“I don’t want my kids to be around Muslim people again.”
Contact with “The Religion of Peace” can leave a decidedly negative impression.
The Sioux Falls Argus Leader is running a feature series on “South Dakota to South Sudan,” detailing the triumphs and challenges of the large South Sudanese community in Sioux Falls. Reporter Steve Young traveled to the world’s newest nation with Sioux Falls probation officer David Jal, who is working with his people here and in their homeland.
Along with the challenges of adapting to life in a new and very different land, the Christian South Sudanese carry memories of a brutal war waged against them by the Islamist regime in Khartoum, from which they seceded in 2011. Comments in the articles are telling:
But learning new ways hasn’t necessarily meant letting go of the old ones. Many of the 3,000 to 4,000 South Sudanese now living in Sioux Falls brought their songs and their food and their dances with them. And some brought the lingering hatreds spawned from decades of civil war that killed more than 2 million of their relatives and countrymen and forced twice that many to flee the human slaughter.
As a result, there are addresses in the city here today where the animosity forged by a radical Muslim-led Sudan government bent on wiping out the Christian Southerners has not been forgotten. While they do understand that they live in a country built on the premise of religious freedom, it doesn’t matter — some have decided that their sons and daughters will not be friends with Muslim classmates, or Muslim neighbors, or Muslim anyone.
Some have even gone to the point of calling up their public school principal here in Sioux Falls and telling them that their children are not to associate with Muslim classmates.
This is how Garang Deng Akot explains it. He is missing part of the ring finger on his right hand after he was bayoneted by Khartoum government soldiers who stole his family’s cattle. So deep is his animus toward the Sudan government that Akot sends his children to St. Lambert Catholic school in Sioux Falls. That way they won’t be exposed to Muslim children in public classrooms.
“The Muslims kill a lot of people in my country. They kill young people. They kill a lot in my family,” the 45-year-old meatpacker at John Morrell & Co. says. “I don’t want my kids to be around Muslim people again. When they grow up, they will know their own friends. But they are not free to decide until they are 18 years old.”
Young interviews others who point out that younger Sudanese are adapting to American freedom of religion and not experiencing the conflict as acute. He also interviews a Sudanese Muslim teen in Sioux Falls, who takes the position that the Khartoum government is distorting and using his religion, and that he has many Christian friends here. There’s so much to be said for the freedom of religion that we seem bent on eroding - it is one of the world’s greatest peacemaking tools and we seem ready to sacrifice it to one of the world’s most violent entities, the overgrown state.
On a personal note, I’ve been elected to the Board of Rebuilding South Sudan Through Education. I hope you will visit our site - we’re also on Facebook and on Twitter @SudanEducation. Our project’s founder is Moses Joknhial II, who walked out of Sudan as a nine-year-old “Lost Boy,” and returned at the controls of a plane with a vision and supplies for building a better future for his people. His story is at the site, and it is an honor to be part of his work.
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I would imagine - the remarkable stories of forgiveness notwithstanding - that even now some Rwandan Tutsis might feel the same about living in proximity to Rwandan Hutus.
[1] Posted by Jeremy Bonner on 10-10-2012 at 01:35 PM · [top]
You can hardly blame them, though I think they’ll find their fear of Muslims here in America is misplaced. Islam is the most bloody and virulent at its borders (pace Huntington), when it either has the upper hand or is close to gaining same. Sharia isn’t close to gaining a foothold here yet, despite the willing prostration of so much of the Left before it.
[2] Posted by Jeffersonian on 10-10-2012 at 09:26 PM · [top]
Sharia isn’t close to gaining a foothold here yet, despite the willing
Perhaps technically true; but there are a whole bunch of “alphabet soup” radical muslim groups pushing toward that goal and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular has infiltrated our Government and military to further that goal.
I think their concern is very justified because they no doubt would be high on the target list of those who “need to convert”.
[3] Posted by Capt. Father Warren on 10-11-2012 at 07:35 AM · [top]
Thanks for the comments so far. I think #1 makes a good point - there’s a template that can be laid over any historic situation in which one group has gained power to brutalize another.
The positive side of the article is that our First Amendment is a powerful healer, sparing upcoming generations the experience of that template. The article has plenty of quotes from younger Sudanese in Sioux Falls, both Christian and Muslim, who are not afraid of/hostile toward one another.
This should make a liberal person all the more anxious to defend the First Amendment. I think most would as far as freedom of speech, press and assembly; they are increasingly flaky on religion and expressing grievances against the government.
[4] Posted by Timothy Fountain on 10-11-2012 at 10:33 AM · [top]
“Sharia isn’t close to gaining a foothold here yet…”
I disagree. Research what is happening in Dearborn, MI and larger Muslim enclaves in the US.
[5] Posted by iamaworm on 10-11-2012 at 03:10 PM · [top]
I think Dearborn is the largest concentration of Muslims in America, and yes, there has been some unconscionable kowtowing and prostration before Islam there. But that’s not representative of America in the least.
