culturalmarxist:

dreams-from-my-father:

“Tuareg’s have never had a strong fundamentalist Islamic movement and are practically considered heretics by orthodox Muslims.” EXACTELY!!!

This is what ALL the Amazighen I have talked to have told me!! Which is why those claims that the movement may be linked to Al Qaeda seem impossible to them!

BTW ‘Tuareg’ was a name given by colons, they never refer to themselves as such. Some of them told me that they would rather be referred to as Amazigh, how they call themselves. 

But you may be right about this though “the places being destroyed had icons of Muhammad up and that is why they were being targeted.” that would totally make sense.

Yet, I still have the unsettling feeling deep down that it has A LOT to do with the strategic geographic position of Awazad!

Ah! Thank you very much for the info, I’ll keep that in mind (call me out if it slips from my memory).

One of the important things to keep in mind about reporting of Islamists is that this point pretty much any fundamentalist Islamic group is described as “a part of Al-Qaeda”—as much as Al-Qaeda was ever really a real thing in the first place. Are Islamic fundamentalists in Mali really that concerned with the movements of groups in Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.? If a group says they are part of Al-Qaeda, are they in constant communications with all other parts or merely making a statement in the adoption of the name? How strong is the hierarchy of the movement, especially now?

Not saying I know the answers but either way it’s all reported as “Al-Qaeda” because no journalist will take the time to explain this stuff when they have an attention-grabbing headline to write (and more to the point everyone is so pushed for deadlines and instant reactions that unless you’re read up beforehand you just follow the pre-conceived narratives; somehow I doubt any of these news organisations have experts on West Africa cultures just on hand). There’s plenty of disagreement within groups and while I do think Sidi Mahmoud’s tomb was targeted for iconoclastic reasons there’s still a wide range of reasons of what (the Ansar Dine)’s ultimate aim was. And probably very little of them relate to the MNLA and the Amazighen’s struggle which has been going on for centuries at this point—but like you’re saying, no-one in the West has any interest in talking about this because painting everyone under the Al-Qaeda brush creates a nice pretext for intervention and further exploitation.

Your analysis is definitively one of the most nuanced I have read thus far.

I have never thought it like that, you are right, Al Qaeda was never a thing to begin with and piratically anyone can claim to be part of it.

The thing is that information is so contradictory. Apparently the MNLA has broken their alliance with the Islamist group. I need to read more about this because like I said news agencies are reporting contradictory information.

(via jrantisexleague)

escapefromcrete:

dreams-from-my-father:

oumkhartoum answered your question: Does it make sense when Islamists destroy Mosques?

The only source I’m seeing about the mosque is the guardian. I’m suspicious. However there are videos of the destruction of tombs.

I know that the MNLA  had an alliance with some Islamist group but if they are indeed destroying mosquees, it actually proves that they may not be part of Al Qaeda like the western media has been claiming.

I don’t trust them, none of the things they have ever reported about Awazad adds up or makes sense :/

IMO they are just eyeing Niger for th eUranium and the South of Algeria and Lybia for the oil :/

I know that this map is tiny as hell but if you look at it, you can understand why westerners have all interest in claiming that the independentists in Awazad are terrorists

Those westerners think they are slick SMH!!

Well…it is confusing.  So the MNLA broke off their alliance with the Islamists SOON after making it.  And Ansar Dine is destroying mosques because they belong to Sufi saints and the “heretical” Islam to which most Azawadiens adhere.  Unfortunately, they are gaining power due to their links with AQIM and their outside funding, while the MNLA is not receiving international support.

Oh I see but I am still a bit confused I thought they were destroying mosques because they had icons of Muhammad :/

This is so complicated

culturalmarxist:

dreams-from-my-father:

oumkhartoum answered your question: Does it make sense when Islamists destroy Mosques?

The only source I’m seeing about the mosque is the guardian. I’m suspicious. However there are videos of the destruction of tombs.

I know that the MNLA  had an alliance with some Islamist group but if they are indeed destroying mosquees, it actually proves that they may not be part of Al Qaeda like the western media has been claiming.

