80 replies to this topic

[Marbles]

Our dear old Fiskie with is withering salvo on Arabs for their rampant, and criminal, racism.

*********

How many tracts, books, documentaries, speeches and doctoral theses have been written and produced about Islamophobia? How many denunciations have been made against the Sarkozys and the Le Pens and the Wilders for their anti-immigration (for which, read largely anti-Muslim) policies or – let us go down far darker paths – against the plague of Breivik-style racism?

The problem with all this is that Muslim societies – or shall we whittle this down to Middle Eastern societies? – are allowed to appear squeaky-clean in the face of such trash, and innocent of any racism themselves.

A health warning, therefore, to all Arab readers of this column: you may not like this week's rant from yours truly. Because I fear very much that the video of Alem Dechasa's recent torment in Beirut is all too typical of the treatment meted out to foreign domestic workers across the Arab world (there are 200,000 in Lebanon alone).

Many hundreds of thousands have now seen the footage of 33-year-old Ms Dechasa being abused and humiliated and pushed into a taxi by Ali Mahfouz, the Lebanese agent who brought her to Lebanon as a domestic worker. Ms Dechasa was transported to hospital where she was placed in the psychiatric wing and where, on 14 March, she hanged herself. She was a mother of two and could not stand the thought of being deported back to her native Ethiopia. That may not have been the only reason for her mental agony.

Lebanese women protested in the centre of Beirut, the UN protested, everyone protested. Ali Mahfouz has been formally accused of contributing to her death. But that's it.

The Syrian revolt, the Bahraini revolution, the Arab Awakening, have simply washed Alem Dechasa's tragedy out of the news. How many readers know – for example – that not long before Ms Dechasa's death, a Bengali domestic worker was raped by a policeman guarding her at a courthouse in the south Lebanese town of Nabatieh, after she had been caught fleeing an allegedly abusive employer?

As the Lebanese journalist Anne-Marie El-Hage has eloquently written, Ms Dechasa belonged to "those who submit in silence to the injustice of a Lebanese system that ignores their human rights, a system which literally closes its eyes to conditions of hiring and work often close to slavery". All too true.

How well I recall the Sri Lankan girl who turned up in Commodore Street at the height of the Israeli siege and shelling of West Beirut in 1982, pleading for help and protection. Like tens of thousands of other domestic workers from the sub-continent, her passport had been taken from her the moment she began her work as a domestic "slave" in the city; and her employers had then fled abroad to safety – taking the girl's passport with them so she could not leave herself. She was rescued by a hotel proprietor when he discovered that local taxi drivers were offering her a "bed" in their vehicles in return for sex.

Everyone who lives in Lebanon or Jordan or Egypt or Syria, for that matter, or – especially – the Gulf, is well aware of this outrage, albeit cloaked in a pious silence by the politicians and prelates and businessmen of these societies.

In Cairo, I once remarked to the Egyptian hosts at a dinner on the awful scars on the face of the young woman serving food to us. I was ostracised for the rest of the meal and – thankfully – never invited again.

Arab societies are dependent on servants. Twenty-five per cent of Lebanese families have a live-in migrant worker, according to Professor Ray Jureidini of the Lebanese American University in Beirut. They are essential not only for the social lives of their employers (housework and caring for children) but for the broader Lebanese economy.

Yet in the Arab Gulf, the treatment of migrant labour – male as well as female – has long been a scandal. Men from the subcontinent often live eight to a room in slums – even in the billionaires' paradise of Kuwait – and are consistently harassed, treated as third-class citizens, and arrested on the meanest of charges.

Saudi Arabia long ago fell into the habit of chopping off the heads of migrant workers who were accused of assault or murder or drug-running, after trials that bore no relation to international justice. In 1993, for example, a Christian Filipino woman accused of killing her employer and his family was dragged into a public square in Dammam and forced to kneel on the ground where her executioner pulled her scarf from her head before decapitating her with a sword.

Then there was 19-year old Sithi Farouq, a Sri Lankan housemaid accused of killing her employer's four-year-old daughter in 1994. She claimed her employer's aunt had accidentally killed the girl. On 13 April, 1995, she was led from her prison cell in the United Arab Emirates to stand in a courtyard in a white abaya gown, crying uncontrollably, before a nine-man firing squad which shot her down. It was her 20th birthday. God's mercy, enshrined in the first words of the Koran, could not be extended to her, it seems, in her hour of need.

Weblink

[Propaganda_of_the_Deed]

Edited by Propaganda_of_the_Deed, 07 May 2012 - 09:36 AM.

