Pan Africanism : Arab Racism in Africa

By Dr. Moses Ochone of Vanderbilt University.

Professor Iliya Harik's piece is a commendable and bold attempt by an Arab scholar to openly discuss the sensitive issu of Africa-Arab relations. There is a need for an open, unfettered dialogue between African and Arabs on the fractured state of relations between the two peoples.

Professor Harik's write-up is however trapped in the language of denial and obfuscation that has become a key defining feature of Arab responses to charges of racism against blacks. His response sounds eerily familiar, for I have heard many such feeble defenses of Arab racism against blacks--defenses which merely deracializes the racism or emphasize the African roots of North African Arabs. One would normally excuse such defensive posturing were it not for its diversionary implications for understanding the history of Afro-Arab relations--a history preceding Africa's relations with the west.

In fact, Professor Harik's rendering of the crisis in Darfur is almost offensive to Blacks in that it is not only an intolerable simplification and trivialization of a racist genocide of the part of the Arabized government in Khartoum but also an inexplicable attempt to dilute the fact that race, even if it is mediated by culture, is at the heart of the crisis in Darfur

Harik claims that Arabs are not "anti-African on any basis." But this is a straw man. Dr. Onyeani never argued that Arabs were anti-African. The allegation, which Harik did not respond to, is that there is a disturbing pattern of anti-African racism in many Arab countries, and that this attitude translates to many Arabs being indifferent to African struggles and sensibilities at a time when black African leaders like Mbeki and Obasanjo are bending over backwards to accomodate and protect the interests of Arab North African nations. Many people, in the interest of Afro-Arab political alliances anid in order not to alienate our North African brothers, do now want this issue discussed. But it should. This is why Harik must be commended for making his post, as disappointing as its contents are.

It is true that the population of most North African countries are mixed, but it is not a secret that in these countries there is a gradation of human valuation that corresponds directly to skin color, with the most privilaged status being accorded to those perceived rightly or wrongly as being of "pure" Arab stock while those with the darkest skin and curliest hair located on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy.

In fact, Arab racism is embedded in the history of North Africa itself and in the Arabic language. The Arab conquest of North Africa and the subsequent conversion and marginalization of the original Berbers and Moors of North Africa and parts of the Sahel was undergirded by a racist ethos. Till this day, the Berbers, and other distinct peoples are confinded to the fringes of North African and Norht-west society--in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania, etc. The plight of the descendants of blacks (some of who predated the Arab conquest of the 9th century and others who came to North Africa as slaves, captives, and free migrants) is worse than that of the Berbers. In Morocco, Tunisia, and throughout much of the Arab world, the only ticket to social visibility for blacks is soccer. Becoming a soccer star gives a black person access to coveted corridors of society and enables them to "marry up", racially speaking.

Arab racism is so deep it is inscribed in the semantics of the Arab languange. Till this day, the generic word for a black person is the preface "abd." which translates as "slave." as in "Abd"-allah (slave of God). This rule, among many other racially-loaded ones, applies throughout the Arab-speaking world regardless of dialect and orthography.

The case of the Sudan is perhaps the most vivid, poingnant, and irrefutable example of Arab racism against black Africans. Let it be noted that until the Janjaweed and their racist and murderous Sudanese government backers gave a bad name to the arot of hating, marginalizing, and murdering blacks, Arabs never quite saw the raiding of black villages for slaves and cattle, especially in Southern Sudan, as a crime. The racism which propels these practices was increasingly authorized by the discourse of the distinction, within Islam, between dar-al-Islam (the abode of Islam) and dar-al-hard (the abode of war and unbelief). For many Arabs, the historical description of blacks as slaves and servile presences in the Arab world is hard to unlearn.

Arabs still generally regard the Darfur genocide as a public relations disaster rather than a barbaric racist war against black people. After all, we haven't heard any condemnation of the Sudanese government's racist practices from any Arab state. To that would be hypocritical because some of these states themselves condone the racist practices of mavericks or practice anti-black racism in their own official policies. For instance black African immigrants are routinely killed, maimed, and their houses and properties destroyed in Gaddafi's Libya. The same Gadaffi who wants to be the leader of a politically united African super-state. Africans have become jaded about Gadaffi's feeble condemnations of anti-black riots in his country and the ad-hoc and sterile apologies he offers after each tragic episode.

