Author: Serge Trifkovic
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: February 14, 2003
One in a series of excerpts adapted
by Robert Locke from Dr. Serge Trifkovic's new book The Sword of the Prophet:
A Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam.
The Koran commands Moslems to wage
jihad for the forcible conversion of the whole world. Africa, with its
generally low level of civilizational development and corresponding lack
of the power to defend itself, has been singularly vulnerable to these
aggressions, particularly after the hiatus imposed by colonialism (whatever
its drawbacks).
Take Nigeria, a nation burdened
by ethnic and religious diversity which has been plagued by all the standard
African post-colonial experiences, from civil war and a procession of corrupt
and brutal military dictatorships to bouts of strife rooted in the clashing
tribal and religious loyalties of its 100 million-plus people. Its oil
riches have been squandered, stolen, or mismanaged. Its countless economic
and social problems would test the abilities of its rulers even without
the specter of a religious conflict. How could things be worse?
Enter militant Islam.
Only about a half of all Nigerians
are Moslem, but they are a majority in several northern states. The fault
line between Arabized and Moslem North Africa and the real black Africa
closer to the equator splits Nigeria in two, as it does Mauritania and
Sudan.
For years, Nigeria's corrupt military
rulers came from the Moslem north. They treated the rest of the country
as occupied territories to plunder at will. They sought to give a Moslem
stamp to the country as a whole, to the point of joining the Islamic Conference
Organization, creating the impression that Nigeria is Moslem in its entirety.
Their long-term strategy is apparent
from the opening communiqué of the Islam in Africa Organization,
(IAO) founded at a conference in Abuja in northern Nigeria in November
1989. It insists on "re-instating a strong and united umma" (Islamic community)
in Africa and on "restoring the use of Arabic script in the vernacular."1
In addition:
"The Conference notes the yearning
of Moslems everywhere on the continent who have been deprived of their
rights to be governed by the sharia and urges them to intensify efforts
in the struggle to reinstate the application of the sharia." (Islamic law)
The implication is that once there
had been an umma in Africa, within which the local languages were written
in Arabic lettering, and that Africans were under sharia. This is not true;
it is fantasy history. The Conference also demanded "the appointment of
only Moslems into strategic national and international posts of member
nations." It pledged:
"To eradicate in all its forms and
ramifications all non-Moslem religions in member nations (such religions
shall include Christianity, Ahmadiyya and other tribal modes of worship
unacceptable to Moslems)"
The members pledged to pursue those
objectives not only in Islamic states, but also in those with Moslem minorities.
The IAO had huge funds at its disposal from the very first day, including
$21 billion which was "generously donated by the government and people
of Nigeria" for the Islamic Development Fund.
Fast-forward to the end of Nigeria's
military government in 1999. Unhappy with the loss of power following the
collapse of the military regime, traditional rulers of predominantly Moslem
states in northern Nigeria are now seeking to apply the IAO communiqué
at the level of their own communities, most visibly by introducing sharia.
In late 1999 the state of Zamfara, whose two million people are predominantly
Moslem, was the first to adopt a bill to introduce sharia. Its devoutly
Moslem state governor, Alhaji Ahmed Sani, approved it in spite of the objections
of the Christian minority in Zamfara and protests from the rest of the
country. Within weeks all bars were closed, cinemas and video parlors were
shut down, and boys and girls were divided into separate schools. The rest
of the novelties are familiar to any visitor to the Middle East: women
now must cover themselves; amputations of limbs, stonings to death and
beheadings are on the statute book for a variety of offences; consumers
of alcohol in any form are "severely flogged" if caught drinking. Governor
Sani has asserted that he would replicate the sharia code used in Saudi
Arabia.
The consequences have been predictable.
Moslem fanatics have been emboldened to demand sharia in all northern Nigerian
states where they have a majority. Resulting clashes in mixed areas included
two bouts of bloody riots, in February and May 2000, in which over two
thousand people were killed when another northern Nigerian state, Kaduna,
tried to introduce sharia there. Dozens of Christian churches have been
burned and desecrated all over northern Nigeria.
