classical caliphal role as “commander of the faithful” (Amir al-Mu`minin), he is a unifying point of reference for all Muslims, Arabs, and Berbers alike.
The implication of these aspects in contemporary Moroccan society and politics is the diminution of the Berbers’ status and their language in national life. Amazigh families in the south of Morocco have been displaced with Arabs, and Amazigh place-names have been purged and replaced with Arab ones. Only Arabic is an official language and it is even prohibited for Imazighen to record traditional names in birth registers. It is reported that many younger Berbers are not able to speak any one of their three Tamazight dialects which yet constitute one language, and that moreover the language is a handicap in the economic realm for which spoken Arabic is required.28
4. Power and Rights
The treatment of minorities in Middle Eastern Muslim countries is part of a comprehensive strategy of exclusion, homogenization, and repression in the public and political arenas. Traditionally autocratic authoritarian regimes, from Algeria to Iran, engage in policies that deny or restrict human rights for all persons and peoples. The regime rather than an active citizenry stands at the center of politics. It is often, though not always, the case that Islamic law or Muslim norms serve as a legitimizing pillar in the imposition of a single code of behavior that buttresses the regime.
In Saudi Arabia, where Islamic punishments (hudud) are applied, seven Nigerians charged with bank robbery in May 2000 were summarily beheaded.29 In Sudan, whose penal code is inspired by shari`ah law, 19 men had limbs amputated for the same crime of bank robbery in late January 2001.30 In the same period, the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat executed two Palestinians (one in front of a large cheering crowd in Nablus) who were accused of collaboration with Israeli secret services. Beyond the aspect of judicial arbitrariness in the procedures preceding the sentencing, it is suspected that such punishments are the result of inner clan rivalries among the Palestinians and not necessarily the product of a commitment to Palestinian national solidarity.
In the domain of thought and culture, free-thinkers and public critics have been victims of government repression that reflects Islamic concerns. In the year 2000, Egyptian authorities arrested well known human rights activist and scholar Saad al-Din al-Ibrahim on charges of fomenting divisions and tensions in the country due to his promotion of civil and minority, that is, Coptic, rights. He was later sentenced to a prison term. Author Salaheddin Mohsen, also of Egypt, was also sentenced to three years in prison in January 2001 because his writings were deemed offensive to Islam. These examples illustrate that Islam represents intellectual and political rectitude even though the government, headed by President Husni Mubarak, itself represses Islamic movements who use violence to achieve their objectives. Official Egypt, like monarchical Jordan, accommodates Islam, while at the same time containing its anti regime animus.
While Islam is a powerful force of repression within Arab countries, it is also a catalyst for expansion and a virtual assault on the West beyond the Middle East. The decay of Christianity as a political civilizational entity, along with its porous democratic ethos, exposes Western countries to Islamic penetration in Europe and North America.31 September 11 as a seminal rupture in the consciousness of the United States looms large in this regard. This is of a piece with the vulnerability and weakness of Christian com munities in the Muslim world. In the 19th century and even earlier, Russia, France, and Britain took an active interest in the safety and welfare of Oriental Christians; in the 20th century, national self determination and decolonization served to liberate the Arabs and Muslims, but block the road for Christian minority freedom. The independence of Iraq and Egypt, among other countries, placed Arabs above non-Arabs, and Muslims above non-Muslims.
The halcyon days of European concern for Christians and even military intervention on their behalf, as with the French military expedition to Lebanon in 1861, vanished from the arena of practical politics. When the United States intervened in the Persian Gulf in 1990-1991 on behalf of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, it demonstrated its global and regional strategic priorities; and when it accommodated Syrian occupation of Beirut and almost all of Lebanon in the same years, it obtusely abandoned Christians (and others) to a foreign and oppressive regime. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning the initiative of the American Congress in the 1990s to express concern for enfeebled Christians in the Middle East, and for Lebanon in particular, in declaratory and legislative decisions.
International organizations, particularly the United Nations and its agencies, have lacked the requisite determination and resources to assure the rights of minorities in the Middle East. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 made no reference to “minority rights,” while the right to “self-determination” itself is judged inferior to the right of a state to maintain its national and territorial integrity. The rights of indigenous peoples have been recognized, but no country is agreeable to the notion that such peoples should enjoy the option of secession against the right of the state to assert its complete sovereign prerogatives over its entire territory. The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in Article 27, does acknowledge the right of minorities “to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.”32 Yet a centralized political regime, anxious about the majority-minority rift within the country, will not agree to grant extensive rights to a dissident group which might thereafter threaten the survival of the country. Nor are some states even willing to recognize the minority’s separate existence: Turkey traditionally called the Kurds “mountain Turks,” while Egypt mockingly considers Copts a natural part of the Egyptian people and therefore unworthy of special rights or considerations. The goal of freedom and dignity for all old Middle Eastern peoples is a noble vision. The most reasonable solution, however, may be one in which the state refrains from interference in the life of the minority so long as it recognizes the right of the state to its sovereign existence.33 In the religious and political milieu of the Muslim and Arab Middle East, more than this - and even this - seems hardly feasible in the days ahead.