Professor Harik is only half right about the Arab-speaking Northern Sudanese. They are a dark-skinned people, although most of them are of mixed Arab and African ancestry. But these folks, by virtue of the Arab penetration of the Sudan and the adoption of Arabic and many aspects of Arab and Bedouin culture, no longer perceive themselves as blacks, or African in any functional way. Indeed, they have long become Arabized. While Harik and I, as historicallyl conscious people, may recognize them only as cultural Arabs, the Northern Sudanese people and their ideologues and rulers have since, for good or ill, racialized their identity and their distinction (which is actually essentially linguistic and cultural) from the people of Darfur

It is not for me to say whether it is wrong or right to conflate Arabization with Arab racial consciousness, which is the Northern Sudanese people seem to have done. What I do know is that in both its practical expression and its tragic consequences, the attitude of the Arabized Northern Sudanese people and their government towards Darfur is racist.

So, to conclude, I would say that African-Arab political solidarity and alliances have survived not because of the absence of Arab racism towards black Africans-- as Harik seems to suggest--but in spite of it. Nkrumah, Toure, Mbeki, Obasanjo, and other black African leaders were/are aware of the racism but are/were motivated by avowedly higher ideals and goals in their interaction with North Africa and the entire Arab world. This pursuit of South-South alliances and solidarity has cost Africa dearly in human and material terms. My personal opinion is that we are actually approaching a tipping point as Arab disrespect for black-Africans heightens. The emotional blackmail in the form of charges of black racism against North Africa, which is being subtly invoked by our North African AU members to obscure the treatment of blacks in the Arab world, will no longer be tenable.

Even beyond the domain of group relations, there is a preponderance of individual anecdotal evidence to support the notion of a pattern of Arab racist attitudes toward blacks. A Nigerian friend of mine (a Muslim) who now lives in london was appalled at the racist treatment that he and other black Africans received when he travelled to Egypt a few years back. The irony is that he was in Egypt as part of the Nigerian delegation to an "African" trade fair.

Salaam Sekhemu.

There are several world-famous African scholars that refute Dr. Ochone's position:

Cheikh Anta Diop was one of the premier and most respected and knowledgeable Afrocentric scholars, he was also a physicist and director of the Radiocarbon Laboratory in Dakar, Senegal, and a noted Egyptologist. In his most famous work, The African Origin of Civilization, his views differ totally from those promulgated by a minority Afrocentric scholars:

"The primary reason for the success of Islam in Black Africa, with one exception, consequently stems from the fact that it was promulgated peacefully, at first by solitary Arab-Berber travelers to certain Black kings and notables, who then spread it about them to those under their jurisdiction. What is to be emphasized here is the peaceful nature of this conversion, regardless of the legend surrounding it." (Precolonial Black Africa, p.163)

Additionally, in view of what some Afrocentric scholars claim that African peoples should 'return' to 'their own indigenous African religions,' such as Yoruba, it is interesting to note what Diop had to say about this:

"African religions, more or less forgotten, were in the process of atrophying and being emptied of their spiritual content, their former deep metaphysics. The jumble of empty forms they had left behind could not compete with Islam on the moral or rational level. And it was on that latter level of rationality that the victory of Islam was most striking. That was the fourth cause of its success." (ibid, p.166)

An African himself, Diop cannot be accused of making a racist or anti-African statement. He was giving his opinion as an African and as a scholar of high repute. In further dispelling the charge that Islam was forced on African peoples, Diop said the following:

"During the period of our study, from the 3rd to the 17th centuries, not one conquest was ever launched by way of the Nile...nor was there ever an Arab conquest of Mozambique or any other East African country. (ibid, p.101) He went on to explain precisely why Africans fell in love with the religion of Islam:

"The Arabs in these areas, who became great religious leaders, arrived as everywhere else individually and settled in peacefully, they owe their influence and latter acceptance to spiritual and religious virtues." (ibid, p.102)

Africans, as the above shows, were attracted to the spiritual and religious virtues of their Arab brothers. But wasn't Islam forced onto them by the conquering and sword-wielding Arabs? Cheikh Anta Diop said:

"The Arab conquests dear to sociologists are necessary to their theories, but did not exist in reality. To this day no reliable historical documents substantiate such theories." (ibid, p.102)

A man who, in some respects, looms larger than Cheikh Anta Diop in the world of afrocentricity is Edward Wilmot Blyden. He lived in the 19th century and is called "The Father of Afrocentrism" by Afrocentric scholars. Here are some of his views:

