Posted on 01/17/2008 7:33:36 AM PST by forkinsocket
No mystery as to why Christian missionaries might be having their greatest success in the Kabyle. In Algeria, that remains the Berber heartland. It is where the Berbers, that is those who were not forcibly transformed, during the centuries of Arab rule (interrupted by 132 years of French rule) into "Arabs" (how many of those "Arabs" who now persecute the Berbers realize that they themselves are a generation, or two, or five removed from their clearly Berber origins?)
The cause of the Berbers is hardly known in this country. The writer Kateb Yacine, a Berber who refused to write in Arabic, but chose French, is celebrated in France, especially among Berbers -- but unknown in this country, and his anti-Arab rage is not likely to cause his books to be included in the syllabuses of courses on "Francophone" literature given that so many such courses are now taught by French-speaking Arabs.
What is that cause? In the first place, it is linguistic and cultural. In Algeria, where the French rightly saw the Berbers as superior to the Arabs -- one French general wrote a book about the "Europeanness" of the Berbers -- the Berbers were not discriminated against, but as soon as the French left, the forced arabisation of the Berbers started up at once, as if the French interregnum, with the wider possibilities that French education made possible to both Berbers and Arabs, had never existed. Older people in Algeria speak and use French; the younger ones are forgetting. And meanwhile, the Berbers were forbidden to use their own language, the Berber language, Tamazight, in their schools, in their institutions, and even, at times, they could be punished for using it among themselves, on the street. Berber culture was officially ignored.
About twenty years ago, news of agitation began to reach the outside world. There were riots in Tizi-Ouzou. Reported in France, but hardly anywhere else in the Western world. In America, of course, we had all been sufficiently subject to ARAMCO propaganda (performed as a "public service" by the big oil companies, as part of their propaganda payoff to the Saudis for allowing them to find, produce, and then pay exorbitantly for the oil that happens to lie under the malevolent sands of "Saudi" Arabia), to believe that there is something called "the Arab world" and in this "Arab world" there are no Copts, no Armenians, no Assyrians, no Chaldeans, no Turkmen, no Mandeans, no Maronites, and of course no Berbers, no Jews (no, there never were any Jews in North Africa or the Middle East -- they all came to Israel, you see, from Europe), for everyone in the Arab world was an "Arab."
The discovery or re-discovery of a Berber identity (and how many of those North African "Arabs" should begin to realize that they are Berbers? There is, by the way, a genetic marker that, in studies by French geneticists in Tunisia, shows that Berbers and Arabs can be easily distinguished) is or could be an important weapon in unsettling the world of Islam, and perhaps causing the Maghreb to see itself, as it should not as "Arab" but as the victim of Arab imperialism.
For what is Islam if not a vehicle of Arab imperialism, and what are the Berbers, if not the victims of that Arab imperialism, an imperialism far more potent and long-lasting than the European kind, for it attempts to efface the historic identity of whole peoples?
And it makes perfect sense that Berbers in the Kabyle would, having felt along their pulses the Arab imperialism of which Islam is the vehicle, would be more open to the efforts of Christian missionaries, or more likely, are not so much responding to missionary activity, but to their own observations as to what Christianity is like, and what Islam has brought them.
In this respect, one should not underestimate the fact that Berbers now live in France, that they make up most of the membership of such groups as the "maghrebins laiques," and that they, not the Arabs whose ethnic identity is so found up with Islam, are capable, in some cases, not of identifying with the Arabs, but more closely with the French. And those Berbers communicate with Berbers at home, or through the Internet. And sometimes they return, to Algeria and Morocco, to see their families, and bring with them their own observations on the relative merits of the Islamic world, a world suffused with Islam, and the non-Islamic world, the one they have experienced in France.
The more the non-Arab Muslims of the world, and 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arab, come to realize -- and it would not be hard to help them to realize, for they will not be able to deny the facts, having experienced so much of it themselves -- that Islam is a vehicle for that Arab supremacism, the more likely it is that at least some of them will fall away. And others, who may stick with a kind of "non-Arab" Islam (as if such were possible) will, in so doing, at least help to divide, and therefore to weaken, the Camp of Islam.
