Boston – In light of the state of utter pandemonium we live in, one has to practically be dead, to not realize that the injustices that has been inflicted upon indigenous populations around the world, are now coming back to force us to reconsider the falsehoods we once shamelessly accepted, and passed on as history.
Christopher Columbus did NOT discover the Americas more than 500 years ago, simply because we now know that archaeology proved beyond the shadow of doubt, that the Vikings, at the very least, made that journey West to the Americas centuries before Columbus did, and settled in for 90+ years, then packed up and left. They didn’t rob, or ethnically cleanse the place of its inhabitant, they lived here off the land, only took what was necessary for their survival and maintained relative peace with the natives. What Christopher Columbus did was not an act of heroism as it we were made to believe, not by a long shot.
He savagely and mercilessly proceeded to systematically attack and kill the natives who rescued him when him and his crew were lost at sea, enslave their women and children and seize their riches for his imperialist masters back in Europe. He was the superior warrior, and they stood no chance. He could shoot them from a distance, or use gunpowder to blow up their encampments, poison their water sources and snipe away their youth without directly exposing himself or his companions to their arrows, darts or spears. Driven by his insatiable greed, he robbed the land and took what wasn’t his for the taking, and killed whoever stood in the way of that.
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This single stroke of fate, driven by greed and blessed by the church and reinvented as an act of salvation to the “heathen” and the “savages” who occupied these territories before the rest European settlers came in by the boatloads. This despicable “discovery” marked the single most cataclysmic unstoppable and irreversible devastation to the land: the ethnic cleansing of nearly 100 million of the populace and the irreparable loss of historic and cultural cornucopia. GONE! All of it, just gone! Not a single book or written account survived such wretchedness.
While the cases of the Americas and Australia are still fresh in history’s memory, several other equally devastating invasions have been taking place across the world and through time, from Persia and Kurdistan to Tamazgha, which is what I’d like to focus on for the next few minutes.
What’s sad is that while the world recognizes the Aborigines, Persians and the Kurds as being the indigenous with just causes, they still don’t know who the Amazigh are.
Tamazgha land is a large North African strip ranging from the Siwa valley in modern day Egypt to the East, to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic to the West and everything in between.
Because of its strategic location and its natural resources, Tamazgha has been invaded by almost every civilization who could get to it by sea or by land: from the Romans to the Phoenicians and even the Vandals and the Visigoth, they all gave Tamazgha a go; and who has not heard of the Punic wars! … and about 1200 years ago, the Arabs tried their luck as well, and never left since.
Because their incursions were also of a religious consequence, history failed yet again to accurately recall what truly happened and the Amazigh were subdued into silence and forcible acceptance of the slow and continuous deadening of their identity. While many ethnicities have killed each other to rule the region since the Arab’s arrival to Tamazgha (the Moravids and Moahids dynasties for instance were Amazigh) THEOCRACY, the mother of all evil, has never left us to this day. Be they Arabs or Amazigh, everyone who governed Tamzgha since has done so in the name of Allah leaving very little to the actual people, and steadily chipping away at their identity and civilization one tradition at a time.
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Under the current Alaoui rule in Morocco, the Amazigh have suffered marginalization, persecution and many other grave injustices, and up until recently, it was still illegal for them to even give their children Amazigh names; a basic human right. In a country where close to 10 million do not understand or speak Arabic, the official language is STILL Arabic! For millions, this means that they cannot take care of their very basic administrative needs without needing an interpreter, IN THEIR OWN HOME! It also means that they cannot be civically nor politically engaged since they don’t understand their rights nor their obligations as Moroccan citizens.
They don’t understand the constitution, the penal system or the “royal” speeches (which trump the law, according to that very same constitution that they don’t understand), all because the Alaoui dynasty used religion during their humble beginnings to gain people’s trust, only to enslave and persecute them later.
Theocracy made is possible for the Alaouis to gain legitimacy on account that they are direct descendants of prophet Muhamad PBUH and therefore lay claim to the region. The Amazigh, yet another invaded nation that has been forced to annihilate its culture and lose its identity so the imperialists can get their way. Except that they are not finding the courage to say ENOUGH!
I am a Moroccan, therefore I am an Amazigh, be it partially or totally, we are ALL amazigh. As such, those “big projects” to further arabitize us, and call Tamazgha the “great Arabic Maghreb” are NEVER going to see the light of day, not today, not EVER! To claim that Tamazgha is the “Great Arabic Maghreb” is the same as claiming that the USA and Canada are a part of the UK; notions that defy logic and even basic geography, since Britain is in Europe, and Arabia is in the Middle East, NOT NORTH AFRICA! Please have some self respect and quit it with your reverse Darwinism! It is not okay for you, or anyone to claim their culture is superior, and use this pathetic excuse to shove it down people’s throats.
You are welcome to still be Arabs in Tamazgha, you just can’t turn Tamazgha into Arabia! And you cannot try to rename it and claim it for the Arabs either. It is not Arabic territory and never will be.
We are NOT Arabs, we don’t want to be Arabs, we are happy just the way we are! And if you are a Moroccan and still claim you are a pure Arab race, then you are as delusional as you are a racist and a bigot. Arabs and Amazigh intermarried for 1200 years, so with the exception of a couple Sahraoui tribes, everyone has Amazigh blood in them whether they like it or not, and whether they know it or not, PERIOD! In denying this, you are disowning your own culture and identity, which makes you a product of systematic and propagandized imperialism.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Amazigh World News’ editorial views.
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