Debate about a Newly-Formed Berber-Jewish Friendship Association in Morocco

Following are excerpts from a debate on the newly-established Berber-Jewish friendship association in Morocco, which aired on Al-Alam TV on July 21, 2007:

Interviewer: Why are the Amazigh [Berber people] – or some of them, let's not generalize – launching an Amazigh-Israeli friendship association?

Yahya Abu Zakariya, Algerian writer: Fuad, let me make it clear that, in principle, the Amazigh, throughout the history of the Maghreb, fought off all the colonialist attacks. They stood up to the Vandals, the Romans, and the French who came to the Arab Maghreb. Even before the French, they stood up to the Spaniards. They were the epitome of steadfastness, resistance, and confrontation. Moreover, they did a great service to Islamic civilization, and contributed to it to the greatest degree. The fact that such calls are emerging from the Arab Maghreb – the calls for rapprochement with the Zionist entity, which as the entire world knows, has penetrated our territory, and taken away our security... These calls are, obviously, dubious.

[...]

There has been a transformation among certain groups, which are saying that the Arab Maghreb has nothing to do with the Arab world, that there are no bridges connecting this region of North Africa with the Arab world, and that relations with the Zionist entity must be rebuilt. Unfortunately, such initiatives receive official blessing.

[...]

Ahmed Adghrini, Secretary-General of the Moroccan Amazigh Democratic Party: With regard to what Yahya said, let me point out, first of all, that he is defending Arab identity, which is of no interest to the Amazigh people. Arab identity is something particular to the Arabs, and does not concern the Amazigh, or North Africans of other identities. Arab identity is specific to the Arabian Peninsula and to the countries concerned with this, but not to the Amazigh or the non-Arab residents of North America. That's one thing. With regard to the Jews, I don't have to tell you that their history in our region goes back to 1000 BCE. The history of the Amazigh in North Africa goes back 2,957 years. In 40 years or so, we will have 3,000 years of history behind us, throughout which the Jews lived together with us. For the Jews too, Arab identity is of no concern, just as it is of no concern to the aboriginal residents of North Africa. He was talking about the Arab period in North Africa, whereas we go back thousands of years before that.

[...]

He used an infamous term. He said that the Amazigh are suspect. This is an ugly expression, which I ask him to retract, because it reflects badly on him more than on us. We are not suspect in our own country. He should retract all his ugly statements about the Amazigh.

[...]

With regard to the association, you and those listening know that is has to do with friendship, which is a humanist value for the benefit of all peoples, including the Arabs. The Arabs replace friendship with enmity and war. We are working... Personally, I am convinced that friendship is better than war. If only the Arabs had believed in friendship with the Jews all these years, we would not be seeing rivers of blood flowing, among the Arabs themselves, and between that Arabs and the Jews. Therefore, I find it objectionable that anyone – whether Arab, Amazigh, or Jewish – could have an aversion to the word "friendship."

[...]

Yahya Abu Zakariya: When have the Arabs ever eradicated the Zionists? When have the Arabs ever eradicated the Zionist entity? This Zionist entity is aggressive by nature and by faith. It is the Zionist entity that is trying to eradicate me. It is the Zionist entity that destroyed my villages, and all the towns here in southern Lebanon, and the signs of this destruction are still visible. When he says that Arab identity is foreign to Algeria... I am not talking about Arab identity in the ideological sense, but he must recognize that Islam shaped the history of the Arab Maghreb. I cannot simply renounce 14 centuries in which a civilization was formed, and start dealing with a Zionist entity that was founded 50 years ago.

[...]

The Jews in the Arab Maghreb were the eyes of the French colonialist movement. When the French army came to the Arab Maghreb, it was the Jews who led them to the mujahideen, and when France left the Arab Maghreb, the Jews went with it.

[...]

Muhammad Bin Jelloun Al-Andalusi, President of the Moroccan Association for the Support of the Palestinian Struggle (by phone): [Ahmad Adghrini] once said on TV that the Arabs and the Muslims who came to the Maghreb should leave these parts and take their holy book with them, and that when they take away their holy book, and when the Islamic religion leaves these parts, we must welcome another religion, and another friendship.

[...]

Ahmed Adghrini: I heard what Mr. Al-Andalusi said – that the Arabs need to take their holy book and leave. These are his words, and he is responsible for them. He said this, and I wash my hands of it. This is not one of my principles, and I never said these words. He is responsible for this. With regard to the Arabs, they are citizens with full rights. The Arabs of Morocco are Moroccans. The Koran is one of our divine books. It is our book. I deny what he attributed to me about the Arabs leaving, or about the Koran. This is a lie, and he is responsible for it. As for my association, to the best of my knowledge, it was the idea of a group of young people. Most of them recently graduated from university, some are unemployed, and others are still students. They have some supporters in Moroccan society among intellectuals, economists, and other sympathizers. They raised the idea two years ago. I support this idea. As for organizing it, they are responsible for it. These young people, as I learned from my contacts with them, are disturbed by the enmity that has spread in the Middle East, and by the antisemitism that has begun to spread in our region. They are pained that the Moroccan Jews began to leave their homeland, when pan-Arab parties began to spread, around 1967.

[...]

Yahya Abu Zakariya: In response to what Ahmad said, I would like to cite the Arab poem: "every illness has a remedy to cure it, apart from stupidity, which no one can cure." He said that the Jewish element is among the components of the geography of the Maghreb, despite the fact that there is no historical source indicating that the Jews were present in the Maghreb. The sources indicate that the Jews left Andalusia together with the Muslims, and came to the Arab Maghreb. In other words, they are foreign to the Maghreb.

[...]

I say that the Jews have no conscience. They did not respect the sanctity of neighborly relations. The Muslims provided them with safety and protection. I don't want to delve into history, since that is not our topic. Let's return to the current Arab situation. Most decision-makers in the Shin-Bet, in the Shabak, and in the Israeli Mossad are of Moroccan origin. When they went there and joined the security services in Israel, in Tel Aviv in particular – did they remember the kindness the Moroccans showed them, or were they part of the conspiracy against the Arabs?

[...]

When Ahmad says that Arab identity is foreign, and that Arab identity is as far as can be from the Arab Maghreb, this, unfortunately, reinforces what some Amazigh writers have said: "Oh Muhammad, get up and leave the Arab Maghreb" – and some of them say: "The Muslims came to the Arab Maghreb on camels, and we will send them on Boeings back to the Arabian Peninsula." These dubious calls target the culture that laid the ground for the Maghreb. There is a desire to bury Islam and eliminate it from the Arab Maghreb.

[...]

Ahmad Adghrini : The topic of this show is the Friendship Association, but he has taken the opportunity to join the antisemitic movement. He said that the Moroccan Jews have no conscience. I condemn this statement and consider it antisemitism. The Moroccan Jews are respected and trustworthy. I know them, businessmen know them, and they are very conscientious.

http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1518.htm

BERBER ACTIVISTS PLAN FIRST ISRAELI FRIENDSHIP ASSOCIATION

MOROCCO: BERBER ACTIVISTS PLAN FIRST ISRAELI FRIENDSHIP ASSOCIATION

Rabat, 26 June (AKI) - A group of Berber activists is planning to create next month North Africa's first friendship association with Israel, pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi reports. The activists plan to hold the official inauguration on 20 July in the city of Taroudaut, 60 kilometres inland from the western coastal resort of Agadir, the paper said.

Jewish Berbers living in Israel and Moroccan Berbers will be involved in the new association, which aims to allow Jewish Berbers to keep in touch with Berber and Moroccan culture and the Amazigh language, the association's founding committee said in a statement.

Berber activists are inviting all Moroccans wanting dialogue with Israel to attend the 20 July inauguration and sign up. But the association faces hostility from some quarters. It is a "way to divide the Moroccan people and to deny it its history," al-Quds al-Arabi quoted the Palestinian and Iraq solidarity association's president Khaled Al-Sufiyani as saying.

Jews make up 0.2 percent of Morocco's population, Arab-Berbers 99 percent and other groups, 0.7 percent. The country is 99 percent Muslim. Arabic is the official language, while several Berber dialects are spoken. However French is often still the language of business, government, and diplomacy.
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Terrorism&loid=8.0.429247790&par=

Criticism of Islam

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Part of a series on Controversies related to Islam and Muslims

Theological conflicts

Criticism of Islam Islamism | Qutbism | Jihad unbeliever Islam and antisemitism

Human conflicts

Historical persecution by Muslims | Dhimmi Persecution of Muslims Islamic terrorism Women in Muslim societies

Events

September 11, 2001 attacks Muhammad cartoons controversy Qur'an desecration controversy CPT hostage crisis Fox journalists kidnapping Brussels riots Pope Benedict XVI controversy Egyptian ID card controversy Islamic Cultural Revolution

People

Theo van Gogh Mohammad Najibullah Ahmad Kasravi v • d • e

Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages, as with many other religions, on philosophical, scientific, ethical, political and theological grounds. There are criticisms of both the fundamentals of Islam as a religion and of the cultural traditions and social norms associated with it.

Contents [hide] 1 History of criticism of Islam 1.1 Modern criticism of Islam 1.2 Responses to criticisms 1.2.1 Objections to the methods used by critics 2 Intolerance of Islam to criticism 2.1 Apostasy in Islamic law 2.2 Modern treatment of accused apostates 2.3 Modern treatment of critics 3 Muhammad 4 The Qur'an 5 Other criticism 5.1 Human rights issues 5.2 Discrimination against women and non-Muslims 5.3 Reliability of hadith 5.4 Rise of fatwas 6 See also 6.1 Topics regarding Islam and controversy 6.2 Criticism of other beliefs 7 Further reading 8 References 9 External links 9.1 Christian academic sources 9.2 Jewish academic sources 9.3 Directories of sites critical of Islam 9.4 Muslim responses to criticism

[edit] History of criticism of Islam

The earliest records of criticism of Islam are found in early Islamic writings about criticism from pagan Arabs, and from Jewish inhabitants of Arabia.

The earliest surviving written criticisms of Islam are to be found in the writings of Christians who came under the early dominion of the Islamic empire. One such Christian was John of Damascus (born c. 676), who was familiar with Islam and Arabic. The second chapter of his book, The Fount of Wisdom, titled 'Concerning Heresies' presents a series of discussions between Christians and Muslims. John claimed a Nestorian monk influenced Muhammad.^[1][2]

Over the years there have been several famous Muslim critics and skeptics of Islam from within the Islamic world itself. In tenth and eleventh-century Syria there lived a blind poet called Al-Ma'arri. According to Ibn Warraq, he became well-known for a poetry that was affected by a "pervasive pessimism." He labeled religions in general as "noxious weeds," and said that Islam does not have a monopoly on truth. He had particular contempt for the ulema, writing that:

"

They recite their sacred books, although the fact informs me that these are fiction from first to last. O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the religious traditions or interpreted them![3]

"

Some medieval ecclesiastical writers portrayed Muhammad as possessed by Satan, a "precursor of the Antichrist" or the Antichrist himself.^[4]

Maimonides, one of the foremost rabbinical arbiters and philosophers in Jewish history, sees the relation of Islam to Judaism as primarily theoretical. Maimonides has no quarrel with the strict monotheism of Islam, but finds fault with the practical politics of Muslim regimes. He also considered Islamic ethics and politics to be inferior to their Jewish counterparts. Maimonides criticised what he perceived as the lack of virtue in the way Muslims rule their societies and relate to one another.^[5]

[edit] Modern criticism of Islam

Modern criticism of Islam comes in many varieties and from various corners. The most notable of recent criticisms include those expressed by political and religious leaders, and by official institutions.

Many critics are non-Muslim scholars or authors who are outspoken in their views. The members of this group include Oriana Fallaci, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer and Bat Ye'or. Robert Spencer is especially vocal, having written many books, one titled The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims.^[6] Bat Ye'or has studied the phenomenon of dhimma in detail, and stresses "the incompatibility between the concept of tolerance as expressed by the jihad-dhimmitude ideology, and the concept of human rights based on the equality of all human beings and the inalienability of their rights."^[7] Sam Harris, author of the bestseller The End of Faith, is skeptical that moderate Islam is even possible, arguing that Muslim extremism is a consequence simply of taking the Qur'an literally.^[8] Nobel prize winner V. S. Naipaul, a Trinidadian-born British novelist of Hindu heritage, has sowed controversy with his criticism of Islam. He claims it has had a "calamitous effect on converted peoples", destroying their ancestral culture and history.^[9] The Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci wrote three short books after the events of September the 11th advancing the argument that "Western world is in danger of being engulfed by radical Islam". Two of them, The Rage and The Pride and The Force of Reason have been translated into English by Fallaci.^[10]

Notable evangelical leaders from the United States have also weighed in against Islam. They include Pat Robertson, who expresses the view that "Islam wants to take over the world and is not a religion of peace, and that radical Muslims are "satanic", and that Osama Bin Laden was a "true follower of Muhammad".^[11][12] Jerry Falwell, another popular American conservative Baptist minister, characterized the prophet Muhammad as being a 'terrorist'.^[13] Franklin Graham described Islam as an 'evil and wicked religion' and suggested that those who believed Islam to be "wonderful" should "go and live under the Taliban somewhere".^[14]

There are also outspoken former Muslims who believe that Islam is the primary cause for what they see as the mistreatment of minority groups in Muslim countries and communities. Almost all of them now live in the West, many under assumed names because of a legitimate danger to themselves and many have had death threats made against them by Islamic groups including the very public fatwa made on the life of Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini of the Government of Iran. Such people include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Ibn Warraq. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has focused on the plight of Muslim women, saying that "they aspire to live by their faith as best they can, but their faith robs them of their rights."^[15]

Several scholars do not self-identify as critics of Islam but are not afraid to criticise some of its aspects. Bernard Lewis is perhaps the most well-known member of this group. For example, he holds that unbelievers, slaves, and women are considered fundamentally inferior to other groups of people under Islamic law though he holds that even the equality of free adult male Muslims represented a very considerable advance on the practice of both the Greco-Roman and the ancient Iranian world.^[16][17]

[edit] Responses to criticisms

Responses come from both Muslim and some non-Muslim scholars and writers.

