i didn't say precondition. but you are right, in a way. it is an intellectual precondition. it is pretty simple: if we unload all our venim on bin laden, for the deaths he caused, for the way he used his beliefs to rationalize mass deaths, then we need to remember at the same time that that doesn't authorize us to commit various versions of his crimes in the name of our own victimization or purity.
there are moral condemnations for his actions: he was wrong. no one should kill innocent people.
there are political condemnations for his actions: he sought to oppose a superpower by igniting a large war. the response to this "jihadism" seems to have been the same, only it is now a crusade.
there are even religious condemnations for his actions: constructing religious texts so as to authorize mass killings is an abomination. yet bush did the same: he said god appointed him to carry out the war against--he calls it terrorism, i call it islam, or maybe we should call it insubordinate islam as opposed to the saudi version of subordinant islam which seems to get along great with the great satan.
i am not saying in any of this that the flaws in the west exculpate those in the muslim community, or that one should not defend oneself from attacks. i am saying that the rationalization for attacking bin laden must not be made on virtually the same grounds he used to attack innocent people here.
rather, there needs to be an international order of justice, and of carrying out that justice, that rises above national interest. we are not there yet, but we should all work towards it. the ICC is pretty recent, and the US doesn't want to subordinate its sovereignty to that or many other international treaties. decent countries like canada mostly do.
on the other point concerning the slave trade, i have to be very summary here, so i apologize.
the demonization of outsiders concerning african history strikes me as weak. arabs and muslims are defined as the evil people who ran the arab slave trade. it contrast, the europeans ran the atlantic slave trade.
was the atlantic a person, a nation, a religion? why "arab" slave trade, or especially, "muslim" slave trade.
you who are expert in history, tell me, is it the religious affiliation or linguistic/ethnic affiliation that defined the people who enslaved people in the past, in these areas? were the arabs, or was it berbers, or even jews, the actors in the slave trade? what of the swahili, what of the coastal peoples, what of the aro society, what of the kingdoms along the coast; was it the atlantic slave trade, or the christian slave trade? why not call it christian? and why not call it the European slave trade? well, why not call it the portuguese slave trade, or even better, the catholic slave trade versus the protestant slave trade? after all, i remember reading that the catholic slave traders in french congo asserting that it was better that the slaves die than become property of the british protestant slave owners. why tolerate christianity in africa? or can't we say, first, that people have the right to believe whatever they want, and secondly, more importantly, it is no longer european christianity, it is african christianity. just as the islam followed by 99% of thebelievers in africa is really now an african version, in every which way, just as ALL religions have become the versions of the place where they are practiced. let me say, for instance, that the judaism practiced in east lansing has taken on the local accents, and is very different from that in israel. or in brooklyn, for that matter.
the vilification of islam itself, in the association with slavery, strikes me as incomprehensible when slavery was practiced throughout the world, throughout africa, with the trade routes run by people who were non-muslim as well as muslim, arab as well as non-arab.
there is lots to hate in this world, lots to blame people for, but islam is really as african as it is middle eastern, it is an african religion worshipped by african people; it is not, as sembene would have it, a foreign religion imposed on the people. it came into africa as it came into saudi arabia and everywhere else, by people who communicated with other people about theirbeliefs, and who found in islam a religion that spoke to their needs and understandings of the world. it was not through violent jihadist conversion that islam came; the great jihadist movements of the 18th and 19th c were mostly reformist movements for an islam that was already there, in place.
i would share in condemnation of those who use islam or christianity, or judaism, as their excuse for conquering and killing. so much do i share in this that i wonder why we tolerate religions at all. but i know the answer: if it weren't those religions, it would be their equivalent explanations for the wrongness of those people that would be used as excuses to conquer, enslave, or kill them.
last point: the conquest and colonization of africa was not simply a matter of trade, but of imperialist violence. that violence, intellectual and physical, was the model, for us, of what must be resisted today.
