Slavery is still rampant of African Muslims- just ask the Moors
27 MILLION BLACK PEOPLE ARE STILL OWNED AS SLAVES IN MUSLIM COUNTRIES 2DA
WHITE SLAVES- MUSLIM MASTERS
Modern
Day Slave Trade By Arab Muslims
"I
was under the impression that the African slave trade was the sole
responsibility of the Christian Europeans, the White race, that is until I
started exploring the subject in great depth..."
Full List of Islamic Terror Attacks for 2013
– Downloadable PDF
Muslims
excelled in their bloodlust for 2013.
One
person every 31 minutes of everyday of the
year for 2013, died at the hands of Muslims.
25 percent of planet earth
experienced the evil ideology, first hand with almost 17,000 people slaughtered
and another 30,000 people injured.
Feel free to download the
full list, in PDF format below.
If you are a member of the
United Patriots Social Community, the file is available for download via the
‘Folders’ tab.
Modern
Day Slave Trade By Arab Muslims
"I
was under the impression that the African slave trade was the sole
responsibility of the Christian Europeans, the White race, that is until I
started exploring the subject in great depth..."
The United Nations: Accessory to Slavery and other Crimes Against Humanity
by Simon Deng
October 19, 2011 at 5:00 am
October 19, 2011 at 5:00 am
Like you, I came to this
conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance to protest this third Durban
conference which is an effort based on a set of lies, and organized by nations
who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.
Durban
III will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the
Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has lost its way.
Its obsession with the Jewish obvious: . For over 50 years, 82% of the UN
General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state -
Israel. Hitler could not have been made happier.
Given
all the good Israel does in the world, given its democracy and its striving to
follow the highest standards of human rights, even in the face of the most
brutal, the most fanatic enemies, the Durban Conference is an outrage. All
decent people know that.
But
friends, I come here today to make a different case. I come with what you might
at first think is a radical proposition: I come to tell you that there are
peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of
those people.
By
exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has
muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For
over fifty years the indigenous black African population of Sudan -- Christians
and Muslims alike --- have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim
regimes in Khartoum.
In
South Sudan, my homeland, Sudan, about four million innocent men, women and
children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically
cleansed, and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
Everybody
at the United Nations is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees.
They dedicated a separate agency to provide for them; this agency, UNWRA,
treats them with a special privilege.
Meanwhile,
my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored.
The UN even resisted using the word "slavery" to describe the
enslavement of tens of thousands of my people. Why? Because slavery is a crime
against humanity, apparently no one committing it wanted to end up before an
international court. When Khartoum insisted that the term "abducted
people" be substituted for the word "slaves," the UN, caved to
Arab pressure and agreed. Try that in America. Try calling Frederick Douglas an
"abducted person." It is outrageous.
The
UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the root causes of Sudan's
conflicts. Take Darfur, for example. Who knows really what is happening in
Darfur? It is not a "tribal conflict." It is a conflict rooted in
Arab colonialism, as it has typically been practiced in Africa. In Darfur, a
region in the Western Sudan everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because
the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to
Islam In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim
enough. And they also do not want to be Arabized. They like their own African
languages and dress and customs. They resist Arabization. The Arab response is
genocide. But nobody tells the truth about Darfur.
In
the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I
speak. The regime is targeting the black Africans -- Muslims and Christians.
This happened to the Nuba people before. In the 1990's hundreds of thousands
were murdered; a large number of women were raped; children were abducted and
forcibly converted to Islam. Nobody at the UN told the truth about the Nuba
Mountains.
Do
you see a massive amount of outrage and reports and protests about this coming
out of the UN or Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International? Do you hear them
condemn Arab anti-black racism?
Look
at the pages of the New York Times, or the record of the UN condemnations, What
you will find is "Israeli crimes" and Palestinian suffering. My
people have been driven off the front pages by the exaggerations of Palestinian
suffering. Why? Because what Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin that we
are all supposed to address.
The
truth is that the West commits a real sin when it abandons us: the actual
victims of non-Westerns. Our suffering has become almost taboo.
Let
me return to the topic of slavery: while there are issues that divide public
opinion, we can all agree that for one man to own another is a sin, and it
should be stopped. The Americans tore themselves apart over the issue of
slavery.
Chattel
slavery, a centuries-long practice in Sudan, was revived as a tool of war in
the early '90s. The Islamist regime in Khartoum declared jihad, or holy war,
and thereby legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to
destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and
children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to
the North and sold into slavery.
I am
a living proof of this crime against humanity.
I do
not like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is
important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.
I was
only nine years old when I was made a slave. An Arab neighbor named Abdullahi
tricked me into following him to a boat destined to Northern Sudan where he
gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave
going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings
and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with
animals; eating the family's left-overs. During those three years I was unable
to say the word "no." All I could say was "yes,"
"yes," "yes."
The
United Nations knew about the brutal enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs
from the early days of the conflict. Human Right Watch issued extensive reports
about the issue. These reports gathered dust on UN shelves. It took UNICEF –
under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen
years to acknowledge what was happening.
As
soon as the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, the UN agency
backtracked, and proceeded to criticize the Non-Governmental Organizations that
worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN
Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned
in protest of the UN's actions.
My
friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their
masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC
and the Arab League. So much for "human rights for everybody".
As a
former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why
I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.
I
have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you
how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to
find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. In 2005, the refugees camped outside
the offices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Cairo looking
for mercy. Instead, the United Nations closed its doors and left the helpless
women and children at the mercy of the ruthless Egyptian security forces who
brutally slaughtered at least 26 of them.
After
this event the Sudanese realized that Arab racism is the same, whether it is in
Khartoum or in Cairo. So they continued looking for a shelter and they found it
in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for
punishingly long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel's side
of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.
The
fact that even Darfuris, who are Muslims, chose Israel above all the other
Arab-Muslim states of the area, speaks volumes.. Israel is racist? Israel is
against the Muslim world? Ask the thousands of black Muslim Darfuris who found
shelter inside the Jewish state.
When
I asked the refugees about the treatment they receive in Israel, their response
is absolutely the opposite of what the United Nations alleges. They were
welcomed and treated like human beings. Compared to the situation in Egypt,
they described their lives in Israel as "heaven." No-one called them
"abid" – an Arabic word for slaves often used in Sudan, Egypt and
other Arab nations.
Is
Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is
absolutely not. It is a state of people of the colors of the rainbow. Jews
themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with beautiful black Ethiopian
Jews in Israel. Israel is a state that has taken my own black people in,
rescued them, and helped them.
So,
yes … my claim may be a radical claim: I claim that the victims who suffer most
from the UN's anti-Israel policy are not just the Israelis but all those people
who have to be ignored in order for the UN to tell its big lie against Israel:
all those victims of non Western abuse, especially all those victims of Arab
and Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals,
in the Arab and Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel
hatred.
So
far, the Israelis have only been cursed by the UN. But look at the situation of
the Copts, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais
and Sikhs who suffer from Islamic oppression. We all suffer. We are ignored, we
are abandoned so that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.
Before
I conclude let me tell you a story that reflects a special connection that the
people of South Sudan feel toward Israel. In 2005, I visited one of the refugee
camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream.
In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor, and then, she wanted
to visit Israel. I was shocked and numb. How could this refugee girl who spent
most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to
visit Israel, she said: "This is our people." I was never able to
find an answer to my question.
On
July 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. We achieved freedom
despite the opposition from the Arab world and despite the United Nations,
whose General Secretary, Bi Ki Moon, lobbied for the unity of Sudan. For the
South Sudanese, that would mean continuation of oppression, brutalization,
demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.
In a
similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in
their homeland; and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel's
legitimacy.
As a
friend of Israel, I salute the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva
Kiir, who had the courage to state publicly that South Sudan embassy in Israel
will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the
Jewish people.
I
also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its people, will
oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling
the truth.
This originally appeared in a
a slightly different form as an address at a conference titled "The Perils
of Global Intolerance", in New York City, September 22, 2011.
African
Muslim Groups Protest Arab Rule
Islam
is, for all its universalist claims, inherently Arab: prayers must be said in
Arabic, the Qur'an must be recited in Arabic, etc. Throughout Islamic history
this has created tensions among non-Arab Muslims who find that with this Arabic
character of Islam inevitably comes an Arabization of their culture. Note also
here the information about the persistence of slavery. A press release from
Newswire, with thanks to Twostellas:
African
Muslim Groups Protest Arab Rule, Expansion in Africa; Demonstration to Protest
the visit of Mauritanian President
Demonstration
to protest the visit of Mauritanian President
Maaouya
Ould Taya
When:
Tuesday, April 5, from 1 PM to 3 PM EDT Where: In front of The State
Department,
2201 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. Details:
African
Muslims from Mauritania and Sudan are joining to protest the visit to the State
Department of Ould Taya, Arab leader of Mauritania, an African country ruled
and brutally controlled by Arab regimes. Taya is coming to United States to
arrange oil trading with the Bush Administration. This protest builds on the
growing cooperation of African Muslims from Sudan and Mauritania to protest
Arab colonialism, slaughter and enslavement of black Africans.
Mansour
Kane, a Mauritanian Muslim of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in
Mauritania, said, "Ould Taya's hands are dirty with the blood of thousands
of non-Arab black people in Mauritania."
Mamadou
Barry, of the African Liberation Forces, said two of the slogans of the
demonstration will be, "No Arab expansionism in Africa," and
"Stop the genocide in Darfur."
Kane
said, "The Arabs enslaved blacks in my country hundreds of years ago.
Today they still have Black Muslim slaves by the tens of thousands, and they
are pushing the free Blacks off our land in the south."
Barry
said, "Just like happened to our people hundreds of years ago, African
Muslims in Western Sudan's Darfur region are being slaughtered and enslaved by
Arab militia armed by the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum. We stand
and fight with them."
Posted
by Robert on April 4, 2005 8:03 AM | 5 Comments
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5
Comments
waterdragon52
| April 4, 2005 12:41 PM
I
am happy to see these black Muslims finally speaking out, but one has to wonder
why they remain Muslim.
Wonder
what kind of response will be heard from the usual suspects -- CAIR,
International ANSWER, etc.
Geoff
| April 4, 2005 1:17 PM
Gee,
I thought this didn't happen and all - or at least that the US was the only
country that ever used slaves. A shocker, yep, that's what it is, a reeeeeall
shocker.
Geoff
BigSleep
| April 4, 2005 6:25 PM
All
Ould Taya need do is quote Mohammad to these protesting Black African Muslims,
and tell them that "even though their heads are like raisins" they
are still welcome to submit to the will of Arab Muslim invaders and their
violent desert prophet.
That
should mollify them.
Hugh
| April 4, 2005 8:39 PM
This
is very good. Fissures and resentments within Islam should be encouraged.
Besides, those who resent the Arab supremacist ideology within Islam happen to
merely be recongizing the truth -- there is such an ideology. Look at Darfur,
where the attack is on "inferior" -- because non-Arab and black
African -- Muslims.
Not
a syllable of protest was uttered by any member of the Arab League when Arabs
in Iraq murdered 182,000 Kurds. Not a syllable of protest either, about the
denial (until just the other day) of cultural and linguistic rights to the
Berbers in Algeria, punished even for speaking Tamazight.
No
wonder that it is among the "Kabyles" -- the Berbers -- in France
that one finds a higher percentage of apostasy than among the Arabs. In
Indonesia, at some point, resentments over the hideous treatment of Indonesian
domestic workers in Arab oil states could be made much of, and if enough people
in Indonesia recognized the need to split off from Arab Islam, or even to
create the conditions in which Islam itself have its image damaged -- in a kind
of Ataturkism that relies on changes in public perception -- this could be
helpful.
And
then, of course, there is Iran. Let the fury at the Islamic Republic not be
limited, but directed at Islam as the primitive "gift" of the
"primitive" Arabs, a Trojan horse that helped bring Persian
civilization lower. Emphasize how many Persian writers wrote about non-Islamic
themes (wine, women, song), and how many helped prevent the linguistic imperialism
of the Arabs (Firdowsi). Make the embrace of Zoroastrianism, unlikely as it may
seem, become a fashionable alternative -- a statement of nationalism, that
permits and even encourages the abandonment of Islam.
While
many of the important figures in high Islamic civilization were Christians and
Jews, some were Persian, a few from Central Asia, and a very few Arabs. Let
that be emphasized. And Persian and Indo-Persian achievements -- such as
miniature paintings -- were the result not of observing Islam, but of ignoring
the rules of Islam.
And
then, of course, there is the Sunni-Shi'a fissure that might, in Iraq, instead
of being tamped down, be allowed to widen. To create a permanent split, running
through Iraq, with Iran on one side and the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia, and the smaller
Gulf states (with their own Shi'a populations), and Jordan, on the other ---
what could be more useful?
Why
are Ameridan soldiers risking their lives to make for a new improved altogether
wonderful Iraq? Why are hundreds of billions of dollars, at a time when the
price of oil, from which Iraq derives its own revenues, is soaring -- going
from American taxpayers to pay for this by-now simple-minded and silly
adventure, for which the costs are headed skyward while the benefits head
below? A little hardheadness, a little cunning, at this point would be nice.
Giaour
| April 4, 2005 9:56 PM
What's
perplexing is that half of the Muslims in the US are black Muslims (thanks to
Malcom X). They converted in reaction to slavery under the white man, and of
course a justifiable reaction, to their treatment by whites (even to the
present).
But
the history of black enslavement by Arabs has been a void, even to the present.
Such as 21st Century African Slaves in Islam
In
fact the slave traders in Africa were black Muslims, like those in Nigeria, who
(still) practise slavery.
Blacks
who return to their "motherland" and discover this reality are to put
it mildly quite shocked.
Islam
is racist to the core (Arab supremacy is it's core ideology, and Arabs are the
chosen people because they were "selected" above all others to
receive the Qur'an, so the ideology goes).
It
is understandable how blacks could reject the white man's god, as they perceive
it, but it is incomprehensible how they can accept the god of those who
enslaved and enslave them.
I
wonder if American Black Muslims know the truth of the history of enslavement
by Arabs and Muslims, and if they do how do they handle their cognitive
dissonance.
BTW
Hugh, Iraq is pumping very little oil these days, thanks to sabotage by the
Ba'athists and Wahhabi Jihadis. Check out Pipeline Watch
However
OPEC, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, EXXON, Texaco,BP, and of course
Haliburton (Cheney's firm) which received no bid contracts (on which they have
overbilled and bilked the taxpayer) are cleaning up. And the pimpleheaded
Americans are being taken for a ride.
The Arab Muslim Slave Trade
The Arab Muslim Slave Trade
Muhammad was a slaver
In the previous article “Humanitarian Muhammad: Did Muhammad Abolished Slavery”, it has been said that, neither Prophet Muhammad nor Islam took any step to abolish slavery. Instead, Muhammad supported and patronized slavery for the interest of Islam as well as his own. Evidence is overwhelming in the Quran, hadith and sira and the writings of Muslim historians that how Muhammad took, purchased, sold, and gave away both male and female slaves. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya - a great scholar, astronomer, chemist, philosopher, psychologist, scientist, theologian and Islamic historian - says: "Muhammad had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more slaves then he sold. He once sold one black slave for two. His purchases of slaves were more than he sold." [Zad al-Ma'ad", part 1, p. 160] (Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah's (1292-1350 CE) Zad al-Ma'ad, translated as Provisions of the Hereafter, is rated as one of the finest books on the biography of Mohammed.)[1]
"Muhammad had a number of black slaves. One of them was named 'Mahran'. Muhammad forced him to do more labor than the average man. Whenever Muhammad went on a trip and he, or his people, got tired of carrying their stuff, he made Mahran carry it. Mahran said "Even if I were already carrying the load of 6 or 7 donkeys while we were on a journey, anyone who felt weak would throw his clothes or his shield or his sword on me so I would carry that, a heavy load". Tabari and Jawziyya both record this, so Islam accepts this as true." (Behind the Veil) [2]
On one occasion, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali whipped a female slave of Aisha in front of Muhammad to make her speak out about the adultery charges brought against Aisha. Muhammad did not say a word to protest Ali's beating of the slave-girl. On another occasion, Umar beat a slave-girl for wearing the veil (veil is for free Muslim women only). It has been said in the previous article that Muhammad massacred 800 male Koreiza Jews and took their women and children, about 1200 heads, as slaves. He kept at least one Jewish female, named Rihana, as his concubine, and gave the rest away to his companions. He sent his disciple Sa'd bin-Zayd with a portion of the captive women and children to Nejd to sell them for horse and weapons for organizing future jihad-raids.
