Extraordinary article by former Sudanese slave, plus video about violence and slavery in Africa today
First, an excerpt from the article by Simon Deng, entitled: “First They Came for My People, Then They Came for the Jews: A South Sudanese former slave recognized the Palestinian pogrom on Oct. 7”:
My name is Simon Aban Deng. I am from South Sudan. I am a Shilluk. I am a Christian. I am a former slave.
I will not forget that day when Arab Sudanese government troops came and raided my village. We didn’t know what was going on until we heard gunshots from every direction. I was only 9 years old, but the militiamen were shooting anybody they saw, including children.
Myself, my family, and five of my friends had to run. But the Arabs ran after us: While we were running, they shot two of my friends. We ran wildly, not knowing where we were running. We just wanted to get away from these men, and the bullets, chasing us. …
… [On returning later the survivors discovered] the whole village had been burned to the ground with the people inside the houses, including a blind man and an elderly lady we knew.
Deng tells the story of how he then was sold into slavery, what it was like during the years he was a slave, and how he came to be free. Then he writes this:
On Oct. 7, 2023, I watched the news and was sick. Seeing the video of the attack on the music festival in Israel, everything welled up inside me. From the experience of my people, from my own experience, I knew exactly what had just happened and how those terrified hostages were going to suffer. Israelis had been raped, tortured, mutilated, and burned alive just like my people had been for centuries. I will never forget the fires and the burned bodies: They looked exactly like what I saw the day my village was destroyed.
What Hamas did was precisely like what Arab Sudan’s genocidal government did to my people. Since they invaded Africa in the seventh century, Arab Muslims had always been doing jihad. We will never really know many Blacks have died between then and today. It is one of those numbers which, because it is unknown, proves how huge the suffering must be.
Much much more at the link.
The following video is a companion piece I came across not long after. It takes a broader look at the same subject: African Arabs’ violent war on black Africans. I highly recommend watching it. From the description at YouTube:
Many are not aware, but slavery and sex trafficking has never ended in Africa. But while the human rights community seems obsessed with “genocide” in Palestine, no one really pays attention to the massive human rights violations happening to black people in Africa. Why are human rights groups so selective? Why does the media gravitate towards and champion the rights of some while others are ignored?
This week on Top Story, JNS Editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with the co-founder of Americans for Peace and Tolerance Charles Jacobs and executive director of the American Anti-Slavery Group Ben Poser, both of whom are involved in raising awareness of African slaves and freeing them in some cases.
“Why the world cares about Gaza and not about Africa”.
Because they don’t.
Cue Boko Haram…
(The so-called “responsible” nations don’t even care about themselves.)
In any event, shouldn’t an adjunct to this fairly ridiculous question be, “Why South Africa cares about Gaza and not about Africa”
(OK, because Iran paid ’em to…but besides that?)
Slavery is racist. African Arabs are an oppressed people, so they cannot be racists. Therefore, the fellow’s claim of being a slave must be false.
See, I know liberal logic.
No one cares about slavery and sex trafficking in Africa, because groups of people can only be categorized as “oppressed” or “oppressors”.
Blacks and Muslims are “oppressed”, end of story. Any facts contradicting this Unassailable Truth must be ignored. Nothing can possibly be done about Muslims enslaving Black Africans, as this would point out that this contradiction (an “oppressed” group acting as an “oppressor”) actually exists.
Only the US had Slaves, only the Repb want to enslave again.
I bet you could ask any number of college idijts and they will agree with what I said.
These stories are true, and anyone with some familiarity with Islamic history and with the current state of Africa, where jihadis commit atrocities with regularity, knows it. This is one of the reasons, besides the history of the area and the historic mistreatment of Jews worldwide, for my support of Israel in the current war. Militant Islamism is a serious threat to civilization everywhere. It must be defeated wherever it is.
Simon Deng’s essay in Tablet is an outstanding piece of writing.
Many thanks to Neo for bringing this to her readers attention.
No, this is NOT the Bee….
“CNN staffers allege network has ‘systemic and institutional’ pro-Israel bias: report”—
https://nypost.com/2024/02/05/media/cnn-staffers-allege-network-has-systemic-pro-israel-bias/
Arab slavery is racist Read what The Arabs said about the Zanj. Their word for n**”et. Start with inn Khaldun
For some reason despite multiple attempts I can’t do a damn thing
The mispellings must remain forever
Like I’m stupid. Like my parents couldn’t afford an education
Ibn khaldun i can grok it, im not going to spell out the other one
Well yer absolutely right about Darfur…
Communism’s death toll pales in comparison to Islam’s. Add in the millennia of millions enslaved and Islam is the greatest evil ever perpetrated upon the human race.
Even Satan would be hard pressed to exceed it. In fact, arguably it is satanic.
Kate: “Militant Islamism is a serious threat to civilization everywhere. It must be defeated wherever it is.”
Having lived in a Muslim society, you undoubtedly know more about this than any of us who have only read a few books, but why do you qualify Islam as “Militant Islamism?”
I could guess that:
1) those Muslims whom you found to be friendly and supportive of Western values were not “real” Muslims (Islamic believers) but pretending to be for their own safety?
2) those Muslims who seemed to be supportive were in fact devoted to advancing (even violent) Islamic jihad if and when the time was right?
The folks at the Middle East Forum make a similar distinction between Islam vs. Islamism. In the past Newt Gingrich offered “the violet wing of Islam” or some such language.
But as GB points out, if the Quran is the unalterable word of Allah and cannot be questioned, then prospects for moderation seem pretty poor. We now know from the last 50 or so years of Western critical scholarship that the heritage version of Islamic history is wrong on many counts, that the Quran and other documents were certainly man made, evolved over time, and the final versions aided political aims of rulers from 691 to 1200 AD or so [coupled with burning older extant copies when possible.]
The implications from this “harder” (realistic?) view are also daunting, or terrifying.
I respect and welcome your view/ experience.
R2L, many Muslims, even educated ones, are not Qur’anic scholars. They are culturally Muslim, but as my landlord said when he shook my hand, “We are not fanatics.” A Turkish friend of ours used the same expression, “fanatics.” There are lots of people like this, perhaps a large majority. They fast during Ramadan, won’t eat pork, sometimes (the men, anyhow) drink wine or spirits in spite of the rules, but they aren’t hard-core adherents of strict Islam. They would dispute your idea that they’re not “real Muslims.” Indeed, from outside, I cannot say such a thing, any more than I could say that some cultural Jews are not “real Jews,” or that Christians who don’t belong to my kind of church aren’t “real Christians.” What I would say is that we are wise to distinguish between those Muslims who are moderate in their observance and don’t aspire to kill kaffirs, and the ones who do.
The problem is, of course, that the violent passages are indeed in the Qur’an and the hadith, and when casual Muslims become “very religious” they sometimes are caught up in the violence. I knew Muslim women in Cairo who would cross the street to avoid walking by a woman in the full covering including body, head, and face, because they trusted such people no more than I did. It could be anyone under there, they said, perhaps a criminal.