"Domestic Crusaders"

Scene from "The Domestic Crusaders"

I meant to write about this much sooner, but better late than never. At least, in the case of Islam and Muslims, we need to diligently record the events, however small and inconsequential they may seem, because as a collective whole, they do matter a great deal.

This past summer, Mississauga, the biggest (and most multicultural) suburb of Toronto, held a its annual Muslimfest, a two day cultural event on Muslims and Islam. Muslimfest was held during the weekend of July 31-August 1, 2010. The event was even publicized in the Ontario's tourism site, since it has now become something of an anticipated yearly event. Here is the Muslimfest website, listing all the programs for the weekend.

Within this program, the city's theater crowd was able to watch a Muslim play, The Domestic Crusaders, describing how Muslims in the West - mostly in Canada and the U.S. - are dealing with post-9/11 Muslim stereotypes - terrorists, suicide bombers, and so on. Wikipedia writes this synopsis on the play:

With a pulse on the tense, militarized and fear-driven political and social evolution of American society following 9/11, six members of a Muslim Pakistani American family, spanning three generations, reunite at the family home to celebrate the youngest son's 21st birthday. Each individual family member, or "domestic crusader," attempts to assert his or her individual definition of self and destiny in the face of collective family and societal constraints, fears and misunderstandings.

The Toronto Star also has a glowing review (as well as describing other glowing reviews) of the play.

One final note. The title itself is pretty aggressive. Muslim crusaders have as their mission to spread Islam around the world, if necessary through armed Jihad. The Domestic Crusaders, referring to Muslims within a particular nation usually in the West, surely means that these Muslims are just as determined to spread their religion within the nation that they reside - and once again through armed conflict if necessary.

As always, Muslims have to be honest about their goals (if they follow the Koran). The problem is that we just don't listen (or believe them).

Is China Providing a Better Way of Life?

St. George, Patron Saint of Ethiopia, ca. 1740-55

In a blog I posted about a month ago, which I titled: Land Grab from the Poor to the Poor, I wrote about China's use of land in African countries to grow and provide food for its own population. I mention this in a later post, and describe it as a new form of colonization.

This "new form of colonization" is harsher, cruder and ultimately much more damaging than the earlier, Europeans' presence. The European colonizers came to Africa looking for land and resources, there is no doubt about that. But, they also came to provide the natives of these lands with a better way to live, and also on a missionary obligation to introduce, and convert, them to Christianity. What do these 21st century Chinese colonizers have to offer? Nothing, as my title suggests. It is pure and simple land and resources acquisition, at the expense and detriment of the countries they have entered.

This thought was further reinforced by a CBC Radio commentary I was listening to the other day. A Guelph University Geography professor, Barry Smit, was recently on the radio's The Current program. The frightening message from his interview was that countries like China, who have uncontrolled population growth coupled with declining food and agricultural resources, need to find other means to feed their populations. One thing the Chinese fear is the rise of food riots, which Smit says is the result of dissatisfied populations. These riots, as history indicates, could eventually turn into full blown revolutions.

Leasing land for one hundred years seems to do the trick. But, as I wrote in Revolt on the Nile:

Despite China's swaggers about its growing economy, and its presence in the world market, there is no indication that the country has removed its communists yolk. Much of the government still works in a bureaucratic and secretive way, typical of autocratic regimes. And why all those Chinese who are incessantly immigrating to the West? At least  here in Canada, the Chinese immigration influx continues unabated despite all those wonderful things that are meant to be happening in their country.

One final thought. The European major powers at the peak of the colonization period (England, France and Spain) didn't attempt to colonize Ethiopia. This is why I think the thesis that they came for land and resources and to convey a better way of life - i.e. Christianity - is sound. Italy, in the late 19th century, was a conglomeration of rivaling cities, and her attempt to take over an established and Christian  nation ended in defeat. The second time Italy attempted to claim Ethiopia was around WWII, and it is documented that Italy used unfair war practices as part of an attempt to avoid a second embarrassing defeat.

But what was interesting about the Ethiopian occupation by Italy in the 20th century (because it really simply was an occupation) was that the English sent armies and armaments to help the Ethiopians defeat and remove the fascist Italian presence. Christian solidarity trumped a European one, especially if that European country was fascist. I equate this with the American liberation of Europe from the foreign and evil Nazis.

