JUNE 2008: Nasser Weddady
Left: Raquel Evita Saraswati of Project Ijtihad and Nasser Weddady of the American Islamic Congress
"Although Mauritania had no 'slave market' where one could go 'shopping', bondage was mental and cultural. Slavery was justified through religious language. Slaves were promised access to paradise through obedience to their masters. I believe that our problems would have been mostly solved if religious leaders only had the moral courage to stand up and declare religious justifications for slavery to be null and void. Who in their right mind could cling to slavery and claim that Islam is a religion of peace?"
Nasser Weddady was born in Mauritania - a country in North Africa. Mauritania is located in a region known as the Maghreb - which also includes Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and the Western Sahara.
Nasser comes from a well established family of the ruling class - the Moors. His lineage includes accomplished and highly respected scholars of Islam. Many of Nasser's family members passed slaves down through the generations.
The son of a diplomat who freed the slaves left to him by his ancestors, Nasser spent much of his childhood traveling because of his father's work. He met men like Yasser Arafat and King Hussein of Jordan. His experiences as a diplomat's child taught him two things: first, that the talk of leaders rarely matches what is happening in the lives of everyday people. Second, his every word and action could come to reflect his nation's image. Therefore, he learned at a very young age to represent his heritage, his people, and his way of life.
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Life could have turned out much differently than it did for Nasser. He had an excellent education and all the advantages needed to lead a rather comfortable life. He could very well have become a success in more conventional fields. He could have had what many would consider a charmed life.
When he was a teen, Nasser's family returned to Mauritania. There, he saw that people's lives didn't exactly match the rosy accounts his parents shared with him. One discovery in particular - that of modern-day slavery in his father's village - led Nasser to leading his life as an agent for change.
Nasser recounts the story of a young playmate of his - who was constantly in a hurry. He always had to leave from playing with their group of friends. Later on, Nasser learned that this boy was a slave -shared between three families. The child had to share his time between his "masters" - and so was always running from one place to another.
This face-to-face encounter with slavery - and other experiences with violence - led Nasser headfirst into activism.
As a junior high student, he joined activist groups working against slavery and human rights abuses in Mauritania. He distributed pamphlets ("I would sometimes be running with stacks of papers inside of my shirt!", he says) and participated in demonstrations.
It's hard for many of us to imagine the world without the internet. But the internet was just emerging as Nasser and his fellow activists were causing a stir in Mauritania. The mainstream media was heavily censored and state-controlled, so the internet was the ideal way to get their message out.
Nasser was part of a group that pioneered the use of the internet as a tool to advance human rights. They researched, documented and spread information about slavery in Mauritania, exposed the corruption of the government, and let people know about violence the government was participating in.
Nasser and his "comrades", as he calls them, were responsible for exposing a high ranking military official who had been part of the brutal ethnic cleansing of black Mauritanians in the late 1990s. The officer was detained, and removed from his post in France. The exposure of human rights abuses caused a diplomatic crisis between France and Mauritania.
The magnitude of what Nasser and his friends had revealed put Nasser and those who worked with him at great risk. Several of his friends were arrested and tortured. He himself was a target, and was forced to flee Mauritania. After finding out that Europe was no safer for him than Mauritania was, Nasser arrived in the United States as a political asylee.
One of the things that most bothered Nasser about the situation in Mauritania is that religion was used as a way to justify violence. He says that Muslims are responsible for great advances in science, knowledge and more - but that we cannot continue to live on past glories. These achievements, he believes, have become like a mind-numbing "drug" to those Muslims who refuse to see the problems happening under the banner of our faith.
"Islamic cultures and civilizations will not recover their past luster until they embrace modernity."
As a Muslim living in the United States, Nasser understands the difficulties faced by the Muslim community (he himself was harshly interrogated by the FBI after 9/11). However, he doesn't agree that western imperialism is the cause of all of our problems. He understands that anti-Muslim sentiments are high. But he also points out that human rights abuses in the Muslim world began long before American or European imperialism of the Middle East. For example, slavery began in Mauritania long before the French colonized the country. He says Muslims have been enslaving other Muslims for a thousand years, even though Islam clearly forbids this.
Today, Nasser is still working for human rights, despite continued risk. Through his work with the Hands Across the Mideast Support Alliance (HAMSA) - a program of the American Islamic Congress, Nasser works for the civil rights of reformers and dissidents. He's responsible for campaigns to assist jailed bloggers, reformers on death row, and others whose rights have been stripped by their governments or communities. HAMSA's "C.R.I.M.E. reports" spread information about particular cases and get people involved to help.
Nasser's activism requires an honest look at his own identity, and a willingness to make himself unpopular in his own community. He's chosen an unconventional life, but knows that moral courage is the key to ending the crimes of slavery and censorship that plague the Muslim world. To learn more, see the links below, and consider getting involved. Working for human rights is a responsibility each of us carry - no matter our religious and cultural background.
