Shahada and Fatiha Aren't Working for a Million Sudanese

Submitted by Ethan Corey (United States), Jun 10, 2004 at 11:23

The Arab Sudanese government is facilitating attacks by the Janjaweek militias on the (black) residents of the Darfur region of Sudan, who are being driven out of their homes. An article appearing in Sunday's Washington Post notes that the Janjaweed militias have burned hundreds of villages and killed thousands of civilians belonging to black African ethnic groups and are backed by the Sudanese government. The fact that they are Muslim does not protect them against Janjaweed attacks.

Ultimately, the Islamists don't care whether one is Muslim are not. One must be the "right kind" of Muslim. What is the "right kind"? Only the Islamists will get to determine that in the Islamic caliphate. So Europeans who believe that they can "do business" with bin Laden by dropping the U.S. are as misguided as Stalin was when he signed the Nazi-Soviet pact.

One other observation: The English language itself is becoming a victim of politics. When the word "genocide" is bandied about willy-nilly to describe Israel's activities in the West Bank and Gaza, but is largely absent from descriptions of what is happening in Darfur, then writers are destroying the ability of the language to accurately convey reality. The same thing is happening with the substitution of the word "militant" for "terrorist".

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