All these incidents bear testimony to the fact that Muhammad was an enslaver and slave-trader. The names of many of Muhammad's slaves are given in detail in Muslim writings and they can be found in "Behind the Veil". Moreover, even under Muhammad, slaves were treated brutally as above examples make it clear, although some Muslims, groundlessly, claim that slaves under Islam were always treated fairly and kindly.
The rights of slaves under Islam
According to the Thomas Hughes' The Dictionary of Islam, slaves had few civil or legal rights. For example:
1.Muslim masters enjoyed the right to have sex anytime with female slaves (Koran: 4:3, 4:29, 33:49).
2.Slaves are as helpless before their masters as idols are before Allah (Koran: 16:77).
3.According to Islamic Tradition, people at the time of their capture were either to be killed, or enslaved.
4.According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves were merchandise. The sale-proceeds of slaves were kept in accordance with those for animals.
5.Muhammad ordered that some slaves who were freed by their master be re-enslaved.
6.It is permissible under Islamic law to whip slaves.
7.According to Islam, a Muslim could not be put to death for murdering a slave. Ref. 2:178 and the Jalalayn confirm this.
8.According to Islam, the testimony of slaves is not admissible in court. Ibn Timiyya and Bukhari state this.
9.According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves cannot choose their own marriage mate. - Ibn Hazm, vo.6, part 9.
10.According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves can be forced to marry who their masters want. - Malik ibn Anas, vol. 2, p. 155.
“Slavery continued in Islamic lands from about the beginning to this very day. Muslim rulers always found support in the Quran to call 'jihad', partly for booty and partly for the purpose of taking slaves. As the Islamic empire disintegrated into smaller kingdoms, and each ruler was able to decide what Islam's theology really meant. Usually, he always found it in support (in Koran) of what he wanted to do. Their calls for jihad against their neighbor facilitated the taking of slaves for Islam. The Quran and Islamic jurisprudence support the taking of slaves, so, those petty Muslim rulers were following the Quran when they needed slaves”, says Silas. [4]
It is estimated that over the past 1,400 years at least 112 million black Africans were enslaved by Muslim slavers. Hundreds of thousands of white Europeans also ended up in Islamic slave-markets, the young women, who were kept as sex-slaves, being a favorite of Arab slavers.[5]
Who could be slaves under Islam?
1) Islam allows Muslims to make slaves out of anyone who is captured during war.
2) Islam allows for the children of slaves to be raised as slaves
3) Islam allows for Christians and Jews or non-Muslims to be made into slaves if they are captured in war. After Muslim armies attacked and conquered Spain, they took thousands of slaves back to Damascus. The key prize was 1000 virgins as slaves. They were forced to go all the way back to Damascus.
4) Christians and Jews, who had made a treaty with the ruling Muslims could be made into slaves if they did not pay the "protection" tax. This paying for 'protection' was just like paying a Mafia racketeer! This allowed Muslim rulers to extort money from non-Muslim people.
Based on two good books on slavery -- namely "Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa" (Allan Fisher, 1971) and "The Slave Trade Today" (Sean O'Callaghan, 1961) -- reader steadyfriend commented: Everyone knows about the abuses of slaves in the new world. What do you know about the abuses of slaves under Islam? …Both books really opened my eyes to how terrible slavery under Islam really is. I use the present tense, because it is obvious that these abuses continue to this day. I also have a number of other references concerning slavery in Islam. A general survey is. It notes a few basic points:
a) Slaves have no civil liberty, but are entirely under the authority of their owners.
b) Slavery is in complete harmony with the spirit of Islam. Islam did make life better for the average slave, but Muhammad intended it to be a perpetual institution.
c) Hughes also says that it is a righteous act to free a slave. I just find it hard to understand that the god who told Muhammad to take slaves later tells him it's good to free slaves?”
Post-Muhammad slavery
Although Muslims took slaves from all over the lands they conquered, many of the Muslim slaves were black Africans. They were forced to do the harshest labor. There was a famous black slave revolt in Iraq where thousands of black slaves revolted and killed tens of thousands of Arabs in Basrah. There slaves were forced to work in the large Muslim saltpeter mines. During their revolt, they conquered the city of Basrah, in Iraq. They conquered city after city, and they couldn't be stopped. Their uprising and drive for freedom lasted for about 11 (or 15) years.
This revolt, popularly known as The Zanj Revolt was the culmination of series of small revolts. Regarding this revolt, Wikipedia writes, “It took place near the city of Basra, located in southern Iraq over a period of fifteen years (869-883 AD). It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over “tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq”. The revolt was said to have been led by Ali ibn Muhammad, who claimed to be a descendent of Caliph Ali ibn Abu Talib. Several historians, such as Al-Tabari and Al-Masudi, consider this revolt one of the “most vicious and brutal uprisings” of the many disturbances that plagued the Abbasid central government.”[7]
As the Muslim armies continued to conquer land, they acquired many slaves. Bernard Lewis in "The Arabs in History" writes: "polytheists and idolaters were seen primarily as sources of slaves." In the early years of the Arab conquests, vast numbers of slaves were acquired by capture. In The Islamic Dynasties, C.E. Bosworth writes: "The use of this labor enabled the Arabs to live on the conquered land as a rentier class and to exploit some of the economic potential of the rich Fertile Crescent."
Ibn Warraq writes: "Arabs were deeply involved in the vast network of slave trading - they scoured the slave markets of China, India, and Southeast Asia. There were Turkish slaves from Central Asia, slaves from the Byzantine Empire, white slave from Central and East Europe, and Black slaves from West and East Africa. Every city in the Islamic world had its slave market."[8]
Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an anti-Islam polemicist of Pakistani origin who founded the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS). He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qur'anic criticism. Warraq gathered world notice through his historiographies of the early centuries of the Islamic timeline and has published works which question mainstream conceptions of the period. He is the author of seven books, including Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995). He has also spoken at the United Nations "Victims of Jihad" conference organized by the International Humanist and Ethical Union alongside speakers such as Bat Ye'or, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Simon Deng.
Slave trade by the Arabs
To describe the slave trade by the Arabs during their heyday, Wikipedia writes, “The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe (such as Iberia and southern Italy) during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa. People traded were not limited to a certain color, ethnicity, or religion and included Arabs and Berbers, especially in its early days.
Later, during the 8th and 9th centuries of the Islamic Caliphate, most of the slaves were Slavic Eastern Europeans (called Saqaliba). However, slaves were drawn from a wide variety of regions and included Mediterranean peoples, Persians, Turks, peoples from the Caucasus mountain regions (such as Georgia, Armenia and Circassia) and parts of Central Asia and Scandinavia, English, Dutch and Irish, Berbers from North Africa, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of African origins. Later, toward the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves increasingly came from East Africa, until slavery was officially abolished by the end of the 19th century.”[9]
“Historians agree between 11 and 18 million Africans were enslaved by Arab slave traders and taken across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 650 and 1900, compared to 9.4 to 14 million Africans brought to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade from 15th century to the early 19th century. (ref)
Periodic Arab raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.
Arabs also enslaved substantial numbers of Europeans. According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries. These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages from Italy, Spain, Portugal and also from more distant places like France or England, the Netherlands, Ireland and even Iceland. The impact of these attacks was devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. Pirate raids discouraged settlement along the coast until the 19th century."[9]
In those days, slave trade was a highly profitable business. The usual practice was to encircle a coastal village in the darkness of late night and capture the unarmed villagers and forced them to board a ship. The unfortunate people were then sailed to the Middle East and Arab countries and sold in the slave markets. Male slaves were used as agricultural labors and soldiers in the army. Most of the female slaves were used as concubines of the rich Muslims or simply as sex slaves.
History of Arab Muslim slave trade
Murray Gordon in his Slavery in the Arab World, has made a comprehensive study of Arab slave trade and Susan Stephen, in her article Two Views of The History of Islamic Slavery in Africa [10] has profusely quoted from Gordon’s work. She writes, “In his fact-filled work on the history of the Muslim Arab slave trade in Africa, Murray Gordon notes that this trade pre-dated the European Christian African slave trade by a thousand years and continued for more than a century after the Europeans had abolished the practice. Gordon estimates the number of slaves “harvested” from Black Africa over the period of the Muslim Arab slave trade at 11 million – roughly equal to the number taken by European Christians for their colonies in the New World.”
The above comment the Arab trade of African slaves began nearly 1000 years ago that the European Christians began the trade and she writes, “Despite the long history of slavery in the Arab World and in other Muslim lands, little has been written about this tragedy,” writes Gordon in his introduction of his book. “Except for the few abolitionists, mainly in England, who rallied against Arab slavery and put pressure upon Western governments to end the traffic in slaves, the issue has all but been ignored in the West”, adds Mr Gordon.
Among the scholars in the Arab world, none raised the voice against and Mr Gordon the author points out, “No moral opprobrium has clung to slavery since it was sanctioned by the Koran and enjoyed an undisputed place in Arab society.” Gordon’s book starts out with a brief outline of the growth of the Islamic attitude toward slavery and Susan Stephen writes, “There is no evidence that Muhammad sought to abolish slavery, notes Gordon, although he urged slave-owners to treat their slaves well and grant them freedom as a meritorious deed.”
"Some Muslim scholars have taken this to mean that his true motive was to bring about a gradual elimination of slavery. Far more persuasive is the argument that by lending the moral authority of Islam to slavery, Muhammad assured its legitimacy. Thus, in lightening the fetter, he riveted it ever more firmly in place”, Ms Stephen asserts.
“The taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also had a high casualty rate. Gordon notes that the typical practice was to conduct a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the preferred “booty” for the raiders”, Ms Stephen writes.
Young women were targeted first because of their higher value as concubines or sex slaves in markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes. … These women were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected to make themselves available to their owners. . .Islamic law, as already noted, catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed,” writes Gordon. “Young women and girls were often “inspected” before purchase in private areas of the slave market by the prospective buyer”, Stephen adds.
While Gordon acknowledges that at times the Islamic version of slavery could be more “humane” than the European colonial version, he provides many facts which point out that the Muslim variety of slavery could be extremely cruel as well. He writes, "One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.”
One important aspect of Islamic slavery was the large-scale castration of male-slaves, who were employed widely as harem guards and partners for sodomy. This practice is approved or alluded to in Quranic verse 24:31 (Malik): "…male attendants who lack sexual desires".
In India, the castrated African slaves were called “Khojas” and were employed to guard the harems of the lecherous Mughal rulers that contained thousands of slave girls turned concubines. Even enslaved local Hindu boys were widely castrated and sold in India. There were 5000 concubines in the harem of Akbar. When Akbar died, his son Jahangir became the owner of that harem. Later on, he augmented his harem by inducting 1000 new concubines. The majority of these concubines were not slaves bought from the slave-markets, but Hindu women kidnapped or captured from the household of defeated Hindu rulers.
It has been mentioned above that the Barbary States, term used for the North African states of Tripolitania, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, were engaged in the trade of white Christian slaves captured from Europe.
Muhammad was a slaver
In the previous article “Humanitarian Muhammad: Did Muhammad Abolished Slavery”, it has been said that, neither Prophet Muhammad nor Islam took any step to abolish slavery. Instead, Muhammad supported and patronized slavery for the interest of Islam as well as his own. Evidence is overwhelming in the Quran, hadith and sira and the writings of Muslim historians that how Muhammad took, purchased, sold, and gave away both male and female slaves. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya - a great scholar, astronomer, chemist, philosopher, psychologist, scientist, theologian and Islamic historian - says: "Muhammad had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more slaves then he sold. He once sold one black slave for two. His purchases of slaves were more than he sold." [Zad al-Ma'ad", part 1, p. 160] (Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah's (1292-1350 CE) Zad al-Ma'ad, translated as Provisions of the Hereafter, is rated as one of the finest books on the biography of Mohammed.)[1]
"Muhammad had a number of black slaves. One of them was named 'Mahran'. Muhammad forced him to do more labor than the average man. Whenever Muhammad went on a trip and he, or his people, got tired of carrying their stuff, he made Mahran carry it. Mahran said "Even if I were already carrying the load of 6 or 7 donkeys while we were on a journey, anyone who felt weak would throw his clothes or his shield or his sword on me so I would carry that, a heavy load". Tabari and Jawziyya both record this, so Islam accepts this as true." (Behind the Veil) [2]
On one occasion, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali whipped a female slave of Aisha in front of Muhammad to make her speak out about the adultery charges brought against Aisha. Muhammad did not say a word to protest Ali's beating of the slave-girl. On another occasion, Umar beat a slave-girl for wearing the veil (veil is for free Muslim women only). It has been said in the previous article that Muhammad massacred 800 male Koreiza Jews and took their women and children, about 1200 heads, as slaves. He kept at least one Jewish female, named Rihana, as his concubine, and gave the rest away to his companions. He sent his disciple Sa'd bin-Zayd with a portion of the captive women and children to Nejd to sell them for horse and weapons for organizing future jihad-raids.
All these incidents bear testimony to the fact that Muhammad was an enslaver and slave-trader. The names of many of Muhammad's slaves are given in detail in Muslim writings and they can be found in "Behind the Veil". Moreover, even under Muhammad, slaves were treated brutally as above examples make it clear, although some Muslims, groundlessly, claim that slaves under Islam were always treated fairly and kindly.
The rights of slaves under Islam
According to the Thomas Hughes' The Dictionary of Islam, slaves had few civil or legal rights. For example:
1.Muslim masters enjoyed the right to have sex anytime with female slaves (Koran: 4:3, 4:29, 33:49).
2.Slaves are as helpless before their masters as idols are before Allah (Koran: 16:77).
3.According to Islamic Tradition, people at the time of their capture were either to be killed, or enslaved.
4.According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves were merchandise. The sale-proceeds of slaves were kept in accordance with those for animals.
5.Muhammad ordered that some slaves who were freed by their master be re-enslaved.
6.It is permissible under Islamic law to whip slaves.
7.According to Islam, a Muslim could not be put to death for murdering a slave. Ref. 2:178 and the Jalalayn confirm this.
8.According to Islam, the testimony of slaves is not admissible in court. Ibn Timiyya and Bukhari state this.
9.According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves cannot choose their own marriage mate. - Ibn Hazm, vo.6, part 9.
10.According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves can be forced to marry who their masters want. - Malik ibn Anas, vol. 2, p. 155.
“Slavery continued in Islamic lands from about the beginning to this very day. Muslim rulers always found support in the Quran to call 'jihad', partly for booty and partly for the purpose of taking slaves. As the Islamic empire disintegrated into smaller kingdoms, and each ruler was able to decide what Islam's theology really meant. Usually, he always found it in support (in Koran) of what he wanted to do. Their calls for jihad against their neighbor facilitated the taking of slaves for Islam. The Quran and Islamic jurisprudence support the taking of slaves, so, those petty Muslim rulers were following the Quran when they needed slaves”, says Silas. [4]
It is estimated that over the past 1,400 years at least 112 million black Africans were enslaved by Muslim slavers. Hundreds of thousands of white Europeans also ended up in Islamic slave-markets, the young women, who were kept as sex-slaves, being a favorite of Arab slavers.[5]
Who could be slaves under Islam?
1) Islam allows Muslims to make slaves out of anyone who is captured during war.
2) Islam allows for the children of slaves to be raised as slaves
3) Islam allows for Christians and Jews or non-Muslims to be made into slaves if they are captured in war. After Muslim armies attacked and conquered Spain, they took thousands of slaves back to Damascus. The key prize was 1000 virgins as slaves. They were forced to go all the way back to Damascus.
4) Christians and Jews, who had made a treaty with the ruling Muslims could be made into slaves if they did not pay the "protection" tax. This paying for 'protection' was just like paying a Mafia racketeer! This allowed Muslim rulers to extort money from non-Muslim people.