"Islam found its Negro converts at home in a state of freedom and independence of the teachers who brought it to them. When it was offered to them they were at liberty to choose for themselves. The Arab missionaries, whom we have met in the interior, go about without 'purse or script,' and disseminate their religion by quietly teaching the Qur'an. The native missionaries - Mandingos and Fulahs - unite with the propagation of their faith-active trading. Wherever they go, they produce the impression that they are not preachers only, but traders...and in this way, silently and unobtrusively, they are causing princes to become obedient disciples and zealous propagators of Islam. These converts, as a general thing, become Muslim from choice and conviction. (Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race)

"These converts, as a general thing, become Muslims from choice and conviction..." Does that sound like Islam was forced down the throats of Africans? To the contrary, they were impressed by the practical examples of Islam and its moral code of conduct that stood before them. Blyden's words are very important because he was on the continent before the Europeans colonized Africa. He witnessed the spread of Islam in Africa in the 1800s. It is also worthy of note to see how Blyden contrasts Christianity and Islam:

"Christianity, on the other hand, came to the Negro as a slave, or at least as a subject-race in a foreign land. Along with the Christian teachings, he and his children received lessons of their utter and permanent inferiority and sub-ordination to their instructors, to whom they stood in the relations of chattels...owing to the physical, mental and social pressure under which the Africans received these influences of Christianity, their development was necessarily partial and one-sided, cramped and abnormal." (ibid, pp.12-13)

It is a shame that many African-American youths are being misled about Islam by some Afrocentric scholars at a critical time in African-American history when the purifying aspects of Islam are desperately needed in the African-American community - especially amongst the youth.

W.E.B. Dubois is one of the most important African-Americans in our history, and in American history in general. His name is also known over the entire world as one of the greatest men of our age, and he was an influence to many men and woman of all races and countries all over the globe. His works are studied to this day in America and in the schools of Europe. Here is what he says about Islam:

"In this whole story of the so-called 'Arab Slave Trade' the truth has been strangely twisted." (The World and Africa, p.68) Dubois further says,

"Gao, Timbuktu, and Jenne were intellectual centers, and at the University of Sankore gathered thousands of students of law, literature, grammar, geography and surgery. From this Africa a new cultural impulse entered Europe and became the Renaissance. (ibid, pp.211 & 223).

Contrast the above praise of the religion of Islam with his observations on the Christian Church:

"Modern slavery was created by Christians; it was continued by Christians; it was in some respects more barbarous than anything the world had yet seen, and its worst features were to be witnessed in countries that were most ostentatious in their parade of Christianity. (ibid, p.44)

J. A. Rogers was one of the most prolific authors in African-American history. He wrote volumes upon volumes of books on African-American life and African-American history, his most well-known being Sex and Race, in which he demonstrated that many of the so-called 'pure white' kings, princes and queens of Europe were of mixed racial origin. His books are sold to this very day all over America. Here is what this great Afrocentric scholar said about Islam:

"In short, the Negro was discriminated against in no phase of Muslim life on the grounds of color alone. Islam was the greatest and freest of all great melting pots. (Sex and Race, p.108)

If Islam had been so harmful to African people, would not this incredibly gifted and prolific scholar have revealed this to the African peoples of the world? He was a man of world-class scholarship who was a genius of world history and the history of the African diaspora.

Ma Salaam.

With all due respect brotha Aqil.

The scope and topic of Dr. Ochone's position has little to do with Islam and everything to do with Arab racism against black people.

Do you doubt that racism on the part of many Arabs against blacks is a reality, currently in Africa? That in fact Black Africans are catching hell from Arabs because they are Black?

Emeritus Professor Iliya Harik of Indiana University offers a detailed rejoinder to Dr. Mose Ochone's Submission No. 900.

I have read Dr. Moses Ochone's response to my short note regarding Arab affinity with Africans. Of course, a public space is for debate, hence I appreciate his response to my brief note, no matter how critical his response happens to be. The main question is how to address the various issues. Scraping the bottom of the jar to find fault with one side and foment more aggravation is not what I call a desire for understanding and improving of relations. To hold the entire Arab people responsible for the crazy record of Qadhafi, for example, toward black Africa, not to mention the world at large, and for the oppression by the military regime in Khartoum for its crimes in Darfur is, to say the least, unfair.