By Mordechai Nisan
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Endnotes
1 On the status of non-Muslims in the eyes of Islam, see Yohanan Friedmann, “Classifi cation of Unbelievers in Sunni Muslim Law and Tradition,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, Vol. 22 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Th e Hebrew University 1998), p. 163-195. For a general historical overview, see Bat Ye’or, Th e Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (London: Associated University Presses, 1996). 2 A recent contribution to this historical debate appears in M.A. Muhibbu- Din, “Ahl al-Kitab and Religious Minorities in the Islamic State: Historical Context and Contemporary Challenges,” Journal of Muslim Minority Aff airs, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2000): p. 111-127. 3 Th e Associated Press, May 1, 1998, quoted in Middle East Quarterly, Vol. VII, No. 4 (December 2000): p. 85; and Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2000. 4 Pakistan Observer, September 2, 2000; and a report from Th e Copts: Christians of Egypt, Vol. 17, Nos. 1 & 2 (January 1990): p. 3. 5 Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, born in Palestine in 1941 and assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, wrote a compelling fatwah (Islamic legal decision) on the subject called “Defense of the Muslim Lands,” (translated from the original Arabic) distributed on Internet site . 6 Ronni Shaked and Aviva Shabi, Hamas: From Faith in Allah to the Path of Terror [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1994), p. 112. 7 Al-Ahram al-Arabi, October 28, 2000, quoted by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Dispatch no. 151, November 8, 2000. 8 Daily Star, Beirut, December 22, 2000, quoted in the Monthly Digest, published by Th e Jerusalem Institute For Western Defence, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2001): p. 7. 9 Research on Palestinian textbooks is conducted by Th e Center for Monitor- ing the Impact of Peace, and most of the above quotations are drawn from the Center’s Newsletter, issue 4, available on their Internet site . 10 See the authoritative study by Vahakn N. Dadrian, Th e History of the Armenian Genocide (Oxford: Berghahn, 1995), p. 147-151. 11 Op. cit., Dalrymple, p. 97. 12 Madawi Al-Rasheed, “The Myth of Return: Iraqi Arab and Assyrian Refugees in London,” Journal of Refugee Studies,Vol. 7, Nos. 2/3 (1994): p. 199-219. 13 Nasrallah interviews in Al-Safi r, Beirut, September 16, 1997, and Der Spiegel, October 20, 1997. 14 Aequalitas, Vol. 4, No. 1 (March-April 1999): p. 6, published by the Cana- dian-Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, Chomedey-Laval, Quebec. Note also from the CEOHR, “A Communication on Violations of the Rights of the Copts in Egypt presented to the Center for Human Rights-United Nations Offi ce at Geneva,” April 9, 1996. 15 Information from and Cairo Times, January 13-19, 2000, p. 6-8. 16 Alice Moore-Harell, “Slave Trade in the Sudan in the Nineteenth Century and its Suppression in the Years 1877-80,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2 (April 1998): p. 113-128. 17 Author’s interview in January 2001 with an anonymous rebel referred to as Philip who fought in the bush with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. 18 John Garang, Th e Vision of the New Sudan: Questions of Unity and Identity, edited by Elwathig Kameir (Cairo: Consortium for Policy Analysis and Development Strategies, 1997). 19 Meir Bar-Asher and Aryeh Kofsky, “Th e Nusayri Doctrine of `Ali’s Divin- ity and the Nusayri Trinity According to an Unpublished Treatise from the 7th/13th Centuries,” Der Islam, vol. 72, no. 2 (1995): p. 258-292. 20 Rene Dussaud, Histoire Et Religion Des Nosairis (Paris: Librairie Emile Bouillon, 1900), esp. p. 29-30. 21 Silvestre De Sacy, Exposé de la Religion Des Druzes (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1964, orig. 1838). 22 Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, “Th e New Garments of Alevism,” ISIM Newsletter (5/00): p. 23. 23 Henry Munson, “Islamism and Nationalism,” ISIM Newsletter (5/00): p. 10. 24 Christine Allison, “Oral History in Kurdistan: Th e Case of the Badinani Yezidis,” Th e Journal of Kurdish Studies, Vol. II, 1996-1997, p. 37-48. See also John S. Guest, Survival Among the Kurds: A History of the Yezidis (London: Kegan Paul, 1993). 25 C.J. Edmonds, Kurds, Turks, and Arabs: Politics, Travel, and Research in North Eastern Iraq 1919-1925 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 204-205. 26 Th e Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. II (London: Luzac, 1927), p. 596-602. 27 On Lounes Matoub and his murder, see the Internet site of the World Algerian Action Coalition and the report in the Washington Times, June 29, 1998. In the Kabylian city of Tizi-Ouzou, Berber rioters destroyed public property in an outburst of collective anger. 28 Yamina El Kirat, “Some Causes of the Beni Iznassen Berber Language Loss,” Langues et Stigmatisation Sociale Au Maghreb - Peuples Mediteraneans, Vol. 79 (Avril-Juin 1997) : p. 35-53. 29 Guardian (Nigeria), May 20, 2000, reported in the Monthly Digest of News from the Moslem World issued by Th e Jerusalem Institute for Western Defence, vol. 12, no. 6 (June 2000): p. 11. 30 Th e Sudan Victims of Torture Group (SVTG) of London reported this information on February 2, 2001, that was distributed by Internet site . 31 I examined this subject in my book Identity and Civilization: Essays on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999), esp. p. 144-153. 32 Patrick Th ornberry, “Th e UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belong- ing to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities: Background, Analysis, Observations, and an Update,” in Alan Philips and Allan Rosas, editors, Universal Minority Rights (Finland: Abo Akademi University Institute for Human Rights, 1995), p. 20. 33 For a thoughtful discussion, see Anthony D. Smith, “Ethnic Nationalism and the Plight of Minorities,” Journal of Refugees Studies, vol. 7, no. 2/3 (1994): p. 186-198; also my article “Th e Minority Plight,” Middle East Quarterly, vol. III, no. 3 (September 1996): p. 25-34.
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P.S. - This article is taken from the Book, David Bukay (Editor), Muhammad’s Monsters: A Comprehensive Guide to RADICAL ISLAM for Western Audiences, 2004.
http://www.north-of-africa.com/article.php3?id_article=593
16 July 2009
The rapid and triumphal Islamization of the Middle East beginning in the seventh century, west to North Africa, north to the Caucasus, and east to China, is one of the most profound, permanent, and awesome conquests in history. This military and religious campaign welded a collective consciousness and consti¬tuted a political strategy whose primary concepts included: Muslim holy war (jihad), the Islamic territorial abode (dar al-Islam), and martyrdom (shuhada) on the one hand, juxtaposed to infidels (kuf¬far), tolerated non-Muslim scriptuaries (ahl al-dhimma), and the non-Islamic territorial abode of warfare (dar al-harb). The mission of Islam was spearheaded by the “sword of Muhammad” in order to impose Allah’s last revelation over all mankind and throughout the world. Among the various methods employed, in particular in the Middle East terrain but not only, were deportation, colo¬nization, conversion, repression, and at times massacre of native populations.1
The transformation of the broad Mideastern environment was a process of many centuries that culminated in the defacing and refashioning of many lands and peoples. Byzantine Asia Minor, Armenian Anatolia, and much of Kurdistan, became Muslim Turkey. The Sudan as the land of Kush, Nubia, and Black Africa assumed an Islamic and Arab face. Lebanon’s Pheonician and Christian heritage has been swamped by Islam and Arabism. Mesopotamia, Assyria, and part of Kurdistan were in the grip of Arab-Muslim Iraq. The pre-Islamic Berber/Imazighen/Kabyle character of North Africa struggles in the face of integralist and violent Islam. And Israel, reverberating with the Hebrew-Jewish legacy in the Holy Land, confronts the Islamic contention that Palestine is a sacred waqf domain belonging to the Muslims alone.
While the debate continues regarding the actual historical treatment meted out by Muslims to non-Muslims, Jews and Christians in particular,2 the spirit of our times in the late 20th and early 21st century is dominated overwhelmingly by Islamic fundamentalism linked to a comprehensive Muslim assault for glory and power. The names of Ayatollah Khoumeni (Iran), Osama bin-Laden (Afghanistan), Sheikh Hasan Nasrallah (Lebanon), and Hasan Turabi (Sudan), are some from among the heroic revolutionaries in the Muslim pantheon of iconic figures. Resonating into the boroughs of London, the arrondissements of Paris, and the neighborhoods of Jersey City, Detroit, and Chicago, Islamic movements and mes sages carve out their territory of influence in the quest for ultimate domination within the public domain of discourse and politics.
