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 Re: د. العفيف: لماذا هذا الإلتواء من الدكتور خالد المبارك (Re: Yasir Elsharif)
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Arabic Culture & the Black Color
In his al-shu'ara' al-sud wa khsa'isuhum fi 'lshi'r al-'arabi (the Black Poets and their Distinctive Characteristics in 'Arabic Poetry), 'Abduh Badawi tells us the following:
The Arabs hate the black color, and like the white color. They describe anything pleasant (whether material or psychological) as white. Having a white skin is a matter of pride for a man, and a trait of beauty to the woman. Whiteness to them is a sign of honor. A man is praised by being described as the son of a white woman. Indeed they pride themselves of having white women as concubines. … They call the black poets aghribat al-Arab, the ravens of the Arabs, in simile to that detested black bird whose blackness is traditionally considered bad omen".
Detestation of the black color stems from the historical experience of the Arabs with African people. The stereotypical image of the black African in the Arabic culture is that he is malodorous, deficient in body and mind, and depraved of passions. The Arabic proverb "the Negro, if he is hungry, steals, and if his stomach is full he commits adultery", sums it all up. The name 'son of a black woman' was the ultimate insult that black people were assaulted with.
Before Islam
Before Islam, the children of an Arab father and an African mother were not accepted as full members of the tribe even when the tribe depended on them in its wars, as the story of 'Antra reveals. Badawi shows how the black color represented a great barrier in front of these poets. Calling somebody ghurab (a raven) was an insult. Badawi says:
[T]here was a sharp sensitivity over color among the black poets before Islam. This was because they were a depressed and downtrodden group and because they were excluded, sometimes roughly, sometimes gently, from entering the social fabric of the tribe. Thus they lived on the edge of society as a poor and depressed group. They were only acknowledged under conditions of extreme pressure, as we know from the life of 'Antra. Although this poet was the defender of his tribe, and its supreme poetical voice, his own tribe's attitude towards him continued to pain him and to weigh on his mind. The name 'son of a black woman' stuck to him even when returning from victory in battle.
During the Prophet's life
Although Islam preached the unity and equality of human kind despite differences in tongues and colors and that "the most noble of you in the eyes of God is the most pious", the Arabs' attitude towards the blacks never changed. The Prophet has taught that: "no Arab shall enjoy superiority over the non-Arab, nor shall the white ever excel the black, nor the red the yellow, except in piety". Yet this did not prevent Abu Dhar al-Ghiffari, one of the prominent Companions of the Prophet to call his black brother Bilal ibn Rabah, another prominent Companion and mu'ezzin, caller for prayer, of the Prophet, "son of a black woman". The Prophet, when heard about this, reprimanded Abu Dhar so severely that the latter felt that a mere apology to Bilal would not do. So Abu Dhar lied on the ground, put his cheek on dust and asked Bilal to step on it, as a sign of humiliation, and humbleness.
The Middle Ages
If this was the situation during the life of the Prophet, who preached the equality of the believers, it is all natural that the Arabs' attitude towards the blacks would worsen after his death. Bernard Lewis mentions this in the following passage:
While the exponents of religion preached a doctrine of equality, albeit in somewhat ambiguous terms, the facts of life determined otherwise. Prevailing attitudes were shaped not by preachers and relaters of tradition but by the conquerors and slave owners who formed the ruling group in Islamic society. The resulting contempt- towards non-Arabs in general and the dark skinned in particular- is expressed in a thousand ways in the documents, literature and art that have come down to us from the Islamic Middle Ages… This literature, and especially popular literature, depicts [the black man] in the form of hostile stereotypes- as a demon in fairy tales, as a savage in the stories of travel and adventure, or commonly as a lazy stupid, evil-smelling and lecherous slave. The evidence of literature was confirmed by art. In Arab, Persian and Turkish paintings, blacks frequently appear, sometimes as mythological figures of evil, sometimes as primitive or performing some menial tasks, or as eunuchs in the palace or in the household.
Ibn Khaldun sees the blacks as "characterized by levity and excitability and great emotionalism" and that "they are everywhere described as stupid". He offers an explanation for this stupidity and love of joy by attributing it to the "expansion and diffusion of the animal spirit". The Old Testament myth that the black people are the descendants of Ham, and that blackness of skin came about as a result of Noah's curse on his son Ham, was adopted and propounded by some Arab writers such as Ibn Jarir. However, Ibn Khaldun did not accept this prevailing wisdom of his time, and tried to provide an alternative "scientific" explanation for the blackness of the Africans based on the heat.