I have never said there is no racism in the Arab countries. If there is a country in the world where there is no sort or degree of racism, I would like to be guided to it. It is just that when compared with racism among nations of the world, it does not seem that racism among the Arabs stands out as a pronounced phenomenon. Let us not forget that the term "Arab" is often used to refer to Arabic-speaking peoples of different ethnicities and geographic locations, a very large number of whom are black Africans. Still, whatever there is of racism among the Arabs, it is a legitimate subject for discussion.

Arab states in particular should be blamed for not condemning Khartoum for its brutal suppression of the uprising in Darfur and its extensive violations of human rights. That does not mean that they should also be blamed for those crimes themselves, which after all are committed by a black African government against its black citizens. As for Qadhafi, he has committed as much outrage against Arabs as against black Africans. After reading Dr. Ochone's statement one wonders whether Arabs in the east should accuse an Arabized Berber leader of an African race like Qadhafi of being racist against Semitic Arabs? Is not that where the logic in Dr. Ochone's charges leads us?

Racism is not the monopoly of any nation and we all know that it is an evil rife in Africa itself, especially in Nigeria and other nations. What is one to say about Hutus and Tutsis, for example? Even in the Sudan, if the behavior of the Khartoum government toward the rebellious Dinkas in the south is to be described as racist, which to a certain extent it might be, so can one describe the attitude of the Dinkas toward the people of the north. The Sudan, like many other African nations, is made up of different ethnic groups (or tribes). But I still consider the problems of the Sudan to be predominantly cultural and political.

As for the Arabic word "abd," I defy anyone to find it used in contemporary Arab media to refer to a black African. The word used in modern times for blacks is "zunj," which is of old Arab origin too. Moreover, the association of the word "abd" with "slave" is figurative, because the root of the word stands for "worship," "adore," i.e. one who gives himself to the "lord" or anyone else. Yet, the association with slavery is significant and should be discussed as part of the historical relations of the two peoples.

Historical relations should definitely be brought up in their good and bad features. However, selecting grievous activities to incite further disapproval and hostility is not history, nor does it serve anyone, least of all the parties concerned. Arabs and Africans have had - since the middle of the last century - bonds of political identity in the face of colonialism and oppression. They have continued in the post-independence period to stand together to uphold the interests of African Asians. Arabs at present are overwhelmed by their problems of inferiority in the world order, and by the return of neo-colonialism to their midst, some of it by their own fault and ineptitude. They may be excused if they are not showing as much interest in sub-Saharan problems.

But let us not forget their time-honored interests in Africa. Jeune Afrique, the prominent journal, is a project created by a Tunisian. In Egypt, Butros Ghali devoted his career from the start to promoting African issues in the Arab world and in general. The Ahram Center which he founded in Cairo had a central interest in Africa, and its leading journal, al Siyasah al Dwaliya, for decades now has given extensive attention to African affairs. Arab funds of the oil-rich Gulf countries have financially supported African development. Should the Arabs now complain that Africans do not love them or are not interested in them because there is no comparable evidence in sub-Saharan Africa of interest in the Arab world?

It is clear that there are currently irritating problems disturbing Arab-African relations. It should, though, be addressed with good will. Why not call for a dialogue with Arab scholars, intellectuals, and politicians to improve understanding and relations? Would not that be more productive than searching for little causes that will foment hostility and disarray among peoples of the developing world who need each other badly?

(Iliya Harik, Emeritus Professor, Indiana University, Department of Political Science, www.polsci.indiana.edu/ircd)

http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/915.html

With all due respect, Do you honestly think the Arab needs for you to come to his defense.

I will respond to Iliya Harik's discourse very shortly. Suffice it to say, I think it's fairly clear that Dr. Ochone was not holding all Arabs accountable for the atrocities committed against black Africans on the part of Arabs.

The problem is with the leaders of the Arab league et al. The various heads of Arab states that have been conspicuously silent on this matter.

However you have not answered any of the questions I've posed to you.

Is it your contention that some of these very same Arab nations are now friends of Africa?

How many Arab countries in Africa have black Africans who do NOT identify as Arabs in positions of authority.

For those that might not be aware, let us be mindful that Africans in Africa are still being enslaved and killed in the Sudan and Mauritania, by Arabs and Africans who Identify as such.

http://www.destee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38729

Arabs and misguided Africans can intellectualize and talk about what needs to be done about racism, but I know one da*n thing for sure, and that is our people are dying and suffering at the hands of this devil who calls himself an Arab.

So I say death to him the rest of his kind, Death to anyone, black or arab that kills, rapes or enslaves the African. Enough is enough