This is so in the remaining bastions of the (so-called) Christian West and with every greater immediacy and fury within and a bit beyond the Middle East. In May 1998, Libyan leader Muammar Qadhdafi declared that Jews and Christians hate Muslims and insult Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. In the light of this charge, and that by Saddam Hussein of Iraq that Israel defiles Muslim and Christian sanctuaries, the Islamic world is expected to take the road of jihad in order to achieve peace and justice in the world.3 The mujahid bin-Laden, evoking the slogan of the “Great Islamic Republic” throughout the Middle East, repeated the militant refrain in Peshawar in September 2000, calling for war against Jews in Palestine and Christian Americans in Saudi Arabia.4 A year later, the September 11, 2001, Islamic terror attacks in the United States brought home the seriousness and immediacy of bin-Laden’s intentions. His al-Qaidah movement had struck ruthlessly at the political and economic centers of American power.
Meanwhile, attacks in the Far East against Christians and churches in Indonesia, and in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast in Africa, in the year 2000 signaled the scope of the Islamic offensive. The Pakistani “Army of the Righteous” stated the need for jihad against non-Muslims, especially Jews and Hindus, while the march of Allah’s soldiers continued in Bosnia and Kossovo, Chechnya and Kashmir, Palestine and Lebanon.
Of special importance in this regard is the Christian character of Lebanon and the Jewish ethos of Israel as primary targets of Islam’s war against the traditional infidel communities. In 1980, at an Islamic Summit Conference in the Pakistani city of Lahore, the goal was set to have the Middle East totally Islamic with the elimination of the Christians of the Orient and the Jews of Israel. This imperialistic if not genocidal intention appears high on the Muslim agenda until today, considering the pace and direction of events in both occupied Lebanon and intifada-infested Israel.
In an interesting development, the Tibetan Dali Lama condemned both Christians and Muslims in January 2001 for their practice of actively seeking converts. The non-aggressive religions of Hinduism and Buddhism apparently fear for their future. But it is evidently clear that the truly aggressive religion in this era is not Christianity, but rather putative and militant Islam with its explicit agenda of expansion worldwide.
Islam in its formative historical stage surfaced as a conquering and colonizing religious movement that arrogated public space and political power for itself alone. This serves as a model for reproduction in any future era thereafter, subject to the exigencies of power opportunities that are available to the Muslims. There are no fixed frontiers to delimit the scope of the future expansive drive, nor are there any moral or juridical restrictions in pursuing the war. Rather, the exaltation of battle by whatever means is designed to vindicate Islam’s global primacy. The horrors of victory, perhaps for the victors and the vanquished alike, are tangential to the satisfaction of exacting tribute and earning respect from the cringing adversaries of Islam. In this scenario, the minorities in the Middle East are fated, as capitalists for Marx, to disappear in the dustbin of history.
1. Dhimmis:
(a) Jews
Islam in its koranic and traditional self-consciousness considered the monotheistic religious communities of Jews and Christians worthy of no more than a “protected and tolerated” status under Muslim rule. However, with the modern political founding of a Jewish State of Israel and a predominantly Christian state of Lebanon, the normative hierarchy of power was overturned when the inferior, subjugated dhimmi minorities arrogated the right to govern themselves, and even to dominate Muslims as less-than-equal citizens in both Israel and Lebanon. An uncompromising Muslim response was deemed necessary, and certainly legitimate, to re-establish the primacy of Islam in these two Mideastern countries.
Both Pan-Arab nationalism and local Palestinian nationalism had rejected the Zionist claim to Jewish statehood in 1948 and developed a variety of political and military approaches to undermine and unravel Israel’s existence. Islam, though active in the pre-1948 struggle, emerged more recently as an alternative and yet complementary Palestinian framework of belief and dedication, mobilization and warfare, against the rebellious al-yahud of irremediable and obstreperous character. Though a majority in their land and state, the Jews of Israel would be reduced to their minority status in order to re-confirm Muslim primacy.
There were different ways by which the integrity of Jewish identity and the security of Jewish life were disparaged and denied in the past. Jews in Arab lands were considered at times no more than “Arab Jews” in a sweeping assimilative embrace. Living within the parameters of Islamic civilization seemed emblematic of Jews being virtual “Muslim Jews.” But the stridency of the modern Palestinian Muslim movements, with their doctrinal rejection of Israel and their violent mode of armed struggle, sharpened the active war of Islam against the Jewish people.
Modern Zionism, as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, is defamed in the Muslim world as a colonial aggression and invasion that must be repelled by the defensive jihad of Islam.5 According to the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Article 13 of its covenant, any concession of the land of Palestine is a concession of the religion of Islam. This linkage of politics and religion is a central theme in classical Islam culled for active application. When the liberation of Palestine is achieved through jihad, the rule of Allah will descend and shape the moral and religious life of the Muslims, as the alien Jews will be defeated. Sheikh Ahmad Yasin of Hamas had stated in 1989 that “the solution [to the conflict] is a Palestinian Islamic state on all of Palestine where Arabs, Jews, and Christians will live under Islamic rule.”6 This recalls the model of the dhimma (the apocryphal/historical Muslim pact with infidels) that dogmatically denies equality, dignity, or independence to non-Muslim minorities.
The outburst of Intifada al-Aqsa in September 2000 revealed the surging energy of Palestinian Muslims to confront Israel in a spirit of sacrifice and devotion, with hundreds dead and many more hundreds wounded in the fi rst few months thereafter. Jerusalem, as the third holiest city in Islam, was the political target in this new phase of warfare. The Aqsa mosque situated on the Jewish Temple Mount (Har Ha-bayit), known by the Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, evoked a koranic image and the legend of Muhammad’s nocturnal visit to the Holy City. Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, Arafat-appointed mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, called for “sacrifice until Allah’s victory” and considered the Jews as cowards. To liberate al-Aqsa at the cost of child martyrs is an honor to the parents of the shuhud.7
The Islamic ethos of warfare throughout Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and even within pre-1967 Israeli borders as well, merged from within with the national Palestinian ethos of “armed struggle” (PLO Covenant, Art. 9). It also converged from without with the religious furor emanating from the Islamic Republic of Iran and its promotion of terrorism globally, the virulent Islamic hostility in Egypt to Israel, and Hizbullah’s Shi`ite victory against the Israeli army in south Lebanon, from which the IDF withdrew in late May 2000. In December of that year at a “Jerusalem Day” celebration in solidarity with the Palestinian intifada, Hizbullah’s Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah referred to Israel as “a cancer that needs to be removed at its roots.”8 The intense conviction of religious truth that fills Muslim hearts and minds bolsters the Islamic and Palestinian ambition of politicide against Jewish Israel. The Jews who survived as a pseudo-tolerated minority have no right to assert themselves as a sovereign majority people.
For its part, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority established in the context of the Oslo Accord from 1993 continues its animosity and rejection of Israel in the traditional Islamic idiom. The school texts used in the educational system in Palestinian-controlled areas, as in the towns of Ramallah, Kalkilya, and Hebron, portray Jews as “the enemies of the prophets and the believers,” morally stained by “fanaticism” and “treachery,” and committed to “racial discrimination.” The Western Wall is not a Jewish site, but part of the Haram precinct, and the land of Palestine belongs to the Muslims and their brother Christians [sic.].9 The formal and written PLO commitment to peace with Israel was not followed by the promotion of a message of accommodation, respect, and co-existence. Israel, demonized as the predator and pariah from the past, remained castigated as the Palestinians’ enemy even after the peace process was launched in Washington. War against the Jews characterized, as before, the new era of peace.
