From late 2005 through early 2006, there were deadly worldwide riots over cartoons of Islam’s founder, Mohammad, published by a Danish Paper, the Jyllands-Posten (later reprinted by other European papers to show their support for free speech). Once the protests became global, helped along by some skillful incitement by Danish Imams who traveled to the Middle East, their sheer scale, anger and violence threatened to become uncontrollable. This apparent anger was either genuine, manipulated or both. Assuming that the protests were based largely on genuinely felt religious anger, it is then necessary and reasonable to ask what acts, done in the name of Islam or by Muslims, do not offend Muslims – or at least not enough to trigger protests.

On September 11, 2001, young radical Islamists – some even educated in the West – acting in the name of Islam, murdered 3,000 people in New York and Washington DC. Many more than this number have been killed by terrorism around the world before and since 9-11, but it was the spectacularly evil tactic of using captured planes full of humans as bombs to kill even more people that made 9-11 so harrowing. No terrorist group had ever done such a callous act. There was immediate, unconditional condemnation of the attacks by America’s allies, even by young Iranians. The Muslim world in general was more equivocal. Surely Muslims, in whose religion’s name, 9-11 was committed, should have been the most outraged. Far from mass protests and unequivocal condemnation of 9-11, many in the Arab press insinuated that the attacks were an immoral American-Israeli plot to justify global war on Islam. The claims of Islam’s universal humanism were found wanting after 9-11.

The arrogant and unjustified Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, has not only killed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, but has also unleashed an imported Islamist jihad led by men like the Jordanian, Al Zarqawi. Since the American military cannot be beaten in the filed, these Islamists have regularly taken both Iraqi and foreign hostages. Some of these hostages have been beheaded in the most grotesque fashion with their captors chanting "God is great" while filming the executions. Some of those beheaded were peace activists or working with NGOs with no connection to the British or American Governments. Even for Margaret Hassan, a women married to an Iraqi and who had devoted her life to Iraq’s children, there was no mercy from her Islamist executioners. Equally, if not more, disturbing is that there were no mass protests at these beheadings, no effigies of Al Zarqawi burnt by outraged Muslims or protests outside Jordanian embassies. Al-Jazeerah, while coming under intense criticism from the US, at least had the decency to report these executions and was a lone voice in bringing them to the attention of Arab populations. There have been many other such outrages. In early 2006, Christian schoolgirls on their way to school were beheaded by Islamists in Indonesia, for no other reason but their faith. Again, there was not even a murmur of disgust.


In 2004 Muslim Arab (or at least regarding themselves as such) militias, known as the "Janjaweed", began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against impoverished black Muslims in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Even though the victims were mostly Muslim, the critical fact is that they were black and did not accept the veneer of arabism as the northern "arabized" Sudanese had. The unofficial war against Darfur’s blacks was carried out with the full knowledge and blessing of Sudan’s Islamist Government – in fact the Arab militias received military aid from Khartoum. The Sudanese Government however, cleverly kept enough of a distance from the militias to enable a sort of deniability of responsibility. The ethnic cleansing of the black Sudanese in Darfur is a culmination of years of officially sanctioned racial oppression and land grabbing by the dominant northern Arabs. Black Sudanese, even if Muslim, are simply regarded as inferior by the northern Arabs, who control the economy, government and army.

In southern Sudan, the situation is more complex since the blacks there are largely Christian or animists and so face both racial and religious discrimination by the north. In 1983, after a rebellion in the south, the Sudanese Islamist government declared a jihad against these southern black Christians. The civil war that ensued has resulted in the death or displacement of about 2 million black non-Muslims. Unable to militarily defeat the Christian south and wishing to access the oil there, the Sudanese Government, under American diplomatic pressure, has recently reached a tentative peace agreement. As part of their racial and religious war against the southern black Christians, the northern Arabs also forced blacks into slavery. This modern slave trade has proved quite profitable for the slave traders since they often receive ransom money from western aid organizations for each slave freed. For those who doubt Islam’s role in supporting slavery, one need only open the Koran or the Hadith (the words and deeds of Mohammad), which recognize the master-slave relationship and expressly allow the enslavement of non-Muslims. This extends to sexual relationships also, for although the Koran allows a maximum of four wives, the number of concubines permitted to Muslim men is unlimited. The Koran does encourage the humane treatment of slaves, but when have been fetters of kindness been better then those of iron?