Based on two good books on slavery -- namely "Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa" (Allan Fisher, 1971) and "The Slave Trade Today" (Sean O'Callaghan, 1961) -- reader steadyfriend commented: Everyone knows about the abuses of slaves in the new world. What do you know about the abuses of slaves under Islam? …Both books really opened my eyes to how terrible slavery under Islam really is. I use the present tense, because it is obvious that these abuses continue to this day. I also have a number of other references concerning slavery in Islam. A general survey is. It notes a few basic points:
a) Slaves have no civil liberty, but are entirely under the authority of their owners.
b) Slavery is in complete harmony with the spirit of Islam. Islam did make life better for the average slave, but Muhammad intended it to be a perpetual institution.
c) Hughes also says that it is a righteous act to free a slave. I just find it hard to understand that the god who told Muhammad to take slaves later tells him it's good to free slaves?”
Post-Muhammad slavery
Although Muslims took slaves from all over the lands they conquered, many of the Muslim slaves were black Africans. They were forced to do the harshest labor. There was a famous black slave revolt in Iraq where thousands of black slaves revolted and killed tens of thousands of Arabs in Basrah. There slaves were forced to work in the large Muslim saltpeter mines. During their revolt, they conquered the city of Basrah, in Iraq. They conquered city after city, and they couldn't be stopped. Their uprising and drive for freedom lasted for about 11 (or 15) years.
This revolt, popularly known as The Zanj Revolt was the culmination of series of small revolts. Regarding this revolt, Wikipedia writes, “It took place near the city of Basra, located in southern Iraq over a period of fifteen years (869-883 AD). It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over “tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq”. The revolt was said to have been led by Ali ibn Muhammad, who claimed to be a descendent of Caliph Ali ibn Abu Talib. Several historians, such as Al-Tabari and Al-Masudi, consider this revolt one of the “most vicious and brutal uprisings” of the many disturbances that plagued the Abbasid central government.”[7]
As the Muslim armies continued to conquer land, they acquired many slaves. Bernard Lewis in "The Arabs in History" writes: "polytheists and idolaters were seen primarily as sources of slaves." In the early years of the Arab conquests, vast numbers of slaves were acquired by capture. In The Islamic Dynasties, C.E. Bosworth writes: "The use of this labor enabled the Arabs to live on the conquered land as a rentier class and to exploit some of the economic potential of the rich Fertile Crescent."
Ibn Warraq writes: "Arabs were deeply involved in the vast network of slave trading - they scoured the slave markets of China, India, and Southeast Asia. There were Turkish slaves from Central Asia, slaves from the Byzantine Empire, white slave from Central and East Europe, and Black slaves from West and East Africa. Every city in the Islamic world had its slave market."[8]
Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an anti-Islam polemicist of Pakistani origin who founded the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society (ISIS). He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry focusing on Qur'anic criticism. Warraq gathered world notice through his historiographies of the early centuries of the Islamic timeline and has published works which question mainstream conceptions of the period. He is the author of seven books, including Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995). He has also spoken at the United Nations "Victims of Jihad" conference organized by the International Humanist and Ethical Union alongside speakers such as Bat Ye'or, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Simon Deng.
Slave trade by the Arabs
To describe the slave trade by the Arabs during their heyday, Wikipedia writes, “The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab World, mainly Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa and certain parts of Europe (such as Iberia and southern Italy) during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East and North Africa. People traded were not limited to a certain color, ethnicity, or religion and included Arabs and Berbers, especially in its early days.
Later, during the 8th and 9th centuries of the Islamic Caliphate, most of the slaves were Slavic Eastern Europeans (called Saqaliba). However, slaves were drawn from a wide variety of regions and included Mediterranean peoples, Persians, Turks, peoples from the Caucasus mountain regions (such as Georgia, Armenia and Circassia) and parts of Central Asia and Scandinavia, English, Dutch and Irish, Berbers from North Africa, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of African origins. Later, toward the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves increasingly came from East Africa, until slavery was officially abolished by the end of the 19th century.”[9]
“Historians agree between 11 and 18 million Africans were enslaved by Arab slave traders and taken across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert between 650 and 1900, compared to 9.4 to 14 million Africans brought to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade from 15th century to the early 19th century. (ref)
Periodic Arab raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.
Arabs also enslaved substantial numbers of Europeans. According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries. These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages from Italy, Spain, Portugal and also from more distant places like France or England, the Netherlands, Ireland and even Iceland. The impact of these attacks was devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. Pirate raids discouraged settlement along the coast until the 19th century."[9]
In those days, slave trade was a highly profitable business. The usual practice was to encircle a coastal village in the darkness of late night and capture the unarmed villagers and forced them to board a ship. The unfortunate people were then sailed to the Middle East and Arab countries and sold in the slave markets. Male slaves were used as agricultural labors and soldiers in the army. Most of the female slaves were used as concubines of the rich Muslims or simply as sex slaves.
History of Arab Muslim slave trade
Murray Gordon in his Slavery in the Arab World, has made a comprehensive study of Arab slave trade and Susan Stephen, in her article Two Views of The History of Islamic Slavery in Africa [10] has profusely quoted from Gordon’s work. She writes, “In his fact-filled work on the history of the Muslim Arab slave trade in Africa, Murray Gordon notes that this trade pre-dated the European Christian African slave trade by a thousand years and continued for more than a century after the Europeans had abolished the practice. Gordon estimates the number of slaves “harvested” from Black Africa over the period of the Muslim Arab slave trade at 11 million – roughly equal to the number taken by European Christians for their colonies in the New World.”
The above comment the Arab trade of African slaves began nearly 1000 years ago that the European Christians began the trade and she writes, “Despite the long history of slavery in the Arab World and in other Muslim lands, little has been written about this tragedy,” writes Gordon in his introduction of his book. “Except for the few abolitionists, mainly in England, who rallied against Arab slavery and put pressure upon Western governments to end the traffic in slaves, the issue has all but been ignored in the West”, adds Mr Gordon.
Among the scholars in the Arab world, none raised the voice against and Mr Gordon the author points out, “No moral opprobrium has clung to slavery since it was sanctioned by the Koran and enjoyed an undisputed place in Arab society.” Gordon’s book starts out with a brief outline of the growth of the Islamic attitude toward slavery and Susan Stephen writes, “There is no evidence that Muhammad sought to abolish slavery, notes Gordon, although he urged slave-owners to treat their slaves well and grant them freedom as a meritorious deed.”
"Some Muslim scholars have taken this to mean that his true motive was to bring about a gradual elimination of slavery. Far more persuasive is the argument that by lending the moral authority of Islam to slavery, Muhammad assured its legitimacy. Thus, in lightening the fetter, he riveted it ever more firmly in place”, Ms Stephen asserts.
“The taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also had a high casualty rate. Gordon notes that the typical practice was to conduct a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the preferred “booty” for the raiders”, Ms Stephen writes.
Young women were targeted first because of their higher value as concubines or sex slaves in markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes. … These women were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected to make themselves available to their owners. . .Islamic law, as already noted, catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed,” writes Gordon. “Young women and girls were often “inspected” before purchase in private areas of the slave market by the prospective buyer”, Stephen adds.
While Gordon acknowledges that at times the Islamic version of slavery could be more “humane” than the European colonial version, he provides many facts which point out that the Muslim variety of slavery could be extremely cruel as well. He writes, "One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.”
One important aspect of Islamic slavery was the large-scale castration of male-slaves, who were employed widely as harem guards and partners for sodomy. This practice is approved or alluded to in Quranic verse 24:31 (Malik): "…male attendants who lack sexual desires".
In India, the castrated African slaves were called “Khojas” and were employed to guard the harems of the lecherous Mughal rulers that contained thousands of slave girls turned concubines. Even enslaved local Hindu boys were widely castrated and sold in India. There were 5000 concubines in the harem of Akbar. When Akbar died, his son Jahangir became the owner of that harem. Later on, he augmented his harem by inducting 1000 new concubines. The majority of these concubines were not slaves bought from the slave-markets, but Hindu women kidnapped or captured from the household of defeated Hindu rulers.
It has been mentioned above that the Barbary States, term used for the North African states of Tripolitania, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, were engaged in the trade of white Christian slaves captured from Europe.
--------------------
High
Rate of Black African Casualties
While
Gordon acknowledges that at times the Islamic version of slavery could be more
“humane” than the European colonial version, he provides many facts which point
out that the Muslim variety of slavery could be extremely cruel as well.
One
particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys,
sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a
higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created
“eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary
surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one
out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.
The
taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also
had a high casualty rate. Gordon notes that the typical practice was to conduct
a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and
older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the
preferred “booty” for the raiders.
Young
women were targeted because of their value as concubines or sex slaves in
markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab
world was to exploit them for sexual purposes,” writes Gordon. “These women
were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected
to make themselves available to their owners. . .Islamic law, as already noted,
catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as
four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed.”
Young women and girls were often “inspected” before purchase in private areas
of the slave market by the prospective buyer.
Racism
Toward Black Africans
Some
of Gordon’s research disputes the oft-repeated charge that racism did not play
a part in Islamic slave society. While it is true that the Muslims of the
Middle East took slaves of all colors and ethnicities, they considered white slaves more valuable
than black ones and developed racist attitudes toward the darker skinned
people.
Even
the famous Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, expressed racist attitudes toward
black Africans: “The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to
their low degree of humanity and their proximity to the animal stage,” Khaldun
wrote. Another Arab writer, of the 14th Century, asked: “Is there anything more
vile than black slaves, of less good and more evil than they?”
Gordon
covers the Arab/African slave trades up until the mid-20th Century, noting that
Saudi Arabia only abolished the practice in the early 1960s. Unlike the
European nations and the USA, the Arab nations did not abolish African slavery
voluntarily out of moral conscience, but due to considerable economic and
military pressure applied by the great colonial powers of time, France and
Britain. Slavery is still practiced in two Islamic nations: The Sudan and
Mauritania.
Further
reading about the Arab/Muslim slave trades can be found in the following book:
Race
and Slavery in the Middle East
Bernard
Lewis
Oxford
University Press (Trade); Reprint
edition (April 1992)
An
excerpt from this book can be found here
To
learn more about the 21st Century slave conditions in The Sudan and Mauritania,
please visit www.iabolish.org
#
# #
White
Slaves, African Masters
An
Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives
Edited
and with an introduction by Paul Baepler
The
University of Chicago Press 1999
This
book illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the West but which
is now somewhat neglected: the enslavement, over several centuries, of tens of
thousands of white Christian Europeans and (later) Americans in Muslim North
Africa -- or the so-called “Barbary” states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and
Tripoli. Over the course of 10 centuries, tens of thousands of these
unfortunates became the possessions of Muslims in North Africa courtesy of the
feared Barbary pirates. These pirates cruised the Mediterranean Sea and the
Atlantic Ocean in search of European and, later, American ships to pillage and
plunder.
Edited
by a lecturer at the University of Minnesota, Paul Baepler, this book focuses
on first-person accounts of American Christians who served as slaves to
high-ranking Muslim officials in North Africa. Baepler also provides
fascinating background commentary that puts the narratives into historical
perspective. He includes two “fictional” narratives of female captives.
(According to Baepler, Christian women captives of the Barbary states – unlike
male captives – usually did not publish their testimonies under their real
names, due to the fact that many of them had been “dishonored” by service in
the harems of Barbary potentates.)
As
Baepler notes in his introduction, Christian slaves of European ancestry were
hardly an uncommon phenomenon in the Barbary States. The Barbary pirates were
excellent seafarers and, from the Coasts of North Africa, sailed as far north
as Iceland (where they went ashore and captured 800 slaves during one incident)
and as far West as Newfoundland, Canada, where they pillaged more than 40
vessels at one time. By 1620, reports Baepler, there were more than 20,000
white Christian slaves in Algiers alone, and by the 1630s that number tolled
more than 30,000 men and 2,000 women. The most famous of all white Christian
Europeans to serve as a slave in the Barbary States was probably Miguel de
Cervantes, the great Spanish author of the “Don Quixote” epic, who was taken as
a slave in the late 1500s.
An
Important Source of Revenue
European
and (later on) American slaves appeared to have been important source of
foreign revenue for the local economies for several centuries. First, European
and (later) American governments paid huge sums in “tribute” to the Muslim
governments in exchange for “peace treaties” that were supposed to halt the
pirate attacks on their trading and naval ships. Those nations who did not pay
suffered the consequences. Second, enslaved Europeans and Americans were often
redeemed for a handsome ransom. And third, even if the Muslim governments
received no “tribute” or ransom, they still benefited from the unpaid labor of
their captives.
Baepler
quotes a Barbary Coast maxim that illustrates the viewpoints of the pirates and
their sponsoring states: “The Christians who would be on good terms with [the
Barbary States] must [either] fight well or pay well.”
The
first-person narratives reproduced in this book do not support the
often-repeated contention that slavery was somehow a more human institution in
the Islamic world than it was in the European colonies of the New World.
By
and large, the Christian slaves were poorly fed and housed, existing, by one
account, on a meager ration of two slices of bread and a small quantity of
beans per day. Clothing – and medical care -- was provided by sympathetic free
Europeans living in North Africa; slave-owners provided nothing. Spanish
Catholic priests even built a large hospital in Algeria to look after ill and dying
Christian slaves.
The
most popular punishment was the “bastinado” – hundreds of blows on the soles of
the feet with a thick wooden truncheon. For more severe offenses, such as
attempting to escape or ridiculing the Muslim religion or prophet, slaves were
executed in particularly cruel ways: by crucifixion, burning at the stake or
impalement on huge iron hooks until death. The narrators of these slave
accounts witnessed many acts of brutality toward the Christian slaves, as well
as toward the general North African populace ruled over by the elite: the beys,
deys and bashaws of the Barbary States.
Baepler
quotes from, but does not include, the narrative of one James Riley, an
American Barbary captive of the early 1800s who published a book about his
experiences upon returning to the United States. The book became an influential
“best-seller” in the young nation of the USA and influenced those Americans who
worked for abolition of the shameful practice of Black African slavery in the
Southern States of the USA. Riley’s book was said to have greatly influenced
one young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, who, as 16th president of the United
States, signed the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery in the U.S. in
1863.
As
for the Barbary pirate slave trade, it continued sporadically up until the dawn
of the 20th Century, and was not abolished until military and economic pressure
was applied by the colonial powers of Europe (with, in come cases, assistance
from the military might of the USA).
--------------------
-------------------
Four Muslim Terrorist Groups to Look-Out for
in 2014
From
the bloody siege of a Kenyan mall and captured Algerian oil fields, to
high-profile political assassinations in Tunisia and vehicular rampage at
Tiananmen Square, 2013 was marked by terrorist organizations that seemingly
emerged from nowhere to wreak havoc and take innocent lives.
Here is a look at a few:
1. Islamic State of Iraq and
al Sham (ISIS)
Beginning as an umbrella organization for Iraqi insurgent groups in 2003, the Islamic State of Iraq (aka al Qaeda in Iraq) suffered major setbacks during the latter stages of the Iraq War, but since the withdrawal of U.S. forces and the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the group has returned with a vengeance.
Beginning as an umbrella organization for Iraqi insurgent groups in 2003, the Islamic State of Iraq (aka al Qaeda in Iraq) suffered major setbacks during the latter stages of the Iraq War, but since the withdrawal of U.S. forces and the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the group has returned with a vengeance.
This year, the predominately
Sunni extremist group has stepped up its operations, perpetrating
more than 40 deadly attacks each month across Iraq, primarily against Shiite
targets in an effort to incite sectarian conflict. So far, the surge in
violence has claimed roughly 800 civilian lives since mid-2013.
Most notably, in July the
group successfully launched a massive attack on Abu Ghraib prison
freeing more than 500 captured fighters, including many senior al Qaeda
commanders. The highly-organized attack consisted of waves of car bombs,
multiple suicide bombers, and mortar and rocket fire while prisoners rioted on
the inside.
With the outbreak of
conflict in Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq rebranded itself as Islamic State
of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) and has established itself as a significant player
among opposition forces.
2. Ansar al Dine
In the chaos following the military coup that deposed Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure last March, Ansar Dine, loosely translated as “defenders of the faith,” took control of a swath of land the size of Texas that included three major cities in the north Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao.
In the chaos following the military coup that deposed Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure last March, Ansar Dine, loosely translated as “defenders of the faith,” took control of a swath of land the size of Texas that included three major cities in the north Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao.
Led by Iyad Ag Ghaly, a
prominent leader of the Tuareg rebellion in the 90s, Ansar Dine is a militant
Islamist group with close ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb that seeks to
impose a strict interpretation of sharia law. In areas under their control,
they have banned alcohol, smoking, and soccer, and have required women to wear
veils. Those who did not comply were beaten, tortured, or killed.