Christians have been told not to
fear Islamic law. "Islam," declared Usman Bugaje, Secretary General of
the Islam in Africa Organization, based in Nigeria, "has a great capacity
for tolerance." But he left his peculiar meaning of "tolerance" unclear,
because it is in fact limited to those who believe in the principles of
sharia to start with - i.e. Moslems. Nigerian proponents of sharia say
that non-believers must be persuaded by argument, dialogue and example.
Central to their argument, however, is the thesis that all people should
eventually adhere to the tenets of Islam. Like their coreligionists everywhere,
they hold that Islam must unify Moslems over and beyond the confines of
the nation state and provide one single center of authority. Africa "craves
for Islam," says Usman Bugaje, as a part of its quest for "cultural freedom"
and search for "an alternative world view that can stand up to challenge
the West." If true, this is an astonishingly frank confession that even
the Islamists don't really believe in Islam as a matter of religious conviction:
they just want something to stick in the eye of the West. Resentment and
the desire for blind self-assertion are the primary motivation.
Sudan is another African nation
victimized by Islamist aggression. The military regime of General Omar
Hassan al-Bashiri imposed sharia in 1989. This move immediately pitted
the northern Sudan Arabs and Arabized blacks against the Christians and
animists (adherents of the old pre-colonial tribal religions) of the south,
and caused the long-running civil war in which at least two million Christians
have been killed.2 Tragic as it was for the people of Sudan, the resulting
mayhem was welcomed by some Arabic countries -- often America's Middle
Eastern "allies" -- that are actively promoting the Islamic onslaught in
black Africa. This, of course, is from a religion that loudly proffers
itself to black Americans as having a better record of treating blacks
than does Christianity. But as I have written in FrontPageMag.com , the
only places in the world today where one can buy a black man as a slave
for ready cash are in Moslem nations.
Or take the case of Egypt, supposedly
a friend of the United States and the second largest recipient of the U.S.
taxpayers' largesse after Israel. Egypt failed to convict a single murderer
following the January 2000 massacre of 21 Coptic Christians in the village
of Al-Kosheh, 300 miles south of Cairo. The court convicted only four of
96 defendants, and only on lesser charges. All four men convicted were
Moslems; not one was convicted for murder, but two for "accidental homicide
and illegal possession of a weapon" and the other two were each sentenced
to one year in prison for damaging a private car.3 From the outset, the
government of Egypt had sought to cover up the gravity of the case and
to avoid the political minefield of punishing Moslems for the murder of
Christians. After the verdict, Egypt's Christians feared for their lives.
The worst offender in Africa, however,
is that richly-endowed non-African center of Moslem expansionism: Saudi
Arabia. In 1983, Saudi Arabia exerted pressure on Sudan to declare itself
an Islamic state. It ensures that those who join the Islamic Conference
Organization are given speedy access to the funds of the Islamic Development
Bank and the Arab-controlled "Bank for Economic Development in Africa."
Just as the Arab proselytizers of Islam were unconcerned about the welfare
of Black Africans when they ventured to hunt them and sell them into slavery
centuries ago, their heirs see them but as canon fodder in the project
of global Islamic expansion. Or else they simply deny their existence.
The Mauritanian Moslem regime in particular is notorious for denying the
existence of the black majority in the country, while simultaneously ruthlessly
repressing it. It ex-President Ould Taya once declared that "Mauritania
cannot be in the process of Arabization as it is already an Arab country."4
This weird outburst of black self-denial is typical of the self-hatred
that Islam imposes on its conquered peoples, who are made to repudiate
their past ethnic identities.
At the same time, according to Africa
Watch (1990), there was not a single Arab among the 200,000 Mauritanian
citizens who were deported to Senegal or Mali. While black Mauritanians
were being driven out of their homes to refugee camps, Arab refugees from
Senegal, Mali, and Western Sahara were welcomed into Mauritania, where
they were given citizenship and resettled on land whose rightful owners
had been ethnically cleansed. Slavery is practiced exclusively by Arab
Mauritanians and Sudanese on non-Arab citizens in both countries, and upon
the introduction of sharia laws in Mauritania (1980) and Sudan (1983) savage
punishments like amputation and flogging have been applied mainly on non-Moslem
blacks by exclusively Arab-Moslem judges.
Sudan shows that genocide need not
be perpetrated by huge Nazi or Bolshevik-style massacres. There are more
insidious but equally effective ways of killing large numbers of people.
