OF COLONEL GADAFI AND ARAB RACISM

Moammar Gadafi is a desperate man

“We don’t know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans,”( Col Gaddafi said in Rome, August 30/ 2010.

 By Hama Tuma

Arab racism to wards Africans has for long been taboo subject–it is politically incorrect to even say that Arabs who are Moslems are racists to boot and consider Africans–Moslem or Christian it does not matter- as inferior.

Reference is made to the Genesis and the three sons of Noah – Ham, Japheth and Shem with Arabs claiming that “the accursed Ham was the progenitor of the black race; that Japheth begat the full-faced, small eyed Europeans, and that Shem fathered the handsome Arabs with beautiful face and hair.” Arab philosophers also laid the ground for the racism of their kin towards Africans and all blacks. Ibn Sina (Avicenna 980–1037), Arab’s most famous and influential philosopher/ scientist in Islam, described blacks as “people who are by their very nature slaves.” He wrote: “All African women are prostitutes, and the whole race of African men is abeed (slave) stock.” He equated black people with “rats plaguing the earth.”
Ibn Khaldum, revered especially by Algerians, an Arab historian stated that “Blacks are characterized by levity and excitability and great emotionalism,” adding that “they are every where described as stupid.” Al-Dimashqi, often described as an Arab pseudo scientist wrote, “the Equator is inhabited by communities of blacks who may be numbered among the savage beasts. Their complexion and hair are burnt and they are physically and morally abnormal. Their brains almost boil from the sun’s heat…..”
Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani said of black people: “…..the zanj (the blacks) are overdone until they are burned, so that the child comes out between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions…..”

Colonel Gadafi of Libya has continued in this tradition albeit masquerading as a Pan Africanist though he has been attempting since the early 70s to Arabize Africa.
Gadafi may not be an honorable man but he sure is a desperate man. He paid two hundred Italian female models 70 to 80 Euros each to listen to his lecture on Islam and his infamous Green Book. He told them quite blatantly that “Islam should become the religion of Europe” and gave them free copies of the Koran, after he had lectured them for an hour on the “freedoms” enjoyed by women in Libya. Where does one find women who are free in Libya? Is he referring to the majority forced to wrap themselves up like burritos in black covering dresses in the stifling heat? Or to the majority of women beaten as a matter of routine by the males including his notorious son Seif al Islam who has already shamed himself in Genève and Paris as a criminal spoiled brat?  And then again, Gadafi may be called a realist in that he knew not many people would voluntarily come to his lectures unless they get paid. For a vain dictator that he is, this is a commendable foresight and grasp of the cruel reality of his cheap worth especially when compared to other dictators who relish and wallow in their own lies and propaganda.

It is all a matter of perspective and having a modem of respect for the truth, for numbers, for the people and Africa as a whole. For all his claims to the contrary, Gadafi has no respect for Africa and Africans. This is not just manifested by how he treats African workers and asylum seekers (very, very inhumanely), nor by his self declaration as the King of All African tribes but mainly by his deeply ingrained chauvinism and pretension to be an African Messiah. No wonder he refers to Africans as starved and ignorant and violates the rights of Africans in Libya. Gadafi, in his recent visit to Rome, even went as far warning Europeans to beware of the starving and ignorant barbarians: We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.” The desert prisons of Libya (some just containers for goods) are filled with African asylum seekers. Algeria refers to blacks as Kahlusha and black Africans are spat upon in many Algerian cities. The same is true in Morocco and Tunisia. Mauritania, its majority black and its minority considering itself as Arab, still has the salve system in place as was the case in Southern Sudan where the “natives” were compared to “haiwanin” (animals) by the self declared Arab North. The same so called Arab Sudanese are considered as abeed or slave in Saudi Arabia. The claim that Muslims cannot be racist is debunked in the Holy Land of Moslems itself where Africans on the Hajj pilgrimage are victimized by Arab racism and contempt. Lebanon has time and again shown its ugly racism towards Africans in its vile treatment of domestic workers from Ethiopia and other African countries. This crude racism was in evidence when an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed just off Beirut and the Lebanese authorities ignored the Ethiopian victims and their relatives and focused on the few Lebanese who were aboard. Even Arab Sudanese were called Nubian monkeys by the Lebanese police at one time. Egypt, itself an African country calling itself Arab, the Nubians and all blacks are discriminated against. Anwar Sadat was not happy when he heard a film on his life would have an African American actor portraying him and the late Hassan II of Morocco was never amused by a reference to his black ancestry.

Arabs think they are superior and exhibit racism towards Africans. This is the undeniable truth. Let alone white skinned Arabs even the black skinned ones (Sudan for example) consider themselves superior by virtue of their self declared Arab identity. Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia hoodwinked Gadafi and got Libyan aid during the struggle against Mengistu by assuring Gadafi that Ethiopians are Arabs, Zenawi (Meles’ father) a Yemenite and that Ethiopia under Meles will join the Arab League. Over the years Libya has been accused of racism and of officially provoking the beating and killing of African migrants. Gadafi’s pan African pretensions have always appeared shoddy and hollow as a consequence and his recent statement in Europe– calling Africans ignorant and barbarian invaders– has nailed his coffin as an Arab racist. Gadafi has brutally deported thousands of Africans and Saudi Arabia is doing the same every week. The degenerate Sheikhs and princes (who drink alcohol and maintain harems) have hypocritically been subjecting blacks to cruel punishment on flimsy charges of drinking alcohol, adultery and what have you. An Ethiopian woman was hanged in public in Riyadh a few years back while Saudi women who beat up and throw acid at the faces of African domestic workers have never been charged or tried. How many black skinned Libyans, Omanis, Saudis, Algerians and Moroccans hold high positions of government in their own respective countries?

There was a time early in his reign when the young colonel was somewhat funny with his proposal of unity to all and sundry countries with Sicily excepted, his female bodyguards, his tent palace, and his air of a true Bedouin lost in oil and a modern century. But that time has passed. Gadafi the racist has for long been also Gadafi the dictator, killing off his opponents both inside and outside the country, financing the likes of Fode Sankoh in Sierra Leone and meddling in the affairs of other countries like Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia, etc. During his Rome visit recently , Gadafi asked the EU for 5 billion Euros to block black Africans from Invading Europe and turning the continent into “another Africa” ( that is for Gadafi into a continent of starving and ignorant black barbarians). Yet, he told Europeans to open their doors to rich Libyans and offered to the Italian female odels he paid to attend his lecture that he can find them Libyan husbands so that they can be free like Libyan women. We can still take all this as funny but his alliance with Berlusconi has not augured well for Africans. Gadaafi in not funny, no–he is just a pathetic racist Arab who should be shunned by all of Africa.

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