Written By Steve Johnson
September 20, 2012
The recent violence in North Africa and Western Asia mistakenly called the Middle East is shocking news to some, but to those of us who have been paying attention or have done research on US Foreign policy over the last fifty years it’s no shock at all. Today as Americans we have become products of the latest news cycle and many of us have created a reality that if it is not on the news it doesn’t exist. In realizing this one must also see that during an election year the media’s agitation propaganda process is at full strength.
Every station you turn to there’s political ads after ads mixed with news of so called deranged Muslims killing Americans over seas. Everywhere from Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Iran you see protests against the western world. Clearly, many African Americans receive the news of what’s going on overseas with mixed feelings. Initially the disconnection that many African Americans have with Mother Africa has created a numbness to the pain and suffering of the African people.
Next you have millions of African American Christians and Muslims who see the violence in North Africa as some type of war. We all know that when you feel you’re at war with someone it is very hard to have sympathy for your opponent. The fact of the matter is that many African American’s have sat and watched our government support the bombing of other nations including Africa without researching why. I remember an instance when I was getting a hair cut at the local barber shop and a brother who was sitting next to me speaking with a younger brother said that Libya was in the Middle East and that the Arab Gaddafi deserved to die.
After I introduced myself to him I explained to the brother many things including the facts that Libya is in Africa; that there is a difference between Islam and Arabism; and most importantly these Arabs are slowly buying up the so called black community all over the country. After his brief rebuttal I explained to him what the great scholar John Henrik Clarke taught me, that “Arabs did to Islam what Europeans did to Christianity, they took the spirituality out of religion and used it mostly for political gain.”
Now I can go on record and say that I did not agree with Gaddafi’s plan for Africa but with everything there are two sides. On one side you have a people who have criticized Americans and their allies for invading Muslim nations. Although no unlawful invasion is righteous, these people are quick to forget history because the Arab’s (639 AD) and their ancestors the Hyksos (1648 BC) invaded Africa and did the same thing they’re accusing the Western World of.
On the other side you have the case of a bully complaining that someone has smacked them in the face. As I have repeated hundreds of times, History has a way of exposing the things that mankind tried to hide. The fact that many Muslims over seas hate America and vice versa is due to a long list of elements including what we call ideology. I want to be very clear; this hate is not initiated over a religious movie by Theo van Gogh or a cartoon which shows the Prophet Muhammad in a negative way. From this religious hate we have seen the worlds most brutal wars; from the Crusades where the armies of Richard I and Salah al-Din Yusuf also known as Saladin (1189 – 1192 AD) killed each other by the hundreds of thousands, to today where in Ethiopia you can see that African Christians and Muslims are killing each other daily.
Throughout all of this mayhem we see nothing but disease, disorder and death; what my elders call Isfet which is the opposite of Maat which represents truth, justice, harmony, balance, order, reciprocity, and propriety.
I have seen the good and the bad in both the Christian and Islamic faith. Currently it’s very hard for people to see the good within these two religions mainly because of the ignorance to history and a severe case of denial of reality. What do you expect in the black community where many of us have more movie DVD’s in our home than books? I say that because freedom should only mean the liberation of the mind. Now with no end in sight to the conflict that Americans have with many of the fifty-seven countries that make up the newly formed Islamic Conference and the clear fact that many people all over the world can’t think beyond belief, all Americans must brace ourselves for the worse but hope for a better tomorrow.
We must teach our youth the true history of the conflict between the Christians and the Muslims because clearly many of today’s adults as well as some of our ancestors have placed us into a negative situation which could possibly lead us all through a path of destruction; or at least send us further into this modern dark age.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Friday, September 21st 2012 at 11:23AM
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