In my previous discussion of the drone campaign, I banged on about the parochialism of so much of the discourse, ignoring that the tides of jihad beat most strongly on our African and Indian fellows. I couldn’t wish for a more perfect example of this than the following discussion by “Crommunist” over at FtB. While acknowledging that attacking Islam isn’t racist, he grandly says that he can make that distinction because he spends a lot of time brooding about racism and whatnot while “you” don’t care, and grandly instructing “you” that:
Another particularly tricky issue to parse happens when we try to recognize the tricky relationship between Muslims and “Muslims” – the former being the real people and the latter being the ‘scary brown foreigner’ stereotype.
Where do I even begin with this? First of all, has this chap ever heard of Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki and the same’s jihad in Somalia? Or the Chechen jihadists? But much more importantly, he seems unaware who the main victims in this struggle are and where the front-line of the fight is. By some estimates, there are a million black slaves owned, actually owned, by Islamic masters (Saudi Arabia had only abolished slavery two years before Malcolm X was cooing over the racial equality in Mecca).
I don’t need any lessons about when criticism of religion is bigotry, but this just reminds me of something I have observed, and heard from other Kenyan friends – that african-American intellectuals typically know and care less even than other American intellectuals about actual African-Africans.
