Comments for The life of the Algerian Emir Abd el Kader 1808-1883 at http://www.algerianamericans.com , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.algerianamericans.com Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:52:32 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.algerianamericans.com/news/158-the-life-of-the-algerian-emir-abd-el-kader-1808-1883.html#comment-124 There is no racist more than arabs! Find ONE so called arab country that respetc their minority! As Abdelkader was A TRAITOR that sold his own officer in exchange of gold that he took to Syria. He SELFNOMINATED emir of my ass will always be remembered as the first harki of algeria! - a guest Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:03:00 +0100 http://www.algerianamericans.com/news/158-the-life-of-the-algerian-emir-abd-el-kader-1808-1883.html#comment-89 I think to dwell on issues of ethnicity is to miss the point of Abd el Kader's example. Algeria will define its own ethnicity. I think there is hardly a race of man that cannot be said at one time or another to have harbored racist sentiments. My concern is the character of the man and the role his beliefs played in his actions. I am not an ethnographer nor a historian, and I have no wish to add to the distortions that have plagued history.I have tried in my own writing to redress some of the misperceptions and omissions in the West about Islamic history. If this subject interests a reader he would well to read Michael Hamilton Morgan's wonderful [i]Lost History[/i], published by National Geographic. Morgan ingeniously behins each chapter with a vignette of a contemporary life and then proceeds to show how civilizations in medieval Baghdad, Cairo, Cordoba and other Islamic centers directly influence that life. His book, aqlong with Maria Rosa Menocal's [i]Ornament of the World[/i], go a long way toward recovering Islamic achievement written out of Western histories either deliberately or unwittingly. I have tried to do the same in fiction in an unpublished trilogy of novels called[i] Light Piercing Water.[/i] One of the pioneers in this effort to rescue history from propaganda is the late Australian poet-sailor Alan Villiers who correctly pointed out in a 1946 National Geographic essay that Omani seafaring and indeed Islamic seafaring in general had been censored by Western writers. For example, Vasco da Gama, the Portguese adventurer, was given credit for opening sea routes to the East that Arab and Persian seafarers had been plying for centuries.Vasco actually used an Arab navigator named Achmed ibn Madjid. But bent and twisted history is hard to root out, and even when books like Menocal's and Morgan's are written, it takes a long time for them to seep into [opular consciousness. I have little doubt that distortions about the West exist in Eastern histories. The history of the human race leaves little excuse for throwing stones[i].—DM[/i] - a guest Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:10:34 +0100 http://www.algerianamericans.com/news/158-the-life-of-the-algerian-emir-abd-el-kader-1808-1883.html#comment-88 It is so shamefull to be part of an era and not knowing what is to be or not to be an Algerian Arab or berber alike the matter is what is the true Identity of an individual and the only and uninque answer you can find throught the entire past history and present is in Islam so, to come to know so you need to be franc and honest add in to it some good reason.....note that Arab, Berber and all the races or ethnicities who fall under Islam prior to it they all lived a barbaric life..go and study History before saying non sence talk .. then you got the racist french who come in and made the biggest mess and lay into the great Algerian Muslim Society. - a guest Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:13:38 +0100 http://www.algerianamericans.com/news/158-the-life-of-the-algerian-emir-abd-el-kader-1808-1883.html#comment-87 Elaboration: To label Algerians as Arab is erroneous. They are North Africans - not Arabs. The French (like many Algerians today too) just labelled all Algerians as Arabs out of ignorance based on linguistic lines and they labelled a few, Berber. Islam also played a significant role in attempting to wipe out North African identity. To an ethnographer the majority of Algerians are primarily Berber, with other Mediterranean flavours (e.g. Ottoman and Arab, but really mostly Punico-Libyc and Romano). North African yes, and with all due respect to Arabs, Algerians Arab are not! - a guest Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:36:28 +0100 http://www.algerianamericans.com/news/158-the-life-of-the-algerian-emir-abd-el-kader-1808-1883.html#comment-86 To Anonymous Commentator: I think I'll leave your comment to the ethnographers. I've just finished reading Hugh Kennedy's The Great Arab Conquests. He has much to say on the subject. Perhaps you could elaborate. I have no doubt the French did their share of brainwashing. That is the nature of most conquests, isn't it?—DM - a guest Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:05:10 +0100 http://www.algerianamericans.com/news/158-the-life-of-the-algerian-emir-abd-el-kader-1808-1883.html#comment-85 Algerians are not arabs. Arabic exists in Algeria as a result of French and Islamic brainwashing telling subjugated people they are Arabs. - a guest Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:11:02 +0100