Responses from Modern non-Muslim scholars

Such non-Muslim scholars include William Montgomery Watt, John Esposito and Karen Armstrong and the late Edward Said, who sharply criticized Western scholarship of the East. Watt, for example, in his book Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman addresses Muhammad's alleged moral failures. He claims that "Of all the world's great men none has been so much maligned as Muhammad." Watt argues that Muhammad should be judged by the standards of his own time and country rather than "by those of the most enlightened opinion in the West today."^[18] Karen Armstrong, tracing what she believes to be the West's long history of hostility toward Islam, finds in Muhammad's teachings a theology of peace and tolerance. Armstrong holds that the "holy war" urged by the Qur'an alludes to each Muslim's duty to fight for a just, decent society.^[19]

John Esposito has written many introductory texts on Islam and the Islamic world. For example, he has addressed issues like the rise of militant Islam, the veiling of women, and democracy.^[20][21] Esposito emphatically argues against what he calls the "pan-Islamic myth". He thinks that "too often coverage of Islam and the Muslim world assumes the existence of a monolithic Islam in which all Muslims are the same." To him, such a view is naive and unjustifiably obscures important divisions and differences in the Muslims world.^[22]

Responses from modern Muslim scholars

Responses from Muslims have come from many Muslim writers, scholars and comparative religionists such as Ahmad Deedat, Dr. Zakir Naik, Osama Abdallah, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Gary Miller. Within the academia, responses have come from scholars such as Michael Sells, Muqtedar Khan. Muhammad Mohar Ali says that the Qur'an records the earliest criticisms (and responses), examples of which are Muhammad being called a madman (e.g. 15:6), a poet (21:5), a kahin soothsayer (69:42), and so on. He writes that nothing of importance has been added by later critics.^[23]

[edit] Objections to the methods used by critics

Edward Said, in his essay Islam Through Western Eyes, stated that the general basis of Orientalist thought forms a study structure in which Islam is placed in an inferior position as an object of study. He claims the existence of a very considerable bias in Orientalist writings as a consequence of the scholars' cultural make-up. He claims Islam has been looked at with a particular hostility and fear due to many obvious religious, psychological and political reasons, all deriving from a sense "that so far as the West is concerned, Islam represents not only a formidable competitor but also a late-coming challenge to Christianity."^[24] Montgomery Watt agrees with West's historical denigration of Islam but states that the situation has become much better during the last two centuries though many of the old prejudices still linger on. Watt encourages both Muslims and Europeans to reach to an objective view of Muhammad and his religion.^[25]

[edit] Intolerance of Islam to criticism

Islam is frequently criticised as being intolerant of and suppressive of criticism, and especially of apostasy. Ibn Warraq has collected and published stories of the reported mistreatment of Muslim apostates at the hands of Islamic authorities.^[26]

Decision of a Fatwa committee on the case of a convert to Christianity: "Since he left Islam, he will be invited to express his regret. If he does not regret, he will be killed pertaining to rights and obligations of the Islamic law."

[edit] Apostasy in Islamic law

Main article: Apostasy in Islam

Bernard Lewis summarizes:

"

The penalty for apostasy, in Islamic law, is death. Islam is conceived as a polity, not just as a religious community. It follows therefore that apostasy is treason. It is a withdrawal, a denial of allegiance as well as of religious belief and loyalty. Any sustained and principled opposition to the existing regime or order almost inevitably involves such a withdrawal.[27]

"

However, the question of the correct penalties to be imposed under Islamic law for apostasy is a highly controversial topic that has been passionately debated. There are widely-held exceptions to the death penalty punishment, and a minority of Islamic scholars advocate a lesser penalty altogether. In general, though, the four Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence, as well as Shi'a scholars, agree that a sane adult male apostate must be executed. A female apostate may be put to death, according to the majority view, or imprisoned until she repents, according to others.^[28]

Some contemporary Islamic jurists from both the Sunni and Shi'a denominations together with Qur'an only Muslims have argued or issued fatwas that state that either the changing of religion is not punishable or is only punishable under restricted circumstances.^{[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]} For example, Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri argues that no Qur'anic verse prescribes an earthly penalty for apostasy and adds that it is not improbable that the punishment was prescribed by Muhammad at early Islam due to political conspiracies against Islam and Muslims and not only because of changing the belief or expressing it. Montazeri defines different types of apostasy. He does not hold that a reversion of belief because of investigation and research is punishable by death but prescribes capital punishment for a desertion of Islam out of malice and enmity towards the Muslim.^[37] However, these minority opinions regarding punishment for apostasy have not found broad acceptance among their peers in the ulema.

Abdul Rahman, an Afghan convert to Christianity who made international headlines when he was arrested and threatened with execution. Later it was suggested by the Afghan government that he may be mentally mad or ill and should thus be forgiven, although some have raised doubts about these allegations. Kabul, March 23, 2006

William Montgomery Watt, in an interview in response to a question about westerns view of the Islamic Law as being cruel, states that "similar punishments are found in the Old Testament... In Islamic teaching, such penalties may have been suitable for the age in which Muhammad lived. However, as societies have since progressed and become more peaceful and ordered, they are not suitable any longer."^[38]

[edit] Modern treatment of accused apostates

Today, out of 57 mostly Islamic countries in OIC, five make apostasy from Islam a crime punishable by death, including Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan, and Yemen. However, according the US State Department, there have been no reports of such executions by the government of Saudi Arabia for several years.^[39] On the other hand, in Pakistan, vigilante attacks against alleged apostates are common.^[40]

The recent case of Afghan Abdul Rahman has achieved particular notoriety. In early 2006, Rahman was arrested and held by Afghan authorities on charges that he converted from Islam to Christianity, a capital offense in Afghanistan. Many Muslim clerics in the country pushed for a death sentence, but after international pressure (including a public statement by U.S. Secretary of State at the time Condoleezza Rice) he was released and secretly given asylum in Italy.^[41][42]

In 1993, an Egyptian professor named Nasr Abu Zayd was divorced from his wife by an Egyptian court run by Islamic radicals on the grounds that his controversial writings about the Qur'an demonstrated his apostasy. He subsequently fled to Europe with his wife.^[43] Another Egyptian professor, Farag Fuda, was killed in 1992 by masked men after criticizing Muslim fundamentalists and announcing plans to form a new movement for Egyptians of all religions.^[44]

[edit] Modern treatment of critics

German professor Christoph Luxenberg feels compelled to work under a pseudonym to protect himself because of fears that a new book on the origins of the Qur'an may make him a target for violence.^[45] Hashem Aghajari, an Iranian university professor, was initially sentenced to death because of a speech that criticized some of the present Islamic practices in Iran being in contradiction with the original practices and ideology of Islam, and particularly for stating that Muslims were not "monkeys" and "should not blindly follow" the clerics. The sentence was later commuted to three years in jail, and he was released in 2004 after serving two years of that sentence.^[46][47][48]

In recent times fatwas calling for execution have been issued against author Salman Rushdie and activist Taslima Nasreen.^[49]

On September 19, 2006 French writer and philosophy teacher Robert Redeker wrote an editorial for Le Figaro, a French conservative newspaper, in which he attacked Islam and Muhammad, writing: "Pitiless war leader, pillager, butcher of Jews and polygamous, this is how Mohammed is revealed by the Qur'an"; he received death threats and went into hiding.^[50]

See also Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy

[edit] Muhammad

Main article: Criticism of Muhammad

See also: Aisha's age at marriage

Muslims consider Muhammad to be the final and greatest prophet, the messenger of the final revelation that he called the Qur'an. Muslims believe that Muhammad was righteous and holy. However, some scholars such as Koelle and Ibn Warraq, as well as some other non-Muslims, see some of his actions as very immoral.^[4][51] Islamic scholars, such as William Montgomery Watt disagree, especially when a comparison is made between Muhammad and Biblical prophets. Watt, for example, argues that Muhammad should be judged by the standards of his own time and country rather than "by those of the most enlightened opinion in the West today." Muslims have also questioned the historical evidence for some of Muhammad's alleged immoral acts.

[edit] The Qur'an

Main article: Criticism of the Qur'an

It is a central tenet of Islam that the Qur'an is perfect, so criticism of the Qur'an is considered criticism of Islam.

Here are the main arguments of the critics:

• Critics argue the Qur'an has scientific errors,^[52][53] though Muslims have claimed that the Qur'an is perfectly compatible with science.^[54]
• Satanic Verses were two verses allegedly argued to have been added by Mohammad when he was tricked by Satan.^[55][18]
• Quranic verse 4:34 allows, according to critics, muslim men to beat their wives ^[56][57]
• Some critics believe that it is not only Islamists that preaches terrorism but Islam itself, a violence implicit in the Qur'anic text.^[58][59][60]
• The Quran is critized for advocating the death penalty^[61][62] or other cruel and unusual punishments for acts like apostasy,^[63] homosexuality,^[64] adultery,^[65] and theft.^[66]
• There is much criticism of the Quran on its position on slavery, since it specificly allows the practice.^[67]
• Critics critize the quran for being Incompatibile with other religious scriptures, for containing attacks, and for advocating hate against people of other religions.^{[68][69][70][71][72]}
• Critics claim that the Qur'an contains numerous verses which contradict each other.^[73][74]

[edit] Other criticism

[edit] Human rights issues

Human-rights violations by adherents of Islam

See Historical persecution by Muslims.

Discrepancy between Islam and the UN Declaration of Human Rights

Predominantly Muslim countries, like Sudan, Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, frequently criticized the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for its perceived failure to take into account the cultural and religious context of non-Western countries. In 1981, the Iranian representative to the United Nations, Said Rajaie-Khorassani, articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by saying that the UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law.^[75]

In 1990 the Organization of Islamic Conference published a separate Cairo Declaration of Human Rights compliant with Shari'ah.^[76] A group called Article 11 is protesting for religious rights in Malaysia and has been attacked by mobs of Muslim counter-demonstrators.^[77]

Ayatollah Sanei believes that the Islamic and the UN Declaration of Human Rights are approximately close to each other. The discrepancy is their sources. The source of one is divine revelation and the source of the other is the God-given human conscience.^[78]

In full contradiction with this point of view, official European sources have ruled that the difference is not just in the sources, but in the basic tenets. See the reperated condemnations by the European Court for Human Rights of the Sharia as incompatible with democracy.

[edit] Discrimination against women and non-Muslims

This article has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality. Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page.

Main article: Women in Muslim societies

See also: Sex segregation in Islam

Critics argue that in Islam women have fewer rights than men and that non-Muslims under the dhimmi system have fewer rights than Muslims. Muslims argue that men are the protectors of women (Qur'an 4:34) and that dhimmis must return the favor by paying Jizya^[79] of the protection given by an Islamic state (non-Muslims are exempt from military service for the state). Non-Muslims also have certain privileges in Muslim countries; for example, they may be permitted to drink alcohol, although it would be illegal for Muslims to do so, and are also not required to pay the alms tax (Zakah) that Muslims are required to pay in a Muslim state, but must pay Jizya instead. (See also Islam and other religions).

According to Freedom House [18], Saudi Arabia relegates women to second-class citizenship. "Women are not treated as equal members of society. They may not legally drive cars, and their use of public facilities is restricted when men are present. ...Laws discriminate against women in a range of matters including family law, and a woman's testimony is treated as inferior to a man's in court." [19]

Some Islamic scholars justify the different religious laws for men and women by referring to the biological and sociological differences between men and women. For example, regarding the inheritance law which states that women's share of inheritance is half that of men, Grand Ayatollah Makarim Shirazi quotes the Imam Ali ibn Musa Al-reza who reasons that at the time of marriage man has to pay something to woman and woman receives something, and that men are responsible for both their wives' and their own expenses but women have no responsibility thereof.^[80] Muslims reject the assertion that different laws prescribed for men and women imply that men are more valuable than women, arguing that the only criterion of value before God is piety. Part of the verse (3:36) that literally reads as "the male is not like the female" is usually used to show that the value of the female is greater than or at least equal to the value of the male. (The text is not clear as to whether this quote is supposed to be from God or from the mother of Mary, but the meaning of the phrase is clear in its context.) ^{[citation needed]}

According to Professor Doumato, in Islamic thought, women are held responsible for sexual temptation. She writes "Specific Quranic verses enjoin modesty upon women and, to a lesser degree, upon men; and women are viewed as being responsible for sexual temptation (fitna)."^[81]

Critics have used the derogatory terms "gender apartheid" to refer to "sexual discrimination, particularly strict gender-based segregation [20] in some Muslim countries where women are segregated on the basis of sex from men in public and do not enjoy legal equality or equal access to employment or education." The terms "Islamic apartheid" and "Muslim apartheid" have been used to highlight alleged discrimination by both religion and gender.

^[82]

The term "gender apartheid" has also been used by Phyllis Chesler [21]. Per Chesler's article,

"In a democratic, modern, and feminist era, women in the Islamic world are not treated as human beings. Women in Iran and elsewhere in the Islamic world are viewed as the source of all evil. Their every move is brutally monitored and curtailed. The smallest infraction – a wanton wisp of hair escaping a headscarf – merits maximum punishment: Flogging in public, or worse. This is happening in Iran even as we speak. In 2005, a hospital in Tehran was accused of refusing entry to women who did not wear head-to-toe covering. In 2002, in Saudi Arabia, religious policemen prevented 14 year old schoolgirls from leaving a burning school building because they were not wearing their headscarves and abayahs. Fifteen girls died."

[edit] Reliability of hadith

Main article: Hadith

Hadith are Muslim traditions relating to the Sunna (words and deeds) of Muhammad. In general, for Muslims the hadith are second only to the Qur'an in importance,^[83] although some scholars put more emphasis on the perpetual adherence of Muslim nation to the traditions to give them credibility, and not solely on hadith.^[84] However, there are groups and individuals both inside and outside Islam who criticize the reliability of hadith or its use in general.