I don’t trust them, none of the things they have ever reported about Awazad adds up or makes sense :/

IMO they are just eyeing Niger for th eUranium and the South of Algeria and Lybia for the oil :/

I know that this map is tiny as hell but if you look at it, you can understand why westerners have all interest in claiming that the independentists in Awazad are terrorists

Those westerners think they are slick SMH!!

I’ve heard—but I’ll try to find where it was exactly and double-check my sources—the places being destroyed had icons of Muhammed up and that is why they were being targeted. As far as I know the MNLA’s alliance with the Islamist group was very tenuous, based basically on the need for numbers; the Islamists stayed in the cities while the MNLA were trying to secure Awazad’s borders…but that was a couple months ago. As you said it’s hard to find good information, or really even know what the good information is. Of course the two groups are totally different, I mean someone correct me if I’m wrong but Tuareg’s have never had a strong fundamentalist Islamic movement and are practically considered heretics by orthodox Muslims.

Absolutely right about the motives for discrediting them :/ Still trying to keep them under the thumb of debt til the land’s bled dry.

“Tuareg’s have never had a strong fundamentalist Islamic movement and are practically considered heretics by orthodox Muslims.” EXACTELY!!!

This is what ALL the Amazighen I have talked to have told me!! Which is why those claims that the movement may be linked to Al Qaeda seem impossible to them!

BTW ‘Tuareg’ was a name given by colons, they never refer to themselves as such. Some of them told me that they would rather be referred to as Amazigh, how they call themselves. 

But you may be right about this though “the places being destroyed had icons of Muhammad up and that is why they were being targeted.” that would totally make sense.

Yet, I still have the unsettling feeling deep down that it has A LOT to do with the strategic geographic position of Awazad!

(via jrantisexleague)

The only source I’m seeing about the mosque is the guardian. I’m suspicious. However there are videos of the destruction of tombs.

I know that the MNLA  had an alliance with some Islamist group but if they are indeed destroying mosquees, it actually proves that they may not be part of Al Qaeda like the western media has been claiming.

I don’t trust them, none of the things they have ever reported about Awazad adds up or makes sense :/

IMO they are just eyeing Niger for th eUranium and the South of Algeria and Lybia for the oil :/

I know that this map is tiny as hell but if you look at it, you can understand why westerners have all interest in claiming that the independentists in Awazad are terrorists

Those westerners think they are slick SMH!!

Does it make sense when Islamists destroy Mosques?

sensationnalisme:

cosmicyoruba:

sensationnalisme:

I don’t even want to understand anymore.

No it doesn’t.

Also

#its either propaganda for foreign forces to intervene or its the worst kind of evil WTF?

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks this. I don’t even know what to believe when it comes to Mali and Azawad any more.

We’re on the same page, I don’t know how these extremist groups work but I’m not sure if I buy the recent ‘they want to destroy MOSQUES!’ it seems incoherent and honestly, crazy. I’m suspicious of any reports by international medias when it comes to Azawad because they have an agenda. It seems bizarre to me that people who claim Islam will destroy Mosques, of all things.

We can’t talk about Awazad and forget how close it is to Niger which has one of the biggest reserves of Uranium in the world. Uranium is indispensable in making of nuclear weapons. 

All the west is looking for now is any good reason to invade the Sahel like they did Middle East but for that, they must prepare the sheepish western populations glued in front of their TV.

I can’t trust western media anymore. They LIED so fucking much about what was going on in Libya, look at Libya today!! They were telling us that the whole country was against Gadaffi and they didn’t even reported when the UN erased a town populated by about 30,000 black Libyans out of the map!! They didn’t report about the atrocities those against the power were committing against black and indigenous Libyans!! Because of the oil in Libya. Now that Islamists are about to take control over there, their reports are not as positive as they used to be.

Fuck the western media and their lies!

(via sensationnalisme-deactivated201)

Tuareg are now Whites…

sensationnalisme:

ai-yo:

sensationnalisme:

I think I need some ignorant “journalists” to stfu on Tuareg now. I’m not comfortable with anyone stealing a part of my history right before my eyes: Tuareg are Tuareg, Amazigh, African, Indigenous. Not Arabs, not Gypsys, and certainly not Whites (white people have the whole world now they also want this, GTFOH!!)