In his description of the inhabitants of the Equator, al-Dimashqi had to say the following:
The Equator is inhabited by communities of blacks who may be numbered among the savage beasts. Their complexion and hair are burnt and they are physically and morally abnormal. Their brains almost boil from the sun's heat.
Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadhani follows the same line of reasoning. He founded his opinion on an ancient Greek geographical theory that divides the earth into seven latitudinal zones where zone 1 and zone 7 represent extreme heat and extreme cold respectively. He postulates that these two extremes produce savages whereas the middle zone, where the climate is moderate, people are well civilized. To him, the people of Iraq have "sound minds, commendable passions, balanced nature, and high proficiency in very art, together with well proportioned limbs, and a pale brown color, which the most apt and proper color". But the zanj who inhabitant zone 1 are "overdone until they are burned so that the child comes out between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions". John Hunwick observes that while al-Hamadani's prejudice against the Slavs is only limited to their "leprous" color, his prejudices regarding the zanj go beyond color to depict their "deformed bodies", "feeble minds", and "stinking smell". Ibn Khaldun believed that the Africans are closer to animals than to humans, and that they are cannibals as well. "Their qualities of character", says Ibn Khaldun, "are close to those of dump animals. .. they dwell in caves, eat herbs, live in savage isolation, and do not congregate and eat each other".
Response of the Blacks
With such manifest prejudices, two kinds of reactions are predictable, resistance and internalizing contempt. While some blacks rose up to counter these prejudices, others accepted their ill fate, and saw themselves mirrored through the Arabs' eyes. However, resistance itself took two approaches; one challenged the stereotypical image and declared that black is beautiful, and the other accepted the prevailing prejudice that it is ugly, apologized for it, and celebrated the human moral qualities. 'Abduh Badawi tells us that:
The poets saw themselves and their people as downtrodden, and although this sense of being downtrodden varies from century to century, and from poet to poet, yet the black man could not refrain from being a voice of protest against the life around him and the tragedy of his own situation. Later we see [black poets] exploding in the face of those who allude to their color as may be seen in the poetry of the 'three angry poets' al-Hayqutan, Sunayh, & 'Akim [of the early 8th century]. For them it was not enough just to defend themselves. We see them taking pride in their blackness and in the history of black people and the lands they came from and attacking the Arabs on points in which they prided themselves.
Internalizing Contempt
An example of internalizing contempt is Nasib al-Akbar, another poet of Nubian origins. His attitude was similar to that of Uncle Tom in western culture. He chose not to confront the society and to conform to its prejudices. When his own son proposed to a lady from the family of his former owners, who were willing to accept him, Nasib came and ordered some of his black slaves to drag his son from his legs and to beat him hard. The slaves beat up his son. Then Nasib saw a young man of nobility and said to the lady's uncle "marry your brother's daughter to this man, and I will pay the dowry". Thus he did not find his own son fit to marry a woman of nobility, and beat him in order to know his place. Another story reported that the Ummayyads Caliph, 'Abdel Malik ibn Murwan asked Nasib to join his drinking group, but the poet apologized that he was too low to deserve such an honor. He said to the caliph:
Oh Amir al-Mu'minin (commander of the faithful) my skin is black, my frame is deformed, and my face is ugly and I am not fit to be in this position (of being the Caliph's drinking partner).
Another story reported that he resorted to invisibility. He wanted to conceal his blackness from his audience, when he was asked to read his poetry to some women, in order not to injure their feelings. He said: "Let me perform behind a veil. Why should they see me? My skin is black and my hair is white. Let them listen to me behind a veil".
'Antra, the heroic poet, gives us another example of internalizing contempt. He seemed to resent his Ethiopian mother, Zabiba, as the one who was responsible for his blackness. He viewed her as ugliness in incarnation. He called her to a she hyena, and he resembles her legs to those of an ostrich, and her hair to black pepper.
Resistance (1)
An example of resistance based on the first approach is the work of the great classical writer al-Jahiz who lived in Bagdad in the 3rd century of Islam (9th century A.D.), and who was black himself. He tried to remind the 'Arabs that the black people are the creation of God, and that it cannot be true that God intended to distort His own creation, as the Arabs might have believed. He said:
God did not deform us by creating us black. Our black color came as a result of the country (environment). The evidence is that even among the Arab tribes there are blacks, such as Bani Salim Ibn Mansour who live in al-Harrah. All the inhabitance of al-Harrah are black, even its bears, ostriches, foxes, wolves, donkeys horses, goats, and birds are black, and even its air is black.