John Esposito notes that "Modern Western scholarship has seriously questioned the historicity and authenticity of the hadith, maintaining that the bulk of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad were actually written much later." He mentions Joseph Schacht as one scholar who argues this, claiming that Schacht "found no evidence of legal traditions before 722," from which Schacht concluded that "the Sunna of the Prophet is not the words and deeds of the Prophet, but apocryphal material" dating from later.^[85]

Other Western scholars, like Wilferd Madelung, are more confident in the reliability of Islamic traditions, rejecting the stance of some historians who show an "extreme distrust" for "Muslim literary sources for the early age of Islam". Madelung wrote in the preface of his book The Succession to Muhammad:

"

Work with the narrative sources, both those that have been available to historians for a long time and others which have been published recently, made it plain that their wholesale rejection as late fiction is unjustified and that with a judicious use of them a much more reliable and accurate portrait of the period can be drawn than has so far been realized.[86]

"

Within Islam, different schools and sects have different opinions on the proper selection and use of hadith. The four schools of Sunni Islam all consider hadith second only to the Qur'an, although they differ on how much freedom of interpretation should be allowed to legal scholars.^[87] Shi'i scholars disagree with Sunni scholars as to which hadith should be considered reliable. The Shi'as accept the Sunna of Ali and the Imams as authoritative in addition to the Sunna of Muhammad, and as a consequence they maintain their own, different, collections of hadith.^[88]

On the extreme end, there have been Muslims who deny the authority of the hadith completely or almost completely (manifestations of which have sometimes been termed the Quran-only movement). Early in Islamic history there was a school of thought that adhered to this view, but it receded in importance after coming under criticism by al-Shafi'i. Daniel Brown describes a modern anti-hadith movement that reached its peak in the 1950's and 1960's, but is now in decline.^[89] The Submitters movement today holds to a Quran-only view,^[90] although they are considered heretical by more traditionalist Muslims.^[91]

[edit] Rise of fatwas

Many critics are concerned about the rise in fatwas from Islamic leaders. Some fatwas are simple declarations about lifestyle choices and others, such as Osama bin Laden's declaration of war against America, are a call to violence or assassination. Some critics of fatwas are shocked by a recent call to destroy ancient Egyptian statues and artifacts. [22]

[edit] See also

[edit] Topics regarding Islam and controversy

Apostasy in Islam Historical persecution by Muslims Islam and anti-Semitism Islamist terrorism Islamophobia

Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons Liberal movements within Islam Persecution of Muslims Religious persecution Women as imams

[edit] Criticism of other beliefs

Anti-Catholicism Anti-clericalism Anti-Judaism Anti-Mormonism Anti-Protestantism

Criticism of atheism Criticism of Christianity Criticism of Judaism Criticism of Mormonism Criticism of religion Criticism of Hinduism

[edit] Further reading

• The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion by Robert Spencer
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades) by Robert Spencer
• Onward Muslim Soldiers by Robert Spencer
• The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew G. Bostom
• Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Ye'or
• Decline of Eastern Christianity: From Jihad to Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'or
• The Al Qaeda Connection: International Terrorism, Organized Crime, And the Coming Apocalypse by Paul L. Williams
• An Autumn of War: What America Learned from September 11 and the War on Terrorism by Victor Davis Hanson
• Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam by Gilles Kepel
• The War for Muslim Minds by Gilles Kepel
• Esposito, John L. (1995). The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-510298-3.
• Halliday, Fred (2003). Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics of the Middle East. I.B. Tauris, New York. ISBN 1-86064-868-1.
• Esposito, John L. (2003). Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 0-19-516886-0.

• Geisler, Norman L. (2002). Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross. Baker Books. ISBN 0-8010-6430-9.
• Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995)
• —, Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out
• The Institute for the Study of Civil Society report - The 'West', Islam and Islamism
• Zwemer Islam, a Challenge to Faith (New York, 1907)
• Shoja-e-din Shafa, Rebirth (1995) (Persian Title: ????? ????)
• Shoja-e-din Shafa, After 1400 Years (2000) (Persian Title: ?? ?? 1400 ???)
• Category:Books critical of Islam

[edit] References

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2. ^ De Haeresibus by John of Damascus. See Migne. Patrologia Graeca, vol. 94, 1864, cols 763-73. An English translation by the Reverend John W Voorhis appeared in THE MOSLEM WORLD for October 1954, pp. 392-398.
3. ^ Warraq, Ibn (2003). Leaving Islam : Apostates Speak Out. Prometheus Books, 67. ISBN 1-59102-068-9.
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33. ^ The punishment of apostasy in Islam, View of Dr. Ahmad Shafaat on apostasy.
34. ^ Religious Tolerance.org, Apostasy (Irtdidad) In Islam, by B.A. Robinson, Religious Tolerance.org, April 7, 2006, retrieved April 16, 2006.
35. ^ Is Apostasy a Capital Crime in Islam?, Jamal Badawi
36. ^ No Punishment, If No Harm, Sheikh `Abdul-Majeed Subh
37. ^ Ayatollah Montazeri: "Not Every Conversion is Apostasy", by Mahdi Jami, In Persian, BBC Persian, February 2, 2005, retrieved April 25, 2006
38. ^ Interview: William Montgomery Watt, by Bashir Maan & Alastair McIntosh
39. ^ http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2006/71431.htm International Religious Freedom Report 2006 Saudi Arabia
40. ^ "Conversion a thorny issue in Muslim world", The Christian Science Monitor, March 27, 2006.
41. ^ Coghlan, Tom. "Afghan Christian convert is released", CNN, March 28, 2006.
42. ^ "The Troubled Odyssey of Abdul Rahman", Der Spiegel, April 3, 2006.
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45. ^ Heneghan, Tom. "Low profile for German Koran challenger", SwissInfo, Reuters, November 11, 2004.
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48. ^ "From monkey to man: A call for Islamic Protestantism", The Iranian, December 4, 2002.
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50. ^ Arnold, Martin. "Teacher in hiding after attacking Islam", Financial Times, 2006-09-29. Retrieved on 2006-10-17.
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53. ^ [5]
54. ^ [6]
55. ^ "The Life of Muhammad", Ibn Ishaq, A. Guillaume (translator), 2002, p.166 ISBN 0-19-636033-1
56. ^ "The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary", Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Amana Corporation, Brentwood, MD, 1989. ISBN 0-915957-03-5, passage was quoted from commentary on 4:34
57. ^ Kathir, Ibn, "Tafsir of Ibn Kathir", Al-Firdous Ltd., London, 2000, 50-53
58. ^ You Quote the Quran Out of Context, by Ali Sina, FaithFreedom.org, retrieved April 16, 2006
59. ^ [7]
60. ^ [8]
61. ^ Koinange, Jeff. "Woman sentenced to stoning freed", CNN, February 23, 2004.
62. ^ "Nigeria: Death by stoning upheld in the case of Amina Lawal", Amnesty International, August 19, 2002.
63. ^ Qur'an 2.217
64. ^ Qur'an 7:80-84
65. ^ Qur'an 24.2
66. ^ Qur'an 5.38
67. ^ Robert Spencer, "Islam Unveiled", p. 63, 2003, Encounter Books, ISBN 1-893554-77-5
68. ^ Bible in Mohammedian Literature., by Kaufmann Kohler Duncan B. McDonald , Jewish Encyclopedia, retrieved April 22, 2006
69. ^ Gerber (1986), pp. 78&ndas;79
70. ^ "Anti-Semitism". Encyclopedia Judaica
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74. ^ [10]
75. ^ Littman, David. "Universal Human Rights and 'Human Rights in Islam'". Midstream, February/March 1999
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78. ^ interview with Grand ayatollah Yousef Sanei, roozonline news
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82. ^ Minette Marrin of The Sunday Times (United Kingdom) uses "Muslim Apartheid" to refer to voluntary self-segregation by Muslim communities in Europe, and corresponding unwillingness to integrate into the surrounding community. [12] Prominent feminist author Phyllis Chesler [13] uses the term "Islamic Apartheid" to refer to apartheid-like practices in Islamic cultures. Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, uses "Muslim Apartheid" in the context of the treatment of women in Malaysia and compares it to South African apartheid. ""You have two sets of laws for citizens of the same country, one is more disadvantageous than the other. To me, this is like the situation in (old apartheid) South Africa," the 48-year-old Muslim said in her office in a posh Kuala Lumpur suburb." Malaysia's Muslim Professionals Forum and PAS (Muslim political party) have expressed objections to Ms. Mahathir's position. [14] Sudheendra Kulkarni of India's Sunday Express describes "religious and cultural apartheid" in which "Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganised on the 'millat' system of the Ottoman Empire, where they would enjoy the right to organise their social, cultural and educational life in accordance with Shariah. In parts of France, a de facto millat system is already in place.'' As the French premier admitted, even the police could not enter these ''seceded'' parts." [15] Colbert I. King (Washington Post) uses "Saudi Arabian Apartheid" to describe the enforcement of gender apartheid under Saudi Arabia's Islamic-based laws. [16] The Guardian Unlimited (United Kingdom) adds, "In the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, sexual apartheid rules." [17]
83. ^ Ernst, Carl (2002). Following Muhammad : Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World. The University of North Carolina Press, 80. ISBN 0-8078-2837-8.
84. ^ Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, Mizan, Chapter: Sources of Islam, Al-Mawrid Institute
85. ^ Esposito, John (1998). Islam: The Straight Path. Oxford University Press, 67. ISBN 0-19-511234-2.
86. ^ Madelung, Wilferd (1997). The Succession to Muhammad : A Study of the Early Caliphate. Cambridge University Press, xi. ISBN 0-521-64696-0.
87. ^ Goddard, Hugh; Helen K. Bond (Ed.), Seth Daniel Kunin (Ed.), Francesca Aran Murphy (Ed.) (2003). Religious Studies and Theology: An Introduction. New York University Press, 204. ISBN 0-8147-9914-0.
88. ^ Esposito, John (1998). Islam: The Straight Path. Oxford University Press, 85. ISBN 0-19-511234-2.
89. ^ Brown, Daniel (1999). Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought. Cambridge University Press, 17. ISBN 0-521-65394-0.
90. ^ Quran. Welcome to Submission. Retrieved on 2006-07-04.
91. ^ Dr. Khalid Alvi. Indispensability of Hadith. Islaam.com. Retrieved on 2006-07-04.

The Berbers and the Jews

Jews in Africa Part I - The Berbers and the Jews

Fact Paper 19-I

© Samuel Kurinsky, all rights reserved

http://www.hebrewhistory.info/factpapers/fp019-1_africa.htm

Summary:

Jewish were present in North Africa from biblical times as artisans and traders. The Berbers converted to Judaism and resisted the Arab incursion until they were conquered and forced to convert to Islam.

The Jewess, Kahena, Queen of the Berbers, leading the armies of the consolidated Berber tribes against the invading armies of the Arab mercenaries in the year 694. "Lions of Africa and Judah!" was said to have been her rallying cry, "show these Arabs that we will not be enslaved by Islam. Let our slogan be the cry of the Zealots of old; 'Freedom or Death!'Drawing by Keith Gunderson in Wars of the Jews, courtesy of Monro Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson.

• Berbers and Jews, a Unique Relationship. The Historical Background
• Judaic Rebellions in Africa
• Jews Move West
• Judaic/Berber Alliance under Queen Kahena
• Judaic/Berber Participation in the Islamic Conquest of Southern Iberia.
• Notes

Berbers and Jews, a Unique Relationship; The Historical Background

The Berbers were Northwest African tribes inhabiting an area known as the Barbary Coast. The former Barbary States now comprise the modern states of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The Berbers spoke variations of a Hamitic language, mainly Tuareg and Kabyle. The Tuaregs were nomadic Berber tribes ensconced along the trade routes across the Sahara desert. Other tribes settled near the coast.

Judaic presence in the continent of Africa can be said to go back to the Biblical sojourn of Abraham in the lush Nile Delta (Goshen), where Abraham, together with his entourage and herds of cattle awaited the passage of a drought in Canaan. It is also related in the Bible that the vizier to the Pharaoh, Joseph, summoned his family to join him in Egypt. Many Israelites followed, at first as settlers, and then as slaves captured in Canaan by the aptly characterized "Warrior Pharaohs."

After the states of Israel and Judah came into existence, Judaic traders traveled westward along the African coast with the voyagers of Tyre and Sidon, the Canaanite sea-farers referred to by the Greeks as the "Phoenicians." Jews composed a significant proportion of the major North African Canaanite settlement at Carthage (Kart Hadash, or "New City"), and Jewish presence has been well documented elsewhere along the coast during the Pre-Roman period. The Romans termed the Canaanite settlers the Peonicus Carthagenians, which in turn has been transcribed into the "Punic Peoples."

The Canaanite city-states of Utica and Carthage were ruled by a Soffut, akin to the Israelite shoffet, or judge. In Jews and Photography, George Gilbert notes that "in the Mellahs (the Jewish quarters) of Morocco it has long been legend that Jews settled in Northwest Africa even before the destruction of the second temple (586 BCE). In support of this belief one sees Hebrew inscriptions on tombstones in the Roman town of Volubilis (west of modern Fez)."¹

Under the Ptolemaic Greeks (323-31 BCE), the Jews brought their technological, industrial and commercial expertise to Alexandria, one of the largest and economically important cities of antiquity. Judaic artisans, merchants and scholars composed some 40% of the population. They were organized into guilds with reserved sections in the synagogues. The tannaic scholar, Rabbi Judah, visited Alexandria and reported: "... they were seated there not in mixed order, but goldsmiths apart, silversmiths apart, and weavers apart, blacksmiths apart, coppersmiths apart, and weavers apart. So that when a poor [artisan] entered there, he recognized the members of his own craft and turned to them to find means for the maintenance of himself and his family."

