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UCLA Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies Title Afrabia: Africa and the Arabs in the New World Order Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9896d35t Journal Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 20(3) ISSN 0041-5715 Author Mazrui, Ali Publication Date 1992 DOI 10.5070/F7203016755 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California 51 AFRABIA: AFRICA AND TilE ARABS IN TiiE NEW WORLD ORDER Ali A. Mazrui Let me begin this essay on African-Arab relations with two models of historic reconciliation involving other societies. The Anglo­ American model traces the transition from hostility to fraternity in the relations between the people of Britain and those of the United States from the late eighteenth century to the First World War. Are there lessons to be learnt which are relevant for relations between Arabs and Africans historically? The second model of reconciliation traces the transition from enmity to friendship between the United States and Japan from 1941 into the 1990s. Are there other lessons to be learnt in this America­ Japanese model which are also pertinent for African-Arab relations in historical perspective? Let us look at these two models of reconciliation more closely. · It was, of course, in 1776 that the Americans started their rebellion against the British. It became the American war of independence. For at least a century the British were a people the Americans loved most to hate. This included one additional war between the Americans and the British in 1812. Tcxlay, Great Britain is perhaps the United States' closest ally­ perhaps closer than even Israel and Canada are to Washington. The wounds of 1776 and 1812 between the Americans and the British have more than just healed. A new and deeper sense of shared identity has been forged. In 1964 a revolution occurred in Zanzibar against a government which was perceived as Arab-led and a monarchy which was perceived as Omani. Bitter bloodletting and venomous hatred occurred between Swahilized Arabs on one side and Arabized Waswahili on the other. Arabophobia in parts of East Africa reached new depths. Afrophobia in parts of the Arab world was also unmistakable. In reality it took about a century for the Americans and the British to stop hating each other-and longer still for them to become close friends. · In relations between Africans and Arabs, will we also have to wait for a century for the wounds of the past to heal? Is the relevant model that between the United States and Britain-in which forgiveness was very slow, but when it came it was very deep? Or is the relevant model that between Japan and the United States? In 1941 Japan committed treachery and bombed Pearl Harbor without declaring war on the United States of America. President Roosevelt described it as "a day 52 UFAHAMU which will live in infamy." Americans had good reason to hate the Japanese. In August 1945 the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese became the frrst physical casualties of the nuclear age-massacred and, in many cases, maimed for generations. The Japanese had good reason to hate the Americans. And yet within less than a single generation the United States and Japan became great political allies and monumental trading parmers. Forgiveness between Americans and Japanese had been quick-but was it shallow? Forgiveness between Britain and the U. S. A. had been slow- but was it deep? Forgiveness between Arabs and Africans may be somewhere between the U. S.-British model (slow but deep) and the U. S.­ Japanese model (quick but shallow). African-Arab reconciliation may be less slow than the Anglo-American fraternity and significantly deeper than the America-Japanese reconciliation. Afro-Arab reconciliation involves not only memories of the Zanzibar revolution but, even more fundamentally, memories of Arab involvement in the slave trade in Africa. Can the pain of the past be forgotten? Global trends in the New World Order are dictating speed in African-Arab reconciliation and integration. Historical continuities and geographical contiguities may lend great deprh to the future relationship between Africa and the Arab world. But conscious steps need to be taken in pursuit of any new forms of solidarity. Forgiving the past is one thing; forging a new future is a bigger imperative. The ideological walls separating Indo-China from the rest of South-East Asia are beginning to fall. The ideological walls separating eastern Europe from western Europe have been coming down. The economic walls separating the United States, Mexico and Canada are also coming down. Will the walls separating Africa and the Arab world also come down as part of the new world order? h is arguable that some of the walls separating Africans from Arabs are as artificial as the divisions which separated