Sudan - Where is the Muslim anger over Darfur?

Where is the Muslim anger over Darfur?
Are they the 'wrong' kind of Muslims if they self-identify as
black African instead of Arab?

10 August 2009 | Ed Husain

As war raged in Lebanon in the

summer of 2006, people around the

world called for international

intervention to stop the shelling of

civilians. In January this year,

millions shared similar feelings of

horror

and anger witnessing the

bloodshed in Gaza. Both events were

especially painful to Muslims

watching other defenceless Muslims

being

killed. But why have the

deaths of vastly more unarmed

Muslims in Darfur caused so little concern among co-religionists?

The Khartoum regime, brought to power in a highly ideological and
fundamentalist Islamist coup 20 years ago, has killed an estimated
400,000 of its fellow Muslim citizens. Yet, there is near silence about
massive human rights abuses in the remote western corner of Sudan.
As Tareq Al-Hamed, editor of the Asharq Alaswat paper, has asked,
"Are the people of Darfur not Muslims as well?"

When the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the
Sudanese leader, President Bashir, in March, Muslim politicians from
Senegal to Malaysia rallied behind him. The same people who demand
international justice for war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza abruptly
changed their tune. Instead of denouncing Bashir as the architect of
ethnic cleansing, they congratulated him for defying the "conspiracy" to
undermine Sudan's sovereignty so the West can take its oil. The Iranian
Parliamentary Speaker, Ali Larijani, said the ICC warrant was "an insult
to the Muslim world".

Mercifully, the views expressed by Arab and Muslim leaders are at odds
with their citizens. The Lebanese American pollster James Zogby found
80 per cent of those questioned in four Arab countries were concerned
about Darfur and felt it should have more media attention. However,
they were reluctant to apportion blame, and, not surprisingly, they were
hostile to international intervention. Meanwhile some commentators in
Muslim-majority countries are questioning their leaders' support for
Bashir.

According to The Daily Star of Lebanon, "Bashir has sought to cultivate
an image of himself as an Arab/African hero who is standing up for his
fellow Arabs/Africans by defying the edicts of foreign 'imperial'
powers."

So, are Darfuris the "wrong" kind of Muslims because they self-identify
as black Africans rather than Arabs, despite widespread inter-marriage
in Sudan? The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, cites Arab
chauvinism against Africans. I have lived in Arab countries and seen
first hand the racism and bigotry that commands the minds of the Arab
political class.

The Canadian academic Salim Mansur claims: "Blacks are viewed by
Arabs as racially inferior, and Arab violence against blacks has a long,
turbulent record."

For the Nobel Prize winning novelist Wole Soyinka, the unwillingness to
confront Arab racism is rooted in the role of Arabs in the slave trade.
"Arabs and Islam are guilty of the cultural and spiritual savaging of the
Continent," he writes.

The Ethiopian academic Mekuria Bulcha estimates that Arab traders sold
17 million Africans to the Middle East and Asia between the sixth and
twentieth centuries. Yet, there is an almost total reluctance on the part
of Arab intellectuals to examine their central role in slavery, past or
present. Any attempt to confront persistent Arab racism is shouted
down by appeals to Arab/African solidarity against the neo-colonialist
West, a sentiment that seldom moves beyond slogans.

Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan, a member of the senior council of Wahhabi
clerics responsible for writing Saudi school text books, states: "Slavery
is part of Islam. Slavery is part of jihad and jihad will remain as long as
there is Islam. It has not been abolished."

Arab racism is familiar to African guest workers in countries like Libya
and Egypt, enduring routine verbal and physical attack. Sudanese Arabs
suffer from their own racial identity dilemma, viewed as black by their
Egyptian neighbours to the north (Sudan is a corruption of the Egyptian
word for black). I have heard the Arab Sudanese use the word for slave
(abid) to the faces of their fellow citizens who self-identify as non-
Arab. It is also known for Sudanese parents to tease their darker-
skinned children, calling them slaves.

To be charitable, it seems that Muslim and Arab leaders wish Darfur
would simply go away. Hence their enthusiasm for postponing Bashir's
arrest warrant "to allow peace talks to work". Shortly after the ICC
announcement, key members of the Khartoum regime attended an Arab
League summit. They were confident the League would call for the
cancellation of ICC jurisdiction in Darfur, conferred by the United
Nations Security Council in 2005. The meeting failed to agree on
anything stronger than the usual denunciations of Israel and America.
Privately, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi were urging Sudan to deal with the
ICC through legal channels. The Sudanese also failed to get a solidarity
summit in Khartoum. However, Bashir did enjoy a victory tour of
countries where he was hailed rather than arrested.

Arab and Muslim leaders are by no means unique in failing to back up
their words with action. Both the US and the UK until recently had
leaders who frequently cited their Christian faith, yet did little to help
Christians being persecuted in China, Nigeria, Eritrea, North Korea or
Egypt.

However, "Muslim solidarity" matters for two reasons. The Khartoum
dictatorship is sensitive to the opinion of Muslim and Arab leaders. A
genuine peace deal will be more likely as a consequence of private
pressure from Iran or Egypt rather than Canada or Sweden.

Muslims' amnesia about Darfur is also symptomatic of the malaise
affecting the public face of a faith that lacks the confidence to engage in
constructive debate or renewal. Until Muslims can be self-critical
without being condemned as heretics, there will be atrophy where there
should be vibrancy, and polarisation and extremism where there should
be tolerance and inclusiveness. Darfur's tragedy is fast becoming an
indelible stain on the collective name of Islam and Muslims.

Ed Husain is co-director of the Quilliam Foundation and
author of The Islamist
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