Joseph ben Sirach (Ecclesiastus) writing during the Greek period at the end of the third century, describes the activity of Judaic artisans of his time in vivid poetry:

The maker of carving and cunning device,
Who by night as by day has no rest,
Who engraveth signet rings,
and whose art is to make the likeness true,
And his anxiety to compleyte the work,
So also the smith that sitteth by the furnace,
And regardeth his weighty vessels;
The flame of the fire cracketh his flesh,
And with the heat of his furnace he gloweth;
To the hammer's sound he inclineth his ear,
And to the vessel's pattern he directeth his eyes.

The Judaic artisans proudly wore distinctive badges of their particular trade. The tannaic scholar of the first century CE, Eleazer ben Azariah, said of the wearing of these badges, "There is something grand about artisanship; every artisan boasts of his trade, carrying boldly his badge on the street."

Judaic artisans continued to practice their trades in North Africa under the Romans. The Romans considered the manual trades base and inappropriate for themselves. It was none other than Emperor Hadrian Augustus who inadvertently complimented the industrious Jews of Alexandria in a report to his consul, Servianus; in placing them among the proletariat of the city he inadvertently credited them with being the skilled craftsmen of the city, and with the revolutionary process of glassblowing:

"[The Jews in Alexandria are] prosperous, rich and fruitful, and in it no one is idle. Some are blowers of glass, others makers of paper, all are at least weavers of linen or seem to belong to one craft or another; the lame have their occupations, the wounded have theirs, the blind have theirs, and not even those whose hands are crippled are idle."

Alexandria was, outside of Asia, the most populous Jewish center in the Diaspora. Philo estimated the number of Jews in Egypt to have reached the one million mark; Josephus had likewise numbered the population of Egypt as eight million, of which one million were Jews.

During the Ptolemaic period Judaic settlements spread across North Africa. In the Roman period they were a considerable part of the population of the large cities of Said and Memphis, east and south of Alexandria. They were likewise concentrated in seventeen cities west of Alexandria, a region called Cyrenaica, extending from modern-day Tobruk to Bengazi and Tripoli on the Libyan coast. The major towns of that region, Chersonesus, Cyrene, Ptolemais, Arsinoe, and Berenice had large contingents of Jews. This coastal region was vital to the round-the-Mediterranean voyagers of that era; it continued to be so for the next two thousand years. In the first century of the Common Era the total North African Jewish population approached two million in number.

The Judaic community of Cyrene was second only to Alexandria in importance. It had been settled by Alexander the Great with 40,000 Judaic soldiers and their families, and continued to expand in military and commercial importance as a Judaic garrison under the Romans. The second book of Maccabees was written by Jason of Cyrene; it served as an inspiration for many of the Jews of that city to join in the great Judaic rebellion of 66 C. E.

Judaic Rebellions in Africa

In the year 115 a race riot against the Jews took place by the Pagans and Greeks of the city of Cyrene. Usually, the Romans intervened to prevent the Jews from putting up a stiff defense. However, the Roman armies were then preoccupied with the resistance of the Jews in Babylonia (Parthia) to Emperor Trajan's ambitious drive to place all of Mesopotamia under Roman rule. Almost no Roman soldiers were available in Cyrenaica to contain the riots or restrain the Jews, the regular army having been sent to Trajan's aid. "Consequently, the Jews were able to fight back and to carry the battle into the places where the pagans resided. What is more, the Jews of the island of Cyprus, and those of Egypt joined in the fighting."²

The island of Cyprus enters the Judaic/African saga with the significant part the Cypriot Jews played in the succession of rebellions and resistance of the Jews against the Romans. Jews had been present in Cyprus far back into antiquity as traders accompanying the Sidonian and Tyrian seafarers. Then, "about 100 BCE, Jewish fishermen from the Judaic coast settled the island. Cyprus received many more Jews after the first Zealot rebellion, as thousands were sent by the Romans to slave in the copper mines.³

A Cypriot Jew, Barnabus, organized a rebellion against their Roman masters. He succeeded in arming the copper workers, Jews and Canaanites, "and secretly prepare them for insurrection. It was the Sabbath and the Jewish workers were given their customary day of rest. All was peaceful in the coastal towns, and the Jewish men were gathered in the synagogues for prayer as usual. Just as the sun went down on that Saturday night of June 19th, 117, the ram's horn was blown. This was not a ritual observance, but the signal for a sudden and terrible civil war."⁴

The Jews wreaked revenge upon their oppressors in Cyrenaica. What had started as a race riot became a war. "The Jews of the three districts involved organized regular armies and took bloody revenge for all they observe to bear during the half century before. Trajan hurriedly sent Turbo, one of his generals, to restore order. Turbo's soldiers were joined by the pagan population of the affected districts. They attacked the Jews, both the fighters and the peaceful population, more mercilessly than the Jews had attacked them. In the island of Cyprus every single Jew was killed, the total running into the thousands. A law was adopted never to permit a Jew to set foot on the island even if he were shipwrecked nearby. In Egypt and Cyrene the Jewish population was treated with almost equal ferocity. Thereafter the once flourishing Jewish community of Alexandria was definitely on the downgrade."⁵

The ignominy of having a rebellion almost succeed in destroying the Roman Empire led a Roman historian, Deo Cassius [LXVII, 32], 50 years after the event, to write a bitter, self-serving account of the Judaic victories. It was a rabid mixture of fact and fiction; intended to justify the atrocities wreaked upon the Jews for daring to challenge the rule of the Roman Emperor. The account included calumnies which lived on to haunt the Jews for centuries to come throughout Christendom.

"The Jews of the region of Cyrene," wrote Deo Cassius, "had put one Andreas at their head and were destroying both the Romans and the Greeks. They would cook their flesh, make belts for themselves of their entrails, and wear their skins for clothing. Many they sawed in two from their heads downwards. Others they would give to wild beasts and force still others to fight as gladiators."

"In all, consequently, two hundred and twenty thousand perished. In Egypt also they performed many similar deeds and in Cyprus under the leadership of Artemio. There likewise two hundred and forty thousand perished. For that reason no Jew may set foot in that land, but even if one of them is driven upon that island by force of the wind he is put to death. Various persons took part in subduing these Jews, one being Lusius, who was sent by Trajan."⁶

Thus, setting aside the obvious calumnies, we see that Cassius inadvertently documented the size of the Judaic community and the strength of the Judaic forces. The ferocity ascribed to the Jews was in fact practiced by the Romans, albeit cannibalism was not part of their extermination drive. In addition to the decimation of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Cyrenaica and Cyprus, the Jews of Egypt fell under the vindictive swords of the Romans.

"The aggadah, [Babylonian Talmud, Gittin, 57b] in its usual vivid fashion describes the greatness of the Egyptian Jewish community and the extent of the slaughter after the revolt: "[Hadrian, successor to Trajan] slaughtered in Egypt six hundred thousand and again six hundred thousand, twice as many as had gone forth from Egypt [at the time of the exodus]... so that the blood ran in the sea as far as Cyprus."⁷

Jews Move West

Blocked from escape to the east, many Jews found refuge to the west. The westward movement of the Jews from Egypt and Cyrenaica to the Barbary states was once again swelled by the expulsion of the Jews from Alexandria by Bishop Cyril in 414, and by recurrent Byzantine expulsions through the next few centuries.

The effect of each of the expulsions was short-lived. The Jews, uniquely the technologically advanced, literate, and commercially savvy element among the backward indigenous populations, remained crucial for the conduct of African industry and commerce. Economic difficulties resulting from successive expulsions led recurrently to liberalized policies and a new influx of Judaic artisans and traders. That the persecutions proved ineffective in obliterating Judaic presence is evidenced by the account of the subsequent conquering Arab general, 'Amir ibn al-As, who reported that he found 40,000 tax-paying Jews resident in Alexandria alone, inferring the existence of a total Judaic population of several times that figure. The Arab general, stemming from a backward desert society, was likewise staggered to find 4000 "palaces," 4000 baths [!] and other visible evidence of a prosperous community within the city.⁸

Albeit the figures appear somewhat inflated, two facts are manifest from the Arab general's report: The numbers of the Jewish community, and the high level of civilization encountered by the astonished Arab general. The confrontation of the primitive Arabs with the advanced science and technology of the Alexandrian Jews was repeated as the Arab armies crossed North Africa. Entering the arena as barbaric warriors, they eventually absorbed the attributes of an advanced civilization from the Jews.

Moroccan Muslim traditions relate that as the Arabs advanced, the Greeks evacuated the towns and cities. The Jews, however, stayed on, and their numbers were swelled by an influx of Jews from Syria and Egypt into the vacuum left by the Greeks.⁹

As a result of the Emperor Justinian's intolerant policies in the sixth century, Jews were driven inland, and again found refuge among the hinterland Berber tribesmen. The Berbers not only welcomed the Jews, but eight of the tribes, impressed with the erudition and technological acumen of the Jews, disavowed their shamanistic, pagan concepts and adopted Judaism.

Judaic/Berber Alliance under Queen Kahena

Thus, in the year 694, when the rampaging Arab armies drove relentlessly westward along the Barbary Coast, the Jews found themselves allied with the Berbers against the invasion. The confederacy of Jewish Berber tribes rallied around the Jewish/Berber priestess Kahena. The Berbers crowned Kahena as queen, and accepted her as their military leader.

The story of Dehiyya al-Kahina malkat Afriqah (Queen of Africa) is told by Ibn Khaldun, in a literary biography in Hebrew by N. Sloushz. Khaldun's rendition leans heavily on legendary sources, but Salo Baron notes that "Nevertheless this account is essentially confirmed and amplified in many significant details in the more recently published chronicle of an older Arab writer, 'Ubaud ibn Salih ibn 'Abd al-Halim."¹⁰

Khaldun's chronicles about "this medieval version of the prophetess Deborah" hold that the priestess lived 127 years, and governed the tribe of Jeraua with the aid of her three sons for 65 years. Clearly an expansion of the truth, the historical kernel of the legends remains a classic of women's participation in the resistance to tyranny, "as women sooth-sayers and tribal leaders in war and peace had long been known and poetically extolled even among the pre-Islamic Arabs."

Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson paid tribute to many noteworthy women warriors in their book, Wars of the Jews, and report about Kahena that "The Berbers of the Aures mountains retain legends of her bravery. She was said to have been born to a poor Jewish family of cave-dwellers. A chieftain of a Judeo-Berber tribe terrorized her Aures mountain settlement and demanded Kahena as a wife. When she rejected him he slaughtered people of her village. She then gave herself to him, but, like the Biblical heroine, slew him with a nail to the skull on the wedding night."¹¹

The Arab armies enriched themselves as they rampaged across Persia, Afghanistan and northern India to the east, and then in Egypt and Libya to the west. "The march of Islam had barely missed a step when, in 694, the Arab forces drove into Africa Minor. Expecting an easy sweep, the Moslems met fierce resistance in Barbary."¹²

The Berbers rallied around their queen, the Jewess, Kahena, swearing to follow her into battle against the invaders. The Judeo/Berber army was swelled by soldiers of the pagan Berber tribes after their king Kocilla was killed by the Arabs. Queen Kahena became truly the queen and military commander of all the Berbers!

"Lions of Africa and Judah," the queen would shout to her Berber troops, "show these Arabs that we will never be enslaved by Islam. Our beloved Africa will remain free. Let our slogan be the cry of the Zealots of old: Freedom or death."

Under their valiant queen, Northwest Africa was cleansed of Arab mercenaries. Commander Ukba, who had at one point broken through all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, was killed in a Berber ambush. His armies were pushed back in retreat to Kairwan, the new Moslem base in central Tunisia. "The arrogant Ukba had tried to intimidate the proud Berbers with force instead of patiently trying to convert them to Islam with face-saving diplomacy." ¹³ Queen Kahena's skills were again tested in the second, more massive Arab invasion. A new Arab general, Hassan, had driven across North Africa with a fresh army of 40,000 horseman, and had taken Carthage from the Byzantine Greeks. Queen Kahena did not confront this massive force, but outflanked it by taking the city of Bagia from its Byzantine garrison. She roused the Christian population to join her forces in resistance to the Islamic invaders. When the Arab army laid siege to liberated Bagia, Kahena and her army streamed out of the city by secret passageways. They circled around to assault the enemy from behind a rocky prominence at Wadmini. The queen's cavalries spent the night in the saddle, forcing the Arab horsemen to do likewise. The relentless pressure through the night took a toll on the on the travel-weary Arabs, who were not in their native environment and were disadvantaged by an ignorance of the terrain.

With the break of dawn, "the Berber cavalry attacked - spurred on by their fiery queen. The townspeople of Bagia, Greeks, Copts and Phoenicians, united and inspired by Queen Kahena, simultaneously marched out on foot at the Arabs' rear. The Berbers charged with their rugged mountain ponies, while the Moslems countered with their swifter but more nervous Arabian stallions. A thousand Berber lances clashed with slashing Arab scimitars, as the impassioned Judeo-Berbers threw themselves at the fanatic Moslem Ishmaelites. The Arabs were completely routed. The main body of the army retreated as far as Gabes, while stragglers were driven into the wilderness where they perished."¹⁴

Under their triumphant queen's command, the Berber armies liberated Carthage, and swept on across North Africa to free it from both the Byzantines and the Arabs. The local Christians hailed the queen as liberator from the Arabs, and the Judaic communities, who had suffered dreadfully under heavy Roman and Byzantine taxation, hailed her as their deliverer. Kahena's armies swelled with Jewish volunteers from the numerous hill communities that dotted the ridges of the mountains. The Bishop of Bula Regia had flowers strewn along her path.

For the next five years, the coalition of the diverse local elements held firm, and the region enjoyed a peaceful period of freedom from foreign domination.

The wily Arab commander, Hassan Ibn Numan, learned through bitter experience that the dedicated armies under queen Kahena's command were a formidable force. He set out on a classic "divide and conquer" diplomatic maneuver in preparation for another invasion. Noting Christian antipathy toward the Jews, he sent emissaries to the Christians, offering a carrot of proposed tolerance while playing on the latent fear and hostility toward the Jews.