(b) Christians
The “religious and ethnic cleansing” by Islam of what once was the Christian Orient, or largely the Byzantine Orthodox Middle East, is but a euphemism for cultural and human genocide and the willful decimation of primordial native peoples. Once the majority population, Christians in the beginning of the 21st century constitute just three percent of the region’s inhabitants, numbering approximately 15 million, facing more than 350 million Muslims in Turkey, Iran, and all the Arab countries. The religious and historical cradle of Christianity has long become the Muslim-Arab heartland, and even symbolic Bethlehem and Nazareth, which long retained Christian majorities, have succumbed to Muslim majority domination. The basic trend among Eastern Christians in the 20th-century was immigration to the West. This population movement was stimulated by endemic physical insecurity, indiscriminate plunder, religious persecution, and political discrimination directed against virtually all the Christian communities across the region. In fact, the same forces of exclusion and oppression operate in the beginning of our 21st century as well.
• The Armenian genocide of 1915-16 by the Turks, which led to the death of a million and a half people, merits primary mention due to the scope of this horrific crime against humanity. The ancient Armenian people had be come a small and vulnerable minority in its homeland. The historical nexus of circumstances and incompatibilities gave birth to a policy of deportation with instances of fanatical Muslim mobs crying “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), as they burned and butchered the defenseless Christians in the cities of Ayntab and Birecik.10 Turkish nationalism and Islamic passion turned on the Armenians with a satanic ferociousness.
• The massacre at Simel in Iraq of some 600 Assyrian Christians - though Assyrian sources claim close to 3,000 were murdered in the immediate vicinity - in early August 1933 marked the denouement in the history of an ancient Eastern community. Claiming independence in the area of the Lower Zab and Nineveh area but promised only minority guarantees after World War I, the Assyrians were abandoned by the British to the new Iraqi regime, Sunni by religion and Arab by national consciousness.
Meanwhile, in the area of Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey in the 1990s, Muslim fundamentalists under the name Hizbullah spread their net of terror, seized Christian villages, forced women to wear the veil, and murdered priests. Abouna Symeon, a monk, related that the Muslims say, “We should go back to Europe where Christians come from . . . as if our ancestors weren’t here for centuries before the first Muslim settled here.”11 More recently, an Assyrian Suryani priest, Yusuf Akbulut, in Diyarbekir, was put on trial for calling on Turkey to recognize the Ottoman murder of the Armenians during World War I, and charging also that the Turks had used the Kurds to kill Christians.
Hiding the truth of the past has served in conjunction with destroying any future hope for the ancient Christian communities of the Fertile Crescent, across Armenia, Assyria, and Kurdistan, in the mountains of Hakkiari and Urmia, in the valley of Sapna and the village of Amadiya. Assyrian refugees in London prefer to refer to their lost homeland as “Mesopotamia,” recalling the Assyrian Kingdom from 612 B.C.E., rather than call it Iraq with its Arab Muslim significance under the ruthless Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein.12
Under the mournful circumstances, the dream of a national revival and return can filter but in the recesses of Assyrian imagination while divorced from the political realities of the contemporary Middle East.
The Maronites of Lebanon, with a profound historical religious and national presence in the mountain stronghold of Bsharre and Zghorta, Jubail and Kesrouan, have been confronted by the resurgence of militant Islam in recent decades. Faced with Palestinian terrorists and Syrian occupiers, Lebanon’s Christians also struggled with Iranian-supported Shi`ite movements that, in particular Hizbullah, seek to establish an Islamic Republic. Sheikh Fadallah and other religious authorities consider the Khoumeini revolution in Iran a precedent, certainly an inspiration, for their spiritual and political aspirations in the “land of the cedars.”
The outbreak of Lebanese-Palestinian warfare in April 1975 began, appropriately enough in this Islamic zeitgeist, with PLO shooting at a church ceremony in the East Beirut Christian neigh borhood of Ayn Rummanah, killing four Maronites. Palestinian massacres of Christians followed in 1976 in Damour, exhibiting gang-rapes and mutilated bodies, and in Ayshiyyah, exhibiting burnt bodies in the church. The fighting and slaughter continued, and hundreds of thousands of Christians fled the country. Beginning in the 1980s, Hizbullah conducted warfare against native Christians and the Israeli military presence in south Lebanon. When Sheikh Nasrallah’s own son was killed in battle in 1997, he expressed his paternal sadness but added that according to Islam, true life begins in Paradise with the martyr’s death.13 Meanwhile, in the northern city of Tripoli, where the Islamic Unity movement (Tawhid) is active, the 90 percent Sunni majority harassed the Christian shopkeepers and pasted pictures of Muslim leaders on public walls.
Lebanon, constituted after World War I as a primarily Christian state, symbolized the strengths and hopes of Christians through out the region. But the downfall of Lebanon in recent decades is a sobering indication of the advance of Islamic power and Arab influence. Noteworthy in its irony, in addition, is the fact that both small Israel and Lebanon, as the two Western-oriented democratic countries in the region, and representing the Judaic and Christian civilizations in the ancient Orient, have been victimized by the forces of a ferocious brand of Islam. A popular Arab-Muslim refrain regarding the mournful fate of the Jews and the Christians threatens “first the Saturday people and then the Sunday people” targeted by Islam stalking its prey.
Egypt is the home of the largest single Eastern Christian community, overwhelmingly, of the Orthodox Copt church, that is estimated at over five million within a total population of ap proximately 70 million people. The spirit of Arab nationalism and Islamic revivalism have contributed manifestly to shaping the public domain as culturally inhospitable, discriminating in employment and political office-holding, restrictive in religious privileges and practice, and threatening the physical security of Christians.
Egypt has a deep Islamic identity, not only an overwhelming Muslim majority population, in a period of intense popular religious consciousness. The Muslim Brotherhood represents the sweep of Egypt’s national Islamic identity, and other militant and violent groups actively engage in escalating the tone in Islamic discourse. The constitutional amendment which in 1980 recognized that “the Islamic shari`ah [law] is the principal source of legislation,” and the assassination of President Sadat as a “heretic” by the jihad organization, were each in their own way acts that demonstrated Islam grabbing the political high ground in Egyptian society. The Christians, by implication, felt the increasingly suffocating and intimidating atmosphere.
The Copts of Egypt have requested that the state authorities grant them human and minority rights. But Copts have for many years been excluded from high political, administrative, and military posts. They have called for media broadcasting whose message would recognize their legitimate place in Egyptian life; but instead, public figures call for imposing the traditional jizya poll-tax on Christians, while Sheikh Omar Abd-el Rahman, of the 1993 Twin Towers bombing notoriety, reportedly issued fatawat to kill the Christians of Egypt.