Following a French-led UN
military offensive earlier this year, Ansar Dine, has gone underground. A
senior commander was captured earlier this year and Ghaly’s
whereabouts remain unknown. However groups loyal to Ghaly
have continued attacks on French troops and government security
forces.
3. Ansar al Sharia
Described by some as “al Qaeda’s response to the Arab Spring,” extremists across the Arab world have taken to branding themselves Ansar al Sharia, or “Supporters of Islamic Law.”
Described by some as “al Qaeda’s response to the Arab Spring,” extremists across the Arab world have taken to branding themselves Ansar al Sharia, or “Supporters of Islamic Law.”
So far there has been no
evidence linking these disparate groups together, but last year, influential
Jihadist Shaykh Abu al Mundhir al Shinqiti urged Muslims to establish
their own chapters of Ansar al Sharia and eventually unite them all into a
single network. Currently the most prominent groups exist in Yemen, Tunisia,
and Libya, and to a lesser extent in Egypt and Morocco.
Libya
Following the death of
Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, two groups using the name Ansar al Sharia
emerged. The more prominent of the two is being held responsible for the
deadly attack on the embassy in Benghazi that left a U.S ambassador and
three other Americans dead.
While Ansar al Sharia was
chased out of Benghazi and had their headquarters destroyed by a mob of angry
residents following the embassy attack, they have returned as a
social organization with a focus on providing services.
The group seeks to implement
a strict interpretation of Islam, but there seems to be little protest over
their resurgence as they operate a health clinic, provide aid to the poor, help
construct new buildings, distribute money to the needy, and even keep the
streets safe with regular patrols and checkpoints.
On the less charitable side,
the group has desecrated and destroyed Sufi shrines, which it
considers a heretical branch of Islam, and is believed to operate a training
camp for combatants. More recently, Ansar al Sharia has launched
an assassination campaign primarily targeting government
security forces, which has sparked heavy clashes in Benghazi.
Tunisia
Founded by Abu Iyadh, a
former al Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan, Tunisia’s Ansar al Sharia is widely
believed to be the most radical and dangerous group to emerge since the 2011
revolution that ousted President Zine El-Abdine Ben Ali.
The group has been blamed
for several high-profile attacks including the assassination of two
prominent politicians in July that plunged Tunisia into chaos. The transitional
government continues to battle the group throughout the south and along
the Algerian border.
Yemen
Yemen’s Ansar al Sharia is
closely linked to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), operating as part
of AQAP’s rebranding efforts. The group has bolstered AQAP’s already strong
hold over Yemen; it captured large swaths of Southern Yemen in 2011 and held
them until government forces backed by local militias and U.S. airstrikes
staged a bloody counteroffensive in June 2012.
The group continues to
launch deadly attacks against the Yemeni government, including this
month’s deadly assault on the Ministry of Defense headquarters that
left more than 50 dead and nearly 170 injured. In addition, as proof of the
group’s wide-reaching influence, a U.S. citizen living in Brentwood, New York
was recently arrested after plotting with several other homegrown
radical Muslims to travel to Yemen and join the radical group in its fight
against Yemen’s government.
4. East Turkestan
Islamic Movement
The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), also known as the Turkestan Islamic Party, is a Muslim separatist movement based in northwest China’s Xinjiang Province. Founded by Uighars, the Turkic-speaking ethnic majority in Xinjiang, ETIM seeks the overthrow of China’s rule and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.
The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), also known as the Turkestan Islamic Party, is a Muslim separatist movement based in northwest China’s Xinjiang Province. Founded by Uighars, the Turkic-speaking ethnic majority in Xinjiang, ETIM seeks the overthrow of China’s rule and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.
ETIM members are scattered
across Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan, operating primarily
in safe havens along the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border. A
recent video has surfaced of young children receiving military
training at camps in Pakistan’s volatile North Waziristan tribal area.
The group has alleged links
to al Qaeda and several ETIM members joined al Qaeda to fight against the
United States in Afghanistan, including the 22 Uighar militants that were
captured and held at Guantanamo by U.S. forces.
China has blamed ETIM for
several high-profile attacks including the recent suicide car crash in
Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, bus bombings in southwest China, gunning down
Chinese nationals in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, an attempted plane
hijacking, and foiled bomb plots in Dubai and Norway. Some analysts believe
that many of these attacks are beyond the capabilities of the organization and
that the Chinese government is using ETIM as a scapegoat in its efforts to
clamp down on ethnic dissent and maintain order in a resource-rich province.
Article by Eugene K.
Chow |
Twenty-first
Century African Slaves - In the Land of Islam
From the Niger River to Sudan slavery
continues to be practiced and justified in the name of the Koran. Resounding
the alarm are black African bishops, an Italian reporter and an English
baroness from the House of Lords
by Sandro Magister
by Sandro Magister
ROMA -ÊSudan´s first saint, Iosephina Bakhita, was canonized by John Paul II in the year 2000. From an early age she was made a slave, sold and resold at the El Obeid and Khartoum markets. She was fortunate to have ended up in Italy. It was in 1890 that she was finally freed and baptized.
Yet today, more than a century later, there are still slaves found between the Sahara and the Nile. What´s more, it is slavery having its basis in Islam, inheritor of the trade which for centuries has forcibly sent 11-14 million Africans from the sub-Sahara region to Arab and Muslim countries.
Little is studied or said about the trade, the opposite being true of slave trade directed toward the Americas. The last general assembly of the African Catholic bishops conferences took place in Dakar in October 2003, where a session was dedicated to the issue, being introduced by statements such as the following:
"Analyses of this issue have been prohibited at length. One cause of the paralysis of this historical conscience has been the attitude of many intellectuals and Muslim rulers regarding the trans-Saharan trade. For reasons of religious sensitivity they don´t want to properly admit to Arab and Islamic responsibility in this drama, whose evil effects still continue. Today in the Arab world the word ´black´ simply means ´slave.´ The tracks of the trans-Saharan trade have formed geographic roads leading to Maghreb and the Middle East."
* * *
The past is like the present. On one of these roads - currently used by numerous Africans from Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Togo, Nigeria, and Camerun - black emigrants converge to Niger and from there, from Agadez (see: photo of mosque), they face the hard desert until reaching the Libyan coastline. From there they set off for Italy and Europe. In Italy´s largest daily, "Corriere della Sera", one of its correspondents, Fabrizio Gatti, recounted cases of 21st century slavery which he ran across as part of a five-part special report published this past Dec. 24-Jan. 2.
Along the emigrants´ current trans-Saharan route is the Dirkou oasis in Niger, the epicenter of slavery found upon crossing the Téneré desert. Illegal emigrants arrive there broken, having been robbed of everything by soldiers placed at numerous road blocks. Thus, Fabrizio Gatti writes:
"In order not to die of hunger they work for free in the homes of merchants or in palm groves. They wash pans, do gardening and yard work, gather dates and make bricks. All in exchange for a bowl of millet, noodles, coffee and some cigarettes. Their desire was to reach Italy, but became slaves instead. It is only after months of hard work that the owner lets them go, paying them finally a ticket to Libya: 25,000 African francs or 38.50 euro. Their fear is ending up like those who have been held prisoners for more than a year, who have gone mad and live in the bush."
And what is the thinking behind this new slave trade? An infantry corporal with "Arab looks and surname" explained to the "Corriere" correspondent, pointing to blacks kneeling in the sand:
"We already prayed to Allah that they continue playing their drums and eat among themselves like animals. Those over there are not like us. If they can pay their passage to Italy, it means they are rich. They are right in leaving something behind in Niger, something for us who haven´t the money to leave."
The reporter commented:
"It´s an old story. Arabs and black living along the Niger consider inhabitants of Africa´s coasts to be simply inferior. Once they used to cross the Ténéré and Sahara along the same route to buy and resell them as slaves. Today, worse than animals, they pile them into trucks. In comparison, goats and camels ride first class, having room to lay down, hay to eat and water to drink."
* * *
East of Niger lays Chad. And one comes to Sudan, crossed by the Nile, a country with a long history of civil war between the Arab and Muslim north (the power holders) and the black, non-Islamicized south. In Sudan slavery continues to be not only practiced by dominant Arabs, but also theorized on the basis of the Koran.
A book published in London in June 2003 by the British institute, Civitas, reports that in black populated areas of Sudan, like Bahr El-Ghazal, the Nuba mountains, South Kordofan and Darfur, there are reoccurring raids conducted by armed Arab groups "to kill most of the men and to abduct women and children into slavery."
The book contains testimony by women and children who escaped from slavery and evidences that in the 1990s the practice was encouraged by the National Islamic Front, the leading party in Khartoum headed by Hassan Al-Turabi, an important leader in the Islamic world:
"Leading NIF figures mobilized the local Arab tribesmen; encouraged them to participate in the jihad; promised them the right to keep slaves as the bounty of war, assuring them that it is justified in the Koran, as a means of conversion to Islam; and provided logistical back-up on ´slave raids´ with provisions of horses, weapons and troops."
One of the book´s authors, Baroness Caroline Cox, is a member and former vice president of the House of Lords - Great Britain´s high political assembly. In her first trip to Sudan, Baroness Cox went to a village called Nyamlell in the Bahr El-Ghazal region, where just before her arrival 80 men and 2 women were killed and 283 women and children were abducted as slaves. Afterward, she made another twenty or so trips to Sudan, often in forbidden areas while gathering ever more detailed documentation.
The book also contains interviews with Arab slave traders, who sustain that the shari´a (Islamic law) authorizes them to enslave children and relatives of men with whom they are at war. They state that they sell slaves to Arabs in other countries.
A former slave from Karko in the Nuba mountains, Mende Nazer, told her story in a book published last year in German (now in English). Captured in 1992, she was first a slave to a rich family from Khartoum and, then in 2000, to a Sudanese diplomat in London, from whom she escaped seeking political asylum.
__________
The book by Baroness Cox and the director of Civitas, with "case study" appendix on slavery in Sudan:
Caroline Cox, John Marks, "The ´West´, Islam and Islamism. Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy?", Civitas, London, 2003, pp. 127, £ 6,00.
A profile and interview with Baroness Cox on the Anglican Church of Cirencester´s web site:
> Caroline Cox tells why she risks her life to help others
The Civitas web site:
> Civitas. Institute for the Study of Civil Society, London
The English edition of Mende Nazer´s autobiography (in bookstores as of Jan. 6):
Mende Nazer, Damien Lewis, "Slave: My True Story", PublicAffairs, 2004, pp. 368, $ 25,00.
Two organizations (Swiss and English) which are very active in documenting slavery in Sudan and providing relief to victims:
> Christian Solidarity International
> Christian Solidarity Worldwide
The activities of an Italian missionary, Fr. Renato Kizito Sesana, for black people living in the Nuba mountains:
> Nuba Emergency, Southern Kordofan, Sudan
The complete French text of the introductory report given at the session on black slave trade at the African and Madagascar bishops conferences general assembly in Dakar, Oct. 1-12 2003:
> Poids de l'histoire sur la race noire et Pastorale de l'église d'Afrique
Fabrizio Gatti´s special report from Dirkou in Niger, published in the "Corriere della Sera" on Dec. 31, 2003, with web links to inquiries of other reports and photos:
> Schiavi nell´oasi del Téneré. Così finisce il sogno dei clandestini
__________
English translation by Michael A. Severance.
Go to the home page of > www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.
Sandro Magister´s e-mail address is s.magister@espressoedit.it
ARAB SLAVE TRADE- THE HISTORY OF ARAB SLAVERY IN AFRICA
Two Views of The History of Islamic Slavery in Africa
By Susan Stephan
Slavery in the Arab World
Murray Gordon
New Amsterdam Books, New York, NY 1989
In his fact-filled work on the history of the Muslim Arab slave trade in Africa, Murray Gordon notes that this trade pre-dated the European Christian African slave trade by a thousand years and continued for more than a century after the Europeans had abolished the practice. Gordon estimates the number of slaves “harvested” from Black Africa over the period of the Muslim Arab slave trade at 11 million – roughly equal to the number taken by European Christians for their colonies in the New World.
“Despite the long history of slavery in the Arab World and in other Muslim lands, little has been written about this tragedy,” writes Gordon in his introduction. “Except for the few abolitionists, mainly in England, who railed against Arab slavery and put pressure upon Western governments to end the traffic in slaves, the issue has all but been ignored in the West.”
‘Conspiracy of Silence’ on Arab Slave Trade
Gordon decries a “conspiracy of silence. . .[that] has blocked out all light on this sensitive subject.” Among scholars in the Arab world, the author points out, “No moral opprobrium has clung to slavery since it was sanctioned by the Koran and enjoyed an undisputed place in Arab society.”
The book starts out with a brief outline of the growth of the Islamic attitude toward slavery. There is no evidence that Muhammad sought to abolish slavery, notes Gordon, although he urged slave-owners to treat their slaves well and grant them freedom as a meritorious deed.
“Some Muslim scholars have taken this to mean that his true motive was to bring about a gradual elimination of slavery. Far more persuasive is the argument that by lending the moral authority of Islam to slavery, Muhammad assured its legitimacy. Thus, in lightening the fetter, he riveted it ever more firmly in place.”
High Rate of Black African Casualties
While Gordon acknowledges that at times the Islamic version of slavery could be more “humane” than the European colonial version, he provides many facts which point out that the Muslim variety of slavery could be extremely cruel as well.
One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.
The taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also had a high casualty rate. Gordon notes that the typical practice was to conduct a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the preferred “booty” for the raiders.
Young women were targeted because of their value as concubines or sex slaves in markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes,” writes Gordon. “These women were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected to make themselves available to their owners. . .Islamic law, as already noted, catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed.” Young women and girls were often “inspected” before purchase in private areas of the slave market by the prospective buyer.
Racism Toward Black Africans
Some of Gordon’s research disputes the oft-repeated charge that racism did not play a part in Islamic slave society. While it is true that the Muslims of the Middle East took slaves of all colors and ethnicities, they considered white slaves more valuable than black ones and developed racist attitudes toward the darker skinned people.
Even the famous Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, expressed racist attitudes toward black Africans: “The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and their proximity to the animal stage,” Khaldun wrote. Another Arab writer, of the 14th Century, asked: “Is there anything more vile than black slaves, of less good and more evil than they?”
Gordon covers the Arab/African slave trades up until the mid-20th Century, noting that Saudi Arabia only abolished the practice in the early 1960s. Unlike the European nations and the USA, the Arab nations did not abolish African slavery voluntarily out of moral conscience, but due to considerable economic and military pressure applied by the great colonial powers of time, France and Britain. Slavery is still practiced in two Islamic nations: The Sudan and Mauritania.
Further reading about the Arab/Muslim slave trades can be found in the following book:
Race and Slavery in the Middle East
Bernard Lewis
Oxford University Press (Trade); Reprint edition (April 1992)
An excerpt from this book can be found here
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/lewis1.html
To learn more about the 21st Century slave conditions in The Sudan and Mauritania, please visit www.iabolish.org
# # #
White Slaves, African Masters
An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives
Edited and with an introduction by Paul Baepler
The University of Chicago Press 1999
This book illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the West but which is now somewhat neglected: the enslavement, over several centuries, of tens of thousands of white Christian Europeans and (later) Americans in Muslim North Africa -- or the so-called “Barbary” states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli. Over the course of 10 centuries, tens of thousands of these unfortunates became the possessions of Muslims in North Africa courtesy of the feared Barbary pirates. These pirates cruised the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean in search of European and, later, American ships to pillage and plunder.
Edited by a lecturer at the University of Minnesota, Paul Baepler, this book focuses on first-person accounts of American Christians who served as slaves to high-ranking Muslim officials in North Africa. Baepler also provides fascinating background commentary that puts the narratives into historical perspective. He includes two “fictional” narratives of female captives. (According to Baepler, Christian women captives of the Barbary states – unlike male captives – usually did not publish their testimonies under their real names, due to the fact that many of them had been “dishonored” by service in the harems of Barbary potentates.)
As Baepler notes in his introduction, Christian slaves of European ancestry were hardly an uncommon phenomenon in the Barbary States. The Barbary pirates were excellent seafarers and, from the Coasts of North Africa, sailed as far north as Iceland (where they went ashore and captured 800 slaves during one incident) and as far West as Newfoundland, Canada, where they pillaged more than 40 vessels at one time. By 1620, reports Baepler, there were more than 20,000 white Christian slaves in Algiers alone, and by the 1630s that number tolled more than 30,000 men and 2,000 women. The most famous of all white Christian Europeans to serve as a slave in the Barbary States was probably Miguel de Cervantes, the great Spanish author of the “Don Quixote” epic, who was taken as a slave in the late 1500s.
