WHY THE MEDIA SILENCE ON THE GENOCIDE BEING ISLAM DRIVEN? WHY THE SILENCE FROM CHRISTIANS THAT THEIR OWN FAMILY ARE BEING MURDERED

Why is there silence by those that call themselves Christians? Why is there silence from the left and liberals? After Nazi Germany the world said 'Never Again" Why the silence from the media that the genocide in darfur is being driven by Islamic leaders?

As Jesus Christ said 'Those that remain silent are complaint to the suffering in the world".



P: Dr. Phares, what do you make of the media’s silence on the genocide being Islam-driven?

Phares: Hello gentlemen.

I have worked on the Sudan conflicts since at least 1979, when I published a chapter in my first book "Pluralism" on what I called then the Nubian and Southern Sudanese conflicts. The work was in Arabic, and it received the responses by Arab nationalist and Islamic Fundamentalist intellectuals of the time. They unanimously rejected the fact that there was a minority "ethnic claim" in Sudan to start with, let alone a legitimate "ethnic resistance." They accused "foreign forces" of triggering domestic crisis in Sudan and the Arab world.

In that sense, nothing has significantly changed since. Recently, the region's intelligentsia is being challenged by a growing number of Arab and Muslim dissidents, such as Ezzedine Ibrahim in Egypt, or the emerging anti-Terrorist Muslim groups in the US. But the dominant elite that influence regimes and organizations hasn't change its attitude.

Because of that, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Western Governments and media simply ignored the genocide in Sudan. More than a million southern Sudanese, mostly Christian, but also Animists, died in the ethnic cleansing campaign. US and European elites didn't want to jeopardize the economic relationship with both Sudan and the Arab League as a whole. The story is long, but its bottom line was the power of oil in silencing an international outcry. I even remember the Pope being refused a visit to the south, and the demonization of the Bishop of Canterbury when he met southern Sudanese. In the US, the "Jihadist" lobby fiercely opposed any action in Congress for years. In a sense, this lobby was providing political cover to the massacres in Sudan.

When the Darfour situation exploded last year, the US was in a different mode, the European Governments as well. The Arab League had to deal with new geopolitical realities. And evidently in the Nuba area, it wasn't Muslim on Christian, but Arab on Black. That alone was a major difference. The combination of the changing international relations and the shift in the type of ethnic cleansing in Sudan produced the current media and diplomatic interest.

FP: So Dr. Phares, can you crystallize the themes for us? Why are the Muslim Arabs killing the Christians and Blacks? This is an Islamic Jihad combined with racial hate?

Phares: It is both. Probably one of the most lethal religious and racial war combined in contemporary times. In the historical roots, we see the march by Arab-Islamic dynasties through Egypt down the Nile valley and the occupation of the old Nubian kingdoms as of the 8th century AD/CE.

At that time, Arab-Muslim tribes, sent by Amr bnel A'ass, the conqueror of Egypt, clashed with Afro-Nilotic populations, many among whom were Christians in what is today the upper part of Sudan. The "Blacks" were pushed further South and West slowly and surely. So the Nubians of Darfour are the heirs - not necessarily the direct descendants - of the native Nubians of northern Sudan, marginalized towards the periphery.

It took the Arab-Islamic Caliphates and the Ottoman Sultanate a few centuries to "create" two layers of populations in Northern and central Sudan. The northern part was demographically "Arabized” and “Islamized." Practically, and as was the case in other areas of the empire, settler tribes, coming from Arabia and Egypt, established a province by the name of "ard el Sudan" - in Arabic, the "land of the blacks."

A lower layer, was the Islamized black population, the actual African Muslims, from Khartoum to the Nuba mountain in the West. The push has been for over a thousand year, from the north towards the south and the West: Arabs would dominate Blacks. And Muslim Arabs would dominate Black Muslims.

It was only in the mid 20th century that the dominant elite of Khartoum moved further south to clash with and try to colonize the non Muslim Blacks (i.e. the Dinka tribes and other sub tropical Africans).

In a sum, and since the modern state of Sudan was established by the British in the 1950s, the northern Arab-Islamic elite attempted to dominate two ethno religious African communities. The southern Black Christians and Animists and the Nubian Black Muslims.

Since the 1989 coup that brought the National Islamic Front NIF to power with General Omar Bashir and Hassan Turabi, the "Jihadists"in Khartoum focused on the ethnic cleansing of the southern "Christians," on the base of religious ideology. They tried to rally the Black Muslims against the Black Christians. But as of the end of the 1990s, and especially since 2001, the Blacks understood that they were under two Jihads. One is religious against the Christians, and the other is racial against the Blacks, and they were being played against each other.

Hence, the Nuba mountain Black Muslims started to oppose the Arab-led militias. Furthermore, a growing number of anti-Islamists Arabs, criticized Khartoum's regime for its racial and extremist attitude.

Besides, world events, and the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq convinced the Khartoum regime to act against the weakest link first, that is, the Black Muslims in Darfour. Hence, the Jamjawed, Arab militias armed by the regime, unleashed a clear anti-African genocide. So, to summarize, the Jihadists in Khartoum are both religious extremists and racists. In addition, they are also fascists as they have suppressed the moderate Arab Muslim voices.

FP: And the world has just stood idly by while this Arab-Islamic genocide of Blacks and Christians went on for years. Why? Mr. Haidon?

Haidon: Greetings Dr. Glazov, Professor Phares and Mr Lewis. It is certainly an honor and a pleasure.

I agree with both men. Clearly, the acts being committed against Black Darfurians are primarily based upon classical "jihad" and anti-African racism.

However, there is also a political/economic element that has added further fuel to the fire. Khartoum has used this element to further encourage the Janawid militias to murder and pillage. The ilk of the Janjawid and other nomadic Arab tribes have always been given preferential treatment by Khartoum over settled Black African Darfurian farmers. This is why government positions were attacked by Darfurians in the West. The Janjawid are therefore not only motivated by Islam, and racial hatred, but are in a prime position for a power grab over some of the sparse arable sections of the West.

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Lotus

Last Edited by Lotus Feet on 10/17/2009 11:05 AM