The North African Christians were fearful of Visigothan conquest. They were susceptible to Hassan's deceptive promises of autonomy, and their latent anti-Semitism proved more powerful than the peace and freedom they enjoyed under Judeo/Berber hegemony.

At the time, the Spanish Jews were suffering under Visigothan rule in Spain. The Visigoth kings instituted a antisemitic regimen at a succession of ecclesiastical councils at Toledo. They decreed forcible baptism, forbade circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath, festivals and rites. "Jews were flogged, executed and their property confiscated, were subjected to ruinous taxes, forbidden to trade, and, at times, dragged to the baptismal font."¹⁵

Hassan cunningly played upon the Judaic concern for their co-religionists suffering Visigothan oppression. He held out an olive branch to the Jews and proposed a joint Iberian invasion to rescue the Sephardic Jewish community from Visigothan tyranny. "Hassan's seductive offer was actually first proposed by the Spanish Jews themselves. It was they who requested that the Arabs and the forces of Queen Kahena join to conquer the Iberian peninsula. The Spanish Jews were desperate for help in light of harsh new decrees that appropriated all their property, forbade them from all navigation and trade with Africa, prohibited all business with Christians, and required all converted Jews to eat non-kosher food in the presence of supervising clergy."¹⁶

The Judeo/Berbers were lulled into failing to mobilize for defense against the Arab army. Hassan 's new, fresh army of 60,000 troops, swept swiftly across the continent, this time unresisted and even sustained by the Christian communities in their path.

It soon became clear that Hassan had no intention of halting at Barbary's borders. Unprepared, the Berber army was thrown into retreat. The queen, learning too late of the Arab perfidy, hastily mounted a counter-offensive. In desperation, the queen launched a scorched earth campaign in the path of the thundering Arab troops, burning fields, cutting down trees, and destroying dwellings to deny sustenance and booty to the invaders.

The queen's plans were also frustrated by an enemy within her ranks. "Just as King Saul lost his kingdom upon sparing the Amelekite king, Queen Kahena lost hers when she spared the brave and handsome Khalid Ibn Yessid El Kaisi, a srikingly aristocratic youth among the captives."¹⁷

Khalid feigned to have become a loyal adopted member of Kahena's own family. Secretly remaining a devoted Muslim, Khalid passed critical information to general Hassan about planned surprise attacks and ambushes. Thus armed, Hassan was able to prevail. Finally, probably concerned that his perfidy was about to be exposed, the trusted spy slipped out of the Berber camp, and was rewarded by Hassan with the position of deputy commander. Khalid's intimate knowledge of Berber encampments, haunts and hideouts was a major factor in sealing the queen's doom.

Unable to evade confrontation with the far more numerous forces under Hassan, "the two armies clashed head-on in a decisive battle at the ancient [Roman] amphitheater at Thysdrus, the modern town of El Jern. In the shadow of Rome's former African glory, the fate of Barbary was decided. Arab historian Ibn Nuvairi records that the Berbers and the Jews fought like furies, and only the will of Allah allowed the Moslems to triumph. The remnants of the Berber force fled to the Aures mountains, with the queen's guard at the rear. Her men begged her to flee to the safety of the Moroccan hinterlands, but Kahena preferred to remain with a handful of men holding a mountain pass against the onrushing Arabs. Like a true Zealot, she died with sword in hand.

The ignoble Hassan had her decapitated head sent back to the Arab Caliph, Abd el-Malik."¹⁸

The Jews and Berbers were given a choice: convert to Islam or die. Some 50,000 refused to convert and were massacred. The others opted for conversion.

Judaic/Berber Participation in the Islamic Conquest of Southern Iberia.

The converted Jews and Berbers became a significant part of the Arab forces which invaded Iberia. The commander of the joint Berber/Arab army which crossed the strait between Africa and Europe to conquer Spain in 711 CE was a Judeo/Berber convert said to have been one of the sons of Queen Kahena. His Arab name, Jibral-an-Tarik, became transcribed into the name of the fortress, Gibraltar, and the rock is referred to as Tarik's rock.

Many African Jews entered conversion pragmatically, secretly continuing their faith as did the Marranos of a later period. The Iberian Jews consequently collaborated fully with the invaders. The pragmatism of the converted Jews proved advantageous to both the Arabs and the Iberian Jews. The Arabs were dependant on both the Berber convertees and the Iberian Jews for a successful invasion and thereafter for maintaining their hegemony over the conquered region of Iberia.

Arab chroniclers record that the conquerors entrusted the garrisoning of such important cities as Elvira, Seville, and Cordoba to the Jews while the invaders pressed on in hot pursuit of the fleeing Christian forces. One chronicler informs us that Malaga, which had no Jews, could not be garrisoned because no Jews resided in the city and the Christians had all fled!

The gates to the strategic city of Toledo were opened by Jews on a Palm Sunday when the Christians were attending church services. The imminence of the Arab attack had been anticipated, for the Visigothan grandees had already fled the city, and the archbishop had made tracks all the way to Rome.

"The Berber/Arab successes in Iberia were made possible only by the assistance and collaboration of both the Sephardim and the formerly Berber Jews. Once empowered, the primitive Berbers and Arabs, dependant on the industrial and commercial sagacity of the Jews for the continuation and growth of their societies and economies, instituted a period of tolerance. The Arabs absorbed the scholarly attributes of an advanced civilization. Many of the "Arab" philosophers, poets, mathematicians and scientists were converted Jews, or descendants of converted Jews. A new enlightened era for both Arabs and Jews was born.

Jews regained the right to practice their faith and the Jewish populations of North African towns soon burgeoned with new, vibrant Jewish communities.

"In Kairuwan and the province of Ifriqiya, the famous heir of the ancient Carthagenians-Semitic civilization, the Jews, reinforced by numerous arrivals from Egypt and Palestine, had a fully developed life at the time of the Fatimid rise to power (909). In fact... the enemies of the new dynasty asserted that it had much Jewish blood in its veins... During the tenth century the city of Kairuwan, glorified by the Arabs as one of the four gates to Paradise, embraced a large and prosperous Jewish community. The latter soon felt strong enough to throw off the tutelage of the eastern academies.... Fez.... became from its inception (808) a major center of Jewish culture."¹⁹

Likewise, the liberal policies of the new Berber rulers of Spain laid the foundation for "The Golden Age" of Sephardic Judaism.

Notes

1. George Gilbert, Jews in Photography; a Social History, 1996, p. 23.
2. Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969, p. 180 .
3. Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson, Wars of the Jews, Hippocrene Books, NY, 1990, p. 117.
4. Rosenthal and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 117-8
5. Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959, p. 180.
6. Translation of Cassius by Galbraith Welch in, North African Prelude, The First Seven Thousand Years, William Morrow and Company, pp. 141-2.
7. S.S.Safrai, "he Lands of the Diaspora, in A History of the Jewish People, ed. by H.H.Ben-Sasson, Harvard Un., 1976, p. 372.
8. Salo Wittmayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, Vol. III, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1957, p. 71, quoting Eutichius, "Annales," in Petrologiae Cursus Completus, series Greca, CXI, 1107 ed. by Cheiko, II. 26; John of Nikiu, Chronique, CXVII, CXX,trans. by Zotenberg, pp. 449, 455.
9. Baron, Ibid., p. 90.
10. Baron, Ibid., p. 271, note 24. Baron also cites two other works by Slouschz, Travels in North Africa and Sefer ha-Massa'ot (Travelogue) and works by other authors too numerous to repeat here. Notable is a work by J. J. Williams, Hebrewisms of West Africa, documenting the ancient intrusion of Hebrew words and expressions into the Berber languages.
11. Monroe Rosenthal and Isaac Mozeson, Ibid., p.193.
12. Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 192.
13. Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 192.
14. Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 193-4.
15. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, Harper & Row, 1988, p. 177.
16. Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 195.
17. Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 195.
18. Rosenberg and Mozeson, Ibid. P. 196.
19. Baron, Ibid., p. 107-8.

Sacred Sites of Morocco

Minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakesh, Morocco
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Sacred sites of Morocco and Islamic pilgrimage from Northwest Africa

Islam was brought to North Africa by early Arab warriors conquering territories (Oqba Ben Nafi in 680 and Moussa Ben Nosair in 703-711) and by traders voyaging back and forth along ancient trans-Saharan caravan routes. The first African pilgrimages to Mecca were from Cairo during the era of the Fatamid dynasties (909-1171). These early Muslims, traveling in camel caravans across the Sinai Peninsula to the Hijaz region of Arabia (where Mecca is located), established a route that was used continuously until the 20th century. By the 13th century, pilgrim routes across North Africa from as far west as Morocco linked with the Cairo caravan to Mecca. Three caravans were regularly started from the Moroccan towns of Fez, Marrakech and Sijilmasa. They often combined on the route and proceeded under a united leadership eastward across the North African deserts. Composed of pilgrims, merchants and guards, the great caravans often had a thousand or more camels. Covering perhaps twenty miles a day and visiting the fabled Islamic mosques of Tlemcen (Algeria) and Kairouan (Tunisia), they took many months to reach Egypt. Beginning in the 19th century, a sea route through the southern Mediterranean to Alexandria became the most favored route for Moroccan pilgrims journeying to Mecca.

Early records show that the Islamic pilgrimage tradition in West Africa dates from the 14th century, when certain rulers from the region, recent converts to Islam, began to put the teachings of Islam into practice. These royal pilgrims traveled in opulent style with hundreds of slaves and warriors, carried gifts for the rulers through whose territories they passed, and for safety often joined the trans-Saharan caravans traveling from Morocco to Egypt. With the increasing Islamisation of the West African territories during the 15th and 16th centuries, the practice of royal pilgrimages declined to be replaced by large numbers of peasant pilgrims. Several pilgrimage routes across the sub-Saharan savannas gradually developed between 1600 and 1800 as Islam was introduced to these regions. The dangers and hardships involved in using both the trans-Saharan and savanna pilgrimage routes were extreme. The risk of death on the pilgrimage route from disease, thirst and violence was considerable, as was the possibility of enslavement. During certain periods the conditions were considered so bad that pilgrims departing for Mecca were not expected to return home. On departure they were obliged to sell their property and to give to their wives the choice of divorce if they were not accompanying them.

The 20th century European occupation of the Sahara and savanna lands brought increased security and transportation improvements that were to revolutionize the Mecca pilgrimage and greatly expand the numbers of pilgrims coming from West Africa. By the early 1900's railways were transporting thousands of affluent pilgrims, while the less affluent simply walked along the tracks. Automobile and bus transport further contributed to the growth in pilgrim numbers. By the mid-20th century the savanna route, because of its less rugged terrain, had mostly replaced the far older Saharan route.

In the 1950's the possibility of travel by air still further increased the numbers of pilgrims making the journey to Mecca, but not at the expense of the land routes. The land pilgrimage routes have continued to be popular. Factors explaining this continuing overland pilgrimage include poverty (air fare is too expensive for most Africans), the desire of pilgrims to visit famous places of Islam in North Africa, and, most of all, the belief that the difficulties incurred on the land routes (as contrasted to the rapid and easy air routes) actually increase the spiritual benefit of the pilgrimage. However, a post-colonial factor inhibiting the free movement of pilgrims across North Africa has been the rise in nationalism and the closing of borders to overland travelers. The source countries do not wish to lose their populations, and those countries along the land routes fear the development of substantial minority groups.

Sacred sites in Morocco

Scattered throughout the deserts, coastlines and mountains of Morocco are sacred sites and pilgrimage places specific to the indigenous Berber culture and the Roman, Jewish and Islamic people who settled in the northwest reaches of the African continent. The first inhabitants of this region, called the Maghreb, were the Berbers, (the word Berber is derived from the Greek word barbaros and anthropologists believe the Berbers may have a remote European-Asiatic origin). A Carthaginian trading presence was well established along the Mediterranean coast by the 3rd century BC. The Romans, who built their great city of Volubilis in the interior, followed this in the 1st century AD. The most notable, and lasting, immigrants, however, were the Islamic Arabs who began to enter the Maghreb between 703 and 711.

In 788 (or 787) AD, an event occurred that was to forever change the trajectory of Moroccan culture. Idris ibn Abdallah (or Moulay Idris I as he is called in Morocco), the great-grandson of the Prophet Muhammad fled west from Baghdad and settled in Morocco. The heir to the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus, Moulay had participated in a revolt against the Abbasid dynasty (which had usurped the leadership of the Umayyad dynasty and precipitated the split between the Shia and Sunni sects). Forced to flee Abbasid assassins, Moulay initially found asylum in Tangier but soon thereafter tried to establish himself among the remnants of the old Roman city of Volubilis. Before long he moved to the nearby region of Zerhoun, where he founded the town that is now called either Moulay Idris or Zerhoun (and which is the most venerated pilgrimage site in all of Morocco). The local Berber tribes, passionate neophytes of Islam, were convinced of Moulay's power to lead as both king and iman (spiritual guide) and his exemplary conduct soon ensured his lordship over many of the Berber tribes.

The Holy City of Zerhoun, Morocco
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Courtyard of the Zawiya of Moulay Idris I, Zerhoun, Morocco
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The growing power of Moulay Idris I troubled the Abbasid Caliph, who sent an assassin to poison him in 791. The death of Idris, and the resulting destabilization of the fledgling Moroccan Umayyad state, delighted the Caliph in Baghdad. Before long, however, the picture changed. One of the concubines of Idris I gave birth to a son two months after his father's death. This child grew to be an extraordinary being. Writing of Idris II, the historian Rom Landau, says: "In the lore of the Moroccans, Idris II was a being of almost magical attributes. An exceptional young man he certainly must have been. At many points we are reminded of one of the greatest sages of Islam, Ibn Sina or Avicenna. At the age of four little Idris apparently could read, at five write, at eight he knew the Koran by heart, and by then is said to have mastered the wisdom of all the outstanding savants. He was of real physical strength as well, and when he became officially sovereign in 805 at the age of thirteen, he had already accomplished feats of endurance that men twice his age could not emulate. His profound Islamic faith enhanced all these advantages and increased the veneration accorded him."