[ShiaBen]

This thread can mean only one thing. It's not about Islam, it's about fitna making.

Yeah what exactly is your point?

We know there are racist people everywhere and in different forms.

Maybe I should open up threads criticizing Punjabis? Would you find that appealing?

[Chaotic Muslem]

old news , old topic that has being discussed by arab kids themselves making campign for teh right of the foriegn workers
even in their lame comedia , there had been episodes or remark to some crulity made upon the forigners and the lack of justice << speaking about arab countries and justice cant be made in one sentence
the fair treatmnet can be acahived through your country embassy only , other than that and in a corrupted systems , hardly this can be achieved through courts or police

racism though is hardly the case , bullying and abusing it is !
secondly , it varies across the arab communities , making an arab as one lot is just silly , we are not one nation and hardly one race

[Propaganda_of_the_Deed]

I've been to the Gulf, and sure they are generally racist mofos, and you see interaction between locals and foreigners is down to a bare minimal, you really do feel like an outsider (of course if you're white they will suck up to you however, which is a given).

Yet not all Arabs are racist, and as has been mentioned, they are not monolithic as a nation or even as a race themselves. I have been to Morocco and Egypt several times and I have never once felt out of place or was treated any differently.

[Marbles]

Those who are asking what's the point of this thread don't want to hear about it.

What is the point when people make threads about racism in Europe etc? The same point applies here, with the difference that in Europe they address it; in Arab lands they don't.

There would be World War IV if Europeans treated migrants workers in the same way as Arabs treat their migrants.

Edited by Marbles, 07 May 2012 - 09:49 AM.

[ImAli]

The wife of my brother in law has an Ethiopian maid that she smacks around all of the time. It's even more annoying because she couldn't even afford to sneeze before marrying my brother in law, now she thinks she is some sort of queen and has the right to treat other human being in such a horrible manner.

And she doesn't even need a maid....she has a small three bedroom flat and doesn't work.

Edited by ImAli, 07 May 2012 - 09:54 AM.

[Al-Englisi]

Propaganda_of_the_Deed, on 07 May 2012 - 09:42 AM, said:

I've been to the Gulf, and sure they are generally racist mofos, and you see interaction between locals and foreigners is down to a bare minimal, you really do feel like an outsider (of course if you're white they will suck up to you however, which is a given).

Yet not all Arabs are racist, and as has been mentioned, they are not monolithic as a nation or even as a race themselves. I have been to Morocco and Egypt several times and I have never once felt out of place or was treated any differently.

Neither are originally Arab by race, even if the current prevalent language in both countries is Arabic.

I'd prefer they refer to themselves as Africans, no need to attach themselves to the Arabs.

I agree with the rest of the post though.

Mushu, on 07 May 2012 - 09:28 AM, said:

What's your point?

Arabs need another Prophet, the few hundred that God sent (supposing he sent that many), were not enough to make 'humans' of them lol kidding atagfirullah, hope that isn't kuffar.

[~Zee Zee~]

ImAli, on 07 May 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

The wife of my brother in law has an Ethiopian maid that she smacks around all of the time. It's even more annoying because she couldn't even afford to sneeze before marrying my brother in law, now she thinks she is some sort of queen and has the right to treat other human being in such a horrible manner.

And she doesn't even need a maid....she has a small three bedroom flat and doesn't work.

I can happily send your sister- in- law some palestinans for her  to slap around, and the Ethiopian woman can be set free.  But I doubt Palestenians are smart enough to be maids even.

[Chaotic Muslem]

ImAli, on 07 May 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

The wife of my brother in law has an Ethiopian maid that she smacks around all of the time. It's even more annoying because she couldn't even afford to sneeze before marrying my brother in law, now she thinks she is some sort of queen and has the right to treat other human being in such a horrible manner.

And she doesn't even need a maid....she has a small three bedroom flat and doesn't work.

she shouldnt 0.0
she could end up being slaughtered like that Kwaiti bride ! africans are not like the easter asians , they do take revange

[baradar_jackson]

Marbles, on 07 May 2012 - 09:46 AM, said:

There would be World War IV if Europeans treated migrants workers in the same way as Arabs treat their migrants.

[Propaganda_of_the_Deed]

sweet89, on 07 May 2012 - 09:55 AM, said:

Neither are originally Arab by race, even if the current prevalent language in both countries is Arabic.

I'd prefer they refer to themselves as Africans, no need to attach themselves to the Arabs.

