Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, has come out firmly against the Islamification of the world in his new book Of Africa. I wouldn’t have read this book if I hadn’t happened to read a review of it in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago, but I’m glad I did read it. This is because, while it’s easy for the left to chastise me, a white male from America, and to call me an Islamophobe, it’s a little more difficult (though not impossible) for them to use the same name-calling against a black African.
Soyinka deplores the fact that the Nigeria of his childhood has been destroyed:
... in contrast to the harmonious cohabitation of diverse religious beliefs that I enjoyed as a child, all the way through secondary school and beyond, the reign of religious zealotry, enveloping and consuming entire communities, has become a way of life. [185]
Most of us, I presume, have heard of butchering between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria in recent years, generally with the latter as victims. The deterioration started, Soyinka explains, some thirty years ago when an education minister, a Muslim, declared that the school uniforms then worn by schoolchildren favored Christianity and that children should be forced to wear uniforms “dictated by their religious belonging.” [183-4] This didn’t go over very well, and even some Muslims objected, but while losing this battle, “he did launch a war,” with results that are depressing for all but the Muslims and their leftist fans.
Soyinka has no use for political correctness, or rather, he has use for it only up to a point. He deplores the slave trade, but in true self-critical fashion admits that Africans were involved. He also admits that while the trans-Atlantic slave trade has been discussed and condemned endlessly, the same isn’t true of the (Muslim-initiated) trans-Saharan slave trade. He observes that most are familiar with Haiti, an island of blacks that freed itself from white domination, but few are familiar with Zanj, a black enclave in Iraq that for two decades defied the Islamic caliphate back in the ninth century. [71] (See here.)
More to the point is that political correctness, since it focuses on the sins of the West and not those of the Muslims, has contributed to the tragedy of Darfur. The goal of Sudan in Darfur, as he observes, is the “arabization” [80, 87] of land that is currently populated by blacks; he refers to the Janjaweed as the Ku Klux Klan of Darfur [84, 87], because of their viciousness toward blacks as well as their attitude that the blacks of Darfur are basically slaves. If political correctness had been applied within the Muslim world, would Darfur have happened? Perhaps not. Anyway, in the midst of the Darfur tragedy, the Danish cartoon crisis erupted, and it took over the attention of the world, much to his disgust.
Let me add that during that period, I looked through many comments on The Guardian website after it had published an essay by a German (whose name I can’t remember) asking what Europe planned to do about Darfur. The answers by the leftists, what were they? They fell into the following groups: (1) those that tried to turn everyone’s attention back to what Bush was doing in Iraq, (2) those that questioned the leftist credentials of the German in question, and (3) those that insinuated that somehow Darfur was America’s fault and that therefore the left was excused from having to act. Every now and then someone would demand that they say what they planned to do about Darfur, but most obviously had no interest in talking about it. Since it probably couldn’t be blamed on America, it had no political meaning for them and so was a waste of their time. One or two under duress suggested that this was really the business of the African Union.
So much for the slogan “Never Again.”
Soyinka was raised Christian and is probably a secularist, but he wonders if humanity has a religion gene that refuses to let religion die. If so, he recommends his native Yoruba religion, Orisa (also known as Orisha), since it is genuinely tolerant, since it has never shown any irredentist tendencies, and since it spread in the Americas (especially in Brazil) without the use of coercion. I had not heard of this religion before reading this book, which has a good introduction to it.
One can sum up his attitude this way: having seen his country ravaged by Muslim reactionaries, he is in no mood to put up with leftist platitudes about what a wonderful, peaceful, tolerant religion Islam is. He sees these reactionaries as attempting to enslave Africa [93], nor is he impressed with claims of tolerance:
When orders [from fundamentalists] are attributed to an invisible or centuries-dead authority ... transmitted through intermediaries who insist they are only “carrying out orders” but have appropriated access to the Sole Authoritative Voice that dispenses such orders, all dialogue is foreclosed. [94]
Any leftist who rejects that statement has really given up on any defense of the secular world that leftists have spent ages creating.
