Racism - scourge of the Arab world

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Tribalism and nationalism still plague the Arab world, 1400 years after the Prophet Muhammad's (pbuh) message of unity to the world through Islam. This time its in Iraq, where Black people are being discriminated against:

"Black Iraqis are still seen as slaves although engaged in different sectors of the society and there isn't a law that guarantee our rights as citizens," Salah Hashimi, 38, told IslamOnline.net. "The government says that they don't discriminate and that we are all Iraqis, however, those of us who face daily discrimination know otherwise."

The article is interesting in that it reveals new information to me, for example I didn't know there were 2 million black people in Iraq and I didn't know that the term 'zenji' was a racist word, then again in Palestine we used to call this desert here......'raas el-abd' which means 'head of the slave'. So the issue of racism in the Arab world has no borders, some say Gulf countries are more racist or Lebanon is more racist but its clear that we have a problem in ALL Arab countries with racism towards those who have dark skin. Why is this? Is this because of colonialism in the beginning of the 20th Century? Did we learn to love our white masters so much that we have acquired the love of the colour of their skin?! Or is it because of the phenomena of slavery in the Arab world? We need to learn that racism is totally against the teachings of Islam and anyone who works to eradicate racism in Arab countries needs to be supported. Istighfara Allah.

Posted by Bilal at 13:23

Labels: arabs, iraq, racism