Ideally, one would wish this Total System, that has held so many hundreds of millions in thrall, and thwarted over so many centuries so much human potential (think of the art, think of the science, that might have resulted in the absence of the dead hand of Islam on so many people, prevented from so many forms of artistic expression, so many avenues for free and skeptical inquiry that are necessary for the enterprise of science, so much dull fanaticism, so much boredom, so much violence, in posse and in esse) will be seen, by Berbers, by Kurds, by people in the subcontinent (why should Muslims in India not "rediscover" their own history, their Hindu, or Buddhist, or other non-Muslim roots?), by those in Malaysia and the East Indies, with its rich pre-Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist past?
Meanwhile, start reading those Berber sites. And hope that the French state, instead of Sarkozy's folly of "integrating" its Muslims by government-supported mosques, will try to work on the Berbers, work to make them see the light, work to help them to achieve their own destiny, one different from, and superior to, that of the Arabs whose method of domination comes from, is supplied by, Islam, Islam, Islam.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=836
Out of Algeria has come Rai music, the ‘rebel’ or liberal (its a good word for us) music that has caused many to move to Paris for safety and a few to be killed by extremists.
Ah, rai!* I love it, but most of my Maghrebiyya music is Chaabi. It’s very similar!
*I don’t know if you know, but rai means something like “yeah!” Kinda like the Arabic wallah.
I think Rai is my absolute, can’t go wrong on a bad day, music. Cheb Khaled, Rachid Tayha, Cheb Mami, Faudel etc are mainstains in my music library. It’s just pure plain good! Abdel Kadir is one of those songs that my students love and automatically like to dance to.
I’ve heard that Rai also means “our voice” which can also be like “yallah” (granted, that’s what I heard years ago)
Oh!
Speaking of chaabi—— then you know Hakim?? :)
It literally means “opinion,” so I guess I see how you can get “our voice” from that. I’m a Mashreqiyyah, so I don’t know for sure, but I think that Rai was originally Bedouin folk before it was influenced by different traditions.
Yeah, yallah is one of those exclamatory words that can mean a lot of different things, but I’d match rai more closely with wallah.
Right now I’m listening to Manich Mana sung by Cheba Zina. Awesome song to dance to!
Chaabi Habibi Hakim? Why yes, I do. *plays it right now* :)
Chaabi Habibi Hakim? Why yes, I do. *plays it right now* :)
I made a statement and I'll stand by it, that the most intelligent articles and open/honest debates happen on Free Republic. I'm glad I found it...
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Thanks for the heads up!
She’s on You Tube— WHOO HOO! Thanks so much.
Let me know if you want me to mail you the mp3 of my favorite raks baladi song. I don’t know if all her songs are on youtube.
Yes!
Sending you a freepmail.
How about a link for the rest of us?
Sorry
Two by Cheba (girl singer) Zina
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HbTxdji-rk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83AZALOtEUM
And my favorite by Chebs (guy singers) KHALED-RACHID TAHA - FAUDEL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Q1MDce6OY
Habibi ya Einy! That is the perfect song....about 6 changes in rhythm, slow, fast, slurpy sections....great drums....cute lyrics....
(Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, we worked on a choreo to the older version of that song....took us so long to perfect it, we hated it when we had it right :) )
Classic song. I’ve never heard a version of it that I didn’t like, but this one is the one I’ve been dancing to constantly lately.
Have you heard musiqa Mizrahit?
Nope! got a link :)?
This is effectual genocide. There is a reason the Muslims are so intent upon destroying the past in countries Islam has invaded and areas whose cultures they have destroyed.’
This is a perfect example.
The Berbers had a civilization pre-dating the Romans. The Libyans served in the armies of the Pharaohs (when they were not fighting them), the Tauregs (from Arabic “accursed of God) call themselves by another name and practice a superficial form of unorthodox Islam.
MORE attention should be given to these people. MORE pressure should be exerted against their Saudi Wahhbist directed masters and LESS time should be spent prancing arm in arm and sword on shoulder with fanatical anti-Semitic and anti-western dictators grown fat on oil profits provided by the west.
But there are more than mere companies who have incestuous relationships with these enemies of western civilization and their subject people.
Haven't a clue what to call the genre, nor the language, but I like it...
They are related branches of the Afro-Asiatic Lingusitic Family. Berber and ancient Libyan, as well as some north Africa langauges fall into this family and are all closely related to Ancient Egyptian. The Semitic Langauges form an eastern subdivision of this same lingusitic family.
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