Al-Jahiz also wrote Fakhr al-Sudan ala al-Bidan, (the boast of the superiority of the black people over the white people). Al-Jahiz exalts the black complexion comparing it to the sacred black stone of the Ka’ba, as well as to elements of the natural world that are dark-hued, beautiful and strong, dates, ebony, lions, female camels, musk, night and shade”. Three centuries later al-Jawzi, another Bagdadian writer who lived in the end of the 6th century of Islam (13th century A.D.) would rise to defend the blacks. Al-Jawzi wrote “Tanwir al-Ghabash fi fadl al-Sudan wa al-Habash, The Illumination of the darkness on the Merits of the Blacks and Ethiopians). In this works he also exalts the black color, praised the nobility and morality of the kings and queens of Sudan and Ethiopia, as well as the black Companions of the Prophet.
Resistance (2)
The resistance based on the second approach usually accepted the negativity of blackness but asserted moral and intellectual qualities. The line of argument this approach preferred is "yes black but virtuous". The poet Sahim 'Abd Bani al-Hassas, who was a Nubian, says: " if I have been a slave my soul is free, and if my skin is black my virtues are white". He also says, "had I been rosy white, they (women) would have adored me, but my God has cursed me with a black skin". Khifaf Ibn Nadba, another black poet, followed the same pattern. He accepted that his blackness is a negative mark, but he prided himself as a great warrior who settled his account with his detractors in the battlefield: "I said to him while my spear dripping his blood, this is me right here over your body". And "I marred his body with his blood until he turned real black". 'Antra followed the approach as well. He said; "during peacetime they call me son of Zabiba, and when it is war, they say to me 'come on attack them son of nobility". And, "I am the black slave who throws himself in the battle field when its dust rises high in the sky. My sword and spear are my noble origin, and they are my best friends when fear strikes people".
However, the few works of resistance had no effect more than making a point. Prejudicing the black color intensified in Arabic Islamic culture as the empire grew and the Arabs set out to hunt slaves. Eventually an association between slavery and al-Sudan, i.e. the blacks, became instilled. As Akbar Muhammad writes, with the expansion of the empire: “almost the egalitarianism of the Prophet‘s age crumbled under the heavy weight of urbanism, acculturation, internal ethnic factionalism, and Arab ethnocentrism”. Such ethnocentrism and racism is abundantly reflected in the classical Arabic literature.
The Arabs usually did not address black people by their names, but by the word al-Aswad (the black) or al-'abd al-Aswad (the black slave). When a black poet read his poetry in front of an Amir or a Caliph, the usual response was "ahsant ya aswad", (hey black man you have excelled). The Arab poets usually felt bitter whenever a black poet produced excellent poetry. Their usual reaction when they heard an excellent poetry was "I wished I had said that before the black slave". Their favorite way to taunt their black colleagues was to say to them "qul ghagh", i.e. "make the sound of the raven".
Al-Mutanabbi’s satirical poems on Kafur al-Ikhshidi, the black ruler of Egypt during the Middle Ages, are another proof of this point. Al-Mutanabbi is widely recognized as the most talented Arab poet of all times. He approached Kafur, a freed Nubian slave, who ascended to power through his superior military and administrational skills, hoping for an amara, i.e. to be appointed ruler of one of the regions. He composed poems that hail praise on Kafur. He even praised his black color and considered it the embodiment of beauty. Failing to get the job he was aspiring to, he fell out with his benefactor, sneaked out of Egypt, and started a campaign of defamation against Kafur. He composed a number of satirical poems, considered the best in artistic terms, against Kafur, calling him eunuch slave, ugly Nubian, and stinking pig. In all these poems, al-Mutanabbi mocks Kafur's black color. He says in one of them, "a black slave whose lower lip is half his size, yet people say to him 'you are the full moon in the midnight'". He also mocks the Egyptians, and calls them the world's laughing stock, because they had Kafur as their ruler. In one of his poems he says, "many things in Egypt are funny, but they are the kind of funny things that make you cry". It is remarkable that when Northerners read these poems, they identify themselves with al-Mutanabbi and not with Kafur, despite the fact that Kafur was actually a Nubian, i.e. in modern terms, he was a Northern Sudanese.
The Sources of Islam & Color Symbolism
It has been mentioned that in its symbolic order, Arabic Islamic culture standardizes the white color and prejudices the black color. In pre-Islamic poetry, in the Qur’an, in classical Islamic jurisprudence, fiqh, and in classical as well as modern literature, the white color symbolizes beauty, innocence, purity, hope, etc, whereas the black color symbolizes the opposite of these concepts.