i would join that resistance to the resistance to an authoritarian, oppressive regime. combine these two points and you have us where we are today in libya, where there is no clear path with clean hands. that being the case, i hope to choose for the path that sides with the masses of the people, not with any "enlightened" ruler, be it indigenous or western.
this is very long: i agree with you that there is no point of origin for this conflict.
i agree with you that the slave trade across the sahara was an abomination, that there are no mitigating arguments. but this gets turned into attacks on arabs or muslims, and there we get into problems.
ken
On 5/5/11 2:15 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:
Ken,
My categorical answer to your question is YES. Bush and Cheney should be held accountable, tried, and jailed for their crimes. But so should Bashar Assad, Ghadafi, Sudan's Bashir, Nigeria's Obasanjo (who ordered the genocidal decimation of two towns (Odi and Zaki Biam), BF's Blaise Compaore, Tony Blair, former Australian PM John Howard, Pervis Musharaf, Mubarak, ben Ali, and many other former presidents and heads of state who have blood on their hands. My point in extending this accountability narrative to other culpable former leaders? Since it is impractical to prosecute and jail all these (perhaps up to half of all former world leaders have blood on their hands) leaders, I don't see the point, except as an abstract academic exercise, of invoking their culpability to mitigate the need to hold Osama and other murderous extremists accountable and I don't see why we should wait for Cheney and Bush (and all the other culpable former leaders) to be tried and jailed before we insist on our murderous Jihadists being held accountable or before calling clear attention to their agenda. I see the connection you are drawing, but I just don't see how, as a practical matter, prosecuting Bush and Cheney should be a precondition for combating the menace of terrorists or how failure to jail Bush and Cheney should stop us from criticizing or combating Islamist terrorists/terrorism.--
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 9:55 AM, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
moses,--
when i get a second, i will try to answer your points below, many of which you know i agree with, but some not.
i have only one question: do you think bush and cheney committed crimes for which they should be held accountable, should be tried and sent to jail? i am referring to invading iraq, to the deaths that resulted, and to the practices of torture and rendition? i am not seeking to excuse osama, but to point out that it is one-sided to lay all the blame for the current wars on him. he did not represent a state: bush did. the terrorism of a group has been more than matched by the terrorism of the state. the "war" is a hundred fold that of the state, not the extremist group.
as for islam, i will explain my words when i get the time.
ken
On 5/5/11 10:08 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu wrote:Ken,
What we're saying is that all historical criminals should be held to account--if we're going into the messy business of criminal accounting and how they interpellate present crisis. Selectively harping on the crimes of the West is not going to cut it. It is evasive and escapist. Even more despicable is advancing this crime as some kind of original sin that justifies or explains the crimes being committed against fellow Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews, etc, by Islamist terrorists. History is not that neat, as the few examples I threw at Abdul show. Where do you start with the search for original provocations? I don't do that kind of smug teleology, for it is a dead-end endeavor. I haven't seen any argument here about genetic, cultural, or historical disposition to terror or violence. In fact what I have emphasized here is that there are shifts in how members of certain religious communities embrace or avoid or endorse or reject terror and that these are based in part on shifting interpretive conventions that are in turn determined by political and socio-economic factors and by the nature of their relationship to their canons. There are many factors that play into it, some of which I did not even cover. Anyway, this may just be a case of our hypersensitive radars of political correctness going off at the mere mention and proper naming of Islamist terror. Saying that Islam currently has a terrorism problem on its hands is not to deny that Christians, too, have or have had a problem there. Or that in outlining historical provocations, Muslims have an edge. No. My problem is with the very idea that we can work out a ledger of originary provocations and use that to explain or justify the terror we're seeing in our world. The entire premise of that exercise strikes me as unscholarly, ahistorical, and, quite frankly, useless. There is no attempt here to excuse anything done by todays "lovers of peace." But yes, some of us who have