Berber Speaking or Arabic Speaking Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya: A False Dilemma

In a series of articles, I focused on the present troubles of the Berber nation that spans from the western confines of Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean. The cultural genocide perpetrated against the Berber nation is a multifaceted phenomenon attested in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Mali, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Mauritania. The deplorable phenomenon has lasted for about 200 years and it was combined with the equally abominable plans of arabization of the Berber nation.

The phenomenon itself is identical with similar colonial projects implemented – with the same inhuman, tyrannical and criminal method – in many other parts of Africa, Asia, Europe and America.

The viciously targeted Berbers of North – Northwestern Africa are the honorable counterpart of

1. the Aramaeans of the Asiatic part of the Middle East who have been forced to accept several tyrannical regimes and have been submitted to successive arabization projects in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Kuwait, Qatar, Emirates and Saudi Arabia

2. the Yemenites and the Omanis who have undergone many paranoid projects of arabization that constitute a complete cultural genocide against the ancient Yemenite and Omani nations

3. the Copts of Egypt who have also been exposed to arabization projects

4. the Nubians of Egypt and Sudan who – although marginalized – have managed to successfully preserve their culture and language

5. the Kushitic Arabic speaking populations of Central Sudan whose linguistic arabization was falsely interpreted as an ethnic, cultural and socio-behavioural phenomenon

6. the Bejas or Eastern Sudan who have preserved their language and culture through isolation, poverty, marginalization and persecution

7. the Furis, the Hausa, and the Nuba of Western Sudan (Darfur and Kordofan) who consist in the best proof of the fact that Pan-Arabism is a vicious form of European colonialism, racism, terrorism, and barbarism.

All the aforementioned cases represent nations that have been targeted by the colonial European powers France and England, through the vicious plans of arabization.

There are however many other parallels to the aforementioned phenomenon; the viciously targeted Berbers of North – Northwestern Africa are also the honorable counterpart of

1. the Oromos, the Afars, the Sidamas and many other Kushitic nations of Eastern Africa who have been exposed to a tyrannical project of Amharization / Abyssinianization that constitutes another execrable genocide supported and promoted by colonial Anglo-French academia and diplomats

2. the South Azeris, the Baluch and the Loris of Iran who have been exposed to a similar project of forced Persianization

3. various indigenous nations of the East African coastland who have been exposed to the intentional imposition of Swahili as their language by the colonial English

4. various indigenous nations of Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia who have been exposed to systematic hispanization

In the present article, I don´t want to expand and analyze the phenomenon at the global scale, although this would prove that the colonial plan presented almost everywhere the same basic patterns - with eventually slight modifications and adaptations. Certainly, a study of the patterns employed in selected paradigms would reconfirm and corroborate the intentions of the colonial plan´s supporters and promoters.

However, the intentions can be also identified through a careful analysis of the current situation of the targeted nations. Tyranny, lack of national statehood, demolition of their cultural integrity, destruction of the historical identity, disintegration of the socio-behavioural authenticity, and extinction of their linguistic individuality, underdevelopment, stagnation, marginalization at the times of globalization, and - at times - starvation typically characterize all the aforementioned targeted nations.

It becomes however evident for the struggling Berber patriots, intellectuals, activists and thinkers that it is imperative to establish a strong coordination with all the Berbers engulfed in the technical entities into which the European colonials divided the Greater North-Northwestern Africa.

The struggle for freedom and independence is in fact a struggle for identity, for Berberity or rather Amazighity as the term has already been coined. The false dilemma that Berber patriots, intellectuals, activists and thinkers have to overcome and outmaneuver is the fake ´reality´ produced because of the colonial interference and evildoing.

The False Dilemma: Berber Speaking and Arab Speaking Atlas

The fake reality created throughout North-Northwestern Africa, e.g. Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mali, Niger, and Mauritania, has to do with the existence of three linguistic groups:

1. Berber speaking populations

2. Berber and Arabic speaking populations, and

3. Arabic speaking populations

This fake ´reality´ does not reflect a division of the indigenous populations into various ethnic groups, as it could be the case in other countries. The aforementioned situation is due to two historical phenomena:

a. a gradual and terror-free historical process of linguistic arabization that spans over more than 1100 years, from the arrival of the early Islamic armies to European colonial aggression and Napoleon´s occupation of Egypt.

and

b. a forced and tyrannical project of linguistic arabization that was materialized over the past 210 years because of the vicious and malignant agenda of the colonial powers that illegally occupied the territories inhabited by the Berber nation.