Despite the horrifying numbers of black Africans, whether in Darfur or the Christian south, killed by Sudanese Arab Muslims, Islamic governments worldwide have ignored these atrocities committed by their co-religionists. The West has made its usual pathetic gestures of outrage. The African Union for its part, although most of its member states are black, cannot seem to find the courage to confront Sudan for its anti-black racism. It is also revealing that in the United States, the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist organization, led by the vocal Louis Farrakhan, has said nothing. Farrakhan, a Koran-clutching champion of black causes appears willing to overlook the murder of black Africans in order not to offend his fellow Muslim. Perhaps religious solidarity trumps racial violence. It certainly seems that in the Islamic mind while cartoons of Mohammad, drawn by an obscure Dane, are worth killing over, the death of hundreds of thousands of blacks in Sudan at the hands of Arab Muslims is not even worth a mention let alone a protest. What is more obscene – thousands of murdered black Africans or cartoons of Mohammad? Where was the moral outrage from Muslim governments who so successfully turn every criticism into a perceived attack on Islam? Where is the anger over Sudan from Muslims who normally go into paroxysms of self-righteous rage at the very mention of an entity called Israel? Is it Muslims or their very faith that allows no pity for the lives of powerless black "infidels"? However, the Muslim world is not alone in this moral vacuum. As far as the West is concerned, perhaps the hope of future oil deals with Sudan dampened western desire to stop the Darfur killings. Given the West’s silence over the Rwandan genocide in the mid-1990s, perhaps the lives of black Africans, with no oil or geo-political importance to barter with, really are just not worth the effort.

Saudi Arabia (formerly known as Arabia, before the Saud family took ownership and modestly renamed it) is the historic, cultural and religious center of Islam. The Saudi ruling elite, in partnership with the hardline Wahhabi religious establishment, see themselves as the guardians, and indeed exporters, of Sunni Islam. Consequently, there is little room in Arabia for the rights of religious minorities, most of whom are guest workers working in low paid menial jobs. Saudi Arabia is in fact a fully fledged religious apartheid system. Non-Muslims simply have no right to worship freely, build temples or churches, testify against a Muslim, hold political office or in fact hold any authority over Muslims. At all times, the non-Muslim is expected to know his place and act with subservience and deference towards Muslims. Islamic law denies non-Muslims the most basic aspect of humanity, love itself. A non-Muslim man must not make the mistake of falling in love with a Muslim woman, since Islam forbids such a union. However, Islamic law does allow, and in fact encourages, Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women (provided they convert to Islam), thereby strengthening Islam demographically. The reason for the inferior status of non-Muslims is very simple – the Koran and Islamic law are regarded as divine and demand power for Islam and power demands religious apartheid. In turn Saudi rulers, as self-appointed guardians of Islam, enforce these Nuremberg style laws. Their very power depends on this. No matter how skillfully apologists and favored Islamic scholars in the west, such as John Esposito and Karen Armstrong, explain Islam, these facts that cannot be silenced.

Whereas the racial apartheid of South Africa was universally condemned, there is almost no mention of Saudi Arabia’s religious apartheid. The reasons, in part, are based on economics, oil and the sale of arms by western governments. However, there is also the self-censorship, based on intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice of western intellectuals, in criticizing Islamic law. Western liberals and feminists reserve their anger for issues such as the Saudi ban on females driving cars – as if this is the apex of human suffering – yet these same humane liberals are oblivious to Saudi Arabia’s apartheid imposed on millions of non-Muslim guest workers who toil in insecurity and fear (it must be noted that the Wahhabist Sunni establishment also discriminates against the small Shia minority). Along with western silence, there is no outrage or condemnation from Muslims at Saudi Arabia’s treatment of its religious minorities. While the Palestinian issue, the French head scarf ban or the cartoons of Mohammad are regarded as attacks on Islam by Muslims, there is almost complete amnesia when it comes to those victimized by Islam. The question of what is more hurtful to human dignity, religious apartheid or a few cartoons of Mohammad, needs to be asked by Muslims non-Muslims alike.

Imagine if the sheer energy expended over protesting the Mohammad cartoons, was directed by Muslims at fighting for equal political rights for women and non-Muslims. Imagine 100,000 Muslims protesting in Karachi, Tehran and Riyadh, demanding that the Saudi religious apartheid system be dismantled. Imagine courageous Muslim lawyers litigating those parts of Islamic law, that call for the subjugation of non-Muslims, as hate doctrine. Would Islamists anywhere then stand a chance of dividing Muslim from Non-Muslim?