#that literally teaches languages that are going extinct as well as common languages

[abluescarfonwaston]

I do not understand the lower property values movement (i mean i do but i don't agree with it) like. You realize more people coming here means more content creators? People who were previously only on Twitter or at very least not here? (Important for people like me who are Only here) That it means more people sharing and enjoying the works that are posted here?

I cannot stress enough how many people we lost from the porn ban and how much smaller all our communities got when people jumped ship. Having more people is a Good thing!!!

Also please don't harass people. I don't care if they're a 'celebrity'. There is a person behind that account and no one deserves death threats or bullying, Especially not for just wanting to share the space. Just Block people you find annoying! Curate your space!

We are not an island and frankly - isolationism isn't a great move even if you are one. Please celebrate and welcome new folks. So many of them are going to be boons to the communities we inhabit - and the rest you can still just block. Or more likely, won't even see because you're Not Following them.

[1tawnystranger]

One thing that’s becoming more prominent to me since leaving Islām is just how Arabocentric it is. As a muslim I’d been made to believe Islām was a universalist religion that gave no priority to any cultural/ ethnic/ national background over any other, and that Allah chose Muhammad to be his final prophet for the world because he was just the right guy for the job. Even Muhammad himself was against petty shit like racism, nationalism, xenophobia, etc. In his final sermon he told the whole ummah (muslim community):

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor does a black have any superiority over a white except by piety and good action.”

-Taken from Muhammad’s farewell sermon, full text here

Likewise, one criticism Muhammad’s detractors made was that Islām was a foreign religion that went against traditional Arab ways. Or so I was led to believe. Even if it were true that they believed that, it wasn’t necessarily true in practice. Islām has preserved a lot of the old Sabian rituals and gave them a Judeo-Christian justification.

Which brings up the question of what traditional Arab ways were…

However, since the beginning of Islām’s spread outside of Saudi borders, muslims (who were predominantly Arab) saw themselves as culturally/ racially superior. And many peoples who came within their sphere of influence were made to see them thus too. All in all, some nations/ ethnicities who’ve been muslim for a long time try to justify their links to the faith by what I call Illustrious “Arab” Ancestry™. Yes they make up their own family trees as they go along, claiming to be descendants of really famous figures in Islāmic history or somehow linked to Muhammad’s people.

Examples:

In Morocco the curriculum teaches that the Imazighen (the main ethnic group of the country) are descended from a man called Mazigh who was from what’s now Saudi Arabia. The one who told me this, a Moroccan himself, confirmed that was complete bollocks. Honestly I already knew it was bollocks from my knowledge of ‘black’ history; the Imazighen are Berbers, and as far as I can tell Berbers had nothing directly to do with Arabs before the arrival of Islām in north Africa. Their language, Tamazight, is probably unintelligible to Arabs. Even if this Mazigh guy existed, if he lived in pre-Islāmic times chances are he had no blood relations with Arabs.

In Western Sahara (as well as parts of south Asia) there are a number of people claiming to be direct descendants of Muhammad. They call themselves Sayyids. Problem is, ANYONE can say they’re a Sayyid and they won’t be questioned, critiqued or doubted in any way.

Even Italian gangstaz can in theory be Sayyid. LOL

Funny enough, from the Islāmic perspective being a descendant of Muhammad is nothing special. His “specialness” is not genetic but a result of his personality, actions and character. And devotion to Allah, needless to say. Every individual person is responsible for their own selves, and on the day of judgment no-one gets perks for having prophetic ancestry. Besides, according to the faith ALL humans are descendants of a prophet – Adam! So there’s no special status there! Obviously the fact that there’s no test of proof, or even requests for proof, from Sayyid claimants makes the claims untenable.

I recently found out that 1 group in west Africa accepted Islām seemingly without a fuss as soon as they heard of it: the Soninke. According to their oral tradition, their eponymous ancestor Dinga was from the “middle east”. As I’ve pointed out in other posts, “middle east” is a vague term whose geographical range isn’t fixed so where exactly was he from (assuming he existed)? I’ve also read he & his son may have come from Egypt, which isn’t impossible since some Wafrican groups have ancient Egyptian links (as pointed out in Cheikh Anta Diop’s analysis of Medu-Neter & his language Wolof). Furthermore, I do not claim expertise but the name Dinga sounds much more like an indigenous Wafrican name than any Afroasiatic/ “middle eastern” name I’m familiar with. So I strongly doubt this claim.

