Sudan's prominent feminist writer "will not be silent"
afrol News, 22 July - Sudanese author Kola Boof will not give into death threats, and continues to speak out about the "daily event" of enslavement in Sudan. The Islamist Khartoum government denies the existence of slavery in Sudan. The highly controversial feminist author further has caused rage among her fellow Muslim Sudanese slashing out against "manmade religions," and now lives in American exile.
- I realise that the government of Sudan denies that slavery exists in Sudan and contends that I am making up lies, along with the Black Africans of the South, on behalf of the United States government, Kola Boof says in a statement, "and I realize that the Northern Sudanese, the powerful Arabic ruling class of Sudan, has disowned me and cursed the Egyptian father from whose semen I am made. Sorry to be so 'western' in my description."
The Sudanese expatriate has received considerable death threats from Muslim fundamentalists in both North Africa and the US. She is a provocation to those considering a Muslim young woman should be invisible and not heard. A description of her by a US journalist clarifies the cultural contrasts: "She's a sexy feminist literary babe slash African warrior girl slash historian." Not the average northern Sudanese village girl, so to say. Speaking out about slave raiding and slavery in Sudan, is however taboo even for male compatriots.
- I cannot, for one minute, be quiet about the fact that slavery is alive and well in my homeland, Sudan, Boof says in her statement. "Before my parents were murdered, I saw it with my own eyes. Black African Christians rounded up, kidnapped, beaten, raped and routinely chained and put on trucks, never to be seen again - every day of the week! This is part of the notorious, age-old racism that Arab Sudanese and Arab Egyptians have denied for the entire last century, but it is the truest shame of our lives."
She however goes further than attacking the allegedly state-tolerated slavery in Sudan. As a women who is her "own Queen," she attacks Islam itself. "I will never cease from publicly calling Islam just what it is - a terrible, terrible religion. I would rather see my children dead than see them become followers of Islam," Boof cries out.
http://www.afrol.com/html/News2002/sud013_kola_boof.htm