The language of political oppression and linguistic doublespeak employed in Egypt, and then internationally, identifies Muslim assaults against Christians as mere “sectarian tension” (fitna ta`ifiyya) in a way intended to hide the identity of the aggressor and the victim.14
The starkest instance of recent years was the pogrom against the Copts in Kosheh and neighboring communities in Upper Egypt in late December 1999-early January 2000. What began as an argument between a Christian fabric merchant and a Muslim customer ended with the killing of 22 Copts. Chillingly reminiscent from other times and peoples was a rumor instigating the violence to the effect that Christians had poisoned the wells. In March it was reported that the Kosheh killers had been acquitted in court.15 Traditional Islamic legalism frowns upon convicting a Muslim who injured or even murdered a dhimmi.
The condition of the Copts is deteriorating in all domains of Egyptian society. Other examples include attacks against churches, as at Kaser Rashwan in El-Fayoum province in August 2000, im position of Friday and not Sunday as the day off from school as in the Christian village of El-Biadieah in March that year, forced conversions of Christians to Islam, and political intimidation of Christian figures like the patriarch of the Coptic Catholic Church to publicly support the Mubarak regime.
The Sudan in Black Africa, and its southern zone in particular, is the focus of another case in the war of Islam against Christianity in these troubled times. Since 1955, a civil war between the Arab-Muslim north and the African-Christian/animist south has left two million dead and hundreds of thousands of refugees in neighboring countries. In addition, more than three million Sudanese, overwhelmingly in the south, were at risk in the year 2000 from famine and drought. It was the proclamation of Islamic law in 1983 by General Numeiri, and the doctrinaire role of the National Islamic Front led by Hasan Turabi thereafter, that signaled the intensification of the life-and-death struggle for freedom and identity for the southerners. Headed by American-educated John Garang from the large Dinka tribe, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and its military SPLA wing, then renewed the guerrilla war against the Khartoum regime, in the hands of Gen. Omar Hassan Al-Bashir since seizing power in 1989. The long war is largely forgotten by the world.
A complex web of cultural, religious, and economic issues sheds light on the longevity and horror of the suffering and struggle. The historical 19th-century slave trade in southern Sudan, conducted by unrepentant Arab traders/missionaries,16 continues in the throes of present-day warfare with the government’s purpose to break the popular back of the southern rebellion and convert the captives to Islam. Abducted boys, uprooted from their native environment, are brought north to Khartoum and forced to become Muslims, while some are sent back to the south for missionary or military purposes.17 The war in the south down to Equatorial province and Juba, the local capital, is unrelenting, with the Sudanese Army and its Muslim militias unwilling to tolerate an end other than the complete domination of the southerners, if not their physical - certainly cultural and religious - annihilation. We note that prior to the British withdrawal from Sudan in 1955-56 the south officially spoke English (not Arabic), had Sunday and not Friday as the day of rest, and freedom for Christianity was the dominant motif of the educational and religious milieu. But the independence of Sudan in 1956 signified the enslavement of the south.
The discovery of oil in the southern area of Bentiu complicated and exacerbated the north-south conflict, for it girded the military loins of Khartoum to preserve control over the region. Yet the SPLA, joined with Nubian and other opposition forces within the National Democratic Alliance, pursues the struggle in the area of Kassala in the east in an attempt to cut off Khartoum from its hinterland and then force a political settlement acceptable to southern aspirations and interests. Meanwhile, the program of Islamization and Arabization remains at the core of the Sudan government’s strategy, a policy of ethnic cleansing as Arab tribesmen push African inhabitants further south, especially away from the oil site of Bentiu. International oil interests and large numbers of Chinese security personnel stationed in support of the Khartoum regime bode ill for the southern struggle.
The vision of a new Sudan, as proposed by John Garang, is an idyllic image of a pluralistic country that recognizes autonomy for the south, freedom of religion for non-Muslims, and national unity for the country as a whole.18 But when land falls under dar al-Islam and is sanctified for Muslim rule, it is inconceivable that it would be voluntarily relinquished in a magnanimous act for conflict-resolution. Moreover, it is an Islamic imperative to expand into lands not yet populated by Muslims and transform them through mosque construction, religious conversion, and dhimmi subjugation. This is indeed the historical script and political prescription concerning the events transpiring in the Sudan during many decades of continued warfare.
2. Heterodox/Heretical Non-Muslims
(a) Alawites/Nusairis
According to legend, a Shi`ite from southern Iraq called Ibn-Nusair fashioned a radical interpretation of Islam’s origins and dogmas in the tenth century in a way that launched a new sect. His doctrine concerning the deification of `Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law in Mecca, on the one hand, and the existence of a trinity of celestial powers on the other, stood in absolute contra diction to orthodox Islamic belief.19 There arose, therefore, a new community of faith with highly syncretic features of Christian and pagan and perhaps Persian vintage, worshiping nature, promoting mixed dancing with unveiled women, as a schismatic Shi`ite sect set free from its presumably initial Islamic moorings. There were never mosques in the Nusairi mountain enclave in northwestern Syria, no sign of prayer, and no pilgrimage to Mecca.
This minority had apparently turned into an apostate community from Islam, and that act of heresy was met by hostility and rejection by the religious and political authorities in the Muslim East. A fatwah by Ibn-Taimiyya in the 14th-century considered the Nusairis an aberration and forbade to bury them in Muslim cemeteries or to eat meat from their slaughtered animals. In his view, the Nusairis were more infidel than Jews and Christians.20 Efforts by the Mamluks and the Ottomans to have them accept Islam failed.
In the 20th century, the Nusairis, now commonly known as Alawites, sought recognition for their separate identity within their own regional autonomous zone in Syria; and yet alternatively, depending on the political situation, they wanted acceptance from knowledged Alawites as Muslims and later in the early 1970s, under far different political circumstances, Imam Musa Sadr in Lebanon declared that the sect is part of the Shi`a branch of Islam. This religious maneuver remained, we may assume, farcical in the eyes of the large Muslim Sunni population in Syria where Hafi z al-Asad, a son of the Alawites from the mountain village of Qardaha, ruled with an iron fist. The Muslims considered Asad’s Baathist regime an atheistic anathema in the hands of a heretical minority dictatorship that represented only 12 percent of the Syrian population.
Events in Syria, like the massacre of 20,000 people in the stir of Muslim Brotherhood rebelliousness in Hama in 1982, illustrated the incongruity of Alawi rule over a society suffused with Islamic faith and Arab nationalist fervor. The fact that Asad, prior to his death in June 2000, was successful in transferring power to his son Beshar does not assure the long-term ability of the Alawite sect to impose its domination over the Muslims of Syria. Th e day of reckoning may come when Islam, as in its imperial past, recovers Damascus and the country from its apostate rulers from the mountain.
