Some Disscusion on The Above Article

"It has taken a genocide in Darfur, where hundreds of thousands have been killed in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and countless more continue to die in disease-ridden refugee camps, to force influential segments of the black activist community to put aside their differences and acknowledge a long history of ongoing atrocities in the Sudan."

The following are some responses:

The war between Black and Arab culture is not new. It’s no secret that Arabs hate Black people and if they can’t pimp us then they want to eliminate us. Just go to any Black neighborhood and visit one of the Arab owned greasy spoon fast food stands, or corner grocery, liquor or dollar stores and observe how hateful and disrespectful they are to their patrons (especially the women). You’ll also find that the vast majority of their patrons are low income Blacks, steet people, gangbangers and “get-over” ghetto Black folks trading LINK and WIC benefits for cash. Working/middle class Black folks avoid Arabs and patronize places that actually hire Black people. The differences in those who patronize their businesses and those that don’t illustrate the division in many inner city communities that keep them from forming the cohesiveness needed to demand government services from City Hall needed to improve quality of life. Arabs are running interference to keep any kind Black unity from being established and are forming an alliance with vulnerable Black folks who would do their bidding against Blacks that see Arabs for who they really are.
Posted by theloneous on Sep 14, 2004 at 9:34 AM

This is an interesting and necesary article. As an as Afro-American let me urge to inform our people about the situation in Mauretania. The arabs there do quite similar things to the blacks.In fact a slightly veiled slavery still exists there. However, it receives no coverage.In about 1992 after a failed coup blacks were driven across the Senegal river into Senegal despite their Mauretanian citizenship. Hopefully,we will become a little more honest in the future.
Posted by wallace nixon on Sep 14, 2004 at 10:35 AM

Nate Clay is definitely a misinformed brother. Minister Farrakhan and the Nation Of Islam have never benefited or taken a penny from Arabs. He has stated many times from the early 80’s up till now that he has been offered millions to change his stance in defending the teachings of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and he has declined time and time again. The controlling Muslim scholars in the East even went as far as offering Farrakhan the title of Messiah if he would change his teachings and go along with the so-called orthodoxy. To even imply that Farrakhan has taken a side based on religion is foolish at best. And it’s a shame Negroes such as Clay can make a wild accusation without providing facts. I wonder if Clay has went to the Sudan and investigated the situation himself? Farrakhan has and has made repeated speeches that can be obtained speaking to what he saw and the conflict between the Islamic north and Christian/traditional religion-led south. It’s a shame when Caucasians try to annihilate our leaders in the media, but it’s a shame when we get hoodwinked and bamboozled by our own kind in the guise of Pan Afrikanist thought. Clay.....please come back home Black man!!!!!!
Posted by Damon X on Sep 16, 2004 at 4:42 PM (Let me interupt and say that Rev. Al Sharpton went to Sudan and reported he witnessed slavery there.)

Are all black people supposed to tote the same line ? Come home ? What does that mean ?
Posted by Michael Hardesty on Sep 17, 2004 at 9:46 AM

Salim is just off base as most blacks in the US who get all their news from the pro-Israeli media--Times, WP, Wall Street journal, CNN, etc.
The term “Arab” like the fake construction “Hispanic” doesn’t mean anything. “Arabs” can be BLACK(Sudan and parts of North Africa), BROWN(biracial features as most of North Africa) or West Asian types(like In Syria, Iraq, Lebanon,etc.) I have seen Arabs in the Sudan and they are much blacker than Salim Muwakkil so how can the Darfur conflict be a racial one? Or maybe he is naively sucked in by the pro-Israeli magazine he works for.
Posted by dian Souare on Sep 17, 2004 at 11:25 AM