seen, heard, experienced, and know what Islamic extremism and terror looks like can name it clearly without feeling guilty at offending paternal liberals and defensive Muslim intellectuals, whom, as Pius said, seem to care more about the reputation of Islam than about the problem of terror that the religion is saddled with--a problem, by the way, that arguably kills more Muslims than it does folks of other religions. Finally, on the question of "the crimes of muslim slave trading," I have a hard time understanding why you think that pointing to the brutal Arab complicity in the forceful removal of 9 Million Africans who were transported across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean over many centuries amounts to a historically weak statement. Do you dispute the historicity of the trade? Do you subscribe to the annoying, labored effort to whitewash Arab enslavement of Africans as some benign, integrationist, ultimately beneficial enterprise? By the way, Islamic manumission, which Mazrui-inspired scholars repeat lazily to mitigate discourses of the crimes of Arab enslavement is actually more complicated than it is presented. Some recent scholarships are beginning to show clearly that in fact because manumission was tied to spiritual rewards in the hereafter, it had the effect of increasing and prolonging the enslavement of Africans as African slaves were being manumitted so the owners could get the reward but also so they could import a replacement from across the Sahara or the pond--replacing an overworked, old slave with a strong, healthy one while reaping the spiritual reward of manumission under Islam. Then there is the tired integration argument, which conveniently ignores how integration and non-tranferability of slave status to slave offsprings in fact led to more slave raids and more slave importation since slavery was central to the economy and social life of Arabs for several centuries and the voids led by integration had to be filled. I want to be educated on why you think that highlighting the crimes of Arab slavery is historically weak. I really do.--
On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 6:39 AM, <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:
Pius, Kenn, et al!
I know now why I would have failed PhD school; you people think too much! There is no clarity in your choices. Who cares whether the moslems or the christians ejaculate before their cowardly killings? I don't. So Western nations go after their enemies with a vengeance and finish them off as they should, what is the issue here? A snake is dead and some jerk is saying enh shebi na woman kill am! Is said snake not dead?
Was Osama bin Idiot not a cowardly snivelling bastard eating Oreo cookies and caviar and hiding in a pretend mansion enjoying Western artifacts of civilization like the rest of you Internet warriors? Did he not deserve to die like the filthy rodent that he is? And when a rat is snuffed out, do we not throw the sonofabitch in the latrine? I hope Osama roasts in the hottest part of hell for eternity for what he did to the unarmed in Kenya, Tanzania, and the United States of America. He is lucky he died swiftly. I would have fed him his ears roasted in jet fuel, the cowardly bastard.
Organized religion is a plague on the world's dispossessed and the holy books are great works of fiction written by insecure men to subjugate women, children, servants, slaves, left handed people, gays, and lesbians, well, scratch thee left handed people part, you get my drift. As we speak, Christianity is ravaging all of West Africa, leaving in her evil wake unthinking dolts and brutalized children. Pius, the children of Akwa Ibom are being murdered as "witches" by "pastors." In the name of Jesus! Allah, I swear God is a drama queen. And a racist. Long live America. I am so proud of Obama for getting that bastard!
- Ikhide
-Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
From: Pius Adesanmi <piusadesanmi@yahoo.com>Date: Wed, 4 May 2011 20:02:47 -0700 (PDT)ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comSubject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Conflation Of The Concepts Arab And Muslim
--
La Vonda:
The answer is quite simple and self evident. It is no one's fault that Christian terrorists do not always self-advertise as Christians at the exact moment of sword's contact with the neck. Do you have any evidence that those Christian terrorists in the antebellum south screamed "in Jesus name!" "in Jesus name!" as they lynched their black victims? I thought they screamed their superior race and not their religion?
Today, do you hear screams of "in Jesus name" when two or three racist dunderheads gather in the tea party or the birther movement to denigrate Obama? Do you hear: Obama, you're a monkey or a macaca in the mighty name of Jesus? America's contemporary racist terrorists won't even own up to their racism let alone scream that they do those things in the name of Jesus Christ and their religion. The best you'll get is the loaded we are defending "our values".