(a) Druzes
The appearance of the Druze sect in early 11th-century Egypt was a manifestation of a Shi`ite-Fatimid/Isma`ili faith and regime that elevated the caliphal fi gure of Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah to divine status. This fundamental distortion of orthodox Sunni Islam led to the persecution (mihna) of the new community, which then set its sights on acquiring a safe haven in the southern mountainous area of Lebanon, in Jabal `Amil and Wadi al-Taym. Th e new Druze religion departed from Islam, though at times the adherents pretended to be regular Muslims (taqiyah), but actually divorced themselves from Koran and shari`ah law. Religion had given birth to this new com munity, leaving the Druzes hardly more than allegorical Muslims, with monotheistic faith but without the doctrinal and behavioral paraphernalia of Islam.21 The Bani Ma`aruf, as they call themselves, consider their particular monotheism within an existing mono theistic Middle East to be a special brand, as a philosophical and syncretic quality fills the Druze spiritual universe with a fragrance of depth, eclecticism, and unadulterated purity.
The history of the Druzes is one of an introverted, secret sect surrounded, and sometimes endangered, by the Sunni Muslim majority in Lebanon, Syria, and beyond. Their religious leaders (Uqqal) preserved the collective integrity of this small minority group and, with lay military chieftains, always fought attempts, as in the effort by the Ottoman Turks at the turn of the 20th century, to impose Islam upon the Druzes in the southern Syrian Hawran region. At a minimum, the Druzes were put under Muslim religious authorities even though they claimed that they are independent of the shari`ah.
After Israel’s establishment, the Druze minority in the Carmel and Galilee areas was allowed to administer their own communal courts, no longer subordinated to Islamic law. This development was a result of the Jewish-Druze relationship which had begun in the 1930s, and reflected traditional Druze anxiety with Sunni Muslims, in this case the Palestinian Arabs. The Druze ended up agreeing to full conscription into the Israeli army. In the background of this fascinating military brotherhood between two small Mideastern peoples is the symbiosis in the biblical tale of Moses and Jethro his father-in-law, whom the Druze claim as their spiritual ancestor.
(a) Alevis
This highly mysterious group, which may number as much as ten or more million people in Turkey, seems to be an off shoot of Shi`ism but with an extreme emphasis on the divinity of “Ali.” De void of basic Islamic practices, like fasting in the month of Ramadan or mosque attendance, the Alevis reject shari`ah law and assume the proprietorship of an esoteric religious tradition, which may have absorbed Christian and pagan ideas. They also do not intermarry with Sunnis in Turkey.
When Muslim fundamentalism surfaced powerfully in Turkish society and politics, the Alevis cautiously maintained a low public profile. At the end of the 1990s, however, and though generally considered of non-Turkish ethnic identity, they adopted a more visible presence in Turkish cities and towns, erecting houses of worship known as cemevi, as in Ankara the capital.22 They may consider that the constitutional character of Turkey as a secular republic will always buttress them while containing the challenge of Islam as a rival political doctrine. This will then allow the wayward Alevis the opportunity to feel free to declare their religious identity without inviting any menacing Islamic response.
3. Non-Arab Muslims
(a) Kurds
The imperial rule of Islam dominated Kurdistan and its millennial-old native Kurds in the days of the Abbasid caliphate, the Ottoman sultanate, and the Safavid dynasty, and so, too, under their successor states - Iraq, Turkey, and Iran - in later and contemporary periods of Middle Eastern history. In the heights of their rugged mountain hearth the Kurds, subjugated by the Arab conquest, accepted Sunni Islam but in a way that their core collective identity remained rooted in their particular cultural, ecological, and ethnic way of life. Religious and national identity are often fused, as for Eastern Orthodoxy and Russian identity, or Catholicism and Irish nationality. In the Middle East, Arab nationalism has a Sunni Islamic hue, as if to be an Arab is to be a Muslim, or to be an Iranian is to be a Shi`ite.23 What then of Muslim Kurds?
The consequences of this linkage between nationality and religion are for certain minorities, like Muslim Kurds, harsh and fatal. Such a minority is, at one and the same time, denied any independent or honorable national significance while subordinated to the overarching religious community of which it is a member but that is dominated by another people. In the words of Firat, a Kurd, in a private communication from January 2001:
“Islam is actually the main reason that the Kurds can not unite [because they are nominal Muslims with other non-Kurd Muslims under the common faith of Islam], and one of the main reasons that Kurds do not have a country of their own [as they are subjected, as in Iraq and Syria, to the pan-Arab political framework].”
Kurds were traditionally not considered mainstream, observant, and loyal Muslims by dominant Muslims like the Arabs. First, we have the exceptional case of the Yezidis in the valley of Lalish north of Mosul, with their pre-Islamic faith or apostasy from Islam, worshiping the peacock angel Melek Tawus, who as recently as the 1990s feared the construction of a mosque in Dohuk, northern Iraq, as a sign of impending religious persecution.24 Secondly, saint worship and holy shrines were more predominant than shari`ah conformity and mosque attendance for the Ahl-e Haqq Kurdish adherents, as in Kermanshah in western Iran. Thirdly, Sufi mystical orders, like the Qadiri and Naqshbandi, muted formal Islamic commitment in favor of spiritual and moral exercises. Fourthly, popular Kurdish culture, it seems, only tangentially conformed to Islamic norms and probably more often diverged from them, as eccentrically engaging in mixed bathing.25
In the 20th century, the Kurds demanded and fought in vain in their pursuit of statehood as an expression of the surge of ethno nationalism in their ranks. Conducting minority insurgency with great tenacity over many decades in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq produced, however, no political gain. With a fundamental denial of the very existence of the coherent ethnic-linguistic community of over ten million Kurds in the country, Turkey practiced a harsh policy of cultural repression and physical deportation. The indictment and imprisonment of sociologist Ismail Besikci became the cause célèbre in the struggle for Kurdish recognition in the 1980s. In Iraq, three million Kurds fought a guerrilla war under the charge of Mustafa Barzani, but the campaign collapsed in 1975. The variety of Kurdish parties/militias - KDP, PUK, PKK - continued armed struggle across the Kurdistan homeland, but division within and brutal re pression without left the Kurds subjugated to the repressive states under which they live. In 1988, Saddam Hussein’s forces unleashed the Anfal campaign to destroy his non-Arab Kurdish compatriots The gassing of 5,000 villagers in Halabja became the symbol of Iraq’s “final solution” policy against the Kurds. In 1992, in the aftermath of the Gulf War and the liberation of Kuwait from Iraq’s clutches, the Kurds were able to establish a regional administration, but not more than that, with its capital in Arbil.
