The American activist, Malcolm X saw the light of Islam through his Hajj in April 1964. As a former member and speaker for the Nation of Islam, a black spiritual and nationalist movement, he believed that the white man was the devil and the black man superior. After leaving the Nation of Islam in March 1964, he made the Hajj; it changed his perspective on whites and racism completely. Below are excerpts of a letter El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (his adopted Arab name) wrote about his Hajj experience. In it, he explains what it was during the journey that made him so profoundly shift his perspective on race and racism:

"There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white."

"During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)-while praying to the same God with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of the blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the 'white' Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana.

We are truly all the same - brothers."

  It seems that Arabs in the Sudan are unaware of Islam's tradition of the brotherhood of all, regardless of race or ethnicity. The Prophet, PBUH, must be rolling over in his grave:

  A brutal genocidal war is being waged in western Sudan. Government-backed Arab militias, the Janjawid, have been burning villages and killing members of the Fur tribe, and other black Africans of Sudan's Darfur province.

  Air attacks, crop destruction, poisoned wells and mass executions are thoroughly documented, as is rape, torture, and starvation. Kidnapped children are bought and sold in a thriving slave trade. Six hundred children were recently rescued by UNICEF. An estimated 40,000 children remain enslaved in government held territories. The Janjawid, a government backed militia, roam the Darfur region on horseback pillaging like Genghis Khan. They massacre men, rape women, and torch villages and mosques with government support. They call themselves mujahideen.

  The Janjawid's numbers are reported to be very small, no more than a few thousand, but they are well armed with automatic weapons and ride well-fed horses and camels. Their attacks are often supported by Sudanese Army helicopters. Since February of 2003, at least 10,000 people have been killed by the Janjawid. Another 50,000 people are unaccounted for. As many as a million refugees have crossed the border into Chad.

  Many are living in makeshift shelters, unable to get into established refugee camps. They face the constant threat of attack, rape and enslavement from Janjawid terrorists who have followed them across the border.

  Many of the “displaced” children under five die from treatable maladies like malaria and diarrhea. 21% of these children suffer from acute malnutrition; many have died from starvation.

  The Africans, Sunni Muslims like Sudan's Arabs, are inhabitants of Darfur’s central Jebel Marra massif, a little-known region of lush fertile valleys and volcanic mountains rising to more than 10,000ft, bounded to the north and east by arid plains fading into desert. The Fur tribe, settled, traditional farmers, have lived in the Jebel Marra for centuries. Darfur translates as "Homeland of the Fur."

  The crisis in Darfur is rooted in historic rivalries between the ruling Arabs of northern Sudan and black Africans occupying the region’s most fertile lands. As many as 90 African and Arab tribes and clans inhabit the Darfur region. Sudan’s Arab Islamist government in Khartoum began to manipulate the region’s ethnicity in the 1980s.

  

  The Arab tribes of Sudan are nomadic camel and cattle herders on the plains. Like many nomadic peoples, they have a feeling of superiority over the settled Fur, whom they refer to as tukul (kitchen dwellers).

  Throughout history, there has been tension between the two groups, but skirmishes were settled through negotiations, and Africans and Arabs exchanged goods and services. There was never large-scale conflic. Britain, which ruled Sudan for more than half a century until 1956, administered the whole of Darfur, its peoples and its once immense herds of game with only a handful of colonial civil servants.

  Inter-marriage between Darfur's Africans and Arabs down the centuries, makes it difficult to differentiate groups through skincolor. But, as a result of Khartoum’s ethnically-driven policies, by the late 1980s Sudanese began identifying themselves clearly as either "African" or "Arab." There was an ethnically driven clash in 1987-9 over access to grazing lands and water sources between nomads of Arab origin and the sedentary Fur.

  Darfur scholar, Yousef Takana, said the conflict began at a very limited level among some camel-herding Arab tribes in northern Darfur and some Fur groups in the northern part of Jebel Marra, but it quickly degenerated as a result of meddling by the Sudan government. "Propaganda, particularly in the Khartoum media, intensified and stoked the fighting until it drew in all the sectors of the Fur on one side and all the Arab tribes on the other," said Takana.

  The Arabs charged that the Fur were intent on widening the "African belt" around the Jebel Marra mountains by denying them access to water and dry-season grazing. The Fur said the war against them was genocidal, fuelled by racism, with the aim of settling their historic lands with Arab tribes.

  A fragile peace was agreed in July 1989 after an estimated 2,500 Fur and 500 Arabs died, but tensions and periodic clashes continued. When the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) began full-scale resistance in 2003, Khartoum unleashed more than 20,000 Janjawid, backed by helicopter gunships and bombers, into the Jebel Marra. Thus began the ethnic cleansing which, says Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, requires an international force to prevent killing on a Rwandan scale.

An Eyewitness Account

  Abdou Abdallah Ismael was peering through a window watching cattle graze by the wadi near his village when he first caught sight of the terrorists - he recognised them as Janjawid by the uniforms the government had given them. "I saw a lot of Janjawid on horses and camels. They were circling the cattle and shooting at people. They killed 13 people."

  The wadi was an important place: people from the neighbouring villages brought their cattle there to drink from its waters. Some of his friends and family were there too, keeping a watchful eye on the animals as they lapped at the water.

  Some of the Janjawid were on camels; the others rode horses. Abdou remembers that they did not dismount, but rode hard, firing their guns towards the people and the cattle. The villagers began to run. Janjawid ran from house to house, firing at the villagers and setting fire to their homes.

  Afterwards the survivors surveyed the results, "There were bodies lying on the ground, a lot of bodies. Each had a bullet hole in the temple. The soldiers had checked who was dead and who was not dead. They shot everyone on the ground with one bullet in the head." The death toll reached 72 people, 17 of them in Abdou's house. He was the only one of those who had been inside who had escaped. They dug as many graves as they could and piled in the bodies. In some graves there were more than eight people.

  the government sends MiG fighter-bombers and helicopters to bomb the villages before the Janjawid ride in to attack. Day after day, villages are destroyed, there is little left.

  Facing extermination, the villagers have begun to fight back. Many have joined the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. Abdou is the local SLA leader.

  International neglect led to near-genocide a decade ago in Rwanda, while NATO went to war in Kosovo in 1999 for the sake of a few hundred thousand refugees. The United States is considering formally labeling the Darfur crisis as a genocide in progress, the world - the world beyond the Arab world that is - is justified in asking the following question: "What are the Arabs doing about this atrocity in their own back yard?"

  The answer, of course, as usual, is nothing. At the conclusion of the 2004 annual Arab League summit a statement was issued. Referring to Sudan, the statement "reaffirm(ed) ... the Arab states' solidarity with the sisterly Republic of Sudan and their keenness to preserve its territorial integrity and sovereignty and reinforce all peace initiatives started by the Sudanese government with the international and regional parties." Many fine words on "human rights" were also committed to paper in the summit statement. Fine words, but no action.

For further information concerning the Darfur region and its inhabitants click here.

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Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3613953.stm

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&article_id=5351&categ_id=17

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=659022004

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=659012004

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1160

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/28/1085641708758.html?oneclick=true

http://www.techcentralstation.com/060204C.html

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=659012004

http://www.sudan101.com/fur.htm

http://www.soundvision.com/Info/racism/xletter.asp

http://yementimes.com/article.shtml?i=746&p=opinion&a=3