An Important Source of Revenue
European and (later on) American slaves appeared to have been important source of foreign revenue for the local economies for several centuries. First, European and (later) American governments paid huge sums in “tribute” to the Muslim governments in exchange for “peace treaties” that were supposed to halt the pirate attacks on their trading and naval ships. Those nations who did not pay suffered the consequences. Second, enslaved Europeans and Americans were often redeemed for a handsome ransom. And third, even if the Muslim governments received no “tribute” or ransom, they still benefited from the unpaid labor of their captives.
Baepler quotes a Barbary Coast maxim that illustrates the viewpoints of the pirates and their sponsoring states: “The Christians who would be on good terms with [the Barbary States] must [either] fight well or pay well.”
The first-person narratives reproduced in this book do not support the often-repeated contention that slavery was somehow a more human institution in the Islamic world than it was in the European colonies of the New World.
By and large, the Christian slaves were poorly fed and housed, existing, by one account, on a meager ration of two slices of bread and a small quantity of beans per day. Clothing – and medical care -- was provided by sympathetic free Europeans living in North Africa; slave-owners provided nothing. Spanish Catholic priests even built a large hospital in Algeria to look after ill and dying Christian slaves.
The most popular punishment was the “bastinado” – hundreds of blows on the soles of the feet with a thick wooden truncheon. For more severe offenses, such as attempting to escape or ridiculing the Muslim religion or prophet, slaves were executed in particularly cruel ways: by crucifixion, burning at the stake or impalement on huge iron hooks until death. The narrators of these slave accounts witnessed many acts of brutality toward the Christian slaves, as well as toward the general North African populace ruled over by the elite: the beys, deys and bashaws of the Barbary States.
Baepler quotes from, but does not include, the narrative of one James Riley, an American Barbary captive of the early 1800s who published a book about his experiences upon returning to the United States. The book became an influential “best-seller” in the young nation of the USA and influenced those Americans who worked for abolition of the shameful practice of Black African slavery in the Southern States of the USA. Riley’s book was said to have greatly influenced one young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, who, as 16th president of the United States, signed the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery in the U.S. in 1863.
As for the Barbary pirate slave trade, it continued sporadically up until the dawn of the 20th Century, and was not abolished until military and economic pressure was applied by the colonial powers of Europe (with, in come cases, assistance from the military might of the USA).
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/SStephan/islamic_slavery.htm
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ARAB SLAVE TRADE
The History of Arab Slavery in Africa
Owen Alik Shahadah
'Alik Shahadah (2002 -2005) Notes
Holocaust Holocaust
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. Holocaust
Holocaust
Holocaust
SLAVERY IN ARABIAN SOCIETIES
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Eunuchs
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion of North Africa
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
African Holocaust
Slavery in America
Slavery in Ethiopia
Africa Before Slavery
21st Century Slavery
TransAtlantic Slavery
This trickle trade boomed in the 19th century, prior to this period the trade between Arabia and Africa was more focused on iron, ivory and animal products. There is very little evidence in the sources to support the claim that slaving was ever a major enterprise of any significance prior to the 19 th century boom.
Genetic evidence does however point to a 2500 year old female mediated gene flow from African to Arabia. This means that African woman have been part of the population of Arabia, especially Yemen.
Slaving Routes out of Africa
This points to some form of enslavement due to the dynamics of gender and conquest; conquering men impregnate conquered women.[2] Which proves the Arab slave trade had to be one of the oldest forced exodus of African people out of Africa.
African internal slave trade is the oldest in the world, since some of the oldest civilizations/communities are in Africa. "oldest" however is a politically loaded term because being older has nothing to do with impact. [2] But in terms of external trades, and forced exodus of Africans, the Arab trade is the oldest, as far as Africa is concerned. And its influences are still responsible for the social status of African people especially in Sudan and Mauritania.
Arab enslavement of Africans was radically different from its European counterpart. [2] It was more complex and varied depending on time and place. The slavery seen in Iraq with the Zanj/Zinj and slavery in Zanzibar was more akin to the slavery in the America's, and those were the exceptions. Also 'Arab' is not a racial group, but an overarching term hugging Arabs who are African and some who are White and Jewish. (Mizrahi, which includes Syrian, Iraqi, Persian, Kurdish, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Tunisian Jews)
It was once believed that the Atlantic slave trade was a largely self-contained phenomenon. However, it is now acknowledged that this slave trade was part of a much wider picture, which includes traditional African slave systems, and the Arab slave trade. All conflicted at various stages in their history as well as complemented each other. Read More
LEGACY AND DIFFERENCE
Holocaust Holocaust
The Arab conquests dear to sociologists are necessary to their theories but did not exist in reality. To this day no reliable historical documents substantiate such theories. Holocaust
Holocaust
Holocaust Holocaust
Holocaust Diop, Pre-colonial Black Africa
Holocaust
Enslaved people in Africa and Arabia were still human beings— they were rarely chattel.
Contrary to popular belief, it was not in the immediate interest for Arab slavers to convert enslaved Africans to Islam, because being Muslim granted the enslaved Africans more rights to manumission. (See Umayyad Calipate)[2] And if the people they were capturing were already Muslim it would "delegitimize" the capture.
Religiosity had no bearing in the New World, only skin color: Class, literacy levels, ethnicity, social-status were of zero consideration on the plantations of the New World. However, In both systems the stigma attached to being a slave, became attached to being African which lead to the perception of inferiority. In the case of the African trade this was diminished since enslaver and enslaved generally looked the same (except in places like Sudan, Sahel, and Ethiopia). As with Christianity, Islam did compound the issue due to the culture of the bearers that transfered the religion to weaker people accepting Islam (this was not the case in most of Africa since powerful rulers accepted Islam on their African terms). [note]
One of the biggest differences between Arab slaving and European slaving was that slaves were drawn from all racial groups and they were rarely used as a means of crop production; slaves were not the economic engine behind Arab economies. Social mobility was possible "from slave to Sultan" (Mamluks), many Africans were used in the armies of Moroccan sultan (17th century) and also in the Egyptian forces during the early days of Islamic expansion.
Race & Slavery
Buy now Motherland
Upward mobility within Islamic/Arab slavery, as within African systems, was not rare. Even Tariq ibn Ziyad (who conquered Spain and Gibraltar was named after) was a slave of the emir of Ifriqiya, Musa bin Nusayr, who gave him his freedom and appointed him a general in his army. This has never occurred, even once, in three centuries of the Atlantic system.
Arab slavery generally lacked massive plantations, where large droves slaves toiled to the crack of a whip in the hot sun. Iraq was one of the exceptions, and according to Ali Mazrui the Zanj uprising deterred further attempts in the Arab world; with the notable exception of Zanzibar in the 19th century
Unlike the European trade in enslaved Africans, the physical remnants of this trade are very hard to measure. No one has detailed records of numbers lost, or a full chronology of events. Anyone claiming to have actual numbers is not doing history, but political guesswork. Also there are no ghettos, mental institutions or prisons holding African people. And this is where the "agendas" in history come into play. We must never forget the role of political objectives in the study of history. The current anti-Arab, anti-Islamic Islamophobic trend has played a significiant role in this study.
Today, due to lack of information beyond rhetoric and Eurocentric propaganda, some think that the Arab slave trade and the European trade share all the same properties—that they are mirrors of the same reality. So where ever a sentences says "European slave trade" just replace it with "Arab" and you have that history. And because Christianity in the African (excluding Ethiopia) was largely the product of slavery and colonialism, it must also be true for Islam in Africa. So this produces a forced ahistorical casual association between the rise of Islam in Africa, and the Arab slave trade. So now the entire Islamic history of Africa is a consequence of a supposed Arab invasion. Without any evidence to qualify these myths, another wave of intellectual destruction is taking away the agency and legacy of African Muslim contributions.[5] (As well as independent Christian history in Africa)
Arab Slavery
Slavery in Zanzibar, 500 Years Later (film)
African-Arab relations and African-Islamic ties are all outside of the interest of Europe. The rise of the Nation of Islam (especially the leadership of Farrakhan) and Islam among African-Diaspora is also not deseriable by Western nations. (Mathonsi) The influx of Somali, and other Muslim groups is a serious concern for places such as Norway and other Western Nations. All of this is necessary to show the backdrop to the attitudes and motives for the "new" focus on Arabs. And when we look at the principle authors of this "new" study we see the hands of people like Ronald Segal, Bernard Lewis (An orientalist, warmongering lobbyist and Zionist) as the prime authorities on a slave trade that Africans experienced.[3]
Europeans and Islam have been in conflict since the Crusades, a lot of the histories around the "Arab slave trade" are a direct outcrop of that hostility; creating a deeply prejudicial study. (Bangura) Its principle end result is the perpetual demonizing of Islam.(Mirmotahari 2011) There is also the position of "sharing" responsibility with Arabs has now shifted to "revealing" how more disastrous in scale the Arab trade was. This "look at them - dont watch me" allows greater de-emphasis on European slaving legacy. It also brings a counter-argument such as "But don't forget the Arab trade predated European slaving and lasted millennia." Slavery was not unique to Europe, many African nations engaged in slavery far longer than Arabia and Europe. But without understanding the massive apex role of Europeans it is easy to confuse duration with impact and legacy.
One position rarely detailed is why the Europeans were so eager to destroy the Arab slave trade on the Swahili coast. The destruction of slaving was not a "humanitarian" activity by David Livingstone (the colonial fixer) because several undeniable things happened after the extinguishing of Arab monopoly in the region:
Diminished the economic and hence political power of their (The Arabs) competitors for African resources
Allowed missionaries to create new Christians. (Mental Slavery)
Creating strategic trade and military positions in the Red Sea.
Most importantly it was the precursor to Colonialism (a humanitarian excuse to invade.) Resulting in the acquisition of African resources which still goes on until this day.
There is nothing nice about being a slave of either Arabs, Europeans or even Africans. Slavery, mild or otherwise, is a crime against a human being. But it would be historiacally and morally inacurate not to cite that there is a serious difference between vassleship and Chattelship.
Western Europe not only corrupted the slave/servility systems in Africa they also caused the Arab slave boom in the 19th century.[2] And most critical is Europe's continuation of the African Holocaust up through colonialism, apartheid, neocolonialism and the current exploitation of Africa's resources.[3] These events are not disconnected, although attempts are made to dichotomize these realities.
Where are the massive companies in Ghana, Lagos, and Arabia that funded slavery? But you can find the likes of JP Morgan and Lloyds of London all over the Western world.[3] Right now you can look at millions of Brazilians, Millions of African Americans, millions of African Caribbean, millions of broken communities in West Africa, millions of people in South Africa, every single one of them the product of European systems.
The global racism towards Africans is again the work of the West in fashioning media to write, and wipe Africans out of humanity. It is therefore ironic, but perhaps evidence of the crisis, that some African-Americans wearing the names of Europeans chose to find greater issue with the Arab Slave Trade while living in the legacy of the European trade.
The distant Arab slave trade with its states in Zanzibar have long vanished from the economic-political landscape. [3] The legacy of race dynamics in the Arab world, however, has not. But the wealth of Great Britain and France continue uninterrupted. The governments, churches, businesses, royal decree, that funded and approved slavery remain unaltered. 140 million Africans in the Western Hemisphere, representing around 14% of the world's population are the visible consequences of Western Slaving and this is not only a numbers issue, as this Diaspora also represent the absolute bottom of every social-economic graph. And while the Arab racism in academia (which was never dominant) has dropped off more than a 100 years ago, the European discourse in corrupting, footnoting, washing out the history of Africans is a institutionalized industry.
ARAB ASSIMILATION
Some women stolen from Africa were stolen to serve the infamous Arabian harems (exploited as sex-slaves); their children were born free to Arab fathers, and thus would have been heirs to wealth and status, fully and equally assimilated into the population (good for Arabia, bad for African identity). [5] Their mother's receives the title of "umm walad" (lit. mother of a child), which was an improvement in her status as she could no longer be sold. Among Sunnis, she is automatically freed upon her master's death, however for Shi'a, she is only freed if her child is still alive; her value is then deducted from this child's share of the inheritance.[1] These umm walad, attained "an intermediate position between slave and free" pending their freedom, although they would sometimes be nominally freed as soon as they gave birth.
Some Afro-Arabs rose to great stations by virtue of their Arab fathers. This also added to disassociation with African culture due to the opportunities "being Arab" brought. (similar to the mulatto culture seen in the Caribbean) So we see a diminishing of Africa and a rise of Arabia, at the expense of African identity by the process of enslavement and cultural displacement. The infamous eunuchs were infertile, and the other men who were enslaved would have gradually married non-African women, hence facilitating the absorption of African culture and lineage into an Arab one (acculturation that is a force still at work today). The contrasting differences between racial definitions on the Arabian continent as oppose to Europe assist in blending the majority of Africans stolen from Africa into the general population of Arabia. However, in the West there was no transcending “racial stigmas.” in any way shape or form.
MAAFA - AUDIO HISTORY
ISLAM AND SLAVERY
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Modern and contemporary history has done Islam an injustice by assigning every activity of every Turk and Arab to the discredit of the Islamic faith.
So the racist writings of any Arab, anywhere, Islamic or non-Islamic, are used as testimony against Islam. Regardless of if Islam is the best attribute to describe these people. [4] They have become the "official" representatives of Islam just by being of Islamic heritage or living in the Islamic world.
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The same thing happens with Jewish history (further confused because "being Jewish" also include even atheist in their definition, while Muslims do not) . So the perception of an Islamic monolith is a reoccurring theme in Western history. So we see "Islamic invasion", etc. And a few reasons exist for this historical set-up. 1. Islam is considered "the other," and just like with Africa [2], it is easy to understand it by compressing it into a single entity, which acts with a single mind-set as if from a single leader. This is not only true for Europeans writing history; it is true across the board. Because anyone writing their own history has a more complex story about themselves than about "the other." Muslims writing about the West do the same thing, the West becomes monolithic. 2. The most threatening force to Europe's domination was Islam. European powers have always tried to demonize Islam, even before the crusades. Muslim countries have large oil deposits, as well as posing a serious military and political threat to Western markets. Muslims historically have been an impasse, the greatest impasse, to total Western domination. (see Libya and historically the Ottoman Empire and the trade routes to the East)
While Islam and the history of Arab slavery are collapsed for biased political reasons, and therefore debatable as it assumes a casual relationship between the religion and the politics of Arab people (a minority group in Islam).(Patrick Manning) It can be said that with the coming of Islam it allowed for greater polities among what would have been antagonistic Arab clans.
Islam gave the Arabs a national identity, which allowed them to expand their geopolitical domination in a way previously impossible. The same way it gave power to the emerging powers in West Africa in the 11th century allowing for large unified polities such as Songhai. Arabs did not enslave Africans because of a religious edict (fatwa), they did so for their own greed and nationalistic interest--like everyone else, including other African nations. The power technology gave Europe allowed them to be successful in exploiting Africa, in the same way the power of an Islamic polity created the power for Arab exploitation, and later Ottoman exploitation. We cannot blame the invention of naval technology because it was used to transport enslaved Africans, we cannot blame a scientist for discovering the power of the atom for Hiroshima; yes there is a correlation, but not a direct causation. As Karenga states, they had the power to destroy but lacked the moral capacity not to. Any error within the Islamic faith must be discussed within these conditions, the error within Arab, African or European culture must also be discussed within its ambit of influence. As well as the fallacy of human nature—which is usually universally defined by greed and intolerance.
COMING OF ISLAM
See Islam and Africa
Even as the fingers of the two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another—You are brothers
Muhammad
When Islam arrived, war and servitude were features of almost all "advanced" societies, inducing African and Arabian communities. African indigenous faiths within states/kingdoms had no general objection to enslaving people. [7] Also Judaism existed among certain Arab tribes as well as Christianity, and like them Islam did not blatantly out law slavery. The Qur'an with every reference to slavery ask the believer to free the slave as atonement for sin, the term "emancipating a slave and feeding an orphan" are repeated constantly throughout the Qur'an as acts which gain God's favor. Islam is therefore the only abolitions mainstream religion which contains within its sacred text a message of manumission. Also there were regulations which enhanced the pre-Islamic laws with respect to the treatment of enslaved people. Ideally they were entitled to good care, to the same clothing and food as their masters. These enslaved people were more akin to indentured servants in Europe than chattel slaves in the Americas.
