Where is the Muslim anger over Darfur?

Are they the 'wrong' kind of Muslims if they self-identify as black
African instead of Arab?
Ed Husain
The Independent (UK)

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 firsthand 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 {a terrific book}.