From a reader:
Jonah
I have spent a fair amount of time in the Arab/Muslim world dating back from 1965 until 9-11. Have spent time in Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt,Tunisia and London. Ok, London’s just a dig. I had read Malcolm X er, Alex Haley’s biography where the epiphany happens in X’s life when he realizes Muslims are not racists. My experience proved quite the opposite. One saw and still sees blacks treated as inferiors in all Arab society. On the streets one sees some mixing of the races in commerce etc. but no blacks in significant jobs private or civil. Remember that one of the complaints that the Muslim Brotherhood had about Sadat was that he was not full Arab, but part black. My wife goes to Uganda frequently where she works with a Black Jewish community, the Abayudaya. The black Ugandan Muslims are quite open to the Jews and Americans and avoid the Arab and Iranian Muslims because they feel the racism emanating from their co-religionists.
Have spent time in Nicaragua and I promise the blacks there are second class subjects. I am sitting in the least racist society on earth, America.