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They are your brothers whom Allah placed under your hands. Feed them with what you eat, clothe them with what you wear and do not impose duties upon them which will overcome them. If you so impose duties, then assist them Holocaust
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Whoever kills his slave, we will kill him Holocaust
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They are your brothers whom Allah placed under your hands. Feed them with what you eat, clothe them with what you wear and do not impose duties upon them which will overcome them. If you so impose duties, then assist them Holocaust
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Other cultures limit a master's right to harm a slave but few exhort masters to treat their slaves kindly, and the placement of slaves in the same category as other weak members of society who deserve protection is unknown outside the Qur'an. The unique contribution of the Qur'an, then, is to be found in its emphasis on the place of slaves in society and society's responsibility toward the slave, perhaps the most progressive legislation on slavery in its time Holocaust
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Qur'anic legislation brought two major changes to ancient slavery, which were to have far-reaching effects: presumption of freedom, and the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances (Lewis). It became a fundamental principle of Islamic jurisprudence that the natural condition, and therefore the presumed status, of mankind was freedom. Islamic sharia, ideally at least, attempted to addressed the reality of slavery that was prevalent at the time by bringing new legislation, which promoted a equitable resolution to the pre-existing slave contract. Despite this, there were the greedy and the vindictive that sought to make slaves of their Muslim brothers and sisters as well as other Africans. There were also many Christian and Mizrahi Jewish Arab groups and well as other indigenous Arabs that continued their tradition of slaving. Because Islamic Sharia had laws pertaining to slavery it was seen by the opportunist as a natural God sanctioned feature of life. Conveniently, the numerous laws of manumission were given a social back seat. So where theory meets reality we see that Islamic belief did not halt slavery. According to Patrick Manning, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse it. Bernard Lewis correctly adds by saying that:
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In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire Holocaust
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And as Arabs and other Muslims gained power, via Islam, it allowed their failures to be more destructive. Just as with democracy today, Islam was used as justification for conquest, and conquest brought slaves as the spoils of war. The Muslim community could ill afford to do away with slavery in its entirety because this would have also negatively impact empire, expansion and nation building. But this dilemma also meant that the more powerful Muslim states became, the more dependent on forced labor they became—distancing themselves from Islam's destiny of total abolition.
Darfur TruthAnd if any of your slaves ask you for a deed in writing (for emancipation) give them such a deed; If ye knew any good in them: yea, give them something yourselves out of the means which Allah has given to you… .Darfur report- [24:33]
Darfur TruthHe will call you to account for your deliberate oaths: for expiation…give a slave his freedomDarfur report- [5:89]
Darfur TruthAnd whoever kills a believer by mistake, it is ordained that he should free a believing slave..Darfur report - [4:92]
Overzealous Europeans have always over-documented the Arab trade in enslaved Africans to alleviate their guilt concerning their own trade. "Well the Arabs did it too " became the common tone of contemporary historians. Sadly, many African-American historians who have only these European sources to infer history from have taken these second-hand guilt-massaging accounts as gospel. However, it is a well-known fact that Europeans in their artistic depictions of slave raids have always intentionally portrayed slave raiders as Muslim Africans or Arabs .
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EUNUCHS OF THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE
The most expensive enslaved group in Arabian societies were the eunuchs who were castrated men drawn from Europe but also Darfur, Abyssinia, Korodofan and other African nations. Ironically because of their lack of sexual function they obtained great privileges while African female slaves privileges were due to their sexuality. Eunuchs were generally made by Coptic priest in Egypt but also a group of Arabs know as the Chamba. Young boys, victims from raids and wars were subjected to the horrid monstrous inhumane process of castration without anaesthesia which had a 60% mortality. To stop the bleeding hot coals were cast into the naked wound, which was followed by the most blood curdling alien scream a human could make. If the child survived this brutal act there was to be a life of influence and luxury; silk garments, Arabian thoroughbreds, jewels, were bestowed on them to reflect the wealth of their masters.(Hunwick) Strangely eunuchs were both distinguished and greatly revered as elites in Arab society, despite being enslaved. They served as guards and caretakers of Mosque as well as administrators. Clearly slave did not mean exclusively downtrodden and oppressed. The actual word slave was far from taboo as the most pious people were self-professed “slaves of Allah.”
ARABS AND AFRICANS : Relations and Perceptions
Africans in the Indian Diaspora The Afro-Arab relationship was riddled with complexities lined in a cultural nexus. And there is no doubt that racial discrimination against people of African origin was a hard reality. There is an escalation of racism as a casual association with Black Skin and Slave was made. And considering the era in which Islam emerged it is therefore even more astounding and revolutionary to find such a strong tone of racial harmony and equality.
This racism was across the board from China to Indian. The Greeks in their time wrote a similar sentiment about the Persians, even though the Persians were more advanced in many ways. There is no point looking at perceptions of "the other" in the historical record and labelling people as distinctively racist when all human societies, even inside of Africa, would have labelled "the other" as barbaric and primitive. (case in point Amhara towards the Oromo). However in our modern era the stigma and negative association has not altered in the Arab world (a few places such as Egypt and especially Morocco being unique). According to Arnold J. Toynbee: "The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation? of this Islamic virtue." Now this statement has to be treated as "relative" to the West and is time sensitive. Because as the notion of African being attached to being enslaved grew so to did the deterioration of "being African" in the Arab world.
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However, the greatest thing to appreciate is that the 18 th century definition of "Black" did not exist in this period and some so-called Arabs were Arab linguistically but racially African. For example in some cases Ethiopians and people of Punt were classified outside of Black identity. The Arab trade in enslaved Africans was not only conducted by Asiatic and Caucasian Arabs, but also African Arabs: Africans speaking Arabic as a first language embracing an Arab culture.
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These Africans would have been part of the Arab society; they would have permanently resided within Arabia for generations. Some may have seen themselves as Arab as African-Americans define themselves as American; it was their nationality and did not conflict with their greater African identity. Some would have seen African as an cursed identity to discard and escape. Via miscegenation children of Arab and African unions were racially Arab and evidence of this even exist today: Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Anwar Sadat. Some however, by being Arab, rejected all attributes which linked them to Africa. Something seen by some Sudanese and Mauritanians today. Which is identical to the Mulatto dilemma in French and British Caribbean, Brazil, USA, and Brazil. (especially before the 1960's in America).
All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a White has no superiority over Black nor a Black has any superiority over White except by piety and good action.
Prophet Muhammad
SWAHILI MARKETS
(2010) The author and researchers are working on updating this section after concluding research in Mombasa and Zanzibar. Please check back regularly for updates. (AHS)
From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000–50,000 African capiives for the overseas market are thought to have been sold from the slave market of Zanzibar to the Somali coast. Most of these people were from the Majindo, Makua, Nyasa, Yao, Zalama, Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi: Collectively, known as Mushunguli, which is a term taken from Mzigula, the Zigua tribe's word for "people" (the word holds multiple implied meanings including "worker", "foreigner", and "slave."
As with all slaving regions in Africa, people captured locally during wars and raids were also enslaved by Somalis. Somali were, like Ethiopians, perceived as superior by the European and Arab slave traders to the region.
While upholding the perception of Somalis as distinct from and superior to the European construct of "black Africans", both British and Italian colonial administrators placed the Jubba valley population in the latter category. Colonial discourse described the Jubba valley as occupied by a distinct group of inferior races, collectively identified as the WaGosha by the British and the WaGoscia by the Italians. Colonial authorities administratively distinguished the Gosha as an inferior social category, delineating a separate Gosha political district called Goshaland, and proposing a "native reserve" for the Gosha
Catherine Besteman [4]
During the 19th Century boom, approxiamately 65% of the population of Zanzibar was enslaved. The Swahili-Arab slave trade reached its height when approximately 20,000 slaves were considered to be carried yearly from Nkhotakota on Lake Malawi to Kilwa.
Slave trade was introduced in Malawi by the Swahili-Arab traders in the 19th Century following a great demand for ivory and slave in the East African markets namely Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombasa and Quelimane. The Swahili-Arabs moved further into the interior of Africa including Malawi to obtain slaves and ivory. A key site in the path of Arab procurment was Nkhotakota where one of the Swahili-Arab slave traders, Salim-bin Abdullah (Jumbe) set up his headquarters on the shore of Lake Malawi in the 1840s. From Nkhota he organized his expeditions to obtain slaves and ship them across the lake to East African markets, Kilwa. About 20, 000 slaves (Pachai, P.A. 1968) were annually shipped by Jumbe to Kilwa from Nkhotakota. The captives were kept until they number 1000 and taken across the lake and then forced to walk for three to four month journey to Kilwa where they were sold. Malawi Slave Routes
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
It was up until Nyasaland came under the British protectorate in 1891 that slave trade completely came to cease. For Europeans the trade was the economic heart of rival Arabs in an age old struggle for trade monopolies. Striking at the source of Arab wealth creation had the double advantage of securing the territory and weakening their trade rivals. Harry Johnston, the first Commissioner in Nyasaland Protectorate, made a significant effort to secure the rival interest in the region for British trade interest.. One of the policies of his administration stipulated was to bring slave trade to an end, but not for humanitarian reasons but as a means of securing new markets and new ways of control over the region. Harry Johnston with a force of Sikh soldiers attacked Jumbe in 1894. Jumbe was tried and banished to Zanzibar. Clearing the way for Johnston and British interest in the region.
At Karonga where Mlozi, another Swahili-Arab, settled and terrorized the Nkhonde people and seized them as slaves to Zanzibar. He organized surprise raids as far as Chitipa and Zambia. He also employed a number of the Swahili from Tanzania who undertook such expeditions. He, however, came into conflict with African Lakes Company, formed by Scottish businessmen John and Fredrick Moir in 1878. The Moir brother had a mission to supply the missions working in the country and provide a "legitimate" trade as opposed to the slave trade to the Africans. The African Lakes Company and Mlozi fought each other. It was until Harry Johnston, sent soldiers and defeated Mlozi who was tried by the Nkhonde chiefs and hanged.
The southern highlands and was also controlled by the Yao chiefs. Nyezerera and Mkanda controlled the sub route passing between Mulanje Mountain and Michesi Hill. These terrorized the Nyanja people in the Shire highlands and the Mang'anja of the Lower Shire valley. Almost all the Yao chiefs stopped slaving after being defeated by the British Colonial Government forces led by Harry Johnston. The Colonial government then erected forts all along the slave routes to pre-colonize the area and secure the territory.
The main Slave Route in the interior of Africa, Central Africa, were Nkhotakota, Karonga, Mangochi and Phalombe where the Swahili-Arabs and their Yao allies built their headquarters and stockades and also organized expeditions to capture slaves as far as Zambia and Congo. At its peak Jumbe send about 20000 annually to the market of Kilwa. These routes were the major terminus of the Slaves in the entire of Central Africa going to the East African Coast Markets.
The end of the Arab-Swahili slave trade routes led to the coming in of another chapter in the history of Malawi and the whole of Central Africa – colonization. The forts which were constructed on the slave route, not only acted as site for control of the illegitimate trade, but also formed the basis of administration of new form of government established by colonialists. These sites have been maintained as administrative centers even in the post-colonial and independence period.
And while the Arab slave trade did not do much to create new Muslims or Arabization in the territories it plundered, David Livingstone was looking for a dual victory and he recommended that Christianity be introduced in the area under the guise of counteracting slave trade activities. He was an advocate of what he called the 3C's : Christianity, Commerce and Civilization. The same Christianity that for 350 years guaranteed that more than 20 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic and held as chattel. The premise still remains a part of Africa today, Europe knows what is best for Africans and is best suited in its civilizing mission of people still perceived as sub-human. And as Africans in the region accepted the European-Christian version of the Bible the Europeans took the lands and the resources in return.
MOMBASA
The dominance of Arab influence on Mombasa was suppressed for about 150 years when the Portuguese arrived.
In 1498, a Portuguese explorer called Vasco De Gama landed on the shores of Mombasa. The purpose of his exploration was to spread the Christian faith and to further expand Portugal's trading area. His arrival to Mombasa was met which much hostility among the local people.
However, he made a very important ally, the King of Malindi. The Portuguese knew that Mombasa was essential in order to successfully trade their goods; hence in 1592 they used their power to make the King of Malindi the Sultan of Mombasa. In doing so the locals consequently had no choice but to obey the orders of the Sultan, which in turn came from the Portuguese Government.
AFRICAN BLOOD IN ARABIA
Mitochondrial DNA variation of populations from the Near East and Africa found a very high frequency of African lineages present in the Yemen Hadramawt: more than a third were of clear African origin. Other Arab populations carried ~10% lineages of African origin, whereas non-Arab Near Eastern populations, by contrast, carried few or no such lineages, suggesting that gene flow has been preferentially into Arab populations. Several lines of evidence suggest that most of this gene flow probably occurred within the past ~2,500 years. In contrast, there is little evidence for male-mediated gene flow from African Africa in Y-chromosome haplotypes in Arab populations, including the Hadramawt. Taken together, these results are consistent with substantial migration from eastern Africa into Arabia, at least in part as a result of the Arab slave trade, and mainly female assimilation into the Arabian population as a result of miscegenation and manumission. [Chicago Journal - Fiona Gratrix]
There is however no doubt that the status of the African in Arabian society became associated with the enslaved. The word for slave (Abid) became the colloq. word for African. Other words such as Haratin speak to the social inferior class of Africans. Also Caucasoid Arab scholarship has its collection of racist such as Hanns Vischer who believed African "black" skin made them a slave-race. But equal evidence exist of the contempt for the trade as evident in the writings of Al-Nasiri. Books such as Tanwir al-Gabbash fi fasl al al-Sudan wa al-Habash by Ibn al-Jahiz, and Black and their Superiority over Whites by Ibn al-Marzuban testify to this. So, the legacy of the African presents in these Arab and later Turkish lands were far from that of absolute subjugation.
By the 14th century, an overwhelming number of enslaved Africans lead to prejudice against African people in the works of several Arabic historians and geographers. For example, the Egyptian historian Al-Abshibi (1388-1446) wrote: "It is said that when the [African] slave is sated, he fornicates, when he is hungry, he steals."
European mistranslations of Arab scholars and geographers from this time period have lead many to attribute certain racist attitudes that weren't prevalent until the 18th and 19th century to writings made centuries ago. Although bias against those of very dark complexion existed in the Arab world in the 15th century it didn't have the stigma currently seen globally. Older translations of Ibn Khaldun, for example in The Negro land of the Arabs written in 1841 gives excerpts of older translations that were not part of later colonial propaganda and show Africans in a generally positive light. In 14th century North Africa, Ibn Khaldun, wrote in his Muqaddimah:
When the conquest of the West (by the Arabs) was completed, and merchants began to penetrate into the interior, they saw no nation of the Blacks so mighty as Ghanah, the dominions of which extended westward as far as the Ocean. The King's court was kept in the city of Ghanah, which, according to the author of the Book of Roger (El Idrisi), and the author of the Book of Roads and Realms (El Bekri), is divided into two parts, standing on both banks of the Nile, and ranks among the largest and most populous cities of the world. The people of Ghanah had for neighbours, on the east, a nation, which, according to historians, was called Susu; after which came another named Mali; and after that another known by the name of Kaukau ; although some people prefer a different orthography, and write this name Kagho. The last-named nation was followed by a people called Tekrur. The people of Ghanah declined in course of time, being overwhelmed or absorbed by the Molaththemun (or muffled people;that is, the Morabites), who, adjoining them on the north towards the Berber country, attacked them, and, taking possession of their territory, compelled them to embrace the Mohammedan religion. The people of Ghanah, being invaded at a later period by the Susu, a nation of Africans in their neighbourhood, were exterminated, or mixed with other African nations.
Ibn Khaldun suggests a link between the decline of Ghana and rise of the Almoravids. However, there is little evidence of there actually being an Almoravid conquest of Ghana. Also the decline of Timbuktu was said to be less to do with the Portuguese mercenary invasion and more to do with the decline of Timbuktu as a central trade route due to emerging markets in Europe.
