1 Feb 2008
Norman Berdichevsky

An incisive, accurate and revealing example of how the Berbers (along with the Maronites, Assyrians, Armenians, Black Sudanese Christians, Copts, Ethiopians, Alawites (before Assad), Druze, Jews, Shi'ites, Iranians, Turks and Azeiris) have had to pay homage to the essentrially Arab character of Islam and refute their own historic identity.

The same occurred in Medieval Muslim Spain where a tiny Arab elite exploited a large body of  Berber tribesmen  recruited in Borth Africa and who were an underclass - the drawers of water and hewers of wood.. Berber revolts against their Arab masters and the fragmentation of Muslim Spain into more than 40 semi-independent taifas (principalities) warring among thmselves (just like Hamas and the PLO today) greatly facilitated the Christian reconquest.   

 Norman Berdichevsky

5 Feb 2008
alfred
Is it the character of the Arab that engenders the Muslim; or is it the character of the Muslim that engenders the Arab?

To me, the two are homogeneous; the one a parthenogenetic manifestation of the other.

There were Arabs before Muslims; but there were no Muslims before Arabs, were there?

So I am thinking that if Muslims had not been invented, then Arabs would have evolved some other vile mythology to express their vile character.

And I wonder how far off base such thoughts may be.

21 Feb 2008
Binyamin Sefers
Islam's highly-paid propagandists have successfully obscured a basic fact at the heart of the debate about Islam. 

The word "Islam" itself essentially means "submission" in classical Arabic.  (Rendering it is "peace" is a cutesy circumlocution.  "Pacification", i.e. submission, is the actual nuance.) 

Islam is not "associated" with submission - it IS submission.

22 Feb 2008
vivek iyer
Dear Sir, The Bebers produced one of the most fanatical and racist (against black people) Muslim dynasties in history. Great sages like Maimonides and Halvei had to flee from them to the more tolerant Arab cities further East. Of course, the power politics of greedy kings is no reflection on the generous character and liberal traditions of the Berber people. Certainly, the ' deeply ignorant 'Islamist' propagandists of today utter a lot of nonsense. But then so do we most of the time. Indeed, we have journos & academics in plenty whose favourite activity is scouring the bad lands of the Earth to seize upon some particularly noxious bunch of cattle rustlers & heap praise upon them as constituing the last remnant of a noble ethnicity martyred at the hands of some Evil Empire or other. The National Governments thus assailed-especially in fragile newly reconstitued states- react in a paranoid manner (though history shows their concerns are often justified) and impose utterly witless programs of cultural homogenisation which breed their own reaction thus making the prophesy self-fulfilling. Thus, I must tell you, I've developed a sort of immunity to the claim that in any given country x, there's a bunch of guys, call them y, totally different from those smelly xites- who really are so uncannily like us, so much so that it would be sheer racism to deny the affinity- with the result that we can all enjoy the moral luxury of unlimited xenophobia against those dirty wogs- the xites- while basking in the glory of a liberal activism which, if it achieves its purpose, will impose heaviest hurt upon those it champions. Vivek Iyer

27 Aug 2010
AEB

 How inaccurate. 

You have no idea how hard Islam cautions against racism.

Arabs didn't destroy my culture - France did. What Arabs did was simple - liberate my country from the imperialist Romans, teach us Islam, give us protection in exchange for some taxes, and left us alone.

The ones that conquered Andalusia were Berbers. Berbers were self-governing under the Arab Caliphate more often than not. The Safavids were Iranian. The Ayyubids were Kurds. The Mamluks, Saljuks and Ottomans were Turks. Islam is more than a "vessel of imperialism" - it's a spiritual brotherhood that is far more important to us than racial supremacy, as you seem to claim.

Of course, Arabic is Islam's language, so naturally, Islam's competition was Judaism, Christianity, and paganism, all of which stood no chance. The Qur'an has a verse forbidding forced conversion, so forced conversion didn't come until much much later. Islamization happened slowly, and Arabization followed as it was convenient for Muslims to learn Arabic. 

 

So what destroyed the Berber culture? France did. It assimilated the Berbers and Arabs together. In the words of our President, “We no longer know whether we are Berbers (indigenous North Africans), Arabs, Europeans or French. France committed a genocide of Algerian identity during the colonial era. Colonisation brought the genocide of our identity, of our history, of our language, of our traditions.” 

And of course, what did the Spanish do after the Reconquista? Didn't they persecute Jews too? Well, it's basically the same thing here. Arabs were the majority; they took over from Berbers. Actually what we did to Berers was nothing compared to what happened with Jews.

Also, about the comments on Israel; don't mock us. Palestinians are Israelites. They just converted to Islam and learned Arabic, just like us Berbers. There are no "Arabs" ethnically, there are Arabs culturally. Syrians are Assyrians, Iraqis are Babylonians, Lebanese are Phoenicians, etc. What unites us is the Arabic language of the Qur'an, of which we are proud.

 

Don't try to use race to divide us; it will not work. Arabs are persecuted in Iran too. What happens to Berbers in Algeria is just another isolated event. Most Muslims know that Islam is not about faith at all; the language of it happens to be Arabic, but there are sayings of Muhammad where he denounces racism and emphasizes that a Muslim is a Muslim no matter what his color is. 

 

 

4 Aug 2011
Shaka

 This is article is completely biased, it attempting to distort historical facts to help the cause of the evanglists. Islam did not destory any culture. I am african and I happened to know arabic, the word islam is deprvied from the word salam which means peace, you don't speak Arabic and just want to make your own fradulent claim. Arabs only make 17% of the muslims worldwide, if the other 83% were forced or their ancestors were froced to converet, and islam is some eveil religon like you claimed, how come we don't see overwhelmeing converestion from it. Personally I don't think arabs are all that religous, but other none arab muslims majority will never give up Islam. None arabs muslims were the main drive of spreading Islam during its early times it was just Arabic lingua franca. Even none muslims who ruled muslims lands converted to Islam and carried the torch of the religion which belonged to the subjects that they ruled, look up Moghouls. Many Afrcians were not forced to convert to Islam, unlike the african slaves who were forced to convert to christianity in America. In the contrary many africans sultanates emerged with islam the nubians and the bornos. The world will be much peacefull if you evanglists STOPPED your sneaky conversions tacktics that keep tearing apart hundereds of the african families of the muslims communities.