Toyin Ade puja,
I don't know if you are pooh-poohing the idea, but whether yu dey or yu no dey, during the Ayodhya mosque controversy and the ensuing arguments about who was everywhere first, long before the prophet of Islam ( s.a.w.) was born, and long before Islam entered India to rule vast swathes of it for over 800 years, there were some subterranean murmurs becoming a rumble ( mostly from Muslim sources ) about preposterous claims being made by Hindus that Westminster Abbey was an ancient Hindu Shrine...
If you have the time and
you haven't done so already
what you need is some
i.e.
The Light at the Centre and his
Last night after digesting the Torah Portion
I moved inexorably closer to fully and exclusively embracing a vegan diet after zapping through the first part of ( a must read) Roberta Kalechofsky's seminal
On Saturday, 18 June 2016 21:36:38 UTC+2, Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:
'But let me hasten to add more juice to the oranges, that during the Ayodhya mosque dispute there were some dark but not sinister rumours emerging and laying historic claims to Westminster Abbey being in fact an ancient Hindu Temple….'
i no dey o
On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 7:17 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:Professor Alinah Segobye,
Re - Your interest in how Africa relates to Europe, well here's the latest business news : Botswana to order 11 Gripen planes from Sweden
So, you are writing from the historic city of Bradford ! As you must have noticed, Bradford is now visibly a Pakistani stronghold . It was this city that was at the epicentre of Islamic resistance in multicultural Britain and the crucible of book burning (extremists' practical literary criticism) - the book in question, Salaman Rushdie's Satanic Verses - when that book first came into disrepute after (in the spirit of good versus evil) the late Imam Khomeini issued his fatwa.
My main acquaintance with Bradford has been as an armchair tourist through Aziz al-Azmeh the author of my autographed copy of "Islams and Modernities " and more recently his "Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence"
Needless to say, some of the people who want the UK to quit the EU are becoming increasingly afraid of the growing menace that could be posed by EURABIA becoming a reality - hastened by a wanton increase of emigration to Europe, from troubled Muslim lands.
There are those who may want to blame it all on Pakistanis, especially after the ascendancy of Sadiq Khan, the new Lord Mayor of London (of Pakistani ancestry) - they must be thinking Jesus Christ/ Mary Queen of Scots – and asking like Donald Trump , what the hell is goin' on? I myself am not surprised : In Freetown, pre-independence Sierra Leone, a Frenchman Lucien Genet was elected mayor of Freetown. So was a Nigerian born citizen, John Ezzidio before him, in 1845...
But let me hasten to add more juice to the oranges, that during the Ayodhya mosque dispute there were some dark but not sinister rumours emerging and laying historic claims to Westminster Abbey being in fact an ancient Hindu Temple….
It was during the nauseous Apartheid era , just back from New York - about forty years ago that I heard one of the freedom fighters passing through, say up at Harvey Cropper's studio in Stockholm, that there are three categories of people in this world: "The rich, the poor and the tourists" – and that's what some of us have been for thousands of years now - like the fabled wandering Jew – "despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not" - (King James Version) - perennial or shall we say millennial tourists – as in
"I've been wandering early and late
from New York City to the Golden Gate" -
ah – but everybody's got a place called home – a place to go to – and he's got Israel now, trying to develop that place as well , not just the Great United States and trying to make the United Kingdom great again as Great Britain in the proposed super state, the United States of Europe. Who knows, in time some a-them might even be emotionally committed to pleading for a referendum called Biafrix - for the Igbo enclave formerly known as Biafra to exit the Federal Republic of Nigeria in which case it should be up to the would be "Bi-afrans" to decide whether or not it is to be " Biafra First", as they decide their " To be or not to be" Nigerians - and of course those among them (if there are indeed any" traitors" ) who don't want to exit Nigeria - in that case they had better not be labelled " tribalists" or worse yet, "racists" or accused of being nationalists or patriots of the type described as scoundrels ! And give the UK and EU countries India, Pakistan, South Africa and China equal rights to emigrate and become free citizens of Biafra!
But let's hear from the horse's mouth (Kennedy Emetulu) about the African angle to this debate that (brain drain, economic refugees) all Africa should be given the green light to immigrate, maybe starting with President Buhari's ten day sojourn in Merry England to heal his ear...
I for one believe in an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, and a bruise for a bruise and that it is much better if conflicts do not escalate...