(b) Amazighen - Berbers/Kabyle
The struggle of the native Imazighen (especially Berbers in Morocco and Kabyles in Algeria) against the Arab-Muslim invasion of North Africa from the seventh and eighth centuries continued with out interruption into the period of the contemporary state-system. Based on an ancient oral language (Tamazight) rooted in the historical geography of Kabylia, the Rif, and Atlas mountains in particular, preserving an indigenous culture of ethnic fidelity and customary law, this minority of 15 million people persists, some times rebels, but lacks independence and statehood. These Berber communities adopted Sunni Islam early on, but their commitment to the faith was traditionally considered weaker than love of their Berber hearth and their tenacity in maintaining Berber identity at all costs. They apparently lent money at interest, despite the Islamic prohibition, and considered saints rather than learned ulema the venue for sanctity and blessing.26
The Algerian war for independence from French colonial ism (1954-62) found Kabylians, like Belkacem Krim, Ramdane Abane, and Hocine Ait-Ahmed, in the forefront of the armed FLN struggle. They dedicated their energies for a free Algeria that would accommodate the Berber minority, its language and culture, as a respectable component of the country’s national profile. Instead, Algeria with a certain jacobin centralized apparatus was soon defined as an “Arab-Muslim” entity that conjured up an old-new cultural-linguistic colonialism. Furthermore, the connection between language and sanctity regarding the dominant role of Arabic as the state language marginalized the Berber tongue as a parochial folk fossil. It was virtually impossible to speak Berber in the Algerian public domain, though approximately eight to nine million speak it in their homes.
It was this repressive situation that led Mouloud Mammeri in the 1970s to initiate his struggle for legitimizing the Berber language and poetry as expressions of a revived culture. So, too, the courageous efforts of Lounes Matoub, who never felt Arabic to be his own language, to speak and sing in his native though stigmatized Berber dialect as an act of resistance. But Matoub, aged 42, was murdered in June 1998, perhaps by state security forces, perhaps by Islamic terrorists, with the civil war in Algeria raging since 1992, and targeting any and everyone.27 Known for his anti-Islamist sentiments and proud Kabyle identity, Matoub once recalled how it was intimidating to utter a word in the Berber language on a bus in Algiers. He made an effort not to learn Arabic, and at his funeral the mourners chanted, “We are not Arabs!”
The Berber minority has been defiant in the face of violence and repression, demanding “democracy and culture” in a pluralistic ethnic Algeria. The people of Kabylia demonstrated in late April 2001 to commemorate the “Berber Spring” from 1980 in a proud act of ethnic self-affirmation. But in confrontations with the Algerian security forces, 126 unarmed youth were killed. The Berbers face both Islamic and state terror with terrible human losses.
In Morocco, where the Berbers traditionally enjoyed liberty in the rural Bled es-Siba areas, the war against French rule in the 1950s arose within a context of national and Islamic unity of the entire population. Yet independence meant the Arabization of Morocco in rejection of the French and Berber languages - even though the Berber proportion of the total population is estimated as high as 40 percent. The Alawite monarchy served as a unifying Arab-Islamic institution, and assumes this political pretension for the new king Muhammad VI, since his ascension to the throne in 1999. Inasmuch as the dynasty claims descent from Muhammad the prophet of Islam, and the king identifies himself in the classical caliphal role as “commander of the faithful” (Amir al-Mu`minin), he is a unifying point of reference for all Muslims, Arabs, and Berbers alike.
The implication of these aspects in contemporary Moroccan society and politics is the diminution of the Berbers’ status and their language in national life. Amazigh families in the south of Morocco have been displaced with Arabs, and Amazigh place-names have been purged and replaced with Arab ones. Only Arabic is an official language and it is even prohibited for Imazighen to record traditional names in birth registers. It is reported that many younger Berbers are not able to speak any one of their three Tamazight dialects which yet constitute one language, and that moreover the language is a handicap in the economic realm for which spoken Arabic is required.28
4. Power and Rights
The treatment of minorities in Middle Eastern Muslim countries is part of a comprehensive strategy of exclusion, homogenization, and repression in the public and political arenas. Traditionally autocratic authoritarian regimes, from Algeria to Iran, engage in policies that deny or restrict human rights for all persons and peoples. The regime rather than an active citizenry stands at the center of politics. It is often, though not always, the case that Islamic law or Muslim norms serve as a legitimizing pillar in the imposition of a single code of behavior that buttresses the regime.
In Saudi Arabia, where Islamic punishments (hudud) are applied, seven Nigerians charged with bank robbery in May 2000 were summarily beheaded.29 In Sudan, whose penal code is inspired by shari`ah law, 19 men had limbs amputated for the same crime of bank robbery in late January 2001.30 In the same period, the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat executed two Palestinians (one in front of a large cheering crowd in Nablus) who were accused of collaboration with Israeli secret services. Beyond the aspect of judicial arbitrariness in the procedures preceding the sentencing, it is suspected that such punishments are the result of inner clan rivalries among the Palestinians and not necessarily the product of a commitment to Palestinian national solidarity.
In the domain of thought and culture, free-thinkers and public critics have been victims of government repression that reflects Islamic concerns. In the year 2000, Egyptian authorities arrested well known human rights activist and scholar Saad al-Din al-Ibrahim on charges of fomenting divisions and tensions in the country due to his promotion of civil and minority, that is, Coptic, rights. He was later sentenced to a prison term. Author Salaheddin Mohsen, also of Egypt, was also sentenced to three years in prison in January 2001 because his writings were deemed offensive to Islam. These examples illustrate that Islam represents intellectual and political rectitude even though the government, headed by President Husni Mubarak, itself represses Islamic movements who use violence to achieve their objectives. Official Egypt, like monarchical Jordan, accommodates Islam, while at the same time containing its anti regime animus.
While Islam is a powerful force of repression within Arab countries, it is also a catalyst for expansion and a virtual assault on the West beyond the Middle East. The decay of Christianity as a political civilizational entity, along with its porous democratic ethos, exposes Western countries to Islamic penetration in Europe and North America.31 September 11 as a seminal rupture in the consciousness of the United States looms large in this regard. This is of a piece with the vulnerability and weakness of Christian com munities in the Muslim world. In the 19th century and even earlier, Russia, France, and Britain took an active interest in the safety and welfare of Oriental Christians; in the 20th century, national self determination and decolonization served to liberate the Arabs and Muslims, but block the road for Christian minority freedom. The independence of Iraq and Egypt, among other countries, placed Arabs above non-Arabs, and Muslims above non-Muslims.
The halcyon days of European concern for Christians and even military intervention on their behalf, as with the French military expedition to Lebanon in 1861, vanished from the arena of practical politics. When the United States intervened in the Persian Gulf in 1990-1991 on behalf of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, it demonstrated its global and regional strategic priorities; and when it accommodated Syrian occupation of Beirut and almost all of Lebanon in the same years, it obtusely abandoned Christians (and others) to a foreign and oppressive regime. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning the initiative of the American Congress in the 1990s to express concern for enfeebled Christians in the Middle East, and for Lebanon in particular, in declaratory and legislative decisions.
