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The Struggle of Ravens: How Did the Arabs Mock Blacks? “Halgankii Tukeyaasha: Carabtu Sidee u Jileen Madawga?” A Book Review

A book review by Abdimajid Nur Osman

Book: “Halgankii Tukeyaasha: Carabtu Sidee u Jileen Madawga?” The Struggle of Ravens: How Did the Arabs Mock Blacks?
Author:
Cabdisaciid Cabdi Ismaaciil
Publisher:
Abdisaid Publication; First Edition edition (November 11, 2015
Paperback:
296 pages

As a Somali, conveying a message to a predominantly Somali audience, I would prefer to review this book in the Somali language (see a previous debate article I wrote on the Somali language issue at WardheerNews. But this book is not a usual book, and the message it carries goes beyond a Somali societal sphere, thereof the English language.

Halganki TukeyaashaThe Struggle of Ravens: How Did the Arabs Mock Blacks? (“Halgankii Tukeyaasha: Carabtu Sidee u Jileen Madawga?”) by Cabdisaciid Cabdi Ismaaciil brings to light a known but often denied phenomenon: the deep-seated Arab racism on blacks. The book takes us to the headwaters of Arab racism and gives the reader a comprehensive analysis of the cultural, religious and psychological mechanisms that fostered it. Ismaaciil is careful to make a clear distinction between Islam on one hand and Arabs and their ancient customs on the other hand. Unfortunately though, this distinction was not (and still is not) made by most of Muslim Arab elites. One of the most hair-raising issues that we learn in the book is, for instance, how Arabs including many of the most celebrated and most respected early Muslim scholars used Islam to justify racism on blacks (black Muslims and non-Muslim blacks). They supported their views on Jewish scripts, Arab and Persian fairytales from the past, and Hadiths (undoubtedly fabricated) that they attributed to the holy Prophet. Great thinkers, such as Ibn Khaldun – the author of Muqaddimah – shamelessly believed that blacks were perfectly comparable to animals. Even worse, great theologians like Ghazzali and Al-Tabari, whose Koran interpretations constitute the backbone of the present day Islamic teaching had similar views on blacks. The argument was always the same: blacks are ugly, have no human intelligence, and are more close to animals in behavior because “their forefather Ham was cursed by his father Noah (Nuux)”. These idioms established, Arab and Persian Muslims justified and executed the most brutal slave trade in the history of mankind, where people from Sudan, Habasha (including Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea) and the lands of Sanji (the Negroes) were sold, tortured, castrated and raped in the name of Islam. It is important to emphasize that Somalis were no exception.

Ismaaciil’s book gives us access to the innermost racial reasoning of the Arab society. If someone wonders why an Arab gladly would marry a black Somali woman, but would never think of the opposite, i.e. a black man marrying an Arab lady, you will find the reason in Ismaaciil’s book. And in such cases, it matters very little if the black man is a devoted Muslim with all possible good qualities bestowed to man by God.

What can we learn from Ismaaciil’s book? The author is clear in the prologue that his intention is not to create hatred on Arabs, and I agree with him. Hatred on other people because of their race (and in a Somali situation because of their clan) is the very stupidity that the book is revealing and trying to heal. For a Somali consciousness, the book is an awakening and an alarm-clock. As Ismaaciil discuss in the book, the Arab world are still in a complete denial of their brutal history of racism and slave trade. Racism has not disappeared anywhere in the world. Black people are still abused in Europe, America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. It is only how racism is addressed in the different countries that makes the difference. And it is here we see a clear difference between the West and Middle East. Whereas the West for a long time ago recognized and condemned their slave trade history, admits and realize racism as a problem in their societies and has legislated an array of laws against it, the Arab world is still in denial and in many case actually encouraging racism. It is in this context that many Somalis, including the author of this text, are outraged by the shipping of Somali women as maids to Saudi Arabia by the current federal government in Mogadishu. These servants will most likely be brutalized and racially be abused by their Saudi masters. And I would like to appeal to the Somali authorities to stop this human trafficking.

The Somali soul has always claimed to have some Arabness in it. This of course is not based on real genealogical relationship – and there is no any scientific evidence supporting a Somali “Arabness”, neither in genetics nor in other fields of science. It is merely based on the Somalis’ love in Islam and in everything they think may be associated with. It is here that Ismaaciil want us to understand the fundamental difference between Islam and the Arab race. The former is not the property of the latter, and the latter does not have a patent on the former.

Ismaaciil’s book is very well-written and the author uses the Somali language in a brilliant fashion. Ismaaciil is a great thinker and, to my knowledge, the only Somali Islamic scholar who is a critical thinker. His other recent book “Xadka riddada maxaa ka run ah” caused a great controversy and the author received serious death threats. I have read that book too and I found nothing offensive in it. Contrarily, I found Ismaaciil’s books to be close to a religious revival that wakes our awareness, enlightens us and takes us closer to the true Islam. Islam is enlightenment and those who threaten thinkers want us to live in darkness. Somalia has been in darkness for over a quarter century, during which Wahhabi Sheiks sent by people who look them down for their skin color have manipulated the Somali masses and monopolized the “truth” in the Somali society. “Halgankii Tukeyaasha: Carabtu Sidee u Jileen Madawga?” sheds light on how Arabs cleverly use blacks and hit the drums of Islam when it pleases them and when it is in their own interest, and how they abuse them in the rest of time, a phenomenon that certainly is not new as we can learn in the book.

Abdimajid Nur Osman
Email: [email protected]
Professor of Medical Genetics,
Linköping, Sweden.


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