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Re: The Guardian :A paler shade of black by The Sudanese Nesrine Malik (Re: Mohamed Omer)
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The Qur'an doesn't claim the innate superiority of any racial group but the enslavement of black Africans was an entrenched part of the culture of Andalusia under Islamic rule. So was racism
In his 'Proverbs', al-Maydani (d. 1124) wrote, "the African black when hungry steals, and when sated he fornicates". Traveling through Africa, Ibn Battuta (1207-1377) claimed that blacks were stupid, ignorant, cowardly, and infantile
These attitudes could be found throughout the Islamic world. In the 'Arabian Nights', the worst thing about the adultery of the wives of kings Sahzman and his brother Shariyar is that their infidelity was with black men. In 'Nights 468', a black slave is rewarded for his goodness by being transformed into a white man. A similar case occurs in the 11th century 'Epistle of the Pardon' by al-Ma'arri, where a black woman, because of her good behavior, ends up as a white houri in Paradise
In 1068 in Muslim Toledo, the Arab Sa'id Ibn Ahmadi wrote a book classifying the nations of the world. In it he accounted the inhabitants of the extreme North and South as barbarians, describing Europeans as white and mentally deficient because of undercooking by the sun, and Africans as black, stupid, and violent because of overcooking. In contrast, Arabs were done just right
Racial self-consciousness led the Andalusian Ibn Hazm to insist that the Prophet Muhammad, his family, and his predecessors, were all white skinned
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