I agree with the rest of the post though.

Well I guess you can say that about the majority of "Arabs and the 23 or so Arab League countries, seeing as the Levant (Sham), North Africa and parts of Iraq were not Arabs until after the early Islamic expansions.

The Arab League defines an Arab as: "a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples."

These conquered people "became" Arab due to their lisaan, which made them Arab...there are two types from what I know: The so called "pure" Arabs who originated from Yemen (Qahtanian Arabs), it is also said Ishmael married into one such tribe, and then the "Arabized Arabs"  who came later and form much of the Arab world as we know it.

Morocco still has substantial Berber (Amazighi) populations however, and still prefer to speak in their native language, but Arabs did intermarry and settle there, as with other parts of North Africa.

[ImAli]

LebanesePrincess, on 07 May 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

I can happily send your sister- in- law some palestinans for her  to slap around, and the Ethiopian woman can be set free.  But I doubt Palestenians are smart enough to be maids even.

She was so poor she lived right next door to a camp....no lie. And not making fun of her for being poor.....but she should remember where she came from.

[Chaotic Muslem]

Propaganda_of_the_Deed, on 07 May 2012 - 10:06 AM, said:

Well I guess you can say that about the majority of "Arabs and the 23 or so Arab League countries, seeing as the Levant (Sham), North Africa and parts of Iraq were not Arabs until after the early Islamic expansions.

The Arab League defines an Arab as: "a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples."

These conquered people "became" Arab due to their lisaan, which made them Arab...there are two types from what I know: The so called "pure" Arabs who originated from Yemen (Qahtanian Arabs), it is also said Ishmael married into one such tribe, and then the "Arabized Arabs"  who came later and form much of the Arab world as we know it.

Morocco still has substantial Berber (Amazighi) populations however, and still prefer to speak in their native language, but Arabs did intermarry and settle there, as with other parts of North Africa.

manathera and ghasasena where arab kindoms in iraq and sham before islam days

[shiaaliibrahim]

Robert Fiske is absolutely trying to create fitna.  The situation described in Lebanon is sorrowful, but the circumstances are unclear.  The woman committed suicide, which in itself speaks to her state of mind more than her treatment at the hands of her employer.  To attempt to use a situation with so many unknowns as an example of a people morality is a form of libel.  

Fiske is a MI6 agent and is always distributing disinformation about Arab Muslims, especially Syria.  He often refers to the president of Iran as a crackpot without providing any evidence and making disparaging remarks about Hezbollah, which if were true he would not be here today.  It is best to ignore his writings and look for a more informative journalist to follow.

[Propaganda_of_the_Deed]

Chaotic Muslem, on 07 May 2012 - 10:14 AM, said:

manathera and ghasasena where arab kindoms in iraq and sham before islam days

Yes, but the Ghassanids originated from Yemen and emigrated from the city of Ma'rib to the Levant, they were not originally from Sham.

The Lakhmids who settled in Southern Iraq, also emigrated from Yemen.

Point is the original Arabs came from Yemen, most of today's "Arabs" are not of "pure" Arab lineage and are Arabized Arabs.

[Chaotic Muslem]

Propaganda_of_the_Deed, on 07 May 2012 - 10:22 AM, said:

Yes, but the Ghassanids originated from Yemen and emigrated from the city of Ma'rib to the Levant, they were not originally from Sham.

The Lakhmids who settled in Southern Iraq, also emigrated from Yemen.

Point is the original Arabs came from Yemen, most of today's "Arabs" are not of "pure" Arab lineage and are Arabized Arabs.

true , just wanted to correct the timeline
it isnt the islamic expansions that lead arabs to sham or iraq, they were there before islam, i read some article that these two region spoke arabic diffrent than the one in central arabia , but still arabic
anyways , as you have mentioned , making all the arabs in one color is really wrong

[ImAli]

Good job Marbles......

[Maula Dha Mallang]

allahs curse on the opressors, may the awaited imam smite them all

[Shia_Debater]

LebanesePrincess, on 07 May 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

There are many smart people from all different races and countries. Let's not be racist and attack a race just because the ones you know you don't like.

Edited by Shia_Debater, 07 May 2012 - 10:51 AM.

[_JuGNii]

20 user(s) are reading this topic

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Just thought i'd inform.

[Propaganda_of_the_Deed]

_JuGNii, on 07 May 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

20 user(s) are reading this topic

8 members, 6 guests, 6 anonymous users

Just thought i'd inform.

This was still the record

http://www.shiachat....c-masturbation/

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