This is the latest:

Tuareg, did not want to be ruled by Blacks (sound familiar?). The racial divide was an old one.

Wait, what? My skin is pretty dark for a white person. I’ve noticed this about people who attempt to cover the conflict: one group chooses to classify Tuareg as White, the other chooses to call them Arab and now they are described as some kind of anti Blacks, even though most are dark, brown, or black (whichever you prefer).
“Other White”, that’s funny, I must admit.

The most important thing is that: the overall majority of Tuareg carry 0% of outside admixture. If they vary from light to very dark, it’s because of genetics, not because someone came and was gentle enough to mix with us (Tuareg don’t want you, I promise). My grandfather was a full blooded Tuareg from Niger, he married a Chadian Mauritanian woman whose family settled in Central Africa for decades, my mother is 50% Tuareg, and no one in my family could be mistaken for White. Not one. We’re all Negros and we love it.

What is a ‘White’ Tuareg? Nothing, they don’t exist.

white people are on some next level bullshit. They can’t even let Black people be Black

For Rubyshimmer, I’ve seen your post before you deleted it and I’ll reply anyway because it’s important: I think you misunderstood ‘this person’ (me)as you said. Read with attention and make sure you understand everything before you jump on it. It’s not an American matter so it’s clearly not about the “US”. If you want to discuss this subject, you’ll have to have some knowledge on our history or at least pretend, you clearly don’t. It’s absolutely not an American thing, I can see why you are  lost. You come in a conversation about people I’m sure you’ve never heard of, asking for “the context”, I understand why you erased this piece.

I assure you now: It’s not about being lumped into the ‘Black category in the US”. Hello I’m not American and I honestly don’t ask to be lumped or not with you, you’re flattering yourself dear, what I’m  saying is: I know who I am and what I look like, no one will call my entire ethnic group ‘White’ in front on me. End.

This is the said article, (by a website I like btw) but it’s poorly written (no sources, no dates, nothing to back his ‘infos’) and you can see the lack of knowledge:

“Like good nomads ought to be, Tuareg desert blues super group Tinariwen are on tour. I hear good things about them as individuals, and I’m sure they’re all fine human beings, but I’m not a big fan. The music is alright, but the politics is rancid. Here’s why.

“Our music was created under the same circumstances as the American blues,” Eyadou Ag Leche tells Belgian TV. “We’ve been colonized.” He seems to want a Tuareg state in the Malian Sahara, something like the state of Azawad that declared its independence from Mali on Friday.

Whatever Tinariwen’s singing, it ain’t the blues. It’s the white man’s blues. In the 1950s, many people in the southern Sahara, mostly Tuareg, did not want to be ruled by Blacks (sound familiar?). The racial divide was an old one, but the French colonizers had nurtured it, even doped it up just before independence. They promised to create a separate Saharan territory expressly for the Tuareg, one that would stay under French rule. When independence came in 1960, and much of the Sahara became Malian territory, many Tuareg considered this a betrayal — the ‘other’ Whites had left them to be ruled by the Blacks. Some have been in revolt, on and off, ever since. This history isn’t pretty, and the racism cuts both ways. The extreme violence with which Mali put down a Tuareg revolt in the early ’60s didn’t help. They might have killed a lot of people, but they didn’t kill the dream. Today’s claims for an independent ‘Azawad’ are based on an old racial rhetoric and a newer nationalist veneer.

So whose blues are Tinariwen singing? I’m from the South — not the global one, the American one. If Lynyrd Skynryd sang this same song (“Sweet Home, Azawad”?), you and I would call bullshit on that, too.”

The author could have called Tinariwen’s music Saharan or simply Tuareg (as THEY call it), he didn’t. He choosed to call it ‘White’  blues (is this a new genre?) on purpose. As if it wasn’t enough, he later continues and implies that Tuareg are “other Whites”, he also justifies this by saying: “The French used that language” (see comments), very clever of a journalist to use a colonial country to justify his use of an abusive term. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for letting me know that I’m really white because the French said so, maybe I can ask for special privileges even though I am Black and on the Darker side.