The government in Khartoum is doing so by attrition: it is slowly and methodically
grinding down the society and economy of the Nuba and starving the entire
population. Meanwhile, in the garrison towns and Orwellian-sounding `peace
camps' the government is remolding the political and social identity of
the non-Moslem Nuba people by force: the aim is to transform them into
a deracinated underclass, the loyal servants of an extremist Islamic state.
In each army attack, soldiers first arbitrarily gun down anyone they find.
The government does not pay them salaries: their pay is the booty from
the raids on Southern villages. The elderly and sick are usually killed
on the spot and their food granaries set ablaze. The main objective of
`combing' is to capture live, fit civilians:
"Thousands of men, women and children
are captured when their villages are surrounded, or are snatched while
tending their crops, herding their animals, or collecting water. Many people
run to hide in caves to escape government attacks, but they are driven
even from these refuges by hunger and thirst, or by attacks using tear
gas. Captives are taken to garrisons, forced to carry their own looted
possessions, or drive their own stolen animals in front of them. These
captives - or `returnees,' as the government calls them - usually never
see their families or villages again. Men are either killed or forcibly
conscripted into a militia known as the People's Defense Force. Many are
tortured. Women are raped and forced to work, often in special labor camps.
All but the youngest children are separated for `schooling' - i.e. conversion
to Islam and training for a role in the new, extremist Islamic Sudan."5
The government also uses food as
a means for luring Southern Sudanese Christians into its "peace camps"
located in the desert. Food distribution in them is carried out exclusively
by Islamic organizations, which use the promise of food as a means of converting
Christians to Islam. The technique is very simple: if one does not bear
an Islamic name one is denied food. Without any means of alternative support
the choice is, as ever, Islam or death.6
Rt. Rev. Bullen Dolli, an Episcopal
Bishop from Sudan, was puzzled by the cold reception when he came to Washington
in October 2001 to talk about the predicament of his much-abused flock
under Islam. "It is a militant religion," he said at a scantily attended
press conference, and warned on behalf of the victims against those who
act as its character witnesses. He pointed out that Sudan's death toll
is larger than the combined fatalities suffered in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan,
Chechnya, Somalia, and Algeria. Twice as many Sudanese have perished in
the past two decades than all the war-related deaths suffered by Americans
in the past 200 years.7 But hardly anyone listened. The Bishop's hosts
could not get him a slot on NPR, on the Big Four, or any other high-profile
venue previously so eager to accommodate any itinerant mullah praising
the "Religion of Peace and Tolerance."
To Bishop Dolli it may seem incomprehensible
that the U.S. has intervened militarily and politically to "save" the Moslems
in Bosnia and Kosovo from non-existent genocides allegedly perpetrated
by their Christian neighbors while it remains indifferent to the very real
genocide of Christians that has been perpetrated by the ruling Moslems
in Sudan for two decades. He does not understand that his flock's very
Christianity barred them from certified victimhood in the eyes of the ruling
Western elites. Political correctness has imposed a set of blinkers on
American thinking in which anyone, no matter how murderous, from the Third
World is a "good guy" and Christians, no matter how many of them die at
the hands of brutal Islamic-inspired governments, are the automatic villains,
or at least irrelevant victims.
Footnotes
1. http://www.islaminafrica.org/backG.htm
2. 107th US Congress, 1st Session
(H. CON. RES. 113) "Regarding human rights violations and oil development
in Sudan."
3. Associated Press, February 5,
2001.
4. Jeune Afrique January 1, 1990.
5. Facing Genocide: The Nuba of
Sudan, published by African Rights on 21 July 1995.
6. Sabit A. Alley's paper delivered
at the 19th Annual Holocaust and Genocide Program, Institute for Holocaust
and Genocide Studies, New Jersey on March 17, 2001. http://www.iabolish.com/today/features/sudan/overview3.htm
7. Testimony of Roger Winter, Executive
Director, U.S. Committee for Refugees on America's Sudan policy to the
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations (March
28, 2001).
Serge Trifkovic received his PhD
from the University of Southampton in England and pursued postdoctoral
research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His past journalistic outlets
have included the BBC World Service, the Voice of America, CNN International,
MSNBC, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Times, the Philadelphia
Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He is foreign
affairs editor of Chronicles.