[6] Posted by Jeffersonian on 10-13-2012 at 05:27 PM · [top]
Nutcracker,
Many of us realize what is happening in Dearborn and other places. However, there is still plenty of the US where Sharia law is NOT welcome. For example- Come visit South Carolina. You know our states *unofficial tourism motto*= Smiling faces, beautiful places. Well many of those faces belong to the many Christians in this state. Many of those beautiful places include some of the most beautiful churches on the east coast. South Carolina has a definite Christian *vibe* to it which was immediately apparent to me when I moved here several years ago.
Tim+ Will definitely go and look at the wondrful site you mentioned. It is wonderful that the younger Sudanese are realizing that they don’t have to be scared of Muslims. I believe nearly every immigrant group has had to struggle and accept the religious freedom that is part of the US culture. Hopefully that won’t be gone in the near future…....
[7] Posted by SC blu cat lady on 10-14-2012 at 06:00 AM · [top]
However, there is still plenty of the US where Sharia law is NOT welcome
Not a problem, the Muslim Brotherhood is patient. That’s why Dearborn and Minneapolis are Islamic, Somali enclaves. They didn’t used to be.
Check to see if any of your local banks are willing to make Sharia loans. Watch what happens if a “Muslim appearing” person gets into some type of legal problem in your community. Does CAIR swoop in to “help” local officials mediate the situation showing “Islamic” sensitivity?
Let someone in your community use their first ammendment rights to put a sign in a store window that “offends” a single Muslim; everyone from your Mayor to POTUS will be falling all over themselves to disclaim the act if CAIR [or some other “moderate” Muslim group] stages a protest in Yemen and kills an ambassador.
Recall Gen. Casey after the Ft. Hood shootings: says nothing about the radical Islamic perp….....but laments if the “incident” should harm diversity efforts in the military. Wonder who gave him that line to say?
The areas where Sharia “is not welcome” will continue to shrink if we don’t drop the “politically correct” stance toward radical Islam.
[8] Posted by Capt. Father Warren on 10-14-2012 at 06:54 AM · [top]
Capt. Father Warren wrote:
In my small town there is a hardware store and a appliance repair shop that both have biblical citations (like Ps 3 or John 3:16) on their very public signs by the street. That is not even counting the many churches with signs by the street. Not to mention the HUGE Billboard that proclaims that “Jesus will return” with a huge life like poster of Christ- by the side of a major highway which goes near this small town. We don’t have many large billboards along highways. That one with an overtly religious message stands.
The majority of US citizens who are killed in our many conflicts the world over are from the south, mostly the small town and rural south. I don’t think SC will welcome Sharia law anytime soon.
[9] Posted by SC blu cat lady on 10-14-2012 at 04:05 PM · [top]
I don’t think SC will welcome Sharia law anytime soon
I certainly hope not, nor do I want to see it here in Mississippi. But, the battle is underway, the infrastructure has been established which is fighting to make that happen in this country. Significant infiltration of both our Federal Government and military has occurred. Unfortunately both Republican and Democrat presidents have been terribly complicit in welcoming the enemy of Radical Islam into our midst.
Maybe within the next few years a group of Muslims will seek to build a mosque near your town. What will be the response of the people in the area around you?
In my area of coastal Mississippi, I can anticipate that the response will be cautious unease; yet out of a sense of being “sensitive” and “inclusive” and certainly not wanting to look Islamaphobic, the “leaders” of our community will make bleating noises about how wonderful it is [particulary after being paid a visit by CAIR and other organizations to explain the facts of life to them]. At that point, another part of America will be checked off as being a successful part of the Project.
[10] Posted by Capt. Father Warren on 10-15-2012 at 07:29 AM · [top]
To borrow from a credit card commercial; “What is in your pocket?”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/mastercard-launches-shariah-compliant-credit-card-with-compass-pointing-toward-mecca/
And also from the story; ” Even in the U.S., the Islamic financial industry is in full swing. University Bank in Michigan offers home financing, deposit products — even commercial options — that are complaint with Islamic law. And, in Virginia, Guidance Residential offers home mortgages.”
And here is the punch line: “And a portion of the monies spent using the cards is donated to charity, as the act of giving is explicitly laid out in the Koran.”
Yes the Quran believes in charity; but it has to be for purposes that further Sharia. Remember the Holy Land Foundation?
[11] Posted by Capt. Father Warren on 10-15-2012 at 07:44 AM · [top]
How does it happen that there are so many Sudanese, both Christian and Muslim, living in Sioux Falls?
[12] Posted by Roland on 10-17-2012 at 05:11 PM · [top]
#12 - Lutheran Social Services of Sioux Falls was particularly effective in settling refugees here. Sioux Falls has good entry level job opportunities and other features that make it a good setting.
[13] Posted by Timothy Fountain on 10-17-2012 at 05:27 PM · [top]
And we sure as hell don’t want Sharia law here in California, either!
[14] Posted by cennydd13 on 10-26-2012 at 07:23 PM · [top]
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