It’s an accumulation of things (I don’t have the time to list how many people told me or wrote that Tuareg are indeed Whites). This person, who is referred to as ” a historian of African history at Columbia University.” is not the first and certainly not the last to imply or call Tuareg White . He’s not a random journalism, but also a historian but he doesn’t know this particular subject, with all due respect, if I didn’t search I would have never guessed this article was written by a Historian (he also ignored my comment btw, I wonder why).

He finishes by writing “ Today’s claims for an independent ‘Azawad’ are based on an old racial rhetoric” , completely ignoring that Azawad is made of various ethnic groups: Fulanis, Shongais, Peuls, Arabs.

Most people don’t know Tuareg people, it’s rare to see one in the Western world, and since it’s extremely rare to have interaction with them, what makes people think they can mislabel us, speak for us or co-sign when an article states we are whites? The truth is: most Tuareg live in the desert, they don’t have the whole racial baggage you - in the Unites States- have, they’ll rather call each other by names instead of “the dark one” or “the light one”. It doesn’t work that way, we have our sort of hierarchy and it’s not based on colors but rather on occupations.

There are minorities that would kill to be seen as Whites, Tuareg are not one of them, we have our culture, identity, history, customs and pride. We’re good with being Kel Tamasheq.

(via sensationnalisme-deactivated201)

Tuareg are now Whites…

sensationnalisme:

escapefromcrete:

sensationnalisme:

I think I need some ignorant “journalists” to stfu on Tuareg now. I’m not comfortable with anyone stealing a part of my history right before my eyes: Tuareg are Tuareg, Amazigh, African, Indigenous. Not Arabs and certainly not Whites (white people have the whole world now they also want this, GTFOH!!)

This is the latest:

Tuareg, did not want to be ruled by Blacks (sound familiar?). The racial divide was an old one.

Wait, what? My skin is pretty dark for a white person. I’ve noticed this about people who attempt to cover the conflict: one group chooses to classify Tuareg as White, the other chooses to call them Arab and now they are described as some kind of anti Blacks, even though most are dark, brown, or black (whichever you prefer).
“Other White”, that’s funny, I must admit.

The most important thing is that: the overall majority of Tuareg carry 0% of outside admixture. If they vary from light to very dark, it’s because of genetics, not because someone came and was gentle enough to mix with us (Tuareg don’t want you, I promise). My grandfather was a full blooded Tuareg from Niger, he married a Chadian Mauritanian woman whose family settled in Central Africa for decades, my mother is 50% Tuareg, and no one in my family could be mistaken for White. Not one. We’re all Negros and we love it.

What is a ‘White’ Tuareg? Nothing, they don’t exist.

PLEASE EVERYONE READ.  UNDERSTAND.  I hate this nonsensical “race war” shit covering the media, this issue is about language, ethnicity, and other factors, but not about “white Tuareg vs. Black African” — we are African!  

They are creating more division on purpose, it’s not a race war, most Tuareg share the same skin with so called “Black” Africans. Most of us are fucking Black.

Western medias fail, over and over again.

(via sensationnalisme-deactivated201)

escapefromcrete:

safwangoesham:

PUNK 77: I am so tired…

graspforsanity:

of the pseudo but strong hate between berbers and arabs when it shouldnt even occur in the first place.
I am tired of these berbers claiming they’re berbers instead of algerians, palestinians, morrocans, whatever.
I am an arab and I find this pathetic because my grandma’s mom was berber and she was an amazing (haha pun not intented) woman.

We are part of the same country and I’m talking about Algeria here, we went through the same horror with the French war in our beautiful country, but berbers as well as arabs were the great moudjahads for the independance.
The West is trying to split us apart guys, let’s just not do that between each other, let’s respect each other and our different cultures.
Arabs of Algeria, at weddings you are dancing on mostly berbers music and eating berber food. Berber culture is so much increased in algerian’s culture that it would be pathetic to persecute these peeps and tell them they’re strangers to us. Don’t be a fool.
Berbers, most of you are Muslims, speak Algerian which is a mix of your language and arabs and would not be the peeps you are now without arabs. I’m not saying you needed us but, hating today’s arabs because they came to North Africa a millenium ago is dumb, as we are one and only country now.
Plus, just like black latinos in islands next to the USA, we are the result of different waves of immigrations. Most of us have both berbers and arabs origins and some don’t even acknowledge it.
I did, and I’m so glad to be part of a country with so much different cultures and ethnics.