As a matter of fact, the totality of the indigenous populations is Berber. Not a drop of Arab blood can be found in the reins of the Arabic speaking Libyans, Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans, Western Saharans, and Mauritanians.

In this regard, it is essential to bear in mind that until the end of the 18th century (when phenomenon b started with the elaboration of the evil anti-Berber, anti-African, anti-Ottoman, and anti-Islamic plans of the Freemasonic regime of France) less than one fifth of the entire population of North-Northwestern Africa were monolingual, Arabic speaking.

The phenomenon of gradual linguistic arabization (a) was exclusively due to the acceptance of Islam by the indigenous populations. It was purely limited at the linguistic level and had no impact on the ethnic, cultural, and socio-behavioural levels. This fact is however distorted by French and English colonial academia in order to provide European statesmen, diplomats, mass media and their local lackeys in North-Northwestern Africa with elements of political argumentation that would eventually "justify" the evil and dictatorial plans of arabaization.

In fact, the cultural and national genocide perpetrated against the Berber nation is founded on historical fallacies and total misinterpretation of the historical phenomenon of the early diffusion of Islam.

Early diffusion of Islam does not imply Arabization – in any sense.

The fallacious presentation of the early diffusion of Islam that has been undertaken by the Anglo-French Orientalists consists in the epitome of the intellectual colonialism. It has been elaborated in order to support and promote the diffusion of Pan-Arabism, the imposition of the arabization projects, the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, the total obliteration of Islam, and its replacement by a fake terrorist Islam that would be the colonial powers´ perfect tool for permanent control of Africa and the Middle East.

The following are some basic points of refutation of the Orientalist aberration according to which the early diffusion of Islam implied arabization, and that the early Islamic Ages´ phenomenon of arabization occurred at all, linguistic, cultural, socio-behavioural and ethnic, levels.

1. The diffusion of Islam cannot possibly imply ethnic arabization.

We possess every type of historical documentation to demonstrate that any amalgamation of early Muslim Arab soldiers who moved outside Hedjaz (Arabia) fighting for Islam did not mean ethnic arabization for any indigenous nation that happened to be occupied by the early Islamic armies and to subsequently adhere to Islam.

At the moment of the death of Prophet Muhammad (632 CE) the entire peninsula had already accepted Islam. This means that already two nations, other than the Arabs of Hedjaz, the Yemenites and the Omanis, had accepted Islam. This however happened with any Arab soldier setting foot in Yemen. Two years before Prophet Muhammad´s death (630 CE), Ali, Muhammad´s gender who was the first Imam of the Muslims, preached Islam at Sanaa when the North Yemenite kingdom of Sheba, all the other Yemenite kingdoms (notably Himyar and Hadhramawt), and Oman were under Sassanid Iranian imperial occupation. Ali´s preaching was met with success and even the Iranian Satrap accepted the new religion. In later periods, we have no proof of Arabs moving to Yemen in groups. Pre-Islamic Yemen left vast epigraphic evidence that has been deciphered and read; we therefore know that Ancient Yemenite was a Semitic language quite different from Arabic and very close to Ge´ez Axumite Abyssinian language that is an offspring of the Ancient Yemenite. The Ancient Yemenite writing was also very different from Arabic, and it gave birth to Ge´ez Axumite Abyssinian writing. The above data are enough to prove that Yemenites accepted Islam without any ethnic amalgamation with Arabs, and that they cannot be considered as Arab in any sense.

The early Islamic armies fought against the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran. The former lost control over all its Eastern and Southern provinces (on territories of today´s Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia) whereas the latter totally collapsed. The so-called Islamic conquests were not true invasions properly speaking; they were military expeditions of limited scope that would have been merely labeled incursions or raids and would have left no significant trace in World History, had the local populations not accepted the Muslim invaders wholeheartedly.

This does not mean that these populations immediately accepted Islam as religion. On the contrary, very few accepted Islam as their own religion at the moment of the incursions; the numbers vary per place, but nowhere was Islam accepted by more than 10% of the local population in the first 10 years after the arrival of the Islamic armies.