International organizations, particularly the United Nations and its agencies, have lacked the requisite determination and resources to assure the rights of minorities in the Middle East. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 made no reference to “minority rights,” while the right to “self-determination” itself is judged inferior to the right of a state to maintain its national and territorial integrity. The rights of indigenous peoples have been recognized, but no country is agreeable to the notion that such peoples should enjoy the option of secession against the right of the state to assert its complete sovereign prerogatives over its entire territory. The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in Article 27, does acknowledge the right of minorities “to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, or to use their own language.”32 Yet a centralized political regime, anxious about the majority-minority rift within the country, will not agree to grant extensive rights to a dissident group which might thereafter threaten the survival of the country. Nor are some states even willing to recognize the minority’s separate existence: Turkey traditionally called the Kurds “mountain Turks,” while Egypt mockingly considers Copts a natural part of the Egyptian people and therefore unworthy of special rights or considerations. The goal of freedom and dignity for all old Middle Eastern peoples is a noble vision. The most reasonable solution, however, may be one in which the state refrains from interference in the life of the minority so long as it recognizes the right of the state to its sovereign existence.33 In the religious and political milieu of the Muslim and Arab Middle East, more than this - and even this - seems hardly feasible in the days ahead.
By Mordechai Nisan
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Endnotes
1 On the status of non-Muslims in the eyes of Islam, see Yohanan Friedmann, “Classifi cation of Unbelievers in Sunni Muslim Law and Tradition,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, Vol. 22 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Th e Hebrew University 1998), p. 163-195. For a general historical overview, see Bat Ye’or, Th e Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (London: Associated University Presses, 1996). 2 A recent contribution to this historical debate appears in M.A. Muhibbu- Din, “Ahl al-Kitab and Religious Minorities in the Islamic State: Historical Context and Contemporary Challenges,” Journal of Muslim Minority Aff airs, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2000): p. 111-127. 3 Th e Associated Press, May 1, 1998, quoted in Middle East Quarterly, Vol. VII, No. 4 (December 2000): p. 85; and Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2000. 4 Pakistan Observer, September 2, 2000; and a report from Th e Copts: Christians of Egypt, Vol. 17, Nos. 1 & 2 (January 1990): p. 3. 5 Sheikh Abdallah Azzam, born in Palestine in 1941 and assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, wrote a compelling fatwah (Islamic legal decision) on the subject called “Defense of the Muslim Lands,” (translated from the original Arabic) distributed on Internet site . 6 Ronni Shaked and Aviva Shabi, Hamas: From Faith in Allah to the Path of Terror [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter, 1994), p. 112. 7 Al-Ahram al-Arabi, October 28, 2000, quoted by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Dispatch no. 151, November 8, 2000. 8 Daily Star, Beirut, December 22, 2000, quoted in the Monthly Digest, published by Th e Jerusalem Institute For Western Defence, Vol. 13, No. 1 (January 2001): p. 7. 9 Research on Palestinian textbooks is conducted by Th e Center for Monitor- ing the Impact of Peace, and most of the above quotations are drawn from the Center’s Newsletter, issue 4, available on their Internet site . 10 See the authoritative study by Vahakn N. Dadrian, Th e History of the Armenian Genocide (Oxford: Berghahn, 1995), p. 147-151. 11 Op. cit., Dalrymple, p. 97. 12 Madawi Al-Rasheed, “The Myth of Return: Iraqi Arab and Assyrian Refugees in London,” Journal of Refugee Studies,Vol. 7, Nos. 2/3 (1994): p. 199-219. 13 Nasrallah interviews in Al-Safi r, Beirut, September 16, 1997, and Der Spiegel, October 20, 1997. 14 Aequalitas, Vol. 4, No. 1 (March-April 1999): p. 6, published by the Cana- dian-Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, Chomedey-Laval, Quebec. Note also from the CEOHR, “A Communication on Violations of the Rights of the Copts in Egypt presented to the Center for Human Rights-United Nations Offi ce at Geneva,” April 9, 1996. 15 Information from and Cairo Times, January 13-19, 2000, p. 6-8. 16 Alice Moore-Harell, “Slave Trade in the Sudan in the Nineteenth Century and its Suppression in the Years 1877-80,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2 (April 1998): p. 113-128. 17 Author’s interview in January 2001 with an anonymous rebel referred to as Philip who fought in the bush with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. 18 John Garang, Th e Vision of the New Sudan: Questions of Unity and Identity, edited by Elwathig Kameir (Cairo: Consortium for Policy Analysis and Development Strategies, 1997). 19 Meir Bar-Asher and Aryeh Kofsky, “Th e Nusayri Doctrine of `Ali’s Divin- ity and the Nusayri Trinity According to an Unpublished Treatise from the 7th/13th Centuries,” Der Islam, vol. 72, no. 2 (1995): p. 258-292. 20 Rene Dussaud, Histoire Et Religion Des Nosairis (Paris: Librairie Emile Bouillon, 1900), esp. p. 29-30. 21 Silvestre De Sacy, Exposé de la Religion Des Druzes (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1964, orig. 1838). 22 Krisztina Kehl-Bodrogi, “Th e New Garments of Alevism,” ISIM Newsletter (5/00): p. 23. 23 Henry Munson, “Islamism and Nationalism,” ISIM Newsletter (5/00): p. 10. 24 Christine Allison, “Oral History in Kurdistan: Th e Case of the Badinani Yezidis,” Th e Journal of Kurdish Studies, Vol. II, 1996-1997, p. 37-48. See also John S. Guest, Survival Among the Kurds: A History of the Yezidis (London: Kegan Paul, 1993). 25 C.J. Edmonds, Kurds, Turks, and Arabs: Politics, Travel, and Research in North Eastern Iraq 1919-1925 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 204-205. 26 Th e Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. II (London: Luzac, 1927), p. 596-602. 27 On Lounes Matoub and his murder, see the Internet site of the World Algerian Action Coalition and the report in the Washington Times, June 29, 1998. In the Kabylian city of Tizi-Ouzou, Berber rioters destroyed public property in an outburst of collective anger. 28 Yamina El Kirat, “Some Causes of the Beni Iznassen Berber Language Loss,” Langues et Stigmatisation Sociale Au Maghreb - Peuples Mediteraneans, Vol. 79 (Avril-Juin 1997) : p. 35-53. 29 Guardian (Nigeria), May 20, 2000, reported in the Monthly Digest of News from the Moslem World issued by Th e Jerusalem Institute for Western Defence, vol. 12, no. 6 (June 2000): p. 11. 30 Th e Sudan Victims of Torture Group (SVTG) of London reported this information on February 2, 2001, that was distributed by Internet site . 31 I examined this subject in my book Identity and Civilization: Essays on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999), esp. p. 144-153. 32 Patrick Th ornberry, “Th e UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belong- ing to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities: Background, Analysis, Observations, and an Update,” in Alan Philips and Allan Rosas, editors, Universal Minority Rights (Finland: Abo Akademi University Institute for Human Rights, 1995), p. 20. 33 For a thoughtful discussion, see Anthony D. Smith, “Ethnic Nationalism and the Plight of Minorities,” Journal of Refugees Studies, vol. 7, no. 2/3 (1994): p. 186-198; also my article “Th e Minority Plight,” Middle East Quarterly, vol. III, no. 3 (September 1996): p. 25-34.
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P.S. - This article is taken from the Book, David Bukay (Editor), Muhammad’s Monsters: A Comprehensive Guide to RADICAL ISLAM for Western Audiences, 2004.
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