The Qur’an contains two types of discourse; one is color conscious and the other is color blind; one standardizes “white” and prejudices “black”, and the other is totally neutral. Examples of the first type of discourse are the following verses: “On the Day when some faces will turn white and some faces will turn black, to those whose faces have blackened (we will say) 'Did you reject the Faith after Accepting it? Do taste then the Penalty of rejecting Faith'. But those whose faces have become white, they are (enjoying) God’s Mercy; therein to dwell for ever” (S. 111, Ay. 106 & 107). “On the Day of Judgement wilt thou see those who have told lies against God; Their faces will be turned Black, Is there not in Hell an abode for the Arrogant”, (S. xxxix, Ay. 60). “When news is brought to one of them of a birth of a female, his face turned black, and he is filled with inward grief” (S.XLIII, 17).
Examples of the second type of discourse are the following verses: “Among God’s signs are the creation of heavens and of the earth and the diversity of your languages and of your colors”. (S. XXX, Ay. 22). “O people! We have created you from male and female and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may come to know one another. The noblest among you in the eyes of God is the most pious” (S.XLIX: Ay. 13)”. The Prophetic hadiths also have the same characteristic of the parallel levels of discourses. Example of the lower level of discourse is "Listen to and obey your ruler even if he an Ethiopian slave with crincky hair". The higher level of the prophetic hadiths preaches the unity and equality of the human race despite differences in color, tongues, and customs. Example of this is "all humans are as equal as a teeth of a comb", and "all of you have descended from Adam, and Adam has descended (or created) from the mud”.
In dealing with these two types of discourse I adopt Mahmoud Muhammed Taha’s idea of the duality of the Qur’anic discourse. Taha perceived the Qur’an as having two levels of discourse: lower and higher, particular and universal, temporal and eternal. The lower level reflects, to some degree, the seventh century Arabs’ particular values, ideology and culture. It is historically bound, and, therefore, it accommodates some of the Arabs shortcomings and prejudices. The higher level, on the other hand, reflects the universal human values and therefore, aims to elevate the Arabs, and all the Muslims, to these universal values. The lower level abrogated the higher level. The problem of the Muslims is that they think of this abrogation as eternal and irreversible. Taha, on the other hand, preaches that abrogation is neither eternal nor irreversible, and calls Muslims to move from the lower level to the higher level by reversing the process of the abrogation, and to build a new renaissance on its basis.
As demonstrated by the above selection of the Qur'anic verses and the Prophetic hadiths, in the lower level of discourse, white and black are used to symbolize good and evil, good omen and bad omen, and happiness and sadness. The transitional level of the Qur'an and the hadiths reflects the Arabs prejudice against the black people, and standardizes the white color. On the basis of the foregoing one can say that there are visible elements that show that the mainstream Arabic Islamic culture sees itself as a white culture.
Alienation from the Self
The Arab’s cultural identity is an outwardly projection of the Arab self. It reflects their sense of the world, which must be different from others’ sense of the world, for people make sense of the world in a cultural way not in a natural way. The Arabic language reflects the world as seen through the Arabs’ eyes, for there is a strong relation between the word and the world, between the discourse and the universe. What in the universe is verbalized in a given discourse. In his psychoanalysis of western cultures, Lacan concluded that western cultures and languages are masculine. In using these languages, women cannot be subjects as women. In so far as women can speak, they speak male language. Within such language order women cannot fulfill their desire as speaking beings. Lacan also showed how the child enters the world of language through its “social symbolic”. This process takes place through identification with the father and alienation from the mother. As a speaking being, the child proceeds into the father’s world.
An analogous point could be made in relation to Northern Sudanese and Arabic language. When a Northern Sudanese enters the world of Arabic language, he or she enters into a process of identification with the Arab father, and alienation from the African mother. But Northerners feel the visible presence of the mother in their faces and skins, and as Deng has explained, “it does not require a professional social psychologist to presume that such a disdain for elements visible in their physiognomy must at some degree of consciousness be a source of tension and disorientation”. Northerners’ way of resolving this tension, however, was rather unique. Instead of trying to reinvent or indigenize the Arabic language to fit their physiognomy, they fantasize about their physiognomy in order to fit the language. Hence the avoidance of using the word black to describe themselves, and the over-emphasis of their Arab origin. Ahmed al-Shahi, who studied the Shaiqiyya tribe, tells us that: “it is rude to refer to a Shaiqi person, “as being azraq (black) even though if his skin is of this color because such reference equates him with the ‘abid”.