MODERN ERA
Africans occupied senior military ranks, they administer provinces and managed the scared Mosque of Mecca. In the mid-eleventh century, the African caliph Al-Mustansir ruled Egypt with his mother, a Sudanese enslaved woman of remarkable strength of character. There are no such parallels in the New World. Africans, even enslaved Africans, played important roles in the history and politics of these regions up until and even including the 1st World War.
THE ZANJ REVOLT (ZINJ)
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
African Holocaust
Slavery in America
Slavery in Ethiopia
Africa Before Slavery
21st Century Slavery
TransAtlantic Slavery
Mental Slavery
The most celebrated resistance to Arab enslavement occurred by the Zanj . The Zanj were predominately-enslaved peoples from East Africa.
It is a common myth, created by European translations of Arabic that their is a transhistorical meaning for Zanj— this is not the case. The term had different meanings at different times. However, the Zanj were subjected to work in the cruel and humid salt pans of Shatt-al-Arab, near Basra in modern day Iraq. Conscious of their large numbers and oppressive working conditions the Zanj rebelled three times. The largest of these rebellions lasted from 868 (eight hundred and sixty eight) to (883) eight hundred and eighty three, during which time they inflicted defeat after defeat upon the Arab armies sent to suppress the revolt. For some 14 years, they succeeded in achieving remarkable military victories and even building their own capital--Moktara, the Elect City, which at its peak was within 70 miles of Baghdad. Moktara had huge resources that allowed the building of no less than six impregnable towns in which there were arsenals for the manufacture of weapons and battleships.
Their achievements are even more impressive considering that they occurred at the height of the Abbasid Empire. An Empire that presided directly over Iraq, Mesopotamia, and Western Persia, and indirectly over territories from North Africa to Central Asia, and from the Caspian Sea to the Red Sea. After the Zanj were finally crushed the victorious Abbasid general Muwaffaq dismissed all claims of their masters who sought their return. Instead, Muwaffaq recognised their strength and incorporated thousands of Zanj into his own government forces.The effects of this powerful rebellion would echo in the Arab world, dampening all attempts at mass labour enslavement until the 19th Century when European markets where furnished with spices and coconuts from Arab controlled Zanzibar.
The 9th century African Muslim author Al-Jahiz, wrote a book entitled Risalat mufakharat al-Sudan 'ala al-bidan ("the Superiority of Blacks over Whites"), in which he stated that Africans:
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..have conquered the country of the Arabs as far as Mecca and have governed them. We defeated Dhu Nowas (Jewish King of Yemen) and killed all the Himyarite princes, but you, White people, have never conquered our country. Our people, the Zenghs revolted forty times in the Euphrates, driving the inhabitants from their homes and making Oballah a bath of blood Holocaust
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And that:
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Arab and Turkish history is littered with furious African uprisings. One other notable battle echoes in Arab history until today and was referred to as “ the battle of the Blacks ” which occurred by loyal Fatimids against Saladin forces in Egypt in 1169.
INDIAN DIASPORA | Kings in Bengal
The Siddi, also known as Habshi (derived from Habesha, a general term used for Ethiopians but applied in some instances to Africans in general in the Indian Ocean world), Siddi are an Indian and Pakistani ethnic group of Afro-Arab approxiamtely 55,000 in number. Most Siddis, are descendants of enslaved Aficans, sailors, servants and merchants from East Africa who arrived and became resident in the subcontinent during the 1200-1900 CE period. Some Indian Siddis are descended from Tanzanians and Mozambicans brought by the Portuguese.A large influx of Siddis to the region occurred in the 17th century when Portuguese slave traders sold a number of them to local princes. Siddi gained a reputation for physical strength and loyalty, and were sought out as mercenaries by local rulers, and as domestic servants and farm labor. [4]
ISLAM AND AFRICA
See Africa and Islam
Islam was founded in a multi-ethnic Arabia which lay 22km of the coast of the African continent. Prior to the rise of Islam, Ethiopia, a super power of that time, had annexed modern day Yemen and parts of Saudi Arabia for centuries.
The Qur'anic accounts of the mighty forces of the Ethiopian general Abraha, who marched towards Mecca with an arsenal of elephants, this testifies to the power of the ancient Ethiopian Empire.
Islam In Africa: Photo copyright Underthissun.com Photographer Betelihem Zelealem c 2006
Islam in Ethiopia
Islam was a religion inseparable from trade relationships and Africa and Arabia were old partners in trade so it is no surprise that Africans were among the first handful of people to accept the new religion brought by the Prophet Muhammad. It is said that when Bilal the Ethiopian, one of the most revered legends of Islam, first heard of Islam he called it the ancient religion. The call to pray which echoes over Muslims lands today was first carried on African lungs (by Bilal).
Islam became a permanent feature in Africa when the prophet Muhammad in 612 sent the first group of the early Muslims to be protected from Arab persecution by the Negus of Ethiopia; this was the first Hijirah. Islam was thus spreading in Africa before it even reached Medina.
It is important to note that while Islam generally disseminated in Africa peacefully it took wars, such as the Riddah wars, to conquer the Arabs into accepting Islam. In the mid-tenth century during the rule of the Umayed Caliph Abdul-Rahman III (929-961), Muslims of African origin sailed westward from the Spanish port of Delba (Palos) into the “Ocean of darkness an fog.” They returned after a long absence with much booty from a “strange and curious land.”
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It is evident that people of Muslim origin are known to have accompanied Columbus and subsequent Spanish explorers to the New World. Also it is reported that the descendants of Kanka Musa of Mali made and epic voyage with a 2000 strong fleet in search of the Americas. Recent linguistic, cultural and archaeological finds in Brazil and Peru offer documentary evidence" that West African Mandinka Muslims explored the early Americas. Islam spread across to West Africa (by African traders such as the Fulani people) from as early as the 8 th century by African traders and was firmly established by the 11 th century. The peaceful non-obstructive course Islam took in West Africa was mainly because those propagating the faith were culturally and ethnically identical to those receiving it. Also the indigenous African had many features in common, such as animal immolation, communal pray, celebrating ancestors, circumcision, polygamy, dowry bride gifts, and the spirit or jinn world. The African spirit world of Bori and Zar was bridged to the Islamic world of jinns whom like African spirits could be friend or foe.
Such similarities between Islam and indigenous African religions facilitated a general peaceful conversion and religious tolerance in West Africa. Islam hence left African culture uniquely African and a traditional African Sufi Islam was formed over the centuries. This brand of Islam in time even reshaped Islamic culture in the lands beyond Africa.
Diop: The primary reason for the success of Islam in Africa, with one exception, consequently stems from the fact that solitary Arabo-Berber Travellers to certain Black kings and notables, who then spread it about them to those under their jurisdiction, promulgated it peacefully, at first... What is to be emphasized here is the peaceful nature of this conversion, regardless of the legend surrounding it. (Pre-colonial Black Africa, page 163.)
Asante: The religion of Islam made each Muslem merchant or traveller an embryonic missionary and the appeal of the religion with its similarities to the African religions was far more powerful than the Christian appeal. (Asante, Genocide in Africa 1991 10) Diop: The Arab conquests dear to sociologists are necessary to their theories but did not exist in reality. To this day no reliable historical documents substantiate such theories. ((Pre-colonial Black Africa, page 102)
Timbuktu, photo Owen Alik Shahadah copyright Underthissun.com
Mosque at Timbuktu
When Islam proliferated in West Africa around the 9 th century, one of the first universities was founded by African Muslims. It was called Sankore, Arabs and others came to Sankore which was built in Timbuktu to learn from the African erudites who lectured on Islamic belief, Islamic jurisprudence, astrology, science, and many other subjects. Timbuktu was reputed for African erudition where books and those who traded in books were the wealthiest elites of the merchant society.
The bulk of African history after the Ancient Egyptians Medew Netjer , was written in the Arabic language by both Africans and Arabs. The Arabic script also served as an agami to write languages such as Swahili, Wolof and Mande. For thousands of years Arabic served as the international language of trade as English is today. Some of the hidden histories of Africa are locked in as many as 700,000 Arabic manuscripts written by ancient African scholars. One of these the Tariq-ul-Sudan, details the history of Islamic West Africa, but this manuscript remains inaccessible to non-Arabic speakers.
18th & 19th CENTURY BOOM
During the 19th century, the Arab slave trade took a brutal turn. The Portuguese had destroyed the Swahili coast and Zanzibar emerged as the hub of wealth for the Arabian state of Muscat. By 1839, slaving became the prime Arab enterprise. The demand for slaves in Arabia, Egypt, Persia and India, but more notability by the Portuguese who occupied Mozambique created a wave of destruction on Eastern Africa. 45,000 slaves were passing through Zanzibar every year.
Portuguese & Arabs
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During the nineteenth century, the East African slave trade grew enormously due to demands by Arabs, Portuguese, and French. Slave traders and raiders moved throughout eastern and central Africa to meet the rising demand for enslaved men, women, and children. Portuguese slaving accounts for a large influx of Siddis to the region 17th century when Portuguese slave traders sold a number of them to Indian princes.
Between conflict and cooporation it is prehaps the single agent creating a boom in Arab activity in Africa. And to satisfy this demand the Arabs hunted deep into the interiors of Africa, they following ancient trails from Bagamoyo, Kilwa, Tanga, where terror and destruction followed in their wake. The Arab plunders met with savage resistance, which meant that the trade had a very high mortality rate. Many documents speak of the roads littered with the weak and the dying, the abandoned and the maimed, left with yokes around their necks. Many as in the case of Tsavo, Kenya became food for lions. Children who became a burden to the coffle gang were brutally murdered in front of their mothers.
Arab Slavery
Slavery in Zanzibar, 500 Years Later (film)
The likes of Livingston would have witness this devastation first-hand but history penned by Europeans recorded it as an endemic characteristic of Africa, as oppose to a very recent genocide that was previously unprecedented in African history. Livingston was the precursor to colonialism, (David Robinson 2004) the colonial template was written on salvaging heathen souls for Jesus and civilizing them to be the cultural stepchildren of Europeans. Livingston is portrayed as the great White hope whom delivered Africans from this hell.
Arab Slavery
Left to die
Thus in the name of "humanity" Europeans, namely the British and the Belgians, conquered Africa to destroy Arab slaving. For Africans one horror was traded for the horror that would deliver the mortal blow- Colonialism.
ZANZIBAR REVOLUTION - BLOOD BATH
Mass Killing of Arabs and Indians after Zanzibar Revolution The legacy of the slavery in Zanzibar produced similar peculiarities to Atlantic slaving communities. And just like in the Atlantic, rebellion and violence continued to impact the viability of the system. The final page on Zanzibar came after Zanzibar was given full independence in December 10, 1963. The first government was formed under Sheikh Shamte but the sultan remained in place.
On January 12, 1964, the conservative government was overthrown in a bloody revolution led by John Okello (A Christian from Uganda) and replaced by a leftist regime under Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume (1905-72). Thousands of mainly Arabs and Indians were massacred in riots, and thousands more fled the island to Oman. Immediately after the revolution, Karume signed a pact with Nyerere uniting Zanzibar and Tanganyika to form The United Republic of Tanzania. Ending 200 years of Arab social-political and economic dominance in Zanzibar. The Zanzibar civil service, for example, became an almost entirely African organisation, and land was redistributed from Arabs to Africans.( George Triplett) The revolutionary government also instituted social reforms such as free healthcare and opening up the education system to African students who pre-revolution occupied only only 12% of secondary school. The day is commemorated on the island each year with anniversary celebrations and a public holiday.
The government following the revolution of Zanzibar of 1964 was pro- Africans and anti-Arab/Indian. The centuries of oppression had finally tipped over. All claims of the Shirazis (A privileged Swahili sub-group with claims of Persian ancestry) were dismissed unless one could still claim to be a Shirazi, he/she had to accept being an African first and Shirazi second. The first president, Abeid Amani Karume proudly presented himself as an African. He went on to institute forced marriages between Arabic and Indian women. A reverse of the pattern of miscegenation which had been a bedfellow of the Arab slave trade.
SLAVING ZONES & TARGET GROUPS
Nubia and Ethiopia were slave zones in Africa. in the 15th century, Ethiopians sold slaves from western borderland areas which often ended up in India, where they worked on ships or as soldiers. They eventually rebelled and took power (dynasty of the Habshi Kings in Bengal 1487-1493). The Sudan region and Saharan Africa formed another "export" area. Both in Sudan and the Ethiopia region (including modern Eritrea) linguistics is evidence of the consequences of this trade.
Zanzibar Slave Tour
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In Amharic, Bariah is used as a degroratory word for non-Habesha [4] ethnic groups who were traditionally targetted for enslavement, for export or local usage. Read More
Being Muslim and Africa was a factor that might exempt a group from being enslaved, although sometimes the conquering group would just find some reason to renounce their Islam but citing occurances of shirk ( ???? širk) taking them outside of Islam and hence making them a target for enslavement. Somalia did not supply slaves -- as part of the Islamic world Somalis were nominally protected by the religious tenet that free Muslims cannot be enslaved. [3]
Darfur & S Sudan
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Because the Arab trade favored women, it is said that some ethnic groups disfigured their faces (Mursi lip plate) in an attempt to dissuade enslavers. This is however a baseless Eurocentric anthropological fringe theory which is typical of ignorance of African culture. Europeans see what is perceived as "ugly" and assume it is universal and hence seek reasons (from their own culture) why someone would practice certain rituals. Read More
REFERENCES | Click to Expand
MYTHS ABOUT THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE
' Alik Shahadah
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
African Holocaust
Slavery in America
Slavery in Ethiopia
Africa Before Slavery
21st Century Slavery
TransAtlantic Slavery
Mental Slavery
Any study of history has to be both a study of historical writings, and sociological patterns, past and present. When Greeks wrote about the Phoenicians,
their writings became the body of historical perception towards these 'people of the sea.' We still see the Phoenicians (exonym name) through the eyes of the Greeks: To the victors of war belong the authorship of history.
However, without an appreciation of the social relationship between the Greeks and the Phoenicians, we are left with an imbalance. Jewish historical traditions carried in Exodus, narrates of a hatred for their oppressors, the Ancient Egyptians. The writing style and the subsequent glorification and defamation all speak to the social-politics of the period in which the Exodus was written. When European explorers first uncovered the splendor of the Cushitic civilization, they automatically documented the evidence they found as "outside of African origin."
The social pre-assumptions of the day influenced the basis of their academic study, leaving nothing but mis-history. It is thus critical to study the sociological aspect of who is writing history and the natural agenda behind those casting the pen. The politics of our time is a factor in determining perspective. When the genocide in Rwanda broke out it was reported as genocide between two groups; ethnic Hutus and ethnic Tutsis, both groups are predominantly Christianity yet this was never a point of debate -- anywhere. However when a similar situation broke out in Darfur it became 'Arab Muslim and blacks.' Once upon a time they would have stressed communist forces now it is the mysterious omnipresent Islamistist. The politics of our time is a factor in determining perspective.
When the genocide in Rwanda broke out it was reported as genocide between two groups; ethnic Hutus and ethnic Tutsis, both groups are predominantly Christianity yet this was never a point of debate -- anywhere. However when a similar situation broke out in Darfur it became ‘Arab Muslim and blacks.’ Once upon a time they would have stressed communist forces now it is the mysterious omnipresent Islamist.
THE FIRST MISTAKE: ARAB?
Arab people (Arabic: ?????, ?arabi) or Arabs (????? al-?arab) are a pan-ethnicity of peoples of various ancestral origins, religious backgrounds and historic identities, who identify as Arabs on one or more of linguistic (1st language speakers of Arabic), cultural, political, or genealogical grounds (less relevant in our modern times). People who identify as Arabs, often have a a multiplicity of identities. It is simmilar to Hispanicity which is independent of race, and constitutes an ethnicity category, as opposed to a racial category. Being Arab has been made even more condensed because of US foreign policies sweeping definition (in ignorance) of anyone with brown skin who happens to be a Muslim. Ironically in the USA many of these people are classified as White. This process of "Arab" identity by the "other" started when the word "Middle East" started being used as a political term invented by the British and French in early 20th century. As stated before, the entire term collapses even people such as Kurds who have a distinctively different genetics, language and history. Again the key unifying factor in this generalization is the Islamic faith.
Difference Between Arab and European A large population of Arabs are White (no less physically white when compared to Spanish or Italians). However because of the classification of whiteness which is sensitive to consanguinity, religion, politics and culture, some Arab groups are non-white politically and socially while being white physically.Read More
The first written historical occurance of the term "Arab" occurs in an Assyrian inscription of 853 BCE, where Shalmaneser III lists a King Gindibu of mâtu arbâi (Arab land) as among the people he defeated at the Battle of Karkar.