Remember, if tomorrow we are in wars, there will be only a nation involved, not berbers/arabs/blacks/whatever. Viva la Kabylie, viva les Arabes & Viva notre chère Algérie!

Are you fucking kidding me? The way you made it sound so easy. You made it seem that the western countries are the bad ones but not the Arab invaders? Excuse me honey, i’m not sure if you’ve noticed but North Africa has been FUCKED by Arab invaders. We were turned into slaves and forced Berbers to change their identity? The Arab invaders are just as bad as the Europeans, if not worse. You cant just say “Oh we’re one country now” what the fuck are you talking about?Try saying that to a Moroccan who wants to name their child an Amazigh name, its illegal to have an Amazigh name in Morocco. BUT NOOOOOO its okay, we’re one country right?

You said: “Berbers, most of you are Muslims, speak Algerian which is a mix of your language and arabs and would not be the peeps you are now without arabs”

ARE YOU ACTUALLY TRYING TO BUM FUCK ME OVER THE INTERNET? If anything the majority of us have lost our identity, our right to call our land part of the Amazigh world and in some places like Libya, illegal to even speak any form of a Berber language. BUT WAIT NOOOOOO we’re one country aren’t we?

What happened a few hundred years ago doesn’t bother me now, but i had to address that because you made the Arab invaders seem like they were angels sent from God himself.  Whether you like it or not, you are still Amazigh and if you believe you’re Arab then you’re ALSO Arab. You just need to remember where the fuck you’re living lol. Algeria is in Africa, respect that shit or fuck off?  You’re just another uneducated North African acting like you know it all. I bet you cant even speak Darija properly lool please.

WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE SO FUCKING IGNORANT AND RACIST.  Fuck Algeria, fuck Morocco, fuck all these oppressive wanna-be nation-states that claim to be Arab-Islamic and nothing else.  

ALLL OF THIS!!

Seriously way too many PoC think that their status of non-white or even African excuses the atrocities they have been committing for centuries and they are still committing.

Everybody is ALWAYS ready to denounce white racism but when it comes for some PoC to face their own racial oppression , no one is interested

(via thefemaletyrant)

Why I won’t celebrate the first anniversary of the Arab spring

of-praxis:

dreams-from-my-father:

Many do not know this but black people are scattered all around the Arab world - product notably of fourteen centuries of Afro-Arab slavery.

Black people are scattered across the world because of European slavery. The Arab slave trade is a completely different matter and functioned as a completely different thing. It did not exist under the guise of racial domination. This has been debunked time and time again and is often an argument that white folks use to say that they have not gained anything from slavery— after all Arab folks had slaves too! If you are going to use the pretense that Arab Africans sold slaves to white people, you also have to consider that some of these people were what you’d call today Black African.

This post has absolutely NOTHING to do with European slavery. So please do no try to derail my post with your Eurocentric perspective. Can we talk about Black and Arab relations in Africa without having Europeans as a point of reference??

This is why I would like to know why their voices were totally shut down during the Arab spring feted all around the world as the uprising of the people and it even led to a systematical worsening of the situation for black people in Libya and in Egypt. 

Not sure about Egypt but in Libya you had people fighting for their rights- Libya was also a part of the Arab Spring.

I have no clue what you are trying to state by this comment. Fighting for your rights doesn’t necessarily mean bombing a town of 30,000 civilians, just saying. 

I am asking myself these questions right now as I am pondering about PoC solidarity. Does it really exist?? Can it be a plinthe solid enough to tackle down white supremacy? Considering the total lack of empathy and concern from non-Afro Arab bloggers and activists for the plight of black/dark-skinned Arabs in their countries, I would have to oppose a firm NO. Yet I can attest that black bloggers and activists have supported and are still supporting not only the Arab resistance against white supremacy in the middle-East but also Arab revolutions. So, once again, we black people are in this situation where we are expected to and we do provide support for other PoC groups, yet said groups NEVER hesitate to engage into (or complicitly ignore) anti-blackness.

For many Africans, Arab anti-blackness and racism represent a higher threat than white supremacy. Most of us still have in memory the horrors of Sudan, where for more than 20 years the Arab government committed a genocide against its black population, yet most ignore that since August 2011 Libyan liberation forces have engaged in the ethnic cleansing of black tribes, such as the Tawerghas and now the Tuaregs.  Most also ignore the day to day racism, black people faced in societies that still view them as “Abd” meaning “slaves” in Arab. 

For me, Arab revolutions in the Maghreb, especially in Libya will always represent the exhalation of sanguinary anti-black violence. For this reason, as a black person, I refuse to celebrate or support it.

If you are from the Arab world, please do not hesitate to give me your opinion on the matter.

I completely agree that Arab bloggers and activists have failed to represent the voices of black Africans and that intra racism is a huge problem in that part of the world. I completely understand why you feel the way you do.

However, it is inaccurate to suggest that Egyptians and etc gained their independence on the backs of Black Africans. I have a problem with representing Arab liberation as ‘exhalation of sanguinary antiblack violence’.

I see why the world “exhalation” may be problematic but never did I say that any of these countries gained their independence on the backs of anyone. If some did perceive it that way, I sincerely apologize. What I thought was clear is that, the revolution, especially in Libya, was an opportunity to UNLEASH violent anti-black sentiments that had been buried especially under Gadaffi who was seen as “pro-black”.

You are acting as if being Arab is contingent on anti-blackness, or that the under-representation of intra-racial issues = an Arab identity and experience that is anti-black.

You are totally reaching here and I can’t be made responsible for this. Your use of the term “intra-racial” illustrates your total misunderstanding of the complexity of the subject. The “racial” question in this region has a lot to do with tribalism, colorism and the historical process of arabisation. You can’t just try and transpose the eurocentric model once again! Arab is NOT a race, so “Arab identity” and “black identity” can NOT be separated so easily in the Maghreb!! One can be a black Arab, I don’t even know if you understand something as primary as this. I would also like to say that when the voice of a minority group are totally shut down or absent, their reality is erased and this is a sign of oppression. Also you are TOTALLY disregarding the historical context of the region, so please read that first of all. The Arab spring took place in a part of the world where slavery against black people has been abolished quite recently, where blacks are still seen as slaves or second class citizen, where for more than 20 long years Sudan killed its black population and so on!! 

Solidarity is not actually a two way street insofar as you cannot make false claims about other people’s identities and experiences because there is a history of ‘them’ not supporting ‘us’. I will always maintain solidarity with all people of color, just because I might be cautious or rightfully critical (as you are in this case) doesn’t mean I get to withdraw support for others.

Personally I find extremely upsetting and disgusting that not enough Arab intellectuals, bloggers and activists seem to care about the massacres of black people that have taken place and are still taking place to this day in the southern part of Libya. If this is not a sufficient reason to question that solidarity for you, well good for you. Do you! It is enough for me, that silence is a complicit agreement! And is once again taking place in a context where black lives do not matter!

I have encountered many domestic Black communities who are not interested in the plight of immigrants and who want all undocumented people to be jailed and deported; I am working in a local campaign RIGHT NOW where the city’s Black sheriff is vehemently anti-immigrant and the NAACP president has endorsed his racist views. There is a history of black nativism against immigrant struggles, but that doesn’t mean that I am going to- for one second- stop supporting black liberation. Because I know that while the popular representation of black communities is anti-immigrant, there are still important histories there that we forget or dont know about.

Once again, can you stop derailing the conversation with Eurocentrism and US-centrism?? I am talking here as an African born and raised on the continent!! Was all of this really necessary?? There is a black experience out of America and without African American involved !!

These are just my views and not me saying you have to do this or that. I really respect and understand where you are coming from. You should keep on blogging about the erasure of Black Africans and their struggles- but be aware that some of the information you present is empirically wrong.

(via le-kif-kif)