Indeed - and on the issue of what has happened with the the Middle East crisis when others who are Middle-Eastern are told they are not and segregated from others in hot-spot areas - or whenever you even have to entertain questions such as "Does Egypt belong to Middle East or Africa?" when it comes to the subject of identity (and the same in regards to Libya, which is another good example of this - on the continent of Africa but considered part of the Middle East), you realize how Carthography has everything to do with it.
That is the only way you can separate the struggles others have been experiencing within the African continent (
including acts of terrorism and displacement like what has happened in Iraq ..Somalia coming to mind) - struggles others in those areas see as a "Middle Eastern struggle" IN(lik
e the Christian militias coming against others as early as Februrary or the
Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists in light of Northern Nigerian Culture and
other Islamist terror groups in Africa)- and then and ignore where that has occurred while only focusing on what has happened in the area deemed to be the Middle East despite how there is extensive historical references showing an African origin of Islam and Islamic culture spreading across Africa (as noted best in
Black Arabia: Black Arabia and the African Origin of Islam: Select Bibliography ). It's no small issue to forget cartography
when it comes to the global African prescence.. (as
Dr. Runoko Rashidi has said best ), noted best in
Black Arabia (Kusha Dwipa) and the African Origin of Islam (more
here). No one considers the many migrants who have fled from places being African in appearance because they have been trained to see Middle Eastern as looking one way - not a lot know of others like Abu Kurke Kebato, in his early 20s, who was one of only nine survivors in a boat carrying 72, which had left Libya, only to languish at sea for two weeks before drifting back to Libyan shores (more
here in
https://voiceofthepersecuted.wordpr...tians-risk-lives-to-flee-war-and-persecution/ ).
If you change the borders and boundaries of an area, you change the perceptions others have toward it.
And as it concerns the visual, I am still in shock over how ironic it is that Christians would raise alarms over the harm being done to Iraqi Christians (a big deal) and yet remain silent for years over the mistreatment of Black Iraqis that has happened for a long time. It's as if they were not worth being acknowledged. “These people have been facing discrimination since the very day their ancestors were brought from Africa to build canals and to turn marshlands into fields for cotton and other crops,” says Saad Salloum, editor of Masarat, a magazine focused on the minorities issue in Iraq. Salloum went on to note that “Unlike the Christians, the Bahai or other religious minorities, the Iraqi blacks haven’t suffered prosecution because of their faith. On the other hand, they don’t enjoy recognition as an Iraqi minority as that is still based on religious grounds.”
If Christians are concerned with the ways others are mistreated in Iraq,
I would think they'd also be concerned with the ways others (like the Black Iraqis present for centuries) have been called "slaves" and have had their history in Iraq marked by a tradition of discrimination. I would hope they would also join in protest against prejudicial treatment, economic marginalization and a high unemployment rate.
Arab Racism against Black People in Iraq - YouTube
Iraq is suffering its own version of
what Blacks went through in the North when it came to economic discrimination within the U.S (after the Reconstruction) and harm of other kinds - and throughout the U.S occupation of Iraq and our going back into Iraq with the ISIS crisis, there has been silence.
But it seems that was all allowable by others in the West since it is is a "Black" concern...and thus, there was not concern for Iraq again until the ISIS started killing others. If nothing else, there should have been concern when Jalal Thiyab was gunned down - hindering the Civil Rights movement in Iraq. His murder occurred against a backdrop of increasing sectarian violence in Iraq. from April 2013 - with the civil war in neighbouring Syria placing an extra strain on the fragile relations between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims in the country and the death toll in Iraq being high......
As impactful and significant as he was, when he died, you didn't hear a word from the West (or Western Christians involved in advocating for persecuted minorities in Iraq) say anything. With the Iraqi Christians, their silence seemed to indicate how much of the problems goes back to how we see nationalism - including nationalism from the perspective of the Iraqi Christians since it doesn't seem that even they either spoke on it or were concerned.
That seems off to me. Actually, to be truthful, it really does bother me a good bi t that you didn't see any Christians speak on the issue of what Jalal noted as a crisis - and yet with the Diaspora of Christians in Iraq and the ISIS, people have taken to protesting and making it a priority to speak out. It gives the impression that one dire struggle is less important than another when suffering is suffering..
That just seems off, IMHO.
Very true - and as it concerns the issue of state vs. state, there's also the dynamic of nationalism that impacts how others see others. Bush ignored a lot when he went into the situation by ignoring the religious and racial tensions - but too many blame Bush and ignore where the public in the U.S was ignorant of what happened there and continued to assume that there were not divisions already present there. They continued with a lot of the stereotypes and thus Bush could do as he did..
And the minority groups within Iraq are so varied that people cannot afford to not know the differing sides of the conflict. For more, one can investigate
Minorities | Masarat