#African Arab

[acepumpkinpatrick]

Hello everyone, I wanna highlight this Sudanese family's campaign.

It is only 5k! and they're half way there but haven't gotten any new donations in 4 days! So please Donate & share, let's help this lovely family out 🫶

For more information and Sudanese fund campaigns to support, kindly check this list

Update:

As of Aug. 30th the goal has been extended to $7k. I would like to remind everyone that this campaign feeds 20 ppl and it has been up for 4 months now and the situation has only gotten worse in Sudan, what with the current destructive floodings and heavy rain.

I ask of you to please continue sharing and donating, while I will focus on other Sudanese campaigns 🙏 thank you all.

Sorry for the tags ♡

@magnus-rhymes-with-swagness @appsa @blackfilmmakers @decolonize-the-everything @lesbianmaxevans @parab0mb @goodguydotmp3

[alternate-real-ities]

So I’ve been working really hard at the gym and am really proud of the progress I’ve made (down 130 lbs!) but I often wonder what kind of life I lead in alternate realities. I’d love to get an idea of what might have been!

This post was written with the help (well mostly him) of a friend (we need to talk btw 😅). Hope you like it! - A.R.

Damn buddy, 130 lbs is a lot of weight! You should be very proud of yourself. But hey, I get it. Everyone wants to know what lies beyond the borders of this reality. Everyone wants to take a peek, to see how they would do if some minor things would have been different in their life.

Let’s look at something close to home. Here, in this reality, only a few away from our own, not much is different. Your fitness journey has continued, which has led to a good physique with some nicely toned muscles.

In this reality you are a total eye candy, working an amazingly successful job and enjoying life to the fullest. Having such an amazing physique certainly has it perks. You are a famous Insta model, making easy money flexing your toned muscles.

This is you in another universe similar to the previous one. The main difference in is that in this reality, you are a true testosterone bomb. You are even more buff in this one! In this reality, you have been working out for ages, which has led to an amazing level of hormones, leading to this rugged hunk! A thick beard covers your face, as dark hairs powder your balloon-shaped pecs and rock-hard abs. A manly musk hangs around you, as you are the peak of masculinity in this reality.

Oh wait, what's that?

Hmmm interesting. There seems to be an intertwined parallel reality to this one. The only difference is that now you are a strong black man. Your blonde, straight hair has curled up into a dark afro and your body hair became more coarse, as your dark skin glistens with sweat. A natural swagger comes over you, as you radiate confidence!

Interesting, intertwined parallel realities are rare, but they are super interesting. I wonder if timeline convergence is easier to achieve in these...

Okay, one more reality to check.

In this reality, further away from our last one, you are of arab descent. Instead of going to the gym, you found your athletic passion in football. As a young child, you showed potential. After being scouted, you got accepted to a premier scholarship.

During college, you are extremely popular. I do not know your sexuality in our reality, but in this one you are very much bisexual, going for both the cheerleaders as well as your teammates in the football team. But oh well, who could even resist your charm when you look like that, right?

I hope you enjoyed these different versions of yourself!

[girlinafairytale]

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre

The University of Michigan’s Black Student Union (BSU) has resigned from the anti-Zionist student group Tahrir Coalition, citing “pervasive” anti-Black discrimination fostered by its mostly Arab and Middle Eastern leadership.

“Black identities, voices, and bodies are not valued in this coalition, and thus we must remove ourselves,” BSU said in a statement posted on Instagram. “The anti-Blackness within the coalition has been too pervasive to overcome, and we refuse to endure it.”

Proclaiming its continued support for the anti-Zionist movement, the group continued, “The BSU’s solidarity with the Palestinian people is unwavering, but the integrity of the Tahrir Coalition is deeply questionable. We refuse to subject ourselves and our community to the rampant anti-Blackness that festers within it. For this reason, we will no longer be a part of the Tahrir Coalition.”

BSU did not cite specific examples of the racism to which Black students were allegedly subjected, but its public denouncement of a group which has become the face of the pro-Hamas movement at the University of Michigan is significant given the history of cooperation between BSU and anti-Zionist groups on college campuses across the US.

BSU’s Black members are not, however, the first to openly clash with anti-Zionist Arabs.

When Arab and Palestinian anti-Zionist activists launched a barrage of racist attacks against African Americans on social media in August, Black TikTok influencers descended on the platform in droves to denounce the comments, with several announcing that they intended not only to remove Gaza-related content from their profiles but also to cease engaging in anti-Zionist activity entirely. The conversation escalated in subsequent posts, touching on the continuance of Black slavery in the Arab world and what young woman called “voracious racism” against African Americans.

“What’s even crazier is that earlier people were like, oh these are bots, no — this is how people really feel. And she made a video that’s a real human being that feels exactly that way,” one African American woman said. “These are people who feel like they are entitled to the support of Black people no matter what, that they get to push us around and tell us who the hell we get to vote for if we support them … They’ve lost their minds.”