According to Wikipedia, not a single modern caste system in Africa can be shown to have existed before the arrival of Islām. That means Arab muslims (and the people they conquered/ interbred with) set up an ethnic pecking order to ensure the continuation of their domination. To be counted among the “winners”, some groups, especially in Africa and Asia, claimed Arabness, hence Illustrious “Arab” Ancestry™. Not too far removed from the ancient Greeks. According to Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World, when they were conquered by Romans they consoled themselves by claiming Romans were Greeks after all.

Why?

Because it’s better to be conquered & enslaved by your own race than a foreign one. Obviously.

You’ll notice I keep putting Arab in quote marks. That’s because, as I’ve also pointed out many times in previous posts, the definition of Arab has changed drastically over the centuries. Originally it referred to a specific ethnicity (who came to the Arabian peninsula from east Africa via Yemen and remained nomadic for quite a while after other people in the region became settled), now it’s used as synonymous with must’arab (any people who’ve been culturally assimilated, willingly & otherwise, into post-Muhammadan Islāmic sphere of influence &/or who speak Arabic as a first language. Ethnic ties to aboriginal Arabs is no longer required). Even before Muhammad’s time a number of Arab tribes were extinct, becoming extinct &/or being replaced with semi-foreigners. Not to mention most people outside the Arabian peninsula, including muslims, don’t know the difference between Arab & must’arab and don’t understand how much people have changed & migrated throughout history. For that reason, claiming Illustrious “Arab” Ancestry™ is misleading because most modern “Arabs” (& must’arabs) are very deeply mixed-race and in denial about it, thus have largely incorrect assumptions about what those Illustrious Ancestors™ were like. Especially in appearance.

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Don’t think this refers to all muslim-majority countries though. Persians (Iranians) never claim to be Arab. And back in the early years of Islām it would’ve been much harder to mistake them for each other (Arabs were still more or less ‘black’, only just becoming settled & literate, while Persians were ‘white’ and already settled & literate). Likewise Somalis don’t claim to be Arab (unless they’re unusually light-skinned in my experience) EVEN THOUGH THEY PROBABLY HAVE THE MOST RIGHT TO OUT OF ANY MUSLIM POPULATION TODAY. To cross the Red Sea for Yemen, the aboriginal Arabs would’ve had to come from the horn of Africa, and to this day Yemenis & Somalis constantly cross each other’s borders. But Arabic has more in common with other east African languages like Amharic & Ge’ez (spoken in Ethiopia) than the Somali language, so the first Arabs likely came from further inland in east Africa. Even so, on top of being the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians & Berbers, Somalis (or proto-Somalis?) have potential legit claims to being the ancestors of the first Arabs.

Yet other people, most of whose ancestors were forced to convert to the new religion on threat of death, claim them with more fervour and more fanfare. What a world we live in.

We’re all Moroccans but ALLAHU AKBAR for making us Arab!!!!!!!!!!!1!

Islām & Illustrious “Arab” Ancestry™ One thing that's becoming more prominent to me since leaving Islām is just how Arabocentric it is.

[netflixanthrothings-blog]

Born A Crime- Dorcas Yeoh

Born a crime is a memoir written by Trevor Noah about his own personal life and experiences living in South Africa as an illegal child. Trevor Noah was born in the time where the ‘Immorality Act 1927’ still existed in South Africa, a law where Europeans and natives are strictly prohibited to have carnal intercourse or they will be punished to five years of imprisonment. Therefore, Noah was born an illegal baby, due to the fact that he had a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother. The overall theme of his book is his life living in South Africa as a biracial child, especially the hardships he and his mother faced. Noah uses many real life examples to explain the situations he and his family struggled with racial discrimination. He addressed the events that happened during the Apartheid and the effects of it on the people living in South Africa. This book also explores the relations between colonialism and culture in South Africa. For example, it talks about how the Dutch colonialism affected South Africa as a whole. Colonialism relates to culture because coloured children were brought up differently and not solely by parents of the same ethnic group. Thus, in this essay we will look into how Dutch colonialism resulted into Apartheid and racism between the blacks and the whites in South Africa.

Culture plays a huge role in every person’s life. Culture can also shape a person’s identity as they discover who they are and where they belong. “A person’s understanding of their own and other’s identities develops from birth and is shaped by the values and attitudes prevalent at home and in the surrounding community” (Common ground, 2018). To Noah, it is a different story. As mentioned in the paragraph above, Noah is a biracial ‘criminal’ from birth due to the laws that were imposed in South Africa. Noah struggled to relate to his peers and to the people around him as he was mixed. During the Apartheid, Noah did not know at first if he belonged to the blacks, the whites, or the coloured. He never had to choose. After attending H.A. Jack Primary government school, he found out that he was black because he felt comfortable hanging out with the black kids and he felt a sense of belonging with them. For example, Noah volunteered to be in the black classroom instead of the white classroom. However, his teacher tried to persuade him to not change his class even though he insisted to he felt belonged to the blacks. Her reason was that there were no smart kids in that class and that the blacks will hold him back. She also warned him that his decision would affect his opportunities in the future, but Noah had already made up his mind. One reason could be because everyone else around him were blacks, especially the person who played the most significant role in his life: his mother. Besides, the black kids embraced him. His white father used to bring him to white church for sunday school but he felt he did not belong to the whites. He found himself more comfortable to the black culture and he preferred being friends with the blacks as he grew up black (p.59).

