Talk Islam

abunoor 12:12 pm on November 29, 2008 | 4 Permalink | Reply
Tags: Nigeria (24)

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  thabet 1:48 pm on December 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  

  You wouldn’t know it from the media coverage that hundreds of people have been killed in violence in Nigeria.

  Dead blacks just aren’t important.

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  abunoor 2:47 pm on December 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  

  I know thabet, it’s amazing. This occurred right around the same time as the Mumbai attacks and when I first posted that I thought of making a similar observation, but thought to myself, well, maybe they need to figure out what’s going on, give them some time. It’s one thing for Americans to give priority to their own situation but the complete and total disregard for anything in Africa and anything in Asia that doesn’t directly involve the American military is shocking. Even what may seem like exceptions, something like Darfur, how much does anyone think the average American even has heard about that situation. This is why someone could be governor of Alaska and not even know that Africa is a continent, not a country (I’m not saying that Palin story is necessarily true, but it’s believable to me). No doubt there is a large racial element, but I don’t think the average American knows anything about Europe either. It’s really kind of sad, I’m not trying to lash out at all the Joe the Plumbers out there, I know daily life is overwhelming sometimes.

  Also, I know we are the heart of the empire, but it is amazing to me the reports that were coming from people in different countries during the last election. There is no conceivable situation I can imagine in which the media in the U.S. would provide consistent coverage of the election in any other country in the world. There isn’t even any mainstream media coverage of Canadian or Mexican politics at all.

  Can people who’ve lived abroad more extensively give me their take on whether America is really as exceptional in its lack of concern/knowledge about the rest of the world as it seems, or is this more of a human phenomenon?

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  thabet 3:23 pm on December 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  

  Hollywood Liberals and NYT reporters lead campaigns for Darfur, yet remain largely quiet over Congo despite similar atrocities being committed in both (and in a crude numbers game Congo has seen many more deaths due to conflict).

  I’d recommend this by Mahmood Mamdani. I’ll quote extensively:

  …how could it be that many of those calling for an end to the American and British intervention in Iraq are demanding an intervention in Darfur? It’s tempting to think that the advantage of Darfur lies in its being a small, faraway place where those who drive the War on Terror do not have a vested interest. That this is hardly the case is evident if one compares the American response to Darfur to its non-response to Congo, even though the dimensions of the conflict in Congo seem to give it a mega-Darfur quality: the numbers killed are estimated in the millions rather than the hundreds of thousands; the bulk of the killing, particularly in Kivu, is done by paramilitaries trained, organised and armed by neighbouring governments; and the victims on both sides – Hema and Lendu – are framed in collective rather than individual terms, to the point that one influential version defines both as racial identities and the conflict between the two as a replay of the Rwandan genocide. Given all this, how does one explain the fact that the focus of the most widespread and ambitious humanitarian movement in the US is on Darfur and not on Kivu?

  Nicholas Kristof was asked this very question by a university audience: ‘When I spoke at Cornell University recently, a woman asked why I always harp on Darfur. It’s a fair question. The number of people killed in Darfur so far is modest in global terms: estimates range from 200,000 to more than 500,000. In contrast, four million people have died since 1998 as a result of the fighting in Congo, the most lethal conflict since World War Two.’ But instead of answering the question, Kristof – now writing his column rather than facing the questioner at Cornell – moved on: ‘And malaria annually kills one million to three million people – meaning that three years’ deaths in Darfur are within the margin of error of the annual global toll from malaria.’ And from there he went on to compare the deaths in Darfur to the deaths from malaria, rather than from the conflict in Congo: ‘We have a moral compass within us and its needle is moved not only by human suffering but also by human evil. That’s what makes genocide special – not just the number of deaths but the government policy behind them. And that in turn is why stopping genocide should be an even higher priority than saving lives from Aids or malaria.’ That did not explain the relative silence on Congo. Could the reason be that in the case of Congo, Hema and Lendu militias – many of them no more than child soldiers – were trained by America’s allies in the region, Rwanda and Uganda? Is that why the violence in Darfur – but not the violence in Kivu – is named as a genocide?

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  Abu Noor Al-Irlandee 3:47 pm on December 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  

  I tend to agree on the reasons why Darfur got the attention it did. Still, I wouldn’t argue that Darfur got more attention than it deserves as an absolute rather than relative matter, I think it got and gets less than it deserves.

  But that was my point, the fact was that Darfur was adopted as a cause celebre by certain elites (perhaps in many cases well meaning) does not mean that the average American even knows what those elites wanted the average American to know about Darfur.

  Allaah knows best.

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