Well, go to northern Nigeria. Shouts of "Allahu akbar" is often the last thing the infidel hears from the Almajiri mob before the sword kisses the neck in broad daylight.
Some of us lived in Nigeria's core north. Some of us have our entire extended families there even as we write - perpetually marked as the non-believer, permanent potential targets of the sword of Allahu Akbar-screaming mobs. You will understand why this is reality beyond the poco-pomo diction of Gayatri Spivak for us.
Blame the terrorists for the association of Islam with terrorism in the global subconscious. They are the ones who damage their religion and identity. That is where the problem you are talking about starts. Don't blame the victims. The victims aren't responsible for the imagery of the Talibanic-bearded, Allahu-Akbar-screaming, sword-swinging mob. Lavonda, when you get the time, do google Gideon Akaluka, Grace Ushang, and Christiana Oluwasesin and read up on them. Trust me, you won't return here talking theory and Spivak if you read up on those names.
Blame Moslem intellectuals like Bangura and too many of his counterparts from northern Nigeria who articulate meretricious discourses and praxes of attenuation - comforted by the American nonsense that is political correctness - rather than face the problem head-on. One is no longer in the mood to comfort attenuators like Bangura by feeding them Spivakian abstractions intravenously to make them feel-good.
I find it also annoying that the bad rap they believe Islam is getting is even more important to these attenuators than the lives of victims.
Pius
--- On Thu, 5/5/11, Lavonda Staples <lrstaples@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Lavonda Staples <lrstaples@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Conflation Of The Concepts Arab And Muslim
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Thursday, 5 May, 2011, 3:12
In the abstract, the work of Spivak, "Can The Subaltern Speak" is also helpful in theorizing this topic. I'm constantly amazed at how we have formed opinions of people we don't see, hear, or even truly know. We don't say, "the Christian terrorists who lynched Black men in post World War II south." We don't say, "the Christian doctors who practiced involuntary sterilization on women such as Fannie Lou Hamer in 1950's Mississippi." We don't do that at all. But we ALWAYS identify the word 'terrorist' with the West's neo-contemporary Untouchables - Muslims. While they remain, in definitive terms only, as an exemplar of Spivak's subaltern; a multitudinous unspoken minority indeed.
La Vonda R. Staples
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 8:59 PM, Abdul Bangura <theai@earthlink.net> wrote:
--The following essays are quite informative in understanding the conflation of the concepts Islam and Muslim:Ahmed Sokarno Abdel-Hafiz. 2000. "The Representation of Islam, Arabs and Muslims...." International Journal of Communication 12, 2:103-117."Is the Life of the Muslim Arab and/or Muslim?"Nadine Nober. 2008. "'Look, Mohammed the Terrorist Is Coming!' Cultural Racism, Nation-Based Racism, and Intersectionality of Oppressions after 9/11." The Scholar and Feminist Online 6, 3."Arab at ASU: Building Bridges."M. Lo and Aman Nadhiri. 2010. "Contextualizing 'Muridiyyah' within the American Muslim Community." African Journal of Political Science and International Relations 4, 6:231-40.G. C. David. "Studying the xotic Other in the Classroom: The Portrayal of Arab..."
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
--
La Vonda R. StaplesAdjunct Professor, Department of Social SciencesCommunity College of the District of Columbia"It is the duty of all who have been fortunate to receive an education to assist others in the same pursuit."
--WebRep![]()
Overall rating![]()
![]()
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com --
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
--
There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
-- kenneth w. harrow distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
--
There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.
---Mohandas Gandhi
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "USA-Africa Dialogue Series" moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin.
For current archives, visit http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
For previous archives, visit http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue-
unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
-- kenneth w. harrow distinguished professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu
No comments:
Post a Comment