Soyinka deplores the fact that the Nigeria of his childhood has been destroyed:
... in contrast to the harmonious cohabitation of diverse religious beliefs that I enjoyed as a child, all the way through secondary school and beyond, the reign of religious zealotry, enveloping and consuming entire communities, has become a way of life. [185]
Most of us, I presume, have heard of butchering between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria in recent years, generally with the latter as victims. The deterioration started, Soyinka explains, some thirty years ago when an education minister, a Muslim, declared that the school uniforms then worn by schoolchildren favored Christianity and that children should be forced to wear uniforms “dictated by their religious belonging.” [183-4] This didn’t go over very well, and even some Muslims objected, but while losing this battle, “he did launch a war,” with results that are depressing for all but the Muslims and their leftist fans.
Soyinka has no use for political correctness, or rather, he has use for it only up to a point. He deplores the slave trade, but in true self-critical fashion admits that Africans were involved. He also admits that while the trans-Atlantic slave trade has been discussed and condemned endlessly, the same isn’t true of the (Muslim-initiated) trans-Saharan slave trade. He observes that most are familiar with Haiti, an island of blacks that freed itself from white domination, but few are familiar with Zanj, a black enclave in Iraq that for two decades defied the Islamic caliphate back in the ninth century. [71] (See here.)
More to the point is that political correctness, since it focuses on the sins of the West and not those of the Muslims, has contributed to the tragedy of Darfur. The goal of Sudan in Darfur, as he observes, is the “arabization” [80, 87] of land that is currently populated by blacks; he refers to the Janjaweed as the Ku Klux Klan of Darfur [84, 87], because of their viciousness toward blacks as well as their attitude that the blacks of Darfur are basically slaves. If political correctness had been applied within the Muslim world, would Darfur have happened? Perhaps not. Anyway, in the midst of the Darfur tragedy, the Danish cartoon crisis erupted, and it took over the attention of the world, much to his disgust.
Let me add that during that period, I looked through many comments on The Guardian website after it had published an essay by a German (whose name I can’t remember) asking what Europe planned to do about Darfur. The answers by the leftists, what were they? They fell into the following groups: (1) those that tried to turn everyone’s attention back to what Bush was doing in Iraq, (2) those that questioned the leftist credentials of the German in question, and (3) those that insinuated that somehow Darfur was America’s fault and that therefore the left was excused from having to act. Every now and then someone would demand that they say what they planned to do about Darfur, but most obviously had no interest in talking about it. Since it probably couldn’t be blamed on America, it had no political meaning for them and so was a waste of their time. One or two under duress suggested that this was really the business of the African Union.
So much for the slogan “Never Again.”
Soyinka was raised Christian and is probably a secularist, but he wonders if humanity has a religion gene that refuses to let religion die. If so, he recommends his native Yoruba religion, Orisa (also known as Orisha), since it is genuinely tolerant, since it has never shown any irredentist tendencies, and since it spread in the Americas (especially in Brazil) without the use of coercion. I had not heard of this religion before reading this book, which has a good introduction to it.
One can sum up his attitude this way: having seen his country ravaged by Muslim reactionaries, he is in no mood to put up with leftist platitudes about what a wonderful, peaceful, tolerant religion Islam is. He sees these reactionaries as attempting to enslave Africa [93], nor is he impressed with claims of tolerance:
When orders [from fundamentalists] are attributed to an invisible or centuries-dead authority ... transmitted through intermediaries who insist they are only “carrying out orders” but have appropriated access to the Sole Authoritative Voice that dispenses such orders, all dialogue is foreclosed. [94]
Any leftist who rejects that statement has really given up on any defense of the secular world that leftists have spent ages creating.
lAways good to see, this was really a brilliant post. In theory would like to be such a good writer too. It takes time to create that brilliant and additionally real effort to make a brilliant article
Posted by: commodity tips | 11/19/2012 at 09:01 PM
Useful advice. Hope to view more fantastic posts when you need it.
Posted by: http://www.outletmichaelkors.ca | 11/20/2012 at 12:24 AM
More computer-generated(?) advertising-driven(?) nonsequitur comments, probably randomly taken from a database of comments written to be content-free and hence minimally appropriate in any context.
If anybody finds an article about what is going on here, please point us to it.
-- Mark Spahn (for real, in West Seneca, NY)
Posted by: Mark Spahn | 11/20/2012 at 03:29 PM
I'll second what Mark says.
Posted by: John Pepple | 11/20/2012 at 07:38 PM