So, who will remove yet another nefarious presence in the world now, because it is surely here at our doorsteps? Or, I should say, it has already entered our lands. I am taking about Islam, although this is a second attempt on the Muslims' part. Is our world capable of taking them on again? Can we even think in terms of Good and Evil anymore? Such is the state of our post-modern, global world.

China Rising - Video Download Solution

For my "China Rising" posts, I have provided links for the Youtube videos in the second installment of the post. This is to avoid the long downloading time for the videos. The two episodes can be watched following the links in the post.

"Revolt on the Nile"

St. George, Patron Saint of Ethiopia, ca. 1740-55 Ethiopia keeps cropping up in various (negative) news stories recently. I wrote earlier about the report in Macleans magazine on the Chinese presence in the region, and their underhanded colonization of the land, where they have leased land for up to one hundred years in order to grow food that they can then send back to their own country. Revolt on the Nile is a National Post article describing  Egyptian and Sudanese claims to the Nile. This occurred around the time when Ethiopia, whose Blue Nile merges with the White Nile to travel into Egypt, was reclaiming occupied land from fascist Italy (1940s to 50s), and the Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania, who also claim they have some rights to this legendary and life-giving river, were still under colonial rule. Oil, which generally doesn't mix with water, is also part of the story, as is war, allies, and broken promises. One interesting quote from the article about the dogmatic Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi (who leased those acres to the Chinese for 100 years):

Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, is one of the agreement's most assertive spokesperson. "Egypt continues to maintain the obsolete notion that it owns the Nile and can dictate the distribution of its waters, and that upstream states are incapable of using the water because they are politically unstable and poverty stricken," he says. "But circumstances have changed."

This hearkens back to a fourteenth century Ethiopian Emperor Amde Seyon, who threatened to divert the Blue Nile's course away from Egypt if the Egyptian Muslims didn't stop persecuting their Coptic Christians. What a different interaction there is now. Meles Zenawi, who is an atheist  unlike the deeply religious northern Ethiopian Tigray people to which he belongs,  has no higher mission for his reaction to Egypt other than hypocritical nationalism and a desire for war. Beware of a leader who marches irrationally or too willfully towards war. It really means that all the saber waving is hiding some deep faults in his rule. Still, if Meles could could get cash for water, would he oblige the Egyptians? How about auctioning off the the air as well? Meles's behavior is getting more and more similar to his predecessor, the communist Mengistu Hail Mariam, who put the country through twenty years of war with the north simply because his will for a greater (communist) Ethiopia wasn't working. Another interesting thought. Despite China's swaggers about its growing economy, and its presence in the world market, there is no indication that the country has removed its communistst yolk. Much of the government still works in a beaurocratic and secretive way, typical of autocratic regimes. And why all those Chinese who are incessantly immigrating to the West? At least  here in Canada, the Chinese immigration influx continues unabated despite all those wonderful things that are meant to be happening in their country. Below is the full article from the National Post.