In the year 809, Idris II refounded the city of Fez on the left bank of the river Fez (twenty years earlier his father had founded a city on the right bank). During the next nineteen years, until he died in 828 at the age of 35, Idris II began to unify Morocco, to establish its firm allegiance to Islam, and to prepare the way for the Arabization of an amorphous and mainly tribal society. Doing so, he brought together in one faith and under one banner the kernel of a future state. For the next twelve hundred years the monarchic tradition established by Idris I & II maintained its hold on Morocco, and the country's cultural progress became intimately linked to each dynasty in succession. The noble beauty of its great mosques - among the finest examples of Islamic architecture - are due to the patronage of sultans from the Almohad, Marinid and Sa'dian dynasties.

Throughout the centuries the mausoleums (burial sites) of Moulay Idris I in Zerhoun and Moulay Idris II in Fez have become the primary pilgrimage sites in Morocco. (Originally it was thought that Idris II was buried, like his father, in Zerhoun, but the discovery in 1308 of an uncorrupted body in Fez, gave impetus to the establishment of a cult of Moulay Idris II. Local women who come to light candles and incense, and pray for ease in childbirth venerate the cult's shrine. The Sultan Moulay Ismail rebuilt the shrine itself in the 17th century.)

The existence of pilgrimage places, other than the holy shrine of the Ka'ba in Mecca, is a controversial subject in Islam. Orthodox Muslims, following the dictates of Muhammad's revelations in the Koran, will state that there can be no other pilgrimage site than Mecca. Likewise, Orthodoxy maintains that the belief in saints is not Koranic. The reality, however, is that saints and pilgrimage places are extremely popular throughout the Islamic world, particularly in Morocco, Tunisia, Iraq and Shi'ite Iran. Edward Westermarck, a noted scholar of Moroccan culture (Ritual and Belief in Morocco) writes that,

"The cult of saints grew up on the soil of earlier paganism; and its growth was actually furthered by the stern monotheism of Islam, which made intercessors necessary for filling up the gap which separated men from their god. When it spread to Africa it found fresh support in the native ideas of the Berbers; and their belief in soothsaying or holy women has certainly had something to do with the large numbers of female saints among their Islamisised descendants...... A place which is in some way connected with a saint partakes of his baraka and they are marked in different ways and under different names. A noted saint often has a qo'bba or qu'bba erected over his grave. This is usually a square, whitewashed building with a horse-shoe door and an octagonal dome. The qo'bba developed out of the tent which the Arabs of olden times used to pitch over the body of a departed person of importance. The holiest part of a sanctuary in which a saint is buried is the grave itself. The grave of an important saint is often marked with a cenotaph, called darbuz, this being a large chest covered with a colored cloth upon which are embroidered passages from the Koran. The sanctity of a saint is communicated not only to the building in which he is buried and the objects contained in it, but to everything inside his horm or harm, that is, the sacred domain of the saint. The horm may be restricted to the building over his grave, but it may also extend far beyond it. The limits of a saintly horm are often indicated by stone cairns outside the shrine. Very frequently a cairn of stones made at a place where a holy person has rested or camped is whitewashed and has a stick with a white flag stuck into it, and the same is the case with many walled enclosures and rings of stones. White is a clean and auspicious color, which keeps away defilement and evil influences. The town or village around the shrine of some great saint is called his za'wia. Fez is the za'wia of Mulay Idris the younger, Zerhoun is the za'wia of Mulay Idris the elder."

Zawiya of Sidi Ali Bousseerrghine, Sefrou
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A typically Moroccan phenomenon is maraboutism. A marabout is either a saint or his tomb. The saint may be a figure of historical importance in Moroccan culture (such as Moulay Idris I) or a Sufi mystic of sufficient piety or presence to attract a following. In the case of a Sufi saint, his followers often confine themselves to the monastic enclave and retreat (za'wia) into which the saint's dwelling had been transformed, devoting themselves to prayers and charitable works. After the saint's death, his tomb would continue to be visited by followers thus developing into a place of pilgrimage. Dozens of saints from ages past are still revered by Moroccans, and their musims, or feast days are the occasion for the assembling of large crowds at the za'wiya of the saint. Besides their religious functions, Musims feature horse races, folk dancing, song recitals and colorful markets filled with native crafts. The two most important musims are those of Moulay Idris the elder in Zerhoun on August 17 and Moulay Idris the younger in Fez in mid-September.

Besides the mausoleums of Moroccan saints, certain mosques also attract large numbers of pilgrims. Primary among these are the Kairouine mosque of Fez and the Kutubiya (Koutoubia) mosque of Marrakech.

Kairouine Mosque (foreground) and Zawiya of Moulay Idris II (background), Fez, Morocco
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Deep in the center of the oldest part of Fez, the great Kairouine (Qarawiyin) mosque is entirely surrounded by narrow alleyways, clusters of markets and barrack-like houses. Founded in 859 by Fatima, a wealthy woman refugee from the city of Kairouan in Tunisia, the mosque underwent several renovations and additions, most notably those of 956 (when the present minaret was erected), 1135 and 1289. The inside of the mosque is simple and austere, consisting of sixteen white-painted naves separated from one another by rows of horseshoe arches born on plain columns; it accommodates 22,700 worshippers who may enter through seventeen separate gates. Adjacent to the mosque is a spacious courtyard whose floor is intricately tiled with hundreds of thousands of precisely cut black and white stones. In the center of the courtyard is a bubbling fountain and at each end there stands an open-air pavilion supported on slender marble columns. The historian Rom Landau writes that, "these columns are covered with intricate carving, and they support arches whose similarly carved surfaces suggest the incisions of a silversmith rather than the work of a stone-carver. Indeed these arches might well be described as pieces of jewelry rather than of architecture. With its back-wall pierced by open-arched doorways, the green tiles on the roof, and its profusion of colored tiles, the entire yard has an almost operatic light-heartedness." In addition to its unique architecture the Kairouine mosque has the honor of being one of the oldest universities in the world. Among its students were the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides, the brilliant Ibn al-Arabi, and the 10th century Christian Pope, Silvester II, who encountered the Arabic numerals and decimal system that he later introduced to Europe.

Courtyard and minaret of Zawiya of Moulay Idriss II, Fez, Morocco
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With the fall of the Idrisid dynasty and the rise of the Almoravids (1068-1145), the seat of Moroccan government moved from the city of Fez south to Marrakesh. The great mosque of Marrakech is called the Kutubiya and it derives its name from the kutubiyin, or booksellers, that originally clustered about the base of the mosque. Begun around 1150, shortly after the conquest of the city by the Almohad dynasty (1145-1250), it was completed by Sultan Yacoub Mansour in 1199. The pride of the Kutubiya is its minaret; soaring to a height of 77 meters, it is one of the most impressive in the entire Islamic world. Persian, Turkish and Egyptian minarets are usually cylindrical or octagonal; that of the Kutubiya is square, possibly inspired by the Umayyad minaret in Kairouan, Tunisia. Whereas the minarets of Islam's eastern regions are mostly white, brick-built or covered with tiles, the Kutubiya minaret is made of huge blocks of ochre-red local stone that subtly change their hue with the changing angle of the sun's rays. The great mosque, one of the largest in all of Africa, comfortably accommodates more than 25,000 worshippers.

Marrakech has also long been famous for the numerous saints buried in its cemeteries and to whom the dwellers of the city and those from the surrounding countryside have always shown great devotion. In the 17th century, the sultan Moulay Ismail, in an attempt to offset the influence of the pilgrimage known as "The Seven Saints of the Regraga" (undertaken yearly by the tribes in the Chiadma territory), decided that Marrakech should have its own important pilgrimage. The man he put in charge of this project was Sheikh el Hassan el Youssi whose task it was to choose from among the many popular saints of Marrakesh who had lived between the 12th and 16th centuries. Basing his selection on the renown of certain saints, and mindful of the mystical importance of the number seven, he organized the first "Ziara des Sebatou Rijal", the Pilgrimage of the Seven Saints of Marrakech. These seven shrines continue to be visited today.

Other sacred sites, power places and pilgrimage shrines in Morocco

• Zawia (also spelled Zaouia) of Sidi Rahhal, east of Marrakech
• Zawia of Mulay Bus'aib, Azemmur
• Zawia of the Wazaan shereefs, Wazaan
• Zawia of Mulay Buselham, on coast, south of Laraiche
• Kaf l-ihudi cave on Mt. Jbel Binna, near Sefrou
• Jbel l-Hdar holy mountain
• Holy hill outside town of Demnat
• Hilltop shrine of Lalla Tamjlujt, Atlas mountains, sacred to tribe of Unzutt
• Holy hill above village of z-Zemmij, Andjra
• Shrine of Boujad
• Zawia of Mulay Abd as-Salim ibn Mashish, Mt. al-Alam, Rif mountains, near Chefchaouen
• Zawia of Sidi Harazin, near Fez
• Zawia of Sidi Kacen, near Tanjier
• Zawia of Sidi Ahhmed Tijane, Fez
• Zawia of Sidi Ali Bousserghine, Sefrou
• Shines of Seven saints of Marrakesh (Sidi Bel Abbes, Sidi Mohammed ben Slimane, etc)

Readers interested in exploring Berber and Islamic holy places in more detail should consult Ritual and Belief in Morocco (volume 1) by Edward Westermarck.

Also consult:

Non-Hajj Pilgrimage in Islam: A Neglected Dimension of Religious Circulation; Bhardwaj, Surinder M.; Journal of Cultural Geography, vol. 17:2, Spring/Summer 1998

Sufism: Its Saints and Shrines: An Introduction to the Study of Sufism with Special Reference to India; Subhan, John A.; Samuel Weiser Publisher; New York; 1970

Minaret of Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakesh
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Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakesh
http://www.sacredsites.com/africa/morocco/morocco.html