A stark example that demonstrates this tension is the following passage which was uttered by al-Sharif Zein al-‘Abdin al-Hindi, a prominent political leader in the North. He said:
I am an Arab. I know I am an Arab. No one can dispute this fact with me. I have a genealogy. I am so, son of so, (fulan ibn fulan) son of Muhammad Rasoul Allah (Prophet Muhammad). Yet, on the other hand, nobody can dispute my Africanness. … We have come and mixed with them, and the result is these ugly figures of ours.
“We”, in the quotation, indicates the Arabs, “them” indicates the Nubians, and the expression “ugly figures of ours” indicates present day Northerners. The statement reflects identification with the father (We), alienation from the mother (Them), and detestation of the self (ugly figures of ours). This is an optimal example of Du Bois’ black person who “sees himself through the revelation of the other world”, and who measures “one’s soul by a tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity”. Northerners' identification with al-Mutunabbi, in his satirical poetry against Kafur, the Nubian, is yet another example of a dislocated psyche.
Northern cultural and political elite feels the need to reiterate frequently that they are Arabs. They also feel uneasy with the word Sudan. Altayeb Salih, a novelist of international fame, said the following:
I wish that our leaders had named this country Sinnar. May be one of the reasons behind the instability of this country that its named (Sudan) does not mean anything to its people. What is Sudan? Egypt is Egypt, Yemen is Yemen, Iraq is Iraq, and Lebanon is Lebanon. But what is Sudan? The colonialists have given this name to the area from Ethiopia in the east to the Senegal in the west. The other nations have given their countries names that mean something to them, and we were left alone bearing this legacy on our shoulders.
Loathing the name “Sudan” stems from the detestation of blackness. Detestation of blackness stems from identification with the Arabs and adopting their worldview. The suggestion to change the name of the country was not new, it came into being immediately after independence. The main reason behind the suggestion was its meaning and connotations. The word Sudani is used by Northerners in a way identical to aswad, and abd (slave). All these terms are used by Northerners to refer to "slaves, or those of slaves descent, whose relatives belonged to a non-Muslim group of the South or Nuba Mountains". For the Northerner, being Sudani meant being black, and being black meant in turn of a low social status and low origins. Many Sudanist scholars, such as Heather Sharkey, and Ahmed Shahi, are in consensus that the stigma of "blackness" is rooted in the legacy of slavery, especially that almost every family in the central riverain North used to hold slaves. Although this is true, but to my mind, it is not the whole story. There is a deeper level in which stigma of "blackness" is rooted, and that is the Arabic culture, which despises the blacks, as we have seen earlier. Northerners internalized not indiginized, the Arabic culture, and the Arabic language and value system. This is why they see the world through the Arabs' eyes, despite the paradoxes, and the self-debasement that such an outlook generates. It is generally observed that the more the Northerner becomes learned in Arabic language and literature the more he exaggerates his Arabic identity, and the more he detests blackness and the word Sudani. Osman tells us that members of the prominent literary society Abu Rawf Group "refused, after independence, to apply for passports because they had to register themselves as Sudanese nationals before they could get one". Al-Tayeb Salih’s statement represents a continuation of an old Northern wish to break away from the curse of the name Sudani. And if we read it along with al-Hindi's passage we can identify a wish to escape from one’s own skin, or to bleach it, through discourse, to resemble that of an Arab. Deng rightly explains the tendency of Northern Sudanese to exaggerate Arabism and Islam and to look down on the blacks as slaves as “a deep-seated inferiority complex, or, to put it in reverse, a superiority complex as a compensational device for their obvious marginality as Arabs”.
Conclusion
We have mentioned that Northerners believe that they are descendants of an Arab father and an African mother, and that they identify with the father and reject the mother. To the average Northerner, the mother symbolizes the Southerner within, and unless Northerners accept their mother, and identify with her, they will not accept Southerners as their equals. Recognition of the long denied African component within the Northern self, and accommodation of the long suppressed African mother within their identity, are the prerequisite for Northerners to recognize and socially accept Southerners as a little bit different but equals.
The problem of the war could be resolved through cessation of the South from the North. This could probably solve the Southern problem with the North, but will not solve Northerners’ identity crisis. It is obvious now the crisis of identity in the North has reached its peak, and the equilibrium started to swing again. Questions about identity have been posed, and Northerners have to make a choice; to continue to lurk in the margin or to create a center of their own, to continue to be second rate Arabs, or to try to be first rate Sudanese. Cultural and political entrepreneurs are split between those who suggest a construction of a new identity that enables Northerners to see the world through their eyes, and those who are defending the status quo.
However, destabilizing the old identity is the point of departure for the construction of a new identity, and exposure of the paradoxes of the old identity is essential for the purpose of destabilization. This is what this paper set to do.
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Yasir Elsharif
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست