response to Vijay
Reader comment on item: Paul Goodman, MP, Analyses Radical Islam
in response to reader comment: Arabs and racism and sexism!

Submitted by zaky (United States), Nov 25, 2006 at 22:38

I'm an Arabic native speaker and just wanted to correct some of your errors.

What you said about the Arabic description of blacks is completely inaccurate and false and i will attribute that to your lack of knowledge of the arabic language rather than to intentional defamation.

One of the most respected and famous personalities in early days of Islam was a black guy by the name of BILAL.

1-The Bazrangids also known as Bazrangi were an ancient mountain-dwelling iranian tribe. These colonies of ancient iran settled on the East African coast and established commercial settlements on the islands during pre-Islamic times. Due to the dominance the Bazrangids had over East Africa, the area they settled became known as Bazrangibar, which means "Bazrangi coast". The name was eventually shortened to Zangibar and was slightly altered etymologically to produce the word "Zanzibar". The African slaves that were marketed from Bazrangibar were known as Zangi or Zingi, which means "a native from Zangibar".

So the name originated in pre-Islamic era by non Muslim people.

2-Abd means servant in arabic thus the name Abd-allah means servent of God. If you know Arabic and really read the Koran as you claim, you would know that God (Allah) addresses his people by calling them, Abeed.

You could also say Abdu or Abdi depending on the grammatical structure of the sentence.

it is worth noting that "Abd" or Abd-allah existed before Islam. The prophet Mohamad's father's name was Abd-Allah, also Abd-ul-Allah.

3-The word "Iswid" or "aswad" is for male, and for female its "siwdaa" or "sawdaa" which literally means the color black. Black shoe for example, its called hizah Iswid or aswad in Arabic.

4-the word Barbari in Arabic originated from Berbers in North Africa which are the native whites of that region and has nothing to do with blacks. Although Egyptians call their blacks barbari. many arabs carry the name of barbari like al-Barbari al-Basri . tell me how many people you know with the names "N" in the US.

In conclusion, all these words have nothing to do with Islam, they are all pre-islamic and theres nothing DEROGATIVE about them.

Finally, The Koran is a masterpiece of immense literary value, fusing the style of presentation with the substance being presented in a blend of unique proportions. its message has a sense of fulfillment and originality that attracts towrds it people from all nationalities, ethnic origine and gender.

And God knows best.

Dali

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