History of Jihad against the Berbers of North Africa – Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco(640-711) http://www.historyofjihad.org/africa.html How the Jihadis mercilessly vandalized the gentle pre-Islamic Berbers of North Africa - Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and transformed them eventually into bloodthirsty aggressors who vandalized Spain (640-711)
______________________________________ According to al-Bukhari [d. 869] an early Muslim jurist; Some of the more salient features of dhimmitude include: the prohibition of arms for the vanquished non-Muslims (dhimmis), and ringing of church bells; restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches, synagogues, and temples; inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims with regard to taxes and penal law; the refusal of dhimmi testimony by Muslim courts; a requirement that Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims, including Zoroastrians and Hindus, wear special clothes; and the overall humiliation and abasement of non-Muslims. It is important to note that these regulations and attitudes were institutionalized as permanent features of the sacred Islamic law, or Shari'a. _______________________________________ Jihad against North Africa – The Arab Muslim aggression against the Berbers of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco The Berbers were the ancient indigenous people of North Africa west of Egypt. They were made up of many tribes, but they managed to maintain their culture, their Hamitic languages, and considerable military power during successive invasions of their land. In ancient times, North Africa had been colonized by the Phoenicians (who became the Carthaginians), they were followed by the Romans, the Vandals (one of the Germanic tribes that destroyed the Roman Empire), the Byzantines, and finally the Arabs. Other foreigners, notably Greeks and Jews, also ruled parts of ancient North Africa at different times. ______________________________ Kahina – the brave Berber Princess held off the Arab hordes for twenty years At the time of the Arab aggression, the Berbers were ruled by a Queen of Jewish descent. Her name was Kahina (also spelt Cahina). Kahina's name is also given variously as Dahiyah, Dahia, or Dhabba (Women in World History, v.8, p. 414.) The title Kahina meant Prophetess. The Encyclopedia Judaica (v. 10, p. 686) says that the term is derived from the old Hebrew "Kahin" ("soothsayer") while some other sources say that "Kahina" was derived from the Hebrew root of the modern Jewish term "Cohen". __________________________________ In the 7th century, the Berbers lived in uneasy peace with the Byzantines, who ruled the coastal cities of North Africa, after defeating the Vandals a century before. The ancient city of Carthage was the Byzantine capital in Africa. Some Berbers were Christians (with a notable tendency towards heresy), some were Jewish, and some adhered to their ancient polytheist religion. Before the end of the century the region faced a new calamity, the traditional rivals of the Berbers, the Byzantines were defeated and driven from Africa by the Muslim Arab hordes who poured out of the Arabian Peninsula and flattened everything in their wake. The Arab invasion of Egypt that had started in 639 had crossed Libya by 642 and by 643, the Arabs hordes started ravaging Berber lands. In the Arab Muslim invaders, the Berbers who had crossed swords with the Vandals Visigoths, Romans, Greeks faced a foe with a ruthlessness, that the Berbers had never encountered before. Surrender to this invader called for the surrender of not just sovereignty, but also of the ancient Berber religion, language and identity. At the time of the death of the false Prophet Mohammed in 632, Muslims ruled only in Arabia. But within ten years the Arab Muslims had achieved one of the most spectacular conquests in history. They conquered Palestine (635-636), Syria (638-640), and Egypt (639-642) from the Byzantines and first Iraq (635-637) and then Persia itself (637-642) from the Persians. Wherever they went, most of the people were forced to become Muslims and Arabic-speakers. The converted people forgot their language and identity and started considering themselves to be Arabs. This happened with Palestine (today's Israel), Syria, Levant (today's Jordan), Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and also partly with Sudan, and Somalia. This trend was reversed only in Persia, where the people, in spite of the brutal Arab conquest, re-asserted their pre-Islamic Persian language after three hundred years of Arab tyranny. But everywhere else the Arab conquest, Arabized the Middle East and North Africa permanently. ______________________________ A typical Berber lady. The Berbers do not traditionally keep their women in the Hijab (the tent-like cloak worn by Arab Muslim women). When the Arabs invaded North-West Africa, the Berbers were ruled by a resourceful Queen of Jewish descent named Kahina. After the Arab general Hassan ibn al Numan took Carthage from the Byzantines, Kahina's forces defeated him. Then, as during World War II, a single defeat in North Africa might lead to a retreat of hundreds of miles. Hassan retreated, probably all the way back to Egypt. Following his retreat, Kahina took Carthage and ruled most of Berber North Africa. __________________________________ In the 680s the Arabs swept across North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic. For some time the Byzantines clung to their coastal cities, as the Arab Jihadis in their tearing hurry to cover as much land as possible raced towards the Atlantic. When the Jihadi general Oqba ibn Nafi reached the Atlantic in Morocco and, according to legend, rode into the sea and slashed at the water with his sword in frustration that there were no more lands to conquer. On his return march in 683, the haughty and cruel Oqba was defeated and slain by the Berbers. After this defeat, the Arab aggression paused for a decade but in 698 the Muslims finally took Carthage, evicting the Byzantine Christians completely from Africa. Now the Muslim aggressors faced their last and most stubborn enemy – the Berbers. Kahina – the brave Berber Princess held off the Arab hordes for twenty years At the time of the Arab aggression, the Berbers were ruled by a Queen of Jewish descent. Her name was Kahina (also spelt Cahina). Kahina's name is also given variously as Dahiyah, Dahia, or Dhabba (Women in World History, v.8, p. 414.) The title Kahina meant Prophetess. The Encyclopedia Judaica (v. 10, p. 686) says that the term is derived from the old Hebrew "Kahin" ("soothsayer") while some other sources say that "Kahina" was derived from the Hebrew root of the modern Jewish term "Cohen". The Encyclopedia Judaica notes that Arabic authors, notably the major 14th century historian Ibn-Khaldun, say that Kahina and her tribe, the Jerawa of the Aures Mountains in eastern Algeria and Tunisia, were Jewish. Charles-André Julien, in his History of North Africa, notes that another writer gave Kahina "the picturesque appellation of the 'Berber Deborah'" (after Deborah, the judge of ancient Israel). Julien believes that Kahina 's resistance to the Arabs was "nurtured, as it seems, by Berber patriotism and Jewish faith." On the other hand, the Encyclopedia Judaica concludes "her opposition to the Muslim Arabs was not religiously inspired; some authorities deny she was Jewish. The history of Kahina remains controversial." What is known is that soon after the Arab general Hassan ibn al Numan took Carthage from the Byzantines, Kahina's forces defeated him. Then, as during World War II, a single defeat in North Africa might lead to a retreat of hundreds of miles. Hassan retreated, probably all the way back to Egypt. Following his retreat, Kahina took Carthage and ruled most of Berber North Africa. ______________________________ A Berber warrior. The Berbers differ from the Arabs in their ethnicity. This is reflected in the differences in language customs, dress habits. The schism between the native Berbers and the invading Arabs continues to this day. The Algerian civil war was in part between the Berbers and the Arabs. __________________________________ According to Ibn-Khaldun, as she waited for the inevitable renewed Arab assault, Kahina carried out a brutal and disastrous policy. She declared that the Arabs wished to conquer North Africa only because of its wealth. She ordered Berbers who were still nomadic to destroy the cities, orchards, and herds of sedentary Berbers, to make North Africa a desert. If Kahina actually made this amazing decision, she was tragically mistaken. The Arabs were determined to take North Africa regardless of its wealth or poverty, because their sole aim was to convert the people to Islam, and because North Africa was a gateway to Spain and Europe. Unsurprisingly, according to Ibn-Khaldun, this savage policy of city burning cost Kahina the support of city-dwelling Berbers. In 702, Hassan again invaded the Berber lands and quickly defeated Kahina. after she lost the final battle, Kahina ordered her sons to go over to the enemy." Her sons had to convert to Islam to seal their defection to the Arabs. Julien believes that for Kahina, the survival of her family and its supremacy over her tribe were ultimately more important than any questions of nationalism or religion. Accounts differ as to whether Kahina died in battle or was captured and executed. The advantage which the nomadic invaders like the Arabs had over settled city dwellers like the Persians and Romans did not hold for nomadic Berbers Over the ages, the conflict between nomadic and settled peoples, and between rural and urban peoples, has been the most important factor in history. This theory seemed to account for many events in the ancient history of the Middle East, as well as the fall of the Roman Empire to the Germanic Goth and Vandals and also for the swift Arab conquest of the Byzantines and Persians. It is still a good theoretical model for some modern conflicts. Many of the wars of modern world have been primarily conflicts between mobile nomadic terrorists and city people. A case in point are the wars of the Taliban in Afghanistan against the settled Govt. of Kabul in the late 1990s. Obviously the tale of Kahina 's destruction of the North African cities and her subsequent loss of the support of city-dwellers fits well into this worldview. This also explains the stubborn resistance that the Berbers put up against the Arabs, while pushing back the Arabs over and over again in the next few centuries. Even till today the conflict in Algeria is an expression of this hoary Arab-Berber conflict. ______________________________ The Berbers who once occupied the entire stretch of land along the coast of Libya, Tunisia through Algeria up to Morocco, have today been pushed into the fastness of the Sahara desert, indicated here by the blue blob in Southern Algeria, North-eastern Mali and North-Western Niger. The Berbers still continue to cling on in small clusters along the fertile coast, which has been largely occupied by the Arab Muslim invaders. Today most of the Berbers have been converted to Islam. But some continue to practice their pre-Islamic nature worshipping religious practices in the remote fastness of the Sahara desert. __________________________________ There are several references to the nature of Berber resistance in the translation by Franz Rosenthal. Ibn-Khaldun notes that the Berbers were given to rebellion and heresy under the Muslims, just as they had been under the Christian Byzantines, before the Muslim conquest. The Berbers continued to rebel and apostatized time after time. The Muslims massacred many of them. Centuries after Islam had been established among the Berber tribes, they continued reverting to their animistic practices and continued revolting and seceding. To merge Islam with their native animism, they adopted dissident [Kharajite] opinions many times. Ibn Abi Zayd said that the Berbers in the Maghrib [North Africa] revolted twelve times and that Islam become firmly established among them only during the governorship of Musa ben Nusayr and thereafter. That is what is meant by the statement reported on the authority of 'Umar, that "Ifriqiyah [Africa] divides the hearts of its inhabitants." The statement refers to the great number of tribes and groups there, which causes them to be disobedient and unmanageable. The Berber tribes in the West are innumerable. All of them are nomads and members of different tribal groups and families. Whenever one tribe is destroyed, another takes its place and is as refractory and rebellious as the former one had been. Therefore, it has taken the Arabs a long time to establish their dynasty in the land of Ifriqiyah. (Rosenthal translation, p. 333) Berber resistance to Islam The story of the Berber resistance to Islam begins after the Arab defeat of the Byzantines and conquest of Carthage. With the defeat of the Byzantines, they were expelled, but the Arabs were not yet the masters of the country. In the interior provinces the Berbers maintained a disorderly resistance to the religion and power of the Arabs. ______________________________ The colorful liberated existence of the Berber women reflects the pre-Islamic culture of the Berbers that has more in common with that of African womanhood, rather than the cloistered hijab-enclosed one of the Arab Muslim women. __________________________________ In the face of repeated Berber counterattacks, the cruel gangsters of the Muslim marauder Hassan were inadequate to hold North Africa peacefully. During some Berber counterattacks, the Arab conquests of many years were lost in a single day; and the Arab chieftains, overwhelmed by the Berber torrent, repeatedly retired to the confines of Egypt, and appealed for succor from the caliph. The same rebellious Berber spirit was revived under the tyranny of Musa, the successor of Hassan; it was finally quelled by the repeated waves of bloodletting by Musa and his two sons; but the number of the rebels may be presumed from that of three hundred thousand Berber captives; sixty thousand of whom, the caliph's fifth, were sold for the profit of the public treasury. Thirty thousand of the Berber youth were forcibly conscripted in to the Muslim army to be used for the invasion of Spain. In their climate and government, their diet and habitation, the wandering Berbers resembled the Arabs of the desert. And gradually the Berbers, accepted Islam and with the religion they also accepted the Arabic as a second language, Arabic names, and also the history of Arabs. This way the blood of the Arab strangers and Berber natives was insensibly mingled; and the impression was created that from the Euphrates to the Atlantic the same nation was diffused over the sandy plains of Asia and Africa. Yet in spite of this dissolution of Berber identity in that of the Arabs, some of the Berber tribes still retain their original language, with the appellation and character of White Africans. (Gibbon, v. 2, p. 279-280) ______________________________ A Berber male. In spite of being Arabized the Berbers, have retained their original African ethnicity. The tradition of painting their faces is one such element. This is not prevalent among the Arabs. __________________________________ After the defeat of the Berbers, the ancient polytheistic religions of North Africa disappeared. Most Berbers became Muslims (with a persistent taste for heresy). Many Berbers became Arabic-speakers; while some retained their own languages to be spoken in the privacy of their homes. Berbers were prominent among the Muslim conquerors of Spain. Christianity almost disappeared in North Africa west of Egypt. The Jews were more stubborn and persisted in a few areas, especially in the Atlas Mountains. The Jewish presence in North Africa was revived by a tragedy in the late 15th and early 16th Centuries. After the completion of the Christian Reconquest of Spain in 1492, the Inquisition gave the Muslims and Jews of Spain the alternatives of conversion to Catholicism or expulsion. Large numbers of Spanish Jews, as well as most Spanish Muslims, immigrated to Africa. ______________________________ A tombstone from Carthage with the symbol of the pre-Islamic Berber goddess Tanit. The goddess Tanit was brought to Africa by the Phoenicians, in about 800 BC. Tanit was a moon goddess, maybe the same as Ishtar or Astarte. She also seems to have absorbed an older Berber goddess. People thought of Tanit as being married to another Phoenician god, Baal. Tanit's symbol appears on gravestones and temples all over North Africa, not just during the Carthaginian period but all through the Roman Empire too, until most people converted to Islam about 700 AD. Then Tanit faded away. __________________________________ Another dramatic foreign event ended the long Jewish presence in North Africa. The establishment of Israel in 1948 caused a rise in active anti-Semitism in North Africa. This, combined with the retreat of European colonialism and the independence of Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, and finally Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s, led to a mass emigration of Jews. For the first time in about 2000 years, North Africa had almost no Jews. Today even ruins associated with Jews can be a magnet for violence in North Africa. On April 11, 2002 a truck bomb loaded with fuel exploded outside an ancient, abandoned synagogue on the tourist island of Djerba off the coast of Tunisia. Besides the suicide bomber, twenty people were killed, most of them German tourists. German investigators said the attack was the work of al-Qaida. The Algerian civil war was in a way a Berber-Arab war The Berbers are still a major presence in North Africa and are still often at odds with their rulers. An Associated Press article published June 1, 2002 ("Algerian prime minister's party wins election majority") reported that Berbers are about one-third of Algeria's population and that about sixty people had been killed in riots between Berbers and police in the Kabyle region in 2001 and early 2002. Most North African Jews went to Israel, where they are a significant part of the population and the armed forces. Memories are long in the Middle East. Perhaps some Israelis from North Africa consider Israel's victories a long-delayed revenge for the Arab conquest of the Berbers and the death of Kahina .

The Daring Daughters of Kahena (not fully accurate)

By Ann Marie Maxwell

Max Freedom Long was a young American student of world religions who, in 1917, took a teaching job in Hawaii. There he heard of guarded references to native magicians known as "Kahunas," who could heal by magic, kill at a distance, control the weather, and see into the future and change it. In time he realized that it was all part of an ancient religion, one that we know today as "Huna," the secret.

His curiosity aroused, he witnessed some miraculous healings and the apparent control of the weather, animals and other elements by Kahunas, the priests/sorcerers or keepers of the secret. He also learned that when Christian missionaries had come to the islands to rule the natives, they outlawed the Kahunas and banned their practices, driving them underground.

Long was consumed by such a passionate desire to understand the magic that it became a life-long obsession. But after years of patient and earnest research on the islands, he finally gave up and went home without a clue. The natives, who witnessed the destruction of ancient Hawaiian traditions wrought by the well-intentioned Christian settlers, stopped revealing their secrets to any Haole (non-Hawaiian). They refused to teach them to even a trusted and sincere friend like Max Long.

At home, Long could not get Huna out of his mind. He deeply regretted his inability to help preserve the ancient skills, which were by then in danger of being lost forever because young Hawaiians were no longer interested in learning them. He remembered the healing and other feats of magic he had witnessed and so passionately wanted to understand and share with others. He remembered, too, his painstaking efforts to make himself trusted and his thorough study of the Hawaiian language. Then at last it occured to him: If something could be done, there had to be words to describe it.

Returning eagerly to his studies, he searched the Hawaiian vocabulary for words corresponding to the effects he sought to understand. After more diligent work, he, in his own words, cracked the code and put together his first book, "Recovering the Ancient Magic," (Rider & Co., London, 1936).

A year after the publication of the book, Long received a letter from a retired English journalist, William Reginald Stewart, who said that "Recovering the Ancient Magic" described the same magic that he, in his youthful travels, had seen and learned from an Amazigh woman in the Atlas Mountains.

Not only that, wrote Stewart, some Hawaiian words were the same as those of a secret, magical language of the Amazighs. The Hawaiian word Kahuna (Kahuna Wahini or Kahini for a female) was the Amazigh word Kahena for a sorceress. The words for a god, too, were almost identical, "akua" in Hawaiian and "atua" in the Amazigh sorcery language. In addition, the similarity of Kahuna, Kahena, and Kahini to the ancient Indian Tantric work for a goddess or a woman of wisdom and power, "Dakini (sky walker)," presents us with the mind-boggling geographic array of Hawaii, India, and North Africa, all with different languages, but all using virtually the same word for wise, powerful women.

In his letter, Stewart described his adventures at the end of the last century in North Africa where he was prospecting for oil and corresponding to the Christian Science Monitor. Having heard about a tribe in the Atlas Mountains whose Kahena was a famous magician, he took his vacation, hired guides and set out to find the tribe and its sorceress. High in the Atlas Mountains, he did, at last, find her. She was the last Kahena still alive, for by Stewart's time the Amazigh Kahenas, sadly, had all died but one, Lucchi. Luckily for Stewart she was just about to begin the training of her seventeen-year-old daughter in the magical arts.