Colonialism is “the practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful countries and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth” (Collins, 2018). Noah highlights the impact of colonialism on South Africa by explaining how when the Dutch colonised South Africa, they met the Khoisans, known as the native Americans of South Africa. Throughout the process of colonisation, the natives interbred with the Dutch and the slaves from West Africa, Madagascar and the East Indies that were brought in by the Dutch. Mixed babies were produced and they have special features. However, the Dutch took freedom from the Khoisans and slowly, the Khoisans became ‘extinct’ due to poor living conditions. Coloured people have more than one ethnic group, so they have no specific place or heritage to go back to. “If they trace their lineage back far enough, at a certain point it splits into white and native and a tangled web of “other”. Since their native mothers are gone, their strongest affinity has always been their white fathers, the Afrikaners.”(p.115) Therefore, there was a huge change in their culture to be more prone to the whites and not their native language. Everything that shaped the culture and perception of the coloured people came from the Afrikaners. The Afrikaners were usually better educated and lived a better quality life. However, they were selfish as they did not want the blacks to be educated properly because they wanted the Apartheid to work. The blacks who were once educated formally were forced into Bantu schools that taught only metrics and agriculture (p.61-62). The government treated the blacks as primitive people who will not understand science and history so they shut down the mission schools. The blacks were then forced to attend Bantu schools who had barely literate teachers to teach them. Therefore, most blacks were not well educated (p.61-62).

The Apartheid was a real, serious racial segregation that happened to the whole of South Africa and Noah’s narration of his childhood gave me a clear picture of the reality that was happening. Fortunately, Noah was a polyglot, as he could speak in many languages, and this gave him a big advantage and a better social status compared to the blacks. He could understand Zulu, Xhosa and a few other languages. Adding on, he had fair skin. When the black kids who thought he was white wanted to pick on him, he could understand them completely and he knew what they wanted to do. His ability to speak English fluently granted him a better social status and gave him better access to things. I could feel the guilt in him when people (excluding his mother) treated him better than his peers and his cousins all because he had fair skin. For example, his grandmother only punished his cousins for the same mistakes he made at home because she insisted that a white boy should not be beaten. However, this only made Noah an outsider wherever he lived.

In conclusion,  Born A Crime provides a very subjective perspective as it is written in the perspective of Noah (by Noah himself) towards the Apartheid and the way his mum brought him up to be who he is. He includes many of his thoughts and ideas about his experience and his actions, as mentioned in the book. Noah perfectly gave the readers a good picture of the life in South Africa during that time as a mixed child, especially how he experienced situational negotiation of identity. As a reader, I was emotionally affected by his sufferings and his personal stories and encounters truly amazes me. This book is worth reading and I definitely enjoyed reading this book as it made me laugh so much throughout the process of reading it. It also helps non-South Africans understand a bit more about the life living under the Apartheid. It made me realise living as a mixed child in South Africa during the Apartheid is tough as Noah struggled to belong as he searched for his own identity. As it is written by Noah’s own point of view, I finally managed to get a better picture of the reality and hardships the blacks and the coloured had to face living in an unjust community. Not forgetting Noah’s mother, the woman who once again reminded me that a mother’s love for her child/children is unconditional. I was deeply touched by his mother’s wise actions, her bravery and her sacrifice for her family. My favourite quote from her from the book would be “Even if he never leaves the ghetto, he will know that the ghetto is not the world. If that is all I accomplish, I’ve done enough.” (pg.74) Such wise words coming out from a black woman who is uneducated is simply amazing. For her to go through life’s struggles alone and to sacrifice for her own family is really tough. She could give up anytime, but her courage and determination moved her forward. The most astonishing thing is that she went through it without complaining and gave Noah the security he needed although he did not have his father beside him. She is now one of the few great women I admire, a woman who never stops providing for the family throughout her whole life yet without a single complaint. This is something truly inspiring for me and a valuable lesson to be learnt. It gave me the motivation to strive harder and not give up easily by the challenges that I face. Noah would not be this successful if it was not for this woman. This book deserves to be treasured and shared to others so that people can benefit from the valuable life lessons.