Slavs from Germans in Europe. There has been much discussion about the artificiality of the Sahara Desert as a divide between Arab Africa and Black Africa. Even more artificial is the Red Sea as a divide. Now that we are examining the New World Order, should we not re-evaluate these old frontiers and re-define our identities? The Concept of "AFRABIA" The French once examined their special relationship with Africa and came up with the concept of EURAFRICA as a basis of special MAZRUI 53 cooperation. We in tum should examine the even older special relationship between Africa and the Arab world and call it AFRABIA. After all, the majority of the Arab people are now in the African continent. The bulk of Arab lands are located in Africa. There are more Muslims in Nigeria than there are Muslims in any Arab country, including Egypt. In other words, the Muslim population of Nigeria is larger than the Muslim population of Egypt. The African continent as a whole is in the process of becoming the first continent in the world with an absolute Muslim majority. But AFRABIA is not just a case of the spread of languages and the solidarity of religion. Whole new ethnic communities were created by this dynamic. The emergence of Cushitic groups like the Somali in the Horn of Africa is one case in point. Oman, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia were also instrumental in helping give birth to whole new ethnic groups on the eastern seaboard of Africa. Swahili culture and the Swahili city states captured a whole epoch in African history and legacy. Oman is central to the modem history of the Swahili heritage. The brave peoples of Eritrea are also part of the bridge of AFRABIA. Even the Berbers are a special case of AFRABIA. The very name "Africa" probably originated in a Berber language, and was initially used to refer to what is now Tunisia The continent got its name from what is now "Arab Africa." Is there a stronger argument for AFRABIA? Then there have been the migrations and movements of populations between Africa and Arabia across the centuries. There is evidence of Arab settlements on the East African coast and in the Hom of Africa well before the birth of the Prophet Muhammad S. A. W. And the fact that the first great muezzin of Islam was Seyyidna Bilal is evidence that there was an African presence in Mecca and Medina which was pre-Islamic. Bilal was there before he was converted-a symbol of older Arabian link with Africa. AFRAB/A is a pre-Hijjriyya phenomenon. Islam itself is almost as old in Africa as it is in Arabia. In Ethiopia Muslims sought religious asylum during the Prophet Muhammad's early days when he and his followers were persecuted in Mecca. Archaeological excavations in Eastern Africa have discovered remains of mosques which go back to the earliest decades of Islam. Islam as a factor in AFRABIA does indeed go back some fourteen centuries! There is the impact of language on AFRABIA. The language with the largest number of individual speakers in the African continent is still Arabic. The most influential indigenous African languages are Swahili (IGswahili) in East Africa and Hausa in West Africa-both of them profoundly influenced by both Arabic and Islam, a manifestation of AFRABJA. - 54 UFAHAMU Linguistic links between Africa and Arabia are, in fact, much older than Islam. Everybody is aware that Arabic is a Semitic language, but not as many people realize that so is Amharic, the dominant indigenous language of Ethiopia. Indeed, historians are divided as to whether Semitic languages staned in Africa before they crossed the Red Sea, or originated in the Arabian peninsula and later crossed over to Africa. The very uncertainties themselves are part of the reality of AFRABIA. In the New World Order, two processes are under way, each one seeking to redefine the nation-state. The centrifugal forces create fragmentation and separatism. The most dramatic examples have been the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The centripetal forces create bigger economic and political communities. The year 1992 was intended to witness the deeper economic integration of the European Community, probably followed by the admission of more member states before the end of the century. In the Arab world the most serious cases of internal centrifugal fragmentation within countries are in Iraq. Lebanon, and the Sudan. Iraq faces central oppression and ethnic separatism. The Kurds and the Shiites are up in arms, sometimes literally. Lebanon has not yet healed its sectarian divisions. And the Sudan is tom not only by the civil war in the South but also by new religious and political tensions in the North. Centrifugal fragmentation in Africa includes not only the Sudan but also ethnic separatism in Ethiopia, Liberia, Somalia, Senegal, and­ with lesser intensity-even Nigeria.

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