An African American male said, “Why don’t we talk about the Arab slave trade? And keep in mind that the Arabs have enslaved more Black people than the Europeans combined.” Another African American woman accused Arabs of not denouncing slavery in Antebellum America.

[holidaysincambodia]

A Jewish bride from the city of Salé in Northwestern Morocco (1935)

[famy-x]

You Will Die at 20 Directed by Amjad Abu Alala 2019 Sudan

[bitchfitch]

idk maybe it's because I see all art as various fields of craft work, ie skills composed of a series of linear steps that can be taken to produce certain results, but it irks me when people lose their shit over really basic pieces simply because the end result was able to produce a realistic image. like. especially since I've noticed it shows up a Lot more often in reference to categories of art dominated by women.

like, it's great y'all are gaining a respect for quilting and fiber work, but maybe loudly declaring that you either don't see or don't care about the immense display of skill in pieces unless they conform to what's mildly difficult in the one(1) genre of art you have deemed respectable isn't like. cool.

[fiery-emblems]

Sketch of the day: Modern AU?

My idea for this is that Soren's father is an extremely corrupt Trump-like business man who had his wife institutionalized to prevent her from talking about abuse. Due to this Soren has been in foster care from a very young age. I know most people go for a goth/punk look for him but this time I went with a kid who tries to dress low-key/ a little nicely but he has a hard time because his clothes are second hand and don't fit right.

Ike and Mist are from a very loving, solidly middle class home with parents whom are well liked and respected in the community. They struggle a bit with the loss of their mother but for the most part they're very well adjusted. Ike in particular is the jock who doesn't tolerate bullying at his school! Its easy to imagine that his life revolves around some kind of contact heavy sport like football or wrestling, which his father no doubt coaches.

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Hi. Not sure if you've answered this before, but do you have a list of books to recommend on fairytale/mythic analysis?

So I finally have a real response to this question, but it's LONG, be warned:

First, it depends what you want to get out of your folklore study, what lens you'd like to use for analysis. And second, it's important to know that the practice of folktale analysis has changed over time, especially in the last ~15 years or so as the scholarly consensus has evolved toward decolonization.

For example, the common historical starting place was Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment. Candidly, I haven't read it yet for a few reasons: 1) It focuses fairly exclusively on Western European fairy tales like those of Grimm, Basile, and Perrault. 2) It assumes the primary audience for such tales are children. 3) It's a white man's perspective, and there are already enough of those to go around. That said, it's considered a foundational text for folklore study, so I'll probably get to it eventually. There are some modern authors who might be considered scholarly successors of Bettleheim, like Maria Tatar. I haven't read her books yet but I know she's also a powerhouse of Western fairy tale analysis.

Some other popular perspectives include the works of Carl Jung and his protégés in psychoanalysis, Marie-Louise von Franz and Erich Neumann. These are wonderful sources for learning about depth psychology and the universal unconscious which causes certain motifs to recur in storytelling across the globe and over centuries. Another popular author in this field is Robert Bly, who dove deeply into the concept of the Shadow as it appears in folk tales.

But for me, my favorite sources have been a collection of feminist authors who were active in the late 80s and early 90s, notably Barbara Fass Leavy and the incomparable Clarissa Pinkola Estes. While their work is pretty firmly grounded in second-wave feminism and therefore not very intersectional as we understand it today, they were the first to begin exploring interpretations of folk tales outside of a patriarchal context. I personally refer to Leavy's In Search of the Swan Maiden and Estes' Women Who Run With the Wolves more than any other books.

A lot of the most current perspectives are only accessible via blogs, like Jeana Jorgensen AKA The Foxy Folklorist, who often explores fairy tales through a Queer lens. Another brilliant voice working today is Helen Nde of Mythological Africans, who is doing the long-overdue work of decolonizing African folklore.

And while all these sources will help you develop a framework for analysis, still one of the best things you can do is read the tales for yourself. One of my favorite series is that of Heidi Anne Heiner of Sur La Lune Fairy Tales, who has amassed impressive collections of folk tales of the same type from around the world, making comparison easy. She also provides excellent footnotes that offer context to the versions and translations she's selected, and every tale has a source.

Outside of that, I like to read regional collections from indigenous scholars and native speakers: some editors will even include a copy in the original language along with the English translation, thus allowing others to "check their work." One of my favorite folkorists like this is Inea Bushnaq, who collects Arab folktales and again provides accessible cultural context. It's important to remember that most oral folktales which are now available in English were first recorded by colonizers, so the versions we have may be edited, mistranslated, or even maliciously altered to suit Western tastes. This is why seeking out versions from actual members of indigenous communities is critical.

Right now, I'm reading The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan by Hayao Kawai, and I'm next going to try Oral World and Written Word by Susan Niditch. I tend to just go where the spirit moves me, journal a bit, go down a research rabbit hole about a particular topic... it's fun. But whatever you're looking to get out of your folk tale study, rest assured you will never run out of material!