Cornelius
On Saturday, 18 June 2016 17:30:48 UTC+2, Alinah Segobye wrote:With grey skies hanging on what was meant to be a sunshiny warm midsummer day in Bradford I am confined to my desk reading this post and many other interesting posts of this wonderful platform and getting greatly inspired (for my research) to ponder further on the subject of how we as African in Africa and the Diaspora engage with/relate to and articulate with this Thing called the West (or North and East for that matter). Cornelius pricked my conscience having been rudely awakened yesterday to a post of a #racistrant from South Africa. Indeed my empathy for the late Cox as a woman leader, mom of young children, supporter of causes did take my mind of other concerns crowding my mind including the big question of how does South Africa address the challenge of racism 40 years after June 16 1976 as one just marker of our timeline of state brutality?I was an ambivalent partaker (via radio) of weeks of celebrating the Queen's 90 birthday including a recitation of a prayer http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/04/18/bishops- which among other things extolled us to pray for the 'Preservation of the Queen from all that is harmful and evil'. I found myself ambivalent and unable to eloquently complete an essay on African feminism and decoloniality which among other things needed me to interrogate the 'evils' of colonialism and empire'. I thought of my mother just shy of 89 years of age who unlike the Queen's - has memories of want and servitude in a Protectorate and now independent state which still struggles to to provide for her basic needs. In another time, the Queen as an 'older sister' might have been obliged to 'carry' her young sister on her back but i doubt this is on the Queen's To Do list this moment.ask-catholics-to-pray-for-the- queen-to-mark-90th-birthday/ So whether one is sitting under a baobab tree in the motherland or some office/park or similar quaint space in the 'northern' hemisphere ambivalence and perhaps self-contradiction is bound to be part of out-loud thoughts and or private musings as we navigate our relations with the continent (Africa) and our other adopted (adopting?) lands. As a very temporary visitor to West Yorkshire I can only hope that the lessons I learn daily from this platform and the Radio continue to enrich my thoughts and hopefully research on my entanglements of with this Island (former Empire?) as its Brexit angst. I suspect tomorrow Mass will extol us to think deeper of our decisions concerning the Vote but as a non-voting visitor I do not worry about that task. I muse curiously though how History changes... a 'kingdom' and continent that had such appetite for far away lands and held on to them to the bitter end are on a precipice concerning Brexit or not to...? As a student of the African past (Archaeology & History) I have scrambled for my copious notes and sources and still cannot make sense of the current debates as my continent's recent past keeps butting in to this picture and I cannot focus properly... A fractured continent struggling to integrate but sorely divided along lines of language, allegiance and other inconvenient things is waiting with abetted breath for the outcome of the referendum.Meanwhile as a human(e) being I wish Ms Cox RIP. May peace prevail ahead of Brits pronouncing their In-ness or Out-ness. Whichever way they pronounce, I we who adore #allthingsbrit should perhaps be asking ourselves when our referendum(s) will come to un-love the 'kingdom'... perhaps a name change (the Island formerly known as...).AKSOn Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:
I understand that from the brothers that I've talked to so far, France is the favourite nation to win the European football championship -
the reason being that Négritude or no Négritude , there are at least seven Africans in France's national football squad . France does
not discriminate when it comes to national prestige in football or language proficiency….
I have mostly been gleaning valuable insights from Bernard Porter's blog in which he (a venerable English man and an anti-imperialist too)
has been deliberating on some of the issues under our purview here. He is currently in the UK...
It' doesn't look like Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi ( a Scot) is going to be weighing in on this referendum - as he did on the Scottish referendum.
The savage murder of Jo Cox is vividly reminiscent of the butchering of Anna Lindh on the 11th of September, 2003. I wailed like a new born blues
baby when I first heard the news. In spite of sympathy votes for the side of the referendum that she was canvassing for , they did not win.
I should hate to make a decision as to what is in the best interests of the UK, based on faulty premises. Briefly : Re- Kennedy Emetulu's plea:
Even for a self-righteous, self-appointed minority spokesperson, it's a pitiful display of either abject ignorance or falsification of reality and bigotry
to reduce the Brexit referendum to being a contest between good and evil, between what he calls the racists' camp composed of mostly those -
from his point of view, evil Brits who like former Mayor of London Boris Johnson want to leave the sinking EU ship and those who want to stay,
the good guys comprising the angelic likes of Prime Minister David Cameron and good Muslims such as Sadiq Khan the new Lord Mayor of London
and his greater multi-culti flock, including good Nigerians such as the Kennedy Emetulu, or so he would like us to believe.