Stewart was a bit more fortunate than Long was to be some twenty years later. By dint of persistence and persuasiveness, he got himself adopted as Lucchi's "blood son" and was allowed to join mother and daughter in the training. But his inability to speak the Amazigh tongue forced him to laboriously match school book French to Tamazight to understand Lucchi and the secret magical language. The delay turned out to be costly.

When the training finally began, Lucchi first revealed the legendary history of the Amazighs which told of twelve tribes, all with Kahenas, living in the Sahara in times so ancient that it was then a green and fertile land. But when the rivers began to dry up, the tribes had to move. They eventually settled in the Aures and Kabyle Mountains of the coast, the Atlas Mountains north of the Sahara of modern Tunisia and Morocco. Amazigh descendants, the Tuaregs or "The Blue People," immigrated south of the Sahara to settle in the Ahaggar and Tassili N'Ajjer Mountains of Algeria and the Air Mountains of present-day Niger. Other tribes began to move into the Nile valley where they ruled, the legends said, and built the great pyramids. But, foreseeing a coming time of great intellectual darkness in the world and wanting to preserve their precious secrets for a future golden age, the Egyptian Amazigh tribes decided to scatter to other lands where they hoped to perpetuate their teachings.

Some went to India and others traveled to the Pacific's then-uninhabited islands, by way of the Red Sea. This dovetails nicely with a Hawaiian legend of their origins that begins with "a journey across the Red Sea of Kane," Kane being a principle Hawaiian god.

In the subsequent part of the training, Lucchi demonstrated her powers to heal the sick and control birds, beasts, serpents, and the weather. Theoretical studies finally behind him, Stewart was ready for practical applications. Unfortunately, to the horror of Stewart and Lucchi's daughter, a stray bullet from a skirmish between two raiding parties in the valley below struck and killed the Kahena. Without a teacher -he presumed that the daughter knew little more than he did- Stewart returned to his other activities and eventually forgot about the Amazighs until he read Long's book.

Centuries after the exodus and the spread of the Amazigh tribes, when bronze-age mariners ventured to the shores of what are now Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, they found there a Caucasian race of matriarchal people who called themselves Imazighen -"the free." The name Berber by which they are commonly known may come from the Greek "barbaroi," meaning foreigner. The 14th century North African historian, Ibn Khaldun, however, described them as a people from the land of "Ber."

As early as 1200 B.C., Phoenician sailors, coming from what is now Lebanon, recorded that they found in North Africa (then called Libya), a race of Caucasians who worshipped the sun and sacrificed to the moon. Soon the Phoenicians became North Africa's first known conquerors and settled in what is now Tunisia. From there they exercised dominion over North Africa and the Mediterranean for more than a thousand years.

A famous Phoenician queen, Dido, founded the fabled city of Carthage near modern Tunis, where she successfully defended it against the forces of her brother who sought to unseat her in about 980 B.C. By 150 B.C., Carthage was the greatest maritime power in the world. It had successfully disputed with Rome in two of three Punic wars and sent Hannibal over the Alps to conquer Spain and invade Italy. But in the third Punic War, Rome ended Carthaginian rule (by 140 B.C.) and reduced Dido's empire to a Roman province.

Amazigh women are thought to be the Amazons recorded by Diodorus Siculus: They led their men to war, mutilated their enemies, and hennaed cowardly men. Pre-lslamic desert Amazighs were described as entirely matriarchal.

By 682 A.D., during the Islamic invasions of North Africa, a legendary woman, Dhabba the Kahena or Dahia-Kahena, queen of Carthage, ruler of the Amazighs and Mauritanians, rallied her forces when Islamic Arabs captured re-built Carthage in 698 and drove them from her city. To leave nothing for successive Arab invaders, she laid waste to her own country and was credited with preventing Islam's southward spread into the Sudan.

She was also known as Kahena the veiled queen of Jerawa (a tribe of the Aures Mountains), and was called the most famous and savage of the feminine enemies of Islam in North Africa. Kahena, of Jewish faith according to Ibn Khaldun, who said that her tribe had converted to Judaism, continued to fight the Arabs until her death in battle in 702 A.D. She is called the Ancestral Queen Mother of the Amazighs.

The tall, noble, proud, fierce and nomadic Tuaregs (Imucagh or free people) live in the Ahaggar and Tassili N'Ajjer Mountains of Algeria and the Air Mountains of Niger. They are called "The Blue People" because the indigo dye of the robes they wore, that are now saved for wear at fairs and festivals only, colored their skin blue. They trace their origins as a separate people to an Amazigh desert matriarch, Queen Tin Hinan, who led them on a desert trek to the Ahaggar Mountains.

In Tuareg custom, only the men are veiled, women wear a head-dress. The sight of a veiled Tuareg noble astride his prized white camel is romantic and arresting. However, it was a sight thought to strike terror in the hearts of all who beheld them sweeping across the desert in raids on caravans and tourists for bounty and slaves -a pursuit that made the Tuareg tribes wealthy and powerful. They have been feared and respected as the daring, deadly warriors they once were for as long as merchants have crossed the Sahara.

Now that the deserts are plied by trucks and so much of the tribesmen's livestock has been destroyed by drought, Tuareg nobles no longer rule their world. Some still keep livestock, while others now lead tours to the ancient, enigmatic rock paintings at Tassili N'Ajjer, northeast of the Ahaggar, and still others work in cities. Although the freedom loving people understandably dread the perhaps inevitable, future transition to a settled, rural life style, they continue to be proud and noble.

Although the unveiled Tuareg women have lost some of their power after their conversion to Islam in the 11th Century, they still retain more economic and social power than most of their present urban counterparts. They live in a completely matrilineal society. Tuareg women regard themselves as men's equals, marry at will, speak in council and serve as heads of encampments. Wives go where they please, hold property, teach and govern the home. Tuareg children, in this distinctly classed society, have their mother's rank and regard maternal uncles as next of kin. Matriarchs preside over some tribes and the men who head others are chosen by women.

Another famous female Amazigh warrior was Barshako who dressed as a man and led camel raids on other tribes. She is said to have returned home only to dismiss her husband, saying that she could no longer cook and keep house for a man.

Amazigh women are famed for their beauty as well as for their energy, strength, and the heavy work they cheerfully perform. In the huge, opulent homes of the Islamic Caliphs of Baghdad, Egypt, Spain and Istanbul, captured Amazigh women were described as the most beautiful of the beautiful, as well as the most desirable and entertaining. The mother of the second Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad was an Amazigh slave named Sallama. Zineb Nafzawi, one of the most famous Amazigh queens, shared power with her husband after the Islamic conquest of Spain, led by Islamicized Amazighs. Together, she and her husband ruled a huge empire extending from North Africa to Spain, between 1061 and 1107. When the Spanish expelled the Moslems from Spain at the end of the l5th century, many Andalusians, who were of Amazigh ancestry, settled in North Africa. From there some engaged in piracy, raiding the Mediterranean for slaves and treasure. Sayyida Al-Hurra was so successful a pirate leader that she became the governor of Tetouan, Morocco. She retained the office for many years and was the undisputed leader of pirates of the western Mediterranean, while her ally, the famous Turkish Barbaros of Algiers, led the pirates of the eastern Mediterranean. Sayyida was a key player in the political game between the Mediterranean powers as well. After the death of her first husband she married the king of Morocco (on her terms, requiring him to come to her for their wedding). She reined in Morocco from 1510 to 1542.

As recently as in the last century, an Amazigh prophetess, Fatma n Soumer or Lalla Fatma (Lalla, "Lady") took part in the resistance to the French in Kabylia in 1854, leading the North African peoples to war once more against the invading French. It took an army of 30,000 to finally defeat the prophetess. But the Kabyles remained unconquered until 1933.

The freedom and independence of Amazigh women is well known. An Algerian traveler, Al Warthilani, complained about the women in some Algerian towns who went about unveiled, exhibiting their ravishing beauty and shapely breasts! Ibn Batuta, too, in his wide travels, registered complaints about Islamic women's nudity elsewhere, of course. During Warthilani's pilgrimage to Mecca, Amazigh women from the Beni Amer tribe joined his caravan and virtually drove the pious man mad, displaying their bare-armed, bare-legged charms and gaily trying to seduce those men whose attention they attracted. Claiming divine powers, whether in jest or in all seriousness, the flirtatious girls threatened anyone who rebuked them, (which Warthilani did) with disaster! Their curses seemed to materialize too, he whined, calling the playful girls slaves of Satan.

Freedom for some Aures Mountain Amazighs extended as far as free love and polygamy. In the same Aures Mountains that spawned Kahena (north-east of the Ouled Nail, home of the Nailiyat, who will be discussed at length later), some girls of the Azriya tribe enjoyed ample sexual freedom, their inaccessible location protecting them from officials, tourists and the fame (or infamy, to patriarchal prudes), of their Ouled Nail sisters. The Azriyat (plural of Azriya) of two communities, the Ouled Abdi and the Ouled Daoud, were dancers who traveled from mountain village to mountain village to perform as well as have sexual relations with their patrons.

If she became pregnant an Azriya kept her child and was feted by the villagers with baby showers to insure the child's good fortune. Most Azriyat would eventually marry, and/or, if they were financially successful, perhaps make the pilgrimage to Mecca to insure their Islamic status. But they were always accepted by their own community.

An Aures Mountain woman shares equally the hard labor of ploughing, sowing, harvesting, grinding and shepherding with the men. Equality and independence was exercised by some girls by eloping with a group of young men, and after the honeymoon returning home with those they chose as husbands. Later, in the 1950's, however, the nationalist movement established headquarters in the Aures Mountains and considerably curbed those liberties.

In Morocco, Amazighs account for at least one half of the total population. Today, while many Amazighs are citified and Islamicized, many more still live in pueblo-like, mud homes in villages of the Atlas and Rif Mountains of the Sahara where they honor their ancient heritage. Many are still semi-nomadic. Many remain matrilineal. They are well known for their strength, independence, bravery and fighting spirit. Despite some intermarriage with Arabophones and Islam's prohibitions against liberty for women, many mountain Amazigh women, while paying lip-service to that religion, still remain quite free.

Every year in September, Moroccan Amazighs, especially those of Ait Haddidou, gather on the Imilchil plateau in the Atlas Range for the annual Moussem or festival, combining a local saint's day with a market. This one is the Bridal Fair.

During the three days of livestock trading, jewelry, clothes and kitchenware vending, sweet-mint-tea-drinking, respect-paying at the domed, white tomb of a marabout (saint), and family and friend reunions, young Amazigh eyes eagerly scan the lanes between tents and stalls for glimpses of prospective brides and grooms.

Swathed in deep blue, striped woolen capes, adorned with huge amber, coal, turquoise and silver necklaces, some displaying the emblem of the Carthaginian Great Godess of the Sky, Tanitt, the ravishing, rouged and khol-eyed marriageable daughters of Kahena gather, gossiping and jesting, to discreetly study prospective grooms who, in turn, scope out the bulkily-clad girls as best they can.

On the last day comes the choosing. Women and girls promenade down the central path while their suitors rush to grab the hands of their favorites. When her hand is seized the girl can accept or reject by clasping, his hand or pulling hers away until she and the man of her choice find each other and proceed, hand in hand, to stand together before the notary.

Later, after the harvest, the traditional marriage of a virgin bride will take place: First there is a mock fight between members of the two families, then comes the bride's ride on a sheepskin-saddled donkey to the groom's house and finally, she is carried over the threshold by her mother-in-law. Unless, of course, she has already been married and divorced. The majority of brides at the fair wear the peak headdress of a divorced or widowed woman while virgins wear flat headdresses.

These Atlas Amazighs, like their playful Aures Mountain and queenly Tuareg cousins, can divorce at will and retain their dowries. They can and do marry as many times as they wish, choosing a new husband every year if they like. Now that's some freedom!

Note

In fairness, it must be added that the sentiments expressed about sexual freedom and pious Muslims are this author's, and emphatically not those of Lazreg, who seems to have included the examples of sexual freedom on the part of Algerian women, without identifying them as Amazighs, simply to refute stereotypes about Islamic, Middle Eastern women in general and Algerian women in particular. Note, however, that Lazreg is very critical of feminist writings and especially the mythologizing of heroines like Kahena. Moreover, she claims that the Kabyle Amazigh intellectual movement is anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and regards pride in a distinct Amazigh identity as irreligious and unpatriotic.

References

[1] Algeria, Berlitz Country Guide, MacMillan. Switzerland, 1990.

[2] The Berbers of Morocco, Alan Keohane, Hamish Hamilton, Ltd., Penguin Books, London, 1991.

[4] The Eloquence of Silence, Algerian Women in Question, Marnia Lazreg, Routledge, N.Y., London, 1994.

[5] The Encyclopedia of Amazons, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Anchor Doubledy, N.Y., 1992.

[6] The Forgotten Queens of Islam, Fatima Mernissi, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1993.

[6] Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries of Africa and Arabia, David Hatcher Childress, Adventures Unlimited Press, 1993.

[7] National Geographic, January 1980, Berber Bride's Fair, Carla Hunt, Photos by Nik Wheeler.

[9] lbid, June 1960, "Algeria," Howard LaFay.

[10] Ibid. November 1965, "I Joined a Sahara Salt Caravan," Victor Englebert.

[11] Ibid, June 1968, "Trek by Mule Among Moroccan Berbers," Victor Englebert.

[12] Ibid, August 1973, "Algeria: Learning to Live With Independence," Thomas Abercrombie.

[13] Ibid, April 1974, "Drought Threatens the Tuareg World," Victor Englebert.

[14] Ibid, August 1979, "The Inadan, Artisans of the Sahara," Michael and Aubine Kirtley.

[16] The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, Barbara Walker, Haprer and Row, San Francisco.

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