[archtroop]

Israel to send Hercules aitplanes to evacuate Israelis (re: Jews) from Amsterdam.

Oh, how I wish Israel existed in the 30s.

We could have evacuated Jews from Europe the day before the Kristalnacht then, too.

[quotidianish]

Tell me if I’m being dramatic but I feel like trans Headcanons in fandom hardly revolve around anyone except young, skinny white people. It feels like a large reflection of how western trans communities view trans people who aren’t exactly like them; as nonexistent.

[whencyclopedia]

Kingdom of Kanem

The Kingdom of Kanem (aka Kanim) was an ancient African state located in modern-day Chad, which flourished from the 9th to 14th century CE. With its heartland in the centre of the African continent on the eastern shores of Lake Chad, the kingdom was formed by a confederation of nomadic peoples and then ruled by the Saifawa dynasty. The city prospered thanks to its position as the hub of trade connections with central African peoples, the Nile Valley, and North African states on the other side of the Sahara Desert. The kingdom adopted the Islamic religion after long contact with Muslim clerics and traders from the 11th century CE onwards. In the 1390s CE Kanem's king was forced to flee the invading Bulala people and so set up a new state on the other side of Lake Chad, which would become the Bornu Empire, sometimes known as the Kanem-Bornu Empire, which lasted until the late 19th century CE.

Origins & Formation

The Kingdom of Kanem, located just to the east of Lake Chad in Central Africa, may derive its name from the Teda and Kanuri term for 'south' (anem) which refers to its position in relation to the better-known states to the north. Perhaps, too, the name reflects the oral tradition that the people of Kanem had once migrated from the Sahara Desert following that region's increased desiccation. The process which saw the formation of the kingdom of Kanem is here summarised by the historian P. Curtin:

Kanem passed through a process of state-building different from that of the western Sudan. The nucleus was a nomadic confederation of peoples speaking separate languages of the Teda-Daza group, probably formed in the 9th century. Nomadic confederations of this kind are common enough in history; the unusual thing is that this one held together. Sometime before the early twelfth century it had become sedentary itself, with Njimi as its permanent capital. (75)

The first mention of Kanem in texts dates to 872 CE and the work of the Arab historian and geographer al-Yaqubi (in his Kitab al-Buldan). Even if the state may have been formed a century earlier, it confirms the above political process as we are informed that the population is still at that time mostly composed of nomads who live in huts of reeds and who have not yet formed permanent settlements. We are also told that the kings of Kanem (here and in other Arab sources called Zaghawa) also ruled over other kings, likely the tribes they had conquered in the region north and east of Lake Chad. The Arab historian al-Muhallabi, writing in the 10th century CE, notes that the kingdom now has two towns and its wealth is evidenced by large herds of cattle, sheep, camels, and horses.

Continue reading...

[alternate-real-ities]

Which versions of this guy could I find in the multiverse?

Ohhh, let's see what's in store for this guy! I've got some juicy news - there are other universes where he's taken on quite the change!

In a reality very close to ours, he's a confident ass-kicker with a 6-pack and an even bigger ego to match. This sexy Indian stud is always down for a good time, whether it's working out or getting worked up in the bedroom.

Meanwhile, in another universe, he's bulked up into an impressive muscle god!

His sculpted abs are just begging to be licked while his chiseled arms flex with every rep. I bet this Arab Adonis could make you forget all about the gym and focus on more...personal workouts.

But wait, there's more! In a reality where he's traded in his flab for lean muscle mass, this Asian hunk is the epitome of masculine perfection.

His luscious hair and dreamy eyes will make you weak in the knees - before he even starts stripping down to reveal that rock-hard physique.

Last but certainly not least, I present to you…the complete opposite end of the spectrum!

In this alternate reality, our chubby gym buddy has always been a youthful, effeminate cutie with an insatiable thirst for attention and affection. His plump lips are made for sucking, and his tight tattooed body is begging to be explored and devoured.

So which version of our friend here gets you most excited? Or, do you wish all of them were real? Let me know, and who knows - maybe we can make it happen... in the multiverse, at least!

[felineverdure]

no hate to you guys, moots, but i keep forgetting how predominantly white and western centric the aot fandom is (just like mikasa). wdym jean is a french german cajun canadian american? he has an absent moroccan dad. annie? she is honorary filipina. thank u tito leonhart. hange is south asian, residing in bangalore specifically. magath, bengali. shadis is yemeni. bertolt and pieck? persians. freckles ymir, mejicanaaaa. i'll give a pass for some characters who are solely white tho like erwin, who else but a white man who is allowed to pull all of the stunts he did. and yes, floch is irish.

[serinyxx]

[sonicandvisualsurprises]

Release date unknown. 60's? 70's?

Fantastic duet between Hirut Bekele and Alemayehu Eshete, one of the greatest voices of early modern Ethiopia.