Curiously enough Emetulu's exhortation is that "Nigerians and all other ethnic minorities in the UK, including all progressive and peace-loving citizens
of the country, vote to make Britain greater in Europe!" - a weak voice and a weak echo, sounding off like Donald Trump only that this one's melody is
simultaneously Sweet Mother and God save the Queen and please Make Great Britain Great Again in the EU - and no to any Britannia Rules the Waves !
Not British to the bootstraps , how is it to be expected that Johnny just come should be harbouring any nostalgic sentiments about former glory or future
victory? As far as he may be concerned the more Nigerians that immigrate into Great Britain, the merrier and the Greater will Great Britain Be! Thanks to
Lord Lugard, doesn't Nigeria already rule / control Peckham now known as " Little Lagos" ?
As Boris Johnson said (and I think that this was slightly under the belt) the EU aims at accomplishing what Hitler failed to do :
Emetulu may still be a Nigerian at heart and in his soul, but doesn't he know that only British citizens are eligible to vote in this referendum?
This morning when asked his name, Tommy Mair (alliterates with Tony Blair) the man charged with the murder of Jo Cox , said
: " My Name Is death to traitors and freedom for Britain"
But the sins of one man should not be sufficient reason to crucify a whole nation?
Okay,
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge
To which a scoundrel clings
Steal a little and they throw you in jail
Steal a lot and they make you king
There's only one step down from here, baby...( What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?"
As Grucho Marx put it, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
R.S.V.P.
I'm ready
Cornelius
On Friday, 17 June 2016 19:07:50 UTC+2, Kennedy Emetulu wrote:The death of Jo Cox, the 41-year old Labour MP murdered while going about her duty in her constituency in Birstall, UK is sending shockwaves around the world. Here was an excellent MP who was celebrated by her constituents and colleagues for her vision, warmth, industry and open-door policy gunned and hacked down in broad daylight by a 52-year old Mr Tommy Mair. This man, a fellow Yorkshire resident described as a loner was reported to have shouted "Britain first!" as he hacked her down. So, while this brutal killing has pushed to the fore the debate about security of MPs, the more telling impact is that it has brought the BREXIT campaign closer to the consciousness of the people because Jo Cox was a passionate campaigner for the Remain Campaign.Okay, the investigations are still ongoing and it may well turn out that Mr Mair has mental health issues. In fact, there are unconfirmed reports that he was a patient at the Mirfield-based Pathways Day Centre for adults with mental illness before 2010. But whether or not he has mental health issues, with the BREXIT referendum just a few days away no one is pretending that people are not looking at this incident as a possible determinant of where their vote will go. To me, whether or not the fellow is sane, he could not have felt that strongly about the issue to the extent of killing the MP if there was no prior talk with others. There are also reports that he's a white supremacist with clear links to white extremist groups. For instance, he is said to have been a long-time subscriber to a pro-Apartheid extremist magazine, "S. A. Patriot" up till 2006. The UK-based publication, which campaigns against "the fall of civilised rule" in South Africa, was edited by former National Front member Alan Harvey.Now, I'm not saying any group of people set him up to do this, but they may have created the condition that influenced his troubled mind (if indeed, troubled) to push him to go out there and kill an MP that has been a staunch campaigner for Britain to remain in Europe and one of the more progressive politicians on the immigration front with her work with refugees all over the world and her serious activism over Dafur, Syria and Palestine. I mean, since the Leave Campaign has focused its main case against remaining in the EU on immigration, it is not out of place to imagine that unstable supporters would do what this fellow has done, especially with the neo-racialist tone of the Leave Campaign when discussing immigration and immigrants. Here is a man said to have lived in the Birstall area for more than thirty years and who, despite being a loner has not been known to be violent before now. The only thing they know him for is that he's the one that does the gardening for the locals for a living. What could have triggered his mind except the viciousness of this campaign?I know that the politicians are being cautious now, so that no one accuses them of playing politics with this death, but it's worth observing that Neil Coyle, the Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark has, while paying tribute to Jo Cox, broken ranks already by saying clearly that the Leave Campaign "risks inspiring extremist elements". While Mr Coyle is being rounded on for playing politics with this, it is important that the rest of us, especially those of us who are ethnic minorities, look closely at those the Leave Campaign and its leading promoters are empowering