JUAN COLE "What does the World look like from Somalia? ...." [View all]

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"What does the World look like from Somalia? Explaining why Ilhan Omar Scares the Horses in DC"


"...In neither case has the US Congress been used to hearing from the colonized.

The voice of former and present colonies has been heard, however, since last November, in the persons of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar. They are all Americans, but of Puerto Rican, Palestinian and Somali heritage, respectively.

...European “civilization” doesn’t look like something to be celebrated so effusively from the vantage point of Mogadishu, an ancient site of East African civilization likely founded by Iranian merchants, and a key node in medieval world maritime trade. Racist hierarchies and segregation, crushing wars of conquest, the disruption and displacement of entire regions, and then the debilitating intrigues of the Cold War and the “War on Terror,” along with the naked exploitation of Somali fisheries and the creeping deserts of global heating– these are the legacies of “civilization.”

When the victims of this European Fascism and its less explicit successors speak from Congress, they do not forget. They do not forget the refugees and the displaced, whether Somali or Palestinian. They do not forget the powerless and subjected and forgotten, whether Somali or Palestinian or Puerto Rican. They do not forget the civilian victims of the “war on terror,” or the US coddling of the Saudis, who have sometimes inspired hard line movements to attack tolerant Muslim traditionalism...."


https://www.juancole.com/2019/03/somalia-explaining-scares.html