http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=87083&d=24&m=9&y=2006&pix=opinion.jpg&category=Opinion
Sunday, 24, September, 2006 (02, Ramadhan, 1427)
Darfur: Where Are the Protesting Muslims?
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent
Some weeks back, I wrote that anti-Arab racism fueled the
brutal actions of the modern Israeli state and those who wholeheartedly
supported the bombings of Gaza and the Lebanon. I criticized Maureen Lipman's
remarks on BBC TV, which suggested she thought Arab lives were cheaper than
Israeli lives because militant Arabs encourage suicide bombers. Lipman came
back forcefully, clarifying her position and asking why critics of Israel
ignored other, worse abuses. I stand by the views I expressed, but her question
pierces my head as the final solution gathers pace in Darfur.
Where is the shrill outrage when Muslims kill and ethnically
cleanse other Muslims from their meager homes? Why is the anti-African racism
of the Arab Sudanese government and militia not damned by Muslims? Where are
the perpetually appalled Muslims today?
Oh, they are otherwise engaged, denouncing Pope Benedict's
speech in Germany, during which he seemingly approved of the 14th-century
Byzantine Emperor Manuel Palaeologus, married to the daughter of a virulently
anti-Muslim Serb despot, based in Constantinople, humiliated by the Ottomans
who besieged his city. Not an objective man, then, who proclaimed the Prophet
Muhammad brought "only evil and inhuman things, such as his command to spread
by the sword the faith he preached."
The pope was wrong to say what he did, and is injudicious to
believe what he does - that Christianity is more rational and reasonable than
Islam. These self-righteous Christians conveniently ignore the Inquisition, the
Crusades and Jesus' "I come not to send peace but a sword." Both faiths have
the propensity to fall into violence; both are capable of bringing to humans
luminous insights and peace. Pope Benedict has apologized, but that will not be
the end of it. As street protests grow, people may well die because they heard
from someone that the Catholic leader said something that was against our
Prophet. That is all it takes for the rage to burn.
Talk of displacement activities. The livid crowd from London
to Pakistan who extracted the apology cares nothing about the torture by Muslim
governments of their own dissidents, and remains blissfully indifferent to the
maltreatment of Christians, Bahais, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists in Muslim
countries.
They cannot bear to accept that, although our war on Iraq has
intensified sectarian hatreds, the abominable killings of civilians are carried
out by Shiites and Sunnis in the name of Allah.
Now comes the greatest test of their selective morality, the
genocide in Darfur. And they have already failed the test, dishonorably and
conspicuously, by withholding condemnation of the most systematic and planned
annihilation of a Muslim population in the 21st century.
Between 300,000 and 500,000 black-skinned Africans in Darfur
have died already. Countless women have been raped and tortured, some killed.
Three million are dispossessed and driven out of safe enclaves. Three years
ago, rebels in some villages rose against what they felt to be unjust policies
of the government in Khartoum. They too shed blood, but the state response was
massively more disproportionate than even the recent Israeli reactions to
Hezbollah provocations in the Lebanon. The UN describes it as "the world's
worst humanitarian disaster." Peter Takirambudde, the African director of Human
Rights Watch, says: "Government forces are bombing villages with total
disregard for civilian lives" to weaken villages and empower the pitiless
Janjaweed militia.
Eyewitness accounts have emerged of tiny children who were
raped over and over before they were burnt to death. A failed asylum-seeker in
the UK has shown me validated documentation of how her ankle was cut so she
couldn't run away, allowing the militia to sexually abuse her - which they did
for hours.
It is set to get worse as African Union peacekeepers - only
7,000, helpless and hopeless - are due to depart and the Sudanese government
seems ready to chuck out the UN. Witnesses and truth are being banished too -
12 aid workers have been killed since May, journalists and peacekeepers have
had their records and computers confiscated. The West operates double standard,
and we hear about these everyday, but what about the double-standard of Muslims
across the world?
They who turn their heads away when they should be wailing
and mourning with the dead of Darfur, screaming for international protection,
just as they do when moved by pictures of the distraught in Iraq and Palestine?
To our eternal shame, it has fallen upon Hollywood stars such as George Clooney
and British celebrities such as Annie Lennox, and other prominent people of
conscience, including Jewish human rights campaigners, to speak for the
voiceless victims. A letter has been written to Blair signed by many of them.
Guess what? There seem to be no signatories from all those
too numerous Muslim organizations always on the lookout for the slightest sign
of Islamophobia or unacceptable Western and Israeli policies.
Like I said, they are too busy getting the pope on to his
knees for his unwise words to attend to the killing fields of Darfur. Allah,
they must believe, will thank them for this diligence.
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