The important development did not occur at the religious but at the political level. The predominantly Christian Aramaeans, the Copts and the Berbers preferred to be ruled by a government headquartered in militarily and politically insignificant Medina than by the formidable administration of Constantinople that regularly sent inimical and foreign soldiers to levy heavy taxes and enforce the Constantinopolitan version of Christianity that was an abomination to either Nestorian Aramaeans or Orthodox Aramaeans, Copts and Berbers (who were then called ´Monophysites´). Similarly, the terrorized Nestorian and Manichaean Aramaeans of the Sassanid Emire of Iran preferred the early Islamic armies to the formidable Iranian military force that had been a tool of oppression, used against them for centuries. Iran had just been defeated by the Eastern Romans, but the two capitals, Tesifun (Ctesiphon) and Constantinople had ceaselessly devised plans against the Aramaeans and the Eastern Roman victory did not change anything fro the indigenous Aramaeans.

Furthermore, the vicinity of Hedjaz, the acquaintance with the Arabas, and the nature of the Islamic religion contributed to the formation of the aforementioned political choice among the Aramaeans, the Copts and the Berbers. The new capital (Medina) was closer than Constantinople. Arab merchants were known in many caravan cities and in all the great centers of the wider area (Charax Spasinou, Basora / Basra, Antioch / Antakya, Edessa / Urfa, Nisibis / Nusaybin, Palmyra / Tadmor, Hatra, Emessa / Homs, Apameia / Hama, Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria).

What is less known today is the fact that the early Eastern Roman references to Islam and Muhammad testify to a far different idea about Islam than that of today´s Christians. This is also due to the fact that today´s Islam is very different from that preached a few years after the Prophet´s death. To Constantinopolitan Christians, early Islam appeared as a rather Christological heresy, as a new, more radical version of Nestorianism. If this concerns Constantinopolitan theologians, one can understand how close to Islam the Nestorian Aramaeans found themselves. The same concerns the Copts. The famous Coptic Chronicle of Severus demonstrates clearly that the Copts of the early Islamic Ages preferred to be ruled by the Caliph than by the Basileus (the Eastern Roman Emperor) - let alone the Roman Pope.

The so-called Islamic conquests occurred between 634 and 711. The process has to be understood in its own dynamics. When the early Islamic armies attacked Jerusalem in 638, there were not only Arabs fighting under Islam´s banners. There were also Yemenites and Omanis who had adhered to Islam as early as 630.

Similarly, when the Islamic armies attacked Alexandria (642), there were also Persians, Aramaeans, Yemenites and Omanis among them.

When the Muslims founded Al Qayrawan (Kairouan) in Tunisia (670), there were also Copts, Libyan Berbers, Persians, Aramaeans, Yemenites and Omanis among them.

When therefore a Muslim fighter settled in the area of today´s Algeria or Morocco in ca. 680, we certainly cannot identify him as Arab for he may have been Copt, Libyan Berber, Aramaean, Yemenite or Omani who merely changed his name after he adhered to Islam.

Then, what puts an end to all discussions about an ethnic amalgamation is our knowledge about the Arab population of the times of the Prophet. At those days, the Arabs were not numerous at all, and this is clearly indicated by the numbers of the fighters in the Arab civil war that preceded the final victory of Prophet Muhammad and Islam among the Arabs.

We can safely conclude that at the times of the Prophet, the total population of the Arab nation did not outnumber that of just one big Persian, Eastern Roman, Aramaean or Egyptian city. Sanaa and Aden in Yemen (known to Greeks and Romans as Eudaimon Arabia / Arabia Felix) and Carthage in today´s Tunisia, each of them had larger population than all the Arab nation that inhabited Hedjaz.

2. The diffusion of Islam cannot possibly imply cultural arabization.

This assumption is totally wrong because it does not take into account the fact that Islam does not consist in properly speaking Arabic culture, and that the Arabs themselves – under Prophet Muhammad´s guidance – rejected their own (Arabic) culture and tradition to accept Islam. By adhering to Islam, the Arabs got totally de-arabized.

3. The diffusion of Islam cannot possibly imply socio-behavioural arabization.

This is a minor point because the survival of indigenous socio-behavioural systems in North-Northwestern Africa, Egypt, Yemen, Oman, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Iraq consists in a sufficient proof against the hypothesis of a socio-behavioural arabization.

It is therefore critical for the struggling Berbers throughout North-Northwestern Africa not to limit their heroic effort for national independence and identity to only the Berber speaking population of their respective countries but to extend a Call for Re-Berberization to the innocent victims of the villainous colonial projects of arabization.

Note

Picture: Islamic - not Arabic – Caliphate