with their rhetoric. I say this, because whatever the reason the killer did this and whatever the ultimate outcome of police investigation, as an ethnic minority in the UK, the whole tone of the debate and this killing worry me. In fact, if I was thinking of voting Leave, at this point I would be doing a rethink because a Britain out of Europe I see is a very dark place. With Nigel Farage strutting around with a sick smirk on his face and Boris Johnson seeking frantically the keys to No 10, I see a Britain where the far-right rules and where the civil liberties and freedoms won over the years will be eroded in pursuit of the false objective of making "Britain first!" As Samuel Johnson once famously said, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel and I see a lot of them now wrapping themselves around the Union Jack.Honestly, Jo Cox's death has left me really sad and I just cannot muster the strength for now to make a proper analysis of this future I see if we leave Europe, but suffice it to say when you read the statement by Brendan Cox, Jo's husband and his insistence that we must defeat hate, you get the idea that he has an idea where this whole hate is coming from, especially when we consider that he himself is a staunch supporter of the Remain Campaign who had consistently complained about the hate coming from the Leave camp before this incident.So, yes, this hate is not coming from Muslims or immigrants; it's coming from people who think they have an entitlement to Britain by virtue of their white skin and their supposed indigenousness. It is coming from people who have been brainwashed into thinking that immigrants are the devils coming to take over their land and their jobs and that they are left no choice but to use violence to stop them. They are the people who people the white extremist groups and even though there are many decent people who want Britain out of Europe for other reasons, these extremists are today hiding under the sovereignty argument to push the idea of Britain leaving the EU as mainstream. But in truth, this is just primed to be the first step in their mission to return Britain to the rulership of the far-right.Well, the Britain these far-right people want is not the Britain my family and I want. The Britain we want is the one showed in Birstall where an unnamed 77-year old Pakistani man tackled the killer of Jo Cox in an attempt to stop him and got injured for his troubles. Despite this tragedy, that man is a hero. It is quite significant that he, an ethnic minority, a Muslim, an old frail man, was the one who tackled this fellow in defence of his MP. The Britain I want is the one one being showcased in Birstall today as Britons of all religions, all faiths and all races are coming together in unity to mourn an outstanding British politician.As an ethnic minority with a stake in Britain and the wider world, I will urge my fellow Britons to vote to stay in Europe, to vote to stay connected with the world. With the rise of far-right parties all over Europe now on the back of the misdirected angst against immigration, do not blindly sign your own death warrant. You've got to know that there's nothing by way of a viable solution to the immigration problem being offered by the Leave Campaign. All they're doing is selling fear - fear of small Britain being swarmed by Barbarians. The Little Englander in Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage is just being ballooned by the foul air of overambition! Even their attempt to link the immigration with an economic argument is cloaked in evil lies and fear-mongering! I mean, what is more embarrassing than Alex Salmon catching out Boris Johnson misquoting the Bank of England report he has not read and typically being bullish in his topped-up ignorance? It is typical of the tissues of lies being bandied about by the Leave Campaign to hear Johnson say that a Bank of England study showed that for every 10 percent increase in immigration there was a two percent reduction in wages when in fact what the study says is that a 10 percent rise in immigration would result in a one-third of one pence diminution in average wages. Since when did one-third of one pence become two percent reduction in wages? But these are the type of bloodcurdling lies they bandy about in their bid to get Britain out of Europe.Obviously, the campaigns have been suspended for now in tribute to Jo, but the vote is still coming up next Thursday, 23 June 2016. So, Nigerians and all other ethnic minorities in the UK, including all progressive and peace-loving citizens of the country, vote to make Britain greater in Europe! There will be no better tribute to Jo Cox, a true internationalist and lover of humanity, than ensuring that the bigots do not take over!…..The picture is of Jo Cox and family joining the #floatilla campaign on the River Thames as part of the IN (Remain) Campaign. The picture was posted on June 15, at the time of the event, by Brendan Cox, the husband of Jo with the following comment: "So this is the moment the #VoteLeave lot started hosing my kids with river water. Nice friendly lot #floatilla."…To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com--
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