Arabs and Africans - the myths part 2

Many sub saharan Africans have this strange view that they are somehow more civllized than Arabs, because they have bought more into European culture.

The facts don't bear this out.

While Africans, due to the slave trade, colonisation and the brainwashing that came with Christianity, started to ape Europeans in name, dress and social customs, Arabs and those of muslim background in West Africa, for e.g., as well as the middle east, kept to their traditional customs and identity. What sub saharan Africans did as the missionaries desperate for converts turned a blind eye to this, was to keep to superstitious beliefs that ought to have been abandoned in the 16th century.

Ask any southern Nigerian or Ivorien to comment on their northern compatriots, and they tell you they're backward, uneducated and are 'like Arabs' and these southerners would contend that they are more forward looking and liberated.

Many sub saharan Africans also have this odd view that because their ancestors were quick to jettison their own traditional beliefs and take on their white colonisers' beliefs, this makes them superior to Arabs (usually code for muslim in sub saharan speak).

Let's take a good look. Look at north Africa and the middle east with their infrastructure and the way they're now booting out their dictators. Look at the high education amongst Arab professionals and the articulate way they marshall their arguments in public, even when they're interviewed on the street.


Now compare this with the current state of sub saharan Africa:

• In Sierra Leone, Charles Taylor and Freddy Sankoh chopped off people's limbs while Charles Taylor was a born again Christian ordained minister.
• In Christian D. R. Congo, boys, girls and men are subject to mass rape as a means of war.
• In Uganda, the Lord's resistance army has committed mass murder, cannibalism, rape and are revered by local Christians as they are reputed to have supernatural biblical powers that turn stones to grenades.
• In the christian south of Nigeria children are murdered daily because they are accused of witchcraft, usually when they lose a parent to AIDs.
• In the same southern Nigeria an incredibly corrupt candidate is supported by many Christian churches as they feel his candidacy is god ordained. 
• In Equatorial Guinea, radio stations broadcast the god given powers of Nguema, a brutal despot, who they say should never be questioned as he has a hotline to christ. 
• Gbagbo is committing various inhumane atrocities in Ivory Coast as we speak as he thinks he should rule instead of a muslim called Alassane Ouattara, who incidentally built up a wonderful infrastructure in Ivory Coast in the 1970s - 1980s.

When I checked with muslims, they don't believe in witchcraft, the parts of Africa they inhabit have a low level of crime and social disorder and these same very civillised sub saharan Africans go there to work and usually engage in the only crime occurring in these Arab areas.

So which is the backward race? - Arab or African, you decide.
And which is the backward religion? Islam or Christianity, you decide.

In case you're wondering, I'm of sub saharan origin and my ancestors were taught to sing the hymns 'Amazing Grace' & 'What a friend you have in Jesus'. This would be a joke if the consequences for sub saharan Africa weren't so tragic and serious.