Revolt on the Nile

Geoffrey Clarfield

Friday, Sept. 3, 2010

Some African journalists are calling it the Nile Revolt: Last May, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania signed the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement, a document that could profoundly change the way the life-giving waters from one of the world's most important rivers are distributed. Congo and Burundi likely will soon add their signatures as well. Only Egypt and Sudan refuse to sign. And the reason they are dragging their feet is obvious: The Agreement would end the virtual monopoly those two Arab-led nations have had on Nile water for generations -- and thereby overturn the politics, economics and demography of northeastern Africa. The Nile is the longest river in the world, 6,000 kilometres from start to finish. As the Greek historian Herodotus once wrote, Egypt is "the gift of the Nile," as it is almost completely dependant on its waters for its survival. This is as true today as it was in the 5th century B.C., when Herodotus wrote his histories. The Nile begins in numerous highland streams in the mountains of Rwanda, in the Ruwenzori range, once dubbed the Mountains of the Moon by the ancient Greeks. These and other streams feed into Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, whose shores are shared by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The White Nile drains out of Lake Victoria's northern end and crosses into southern Sudan. There, it moves through miles of verdant swampland, amongst the cattle herding Nuer and Dinka tribes (traditionalists and converts to Christianity) who recently fought a successful 20-year defensive war against the largely Arab and Muslim northern Sudanese, who wanted their water and the oil that lies beneath it. The Nile then threads its way into northern Sudan -- meeting the Blue Nile, whose origins lie in Lake Tana in highland Ethiopia. The combined river then flows through Sudan to Egypt, passing through the Aswan dam, which generates much of Egypt 's electricity and regulates the country's annual floods. There are ecologists and water engineers who argue that the Aswan dam is a failure because of its interference with the Nile's natural regenerative processes, and that it will eventually cause irreparable ecological damage to the entire basin. But that is a minor headache for Cairo. Egypt's biggest problem is control. A few years ago, during a trip to the region, I surveyed the Nile from Cairo and Lake Victoria. I was convinced that one day soon the upstream countries would finally demand their water rights so that they, too, could build local economies around the irrigation that the Nile can provide. That day has come. Egypt and Sudan negotiated the original two Nile river treaties when they were the only independent countries in the Nile basin-- 1929 and 1959. At the time of the latter agreement, Ethiopia was still slowly recovering from its occupation by fascist Italy, while Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda had not yet attained independence. They were still colonies. And so Egypt and Sudan claimed the whole river --with Egypt taking 87%of the Nile water and Sudan 13%. This control includes a veto of any upstream projects. Egypt's Aswan dam, which depends on a steady flow from upstream countries, was constructed in the 1960s, during the political acme of the Arab League, and Sudan supported the project. Egypt's president, Gamal Nasser, then was the chief spokesperson for African socialism, and Africa's Marxist elites saw Egypt as a leader in the liberation and modernization of their continent. But that relationship began to break down. In 1973, in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, the Arab League and OPEC submitted the West to an oil embargo. The Arab League promised to provide the countries of sub-Saharan Africa with discounted oil if they broke diplomatic ties with Israel. African nations complied, but later discovered that no discounts were forthcoming. They had been stung. When I was working in Tanzania in the 1990s, many Tanzanians whom I met remembered this betrayal. It was one of many factors that motivated a new group of African rulers to begin to think in national and regional terms, as opposed to the Pan African ideology, which had swept the continent during the euphoric days of independence in the 1960s. They also have a new-found sense of their own history, as Western and African scholars have spent the last 50 years uncovering a distinctively sub-Saharan narrative of the continent, one transformed by the phenomenal rise and spread of the Bantu speaking peoples, as well as other tribal movements (such as those of the Masai) during the last two millennia. It became clear to these new elites that their ancestors had suffered terribly from the East African slave trade, whose main perpetrators were Egyptians, Sudanese and coastal Zanzibaris. Today, they no longer look to Egypt and Sudan as leaders of African politics. Indeed, they see them as more corrupt and autocratic than their own fragile democracies. These new African elites contain a significant number of feminists, and professional African women holding advanced degrees. And so it comes as no surprise that the key Kenyan politician behind the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement, Charity Kaluki Ngilu, is a woman. Many of these men and women also happen to be devout Christians. They know their Bible better than most Europeans. In my meetings with them, they have expressed a clear understanding of Egypt's role as oppressor in the story of Exodus. They no longer want to render unto Pharaoh. This emerging mentality, one of increasing African self-confidence toward the Arab states to the north, has not been widely reported in the Western press. In essence, the descendants of the enslaved are now confronting the descendants of their enslavers. The Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement is a manifestation of this demand for regional social justice. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, is one of the agreement's most assertive spokesperson. "Egypt continues to maintain the obsolete notion that it owns the Nile and can dictate the distribution of its waters, and that upstream states are incapable of using the water because they are politically unstable and poverty stricken," he says. "But circumstances have changed." Until recently, Ethiopia was using only 1% of the Nile for irrigation -- even though it is a country famous for periodic drought and starvation. But the country has just opened a new dam on Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. It is called Tana Beles, and will generate much needed electricity for the highly stressed Ethiopian electricity grid. Similar projects will add more power -- including Gibe 3, which will be the biggest hydro-electric dam in sub-Saharan Africa. This fight over water could get ugly. Given Sudan's continuing support for the destabilization of Uganda, and al-Qaeda's bombing of the American Embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in 1998, the future emergence of more radicalized Islamic regimes in Sudan, and possibly even Egypt, could trigger a military showdown between upstream and downstream countries -- including a sort of hydrological jihad. We have not heard the end of the Nile revolt. gwclarfield@yahoo.com-Geoffrey Clarfield is an anthropologist-at-large.