Dirty Secrets

Salim Mansur in the London Free Press execrates the supposed internationalist humanitarians who have no interest in saving the victims of Darfur:

There, in the arid deserts of the eastern Sahara, where living is a bitter daily struggle against sand and sun, a genocide is unfolding, with nary a whimper from the folks at the UN and sophisticates in cosmopolitan centres who remain outraged over American "imperialism" dismantling brutal rogue regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And he also puts this genocide in the context of the ongoing Sudanese civil war. In Darfur, the victims are Muslim, black and non-Arab. The killers are Muslims of Arab origin:

The tragedy unfolding in Darfur has been well-documented by reputable international human rights agencies such as Human Rights Watch. There is no disputing in this instance the facts of a state-supported ethnic cleansing being repeated in the heart of Africa.

But Sudan is a member of the Arab League, an organization representing 22 Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Hence, the Arab League immediately rallied around Sudan at the UN to ease pressures being placed on Bashir's regime.

The diplomatic manoeuvres of the Arab League are predictable. It exists to defend the interests of Arab states -- meaning regimes in power -- and not the Arab people.

And he looks to the Muslims of the West. I'm sure most of them would prefer to live anonymous and unobserved lives, just like their Christian or Jewish neighbors. Many of them will be perfectly happy to enjoy the secular freedoms of the West, without feeling compelled to become politicized. Yet sometimes history doesn't give you that luxury:

Freedom and democracy are sorely lacking among the Arab League members, and popular condemnation of an Arab regime would not be tolerated.

Arabs and Muslims, however, now live in growing numbers in cosmopolitan centres of the West, and enjoy freedoms denied their people elsewhere.

Here they came out in unprecedented numbers, protesting American-led wars to liberate Afghans and Iraqis from despots. But in their unconscionable silence over Darfur, they disclose how selective is their outrage.

Because another quality European-Americans and their Arab-Muslim neighbors share is a discomforting legacy of racism:

This silence is also revealing of culturally entrenched bigotry among Arabs, and Muslims from adjoining areas of the Middle East.

Blacks are viewed by Arabs as racially inferior, and Arab violence against blacks has a long, turbulent record. The Arabic word for blacks ('abed) is a derivative of the word slave ('abd), and the role of Arabs in the history of slavery is a subject rarely discussed publicly.

Here, the contrast between the Arab treatment of blacks, irrespective of whether they are Muslims or not, and the Israeli assimilation of black Jews of Ethiopia, known as Falashas, cannot go unnoticed.

The tragedy of Darfurians ironically has exposed to the world the racial dimension of Arab-Muslim culture and the hollowness of rhetoric proclaiming the brotherhood of Muslims.