The tragedy of the Dafur, Sudan attrocities is the failure of the world in general and Africa in particular, to see it as part of a long series of genocidal and ethnic cleansing activities that the Arabs have been committing against indegenious Africans ever since our encounter thousands of fears ago. Just Look at the northern part of Africa, i.e.Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia, Morroco, Libya, Egypt, Sudan etc. See how they are now Arab. What happened to the African population and how did we become not only the minoritiesbut second class citizens? read Chancellor Williams’ “Destruction Of Black Civilizaion” and the many books written about our history from time immemorial. We can’t even claim the pyramids as African glory. If Abraham is the ancestral patriach of Arabs and Jews through Ishmael and Isaac, then these two races did not exist when he and his barren wife Sarah came to Africa to seek their fortunes ust as immigrants come the USA today for grener pasture. Back to Dafur. Why is Muslim Afria not calling an emergency meeting of the Islamic world to confront the Arabs’ nefarious deeds against indegeneous Africa? I was born a Muslim.I am very much concerned that there is no categorical commandment against slavery. There edits against adultery, eating pork, drinking wine etc. The Bible talks about counting your slaves since they are among your properties (Exodus 21:21), the inequality if the races,(Deuteronomy 7:3)thus prohibiting intermarriage. It is equally the same with Quran which states the conditions of freeing a slave: when a man states to his wife that he would not have sex with her and that having sex with her would be like having sex with his mother, he should free a slave before he can have sex with her. The principal beneficiary of this act is the slave owner who wants his wife. The slave is just a tangetial beneficiary. It also states how and when to accept a slave’s request to work and buy his freedom. To recapitulate:
Dafur should be seen as part of a long series of ethnic cleansing Arab activities.
Muslim Africa should meet with the Muslim Ummah and talk about theviolations of Africans despite the fact that the religion does not categorically condemn it.
African People should start having a very intellectual and academic approach to all religious (particularly the Abrahamic ones) books via-a-vis slavery and freedom.
Posted by ESC on Sep 18, 2004 at 2:30


Western media has intentionally created much confusion surrounding the issue of Darfur. First of all the term, “Arab”, invokes a vision in most of a light, near white, Middle Easterner and this is not the case in Sudan. The Western media is not showing many pictures of the leadership of Sudan nor of the various factions because we would clearly see that they all are Black African people. All of the fighting is taking place between Black Muslims in the Darfur area and is not the simplistic Muslim vs Black Christian battle that the western media would have us believe. The black Muslims in the north speak Arabic and so consider themselves Arabic, however they are indigenous Sudanese people. The issue is not race, but a battle over natural resources. We should be much more cautious when reading the Western reporting on issues pertaining to African countries. When an unrighteous person (read liar) brings you news, look carefully into it, lest you harm someone and be sorry for what you have done. I do not see where Brother Muwakkil is quoting from anyone of our brothers and sisters who actually visited the area and interviewed people from both sides of the conflict.
Posted by Brian Dameron on Sep 18, 2004 at 5:37 PM

This conflict is not how the media is portraying it. It appears that this conflict is between light skinned blacks and dark skinned blacks. The media is trying to portray this conflict as a “race issue” because of two reasons. One reason is that the reputation of arabs is not that good. The other reason is that the media want to defuse the tension between whites and blacks and turned into “blacks vs. arabs”. It is too bad that many people are believing this without looking at the facts themselves.
Posted by tim on Nov 20, 2004 at 11:10 PM

The Arab sudanese are also black. Just because they speak Arabic and identify with Arabic culture does not make them less “black”. The African Americans in America speak English but they are still black. If tomorrow an African American were to kill somebody from Africa, we will not say that an English has killed a black person. It is amazing how ignorance and lack of knowlege among many people has turned this situation into “racial conflict”. Race is an European construct. It applies to people who are originally from Africa and have so called “black features”. Clearly the Arab Sudanese meet both of these conditions. It works well when we use it in U.S. But the issue of race becomes very muddy when we apply it to non-western places. It is funny that African Americans often refer to Egypt as a black civilization even though the ancient Egyptions looked like the present day “black Arabs”. IF the Sudanese are not black, then the ancient Egyptions were not black either.
Posted by Tim on Feb 27, 2005 at 7:21 PM

Go to http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/discuss/1071/black_muslims_and_the_sudan/