The first mistake or misnomer in the study of the Arab slave trade is the term “Arab.” The so-called Arab trade is not solely an Arab enterprise. The term for political reasons is used in that context for “saleability.” It is a terrible day for history when convenient packaging labels are employed for ease of academic and political digestion. The majority of people in Iran are not Arabs, the same for Morocco, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Libya. The process of Arabization has greatly expanded the term Arab to many non-Arab groups such as Palestinains and other groups from the Lavant. Results of a DNA study by geneticist Ariella Oppenheim appears to match historical accounts that Arab Israelis and Palestinians, together as the one same population, represent modern "descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times", albeit religiously first Christianized then largely Islamized, and all eventually culturally Arabized. So we must also factor in that most Arabs today are actually Arabized people (musta`ribah) .
The blurring of racial definitions in historical Africa has always been mishandled in European institutions leading to complete mangling of reality. For example the Sanhaja (considered by some to be “Arabs”) would have been seen as a different race by the Mande, but this is equally true for their perception of the Fulani or the Turaeg ethnic groups. Popular Eurocentrism has created hard definitions such as black, and Arab based upon their worldview of “other.” Terms such as ”oriental trade” “Islamic Trade” as Patrick Manning states are implicitly erroneous. The tradition in Western linguistics of lumping is one of the key aspects of historical distortion, not lost on the study of Africa or Arabia.
CONTROVERSY | PLAYERS AND PLAYED
By understanding the interest groups around the issue of Islam and Slavery, Arabia and slavery the discourse becomes easier to understand:
Europeans Christians
Operating a hi-tech sophisticated academic war to “blame share” and re-focus African energy on a slave trade that did not affect the African Diaspora. Islamophobia is a critical strategy to curb the power of Islam within African communities especially in the Americas (Nation of Islam etc). The “Black” Islamic threat is therefore repelled by demonizing Islam and the Arabs. Creating suspicious and destabilizing Arab-African unity. African Christians usually just go along with any and everything Europe says.
Afrocentrics
Quick to react off anything Eurocentrism throws their way. Hence pointing out “evil” and scoring fast-food academic points with a large unread populous who are volatile and quick to hate the new devil in town . They celebrate the most pseudo -historial statements one could believe " The Destruction of Black Civilization (US, Third World Press, 1987, p.207), claimed that: ‘In the Muslim destruction of the Songhay empire, the main centres of learning with all of their precious libraries and original manuscripts were destroyed first.’ -- The question of "what was the religion of Songhay gets skipped to nail home a bigoted distorted history. Most are very slow at realizing the complex game being set-up by Europe, which primary purpose is to destroy any unity between Muslim Africa and the rest of Africa.[3]
Muslims (general)
In constant denial about the horrors of the past as well as the ongoing racism in Muslim communities towards Africans. Forever adding flowers to hide the smell of a rotten corpse. There is no weakness in admiting the errors of the Islamic past. So they are slow to react and realize the scope and nature of the Arab Slave trade. As oppose to research and honesty they would rather demonize anyone (especially other Muslims) who dare to discuss or expose these facts. While they have not tried hush-tactics they have tried to bury their head in the sand. This avoidance has generally done Muslims and Islam a disservice.
Muslims (African/Black)
African Continental Muslims are generally socially out of step with the post-60's Black Conscious movement. Because of the complex nature of Islamic identity and the separation Muslims practise it has compounded the problem. Many African Muslims have been Arabized and are not open to alternatives. Arab culture is seen as better. Speaking Arabic is seen as better. Much social progress is needed to educate these populations to the broader African consciousness movement. This is not helped when Afrocentrics demonize Islam. And since Muslims are the majority Afrocentrics are digging their own grave.
Jews (European) Are part of the European plan especially with anti-Israeli sentiment on the rise by people like Farrakhan. And just like the Muslim communities their hush tactics on Jewish involvement in slavery have backfired causing even more attention to be drawn to their participation. But they are silent agents in funding scholarship which plugs the Arab slave trade on the African agenda table.
INHERITED & SUPERIMPOSED PERSPECTIVE
The first pitfall of many African academics, especially African-American ones, is to pretend that by knowing about Slavery in the Americas automatically gives them an insight into Slavery in Arabia. The question is of transferred or superimposed experiences. Thus the horrors of being a slave in America and all the dynamics of that system are superimposed onto a world and reality they have no idea about. But simply transference of experiences where Arabs take the place of Europeans is a disastrous academic venture, for the complexities of Slavery in Arabia (place and time being two factors) is radically different, just as generalizations cannot be used to sum up systems of servitude in Africa. A world as complex and ancient as the African-Arab one cannot be navigated from European controlled Universities by a people who live and breathe in a Pax-Americana reality. When we collapse the Islamic and pre-Islamic religions, the surrounding languages, the culture(s), the ethnic diversity, in to one string of unreferenced diatribes we are committing academic heresy.
The argument that Islam destroyed the gender roles in Africa is very problematic because it is wrapped in the influence of a very Western position i.e. Islam removes Women's rights. There was far more justice for the African women under Islamic rule of Songhai than in pre-Islamic Mali. This is beyond debate. There is far more justice with Sharia in Sokoto than in any time in that regions history. Uthman Dan Fodio pave the way for this debate around women equality by institutionalizing all kinds of educational reforms for women, reforms that were traditionally taboo in many African pre-Islamic cultures. So we must be careful in how we approach history and how we project our contemporary moment into a time machine and send it back into time. The very feminist accusation ignores the reality of the pre-existing condition of African women's oppression in indigenous societies: the forces marriages, the right to divorce, the right to dowry, the right to inheritance, protection during warfare, etc.
In Mauritania, the Haratin account for as much as 40% of the Mauritanian population. They are sometimes referred to as "Black Moors", in contrast to Beidane. The Haratin are Arabic-speakers, and generally claim a Berber or Arab origin, which is contrasted against other African peoples in southern Mauritania (such as the Wolof and Fula people who have populations in Mauritania). The Haratine, consider themselves part of the Moorish community. But where it becomes problematic is because they are "darker" in color, they are assumed to slaves brought from "black Africa." So powerful is the theory of "two" Africa's that reality is twisted to accommodate its validity. Every study is looking at Africa through the lens of "Black and White." It is therefore never considered that these "black" populations, like the Kanuri, who migrated South from North Africa, are native to the region. In a struggle to sustain colonial linguistics all forms of pseudo -anthropology is imposed on the African reality posing as mainstream studies.
COMMON MYTHS CORRECTED
The history of the Arab trade is not a new study, as many shock-academics would have us believe.
There was no great Arab invasion of West Africa, as with North Africa, the myth of the destruction of Ancient Ghana was a Berber folktale. 1591 marks one war between the Pashalik of Morocco defeated the Songhai, and made Timbuktu, rather than Gao, their capital.
It was not in the interest for Arab slavers to convert enslaved Africans to Islam, because being Muslim granted the enslaved Africans more rights. And if the people they were capturing were already Muslim it would "delegitimize" the capture.
Not one single Arab ship was responsible for bringing any African to the Americas.
Because a trade is older does not mean it is more destructive.[2] An old trade that trickles has next to no impact on the development of Africa. But 300 years of the Atlantic Trade (which might be shorter) has claimed over 20 million victims (as a estimate). Therefore it is a deliberate dishonest to make duration a central talking point.
Arabization and Islamization sometimes were competing objectives, despite having a correlation, they are not synonymous; they are not one and the same thing.
It is a myth that Muslims have not attempted to deal with this history. This site has been the no 2 site on Arab slavery in the world (after Wikipedia), the author is a Muslim. Naturally human nature causes a softened approach (apologist). The language barrier means it is next to impossible for someone in America to have a serious discussion about what the Islamic world engages in as conversation point. Also Islam is not the Roman Catholic Church it has no "head" to issue dictums.[Afro-Arab]
Not one single border in modern Africa was created by Arabs. Arabs generally related to per-existing nation structures in Africa. Or in the case of the Swahili coast limited their conquest to the coast, avoiding the hinterlands.
An estimated 10 million slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 (more than a 1000 years), compared to more than 12 million that arrived official across the Atlantic from 1500 to 1900.) No historian can offer anything beyond speculation for this number since records do not exist anywhere to support any claim either way. It is clear that some, especially the work of Jewish orientalist Paul Bairoch, is busy exaggerating these numbers to shift responsibility from European (Jewish and Christian) slavers to Arab Slavers. Thus making the Atlantic slave trade as minor as possible against the age old Arab Slave trade.
Islam did not destroy African matriarchal societies as Africa was not a monolith of matriarchal societies to begin with. Cultures are not static, and cultures and gender dominance have always fluctuated in human history.
Islam is not an Arab cultural invention, but a religion born in a multi-racial Arabia; it was actually perceived as “foreign” by most Arab “tribes.” Islam in Africa is just as old as Islam in Arabia. Islam actually flourishes today because of the legal protection the king of Ethiopia gave it. The ideogical foundation of the 3 Abrahamic faiths is African in origin. It is a denial of African history and agency to deny the significance of Africa in the history and formation of the Islamic faith. It is ony an enslaved mind that rejects its own historical claims allowing others full credit. Later Arab and Turkish dominance lessened this history, but it is an African history.
Arab is not a racial term, to say Arab is almost like saying American: thus, people classified as Arab today, could have been Caucasian (white people), Jewish, Asiatic or even Arabized Africans.
Arab slavery did not destroy African sovereignty within its kingdoms. Except in Zanzibar and along the Swahili coast. While European slavery ultimately lead to colonialization and hence the collapse of African kingdoms.
There was no Arab invasion or destruction of "black" African Egypt. Kemet was concluded centuries before by Persians, then Greeks and then Roman invaders. The 1075 conquest of Ancient Ghana by the Almoravids was done by African Berbers. The sacking of Timbuktu by Morisco mercenaries armed with European-style guns in the service of the Moroccan sultan in 1591.
There is a low African Diaspora in the Arab lands due to the proliferation of miscegenation, the dynamics of being classified as an Arab, and the degree or easy of Arabization. See Mazrui making of Arabs and new Muslims
Islam did not bring the Arab slave trade. However, it did respond to it with laws of manumission. These laws were later generally ignored and misinterpretation thus protecting the privilege slaving brought.
Arabs enslaving African would not be interested Proselytism as this would grant the enslaved Africans privileges. Thus slaving and the spread of Islam where in direct conflict and slavers played an opposing role in the Islamization of people (Murray Gordon, “Slavery in the Arab World.”)
Muslim and Arab is not the same thing.
Turks are not Arabs, Persians are not Arabs. Berbers are not Arabs, hence the Trans-Saharan or the Ottoman trade is not an "Arab" Slave Trade.
Arab slaving was not the oldest slave trade in the world (see India and China). It however, was older than the Atlantic Slave trade, but it was scattered and a low priority until the 19th century.
After the 19th century, the horrors of procuring Africans, was the most inhuman aspect of the trade, with castrations, transportation and violent slave raids being the main sources of mortality.
The Arab slave trade in the 19th century was economically tied to the European trade. The Portuguese (on the Swahili coast) profited directly and were responsible for the boom in the Arab trade.
The Arabs did not see all Africans as being of a unified “Black” race.
Arab enslavement did not only target Africans. But became more "racist"
as time went on.
Arab slavery was primarily domestic, and only in the 19th century was it a mainstay for some Arab economies.
Arab Slavery did not leave the social legacy that the European trade continues to leave: prisons, poor education, mental health, etc.
The Arab slave trade had a negligible impact on most Africans in the Diaspora today.
Zanj does not mean all Africans. This is a assumptive linguistic superimposition.
Muslim Africans (and Christians) were not the main suppliers of captives for the Americas. Dahomey and the Asante kingdom Oyo, Benin, Igala, Kaabu, Imbangala, The Aro Confederacy, (includes Ovimbundu)were the main suppliers.
Many African Muslims Kingdoms were the main aggressors to European advances on the continent. Umar Taal, Malick Sy, Ahmadou Bamba, Samory Toure, etc.
THE POLITICS OF NUMBERS LOST
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
If we understand the table of players, in what is more a political war than an academic war, we will quickly find a balance. It is the aim of the Muslim to limit numbers, it is the aim of everyone else to increase them.
The facts are every group is using the same limited sources. So it is amazing how many varied numbers come out of these limited sources. Felipe de Alencastro states that there were 8 million slaves taken from Africa between the 8th and 19th centuries along the Oriental and the Trans-Saharan routes. While it is suggested around 10 million people were lost, it must also be stated that no one can give a number on the 2000 year old forced exodus of Africans. The error again, which constantly must be stated in our modern times, is in attaching every non-European slave mission to Arabs and Islam . Not only Arabs were part of this, and certainly not only Muslims. The term Arab Slave Trade in the early period must be reworded to account for this. Perhaps it was an Old World trade.
There are some numbers floating around and all of this severs as alarmist academia. It is very simple mathematically: What was the total world population in the 7th century? What was the total population of Africa? An educated guess says it certainly was not 1 billion, it was also not 50 million. So unless academics such as John Alimbillah Azuma and Paul Bairoch have discovered time travel, the calculations are all guess work.
Now if we know the general population over the last 2000 year period how do we account for a sparsely populated continent losing upward of 100 million people?
And where did they take these people from? Where did they go to? Did they vanish into thin air, or where they eaten on arrival? There would be some heavy evidence of ships transporting people, and other artifacts associated with mass exoduses of this kind, even a constant trickle would leave some tell tale signs, even evidence in ancient cultural memory. And if the suggestion by popular Afrocentrism of mass genocide, what would be the motive for this? Arabs go all the way to African and capture people and then kill them for fun. The 'victim' mentality needs these stories to explain the global failure of African people. And while both Arab and European exploits are destructive it is critical to deal with the double door of African agency. So only two possibilities for the lack of an African Arab Diaspora as proof that the Arab slave trade came anywhere near the Atlantic European system:
They were victims of genocide: (Makes no economic sense)
They were absorbed into the Arab gene pool: (Hence there was no 2nd and 3rd generation to enslave, unlike in the America's)
There is no escaping these two possibilities. And if the enslaved Africans became absorbed then that history ended there. And none of the above possibilities accommodate the large numbers some European scholars have proposed. The best we can say is "We do not know", but we do know with far more certainty the legacy of the European trade in Africans. It explains almost everything about why the world is dominated by White people.
We find the impact of the Arab slave trade was associated with an 19th century boom, that serves as a key area towards a historical understanding of the Arab slave trade in Africa. The assertions that 80% mortality would suggest that Arabs were very bad at calculating profit and lost. How could they afford such losses and have a viable trade? Anyone can cast alarmist numbers into the wind to sell a book. Clearly the larger the number the better for European interest.
It is amazing how scholars have always manage to make the numbers higher than the trade their ancestors engaged in, sometimes so high it exceeds the population of Africa at that moment in history. Below are opinions from Segal and Lovejoy.
From 650-1600 CE
Citing Ralph Austen:
Trans-Saharan: 4,820,000
Red Sea: 1.6M
East Africa: 0.8M
TOTAL: 7.22M shipped
Citing Paul Lovejoy: 3.5-10.0M shipped
17th Century
Sahara: 0.7M
Red Sea: 0.1M
East Africa: 0.1M
TOTAL: 900,000 shipped
18th C
Sahara: 0.7M
Red Sea: 0.2M
East Africa: 0.4M
TOTAL: 1,300,000 shipped
19th C
Sahara: 1.2M
Red Sea: 0.45M
East Africa: 0.442M
TOTAL: 2,092,000 shipped
TOTAL: 11,512,000 shipped
WHOSE SOURCES
See full Arab Sources
We must begin our journey of historical exploration by asking what are the academic sources for European, Arab and African systems of enslavement. However, if the agency in history is solely a European enterprise, then we have nothing to balance it with. If the Arab Slave Trade is only seen through the zionist eyes of the Jewish orientalist Bernard Lewis then as Edward Said said Islam will be treated as a monolithic entity without the nuance of its plurality, internal dynamics, and historical complexities. Edward Said goes on to define orientalism as a political intellectualism bent on self-affirmation rather than objective study. The same can be said for some aspects of Afrocentrism, which reads Eurocentric writings and insert political objectives; none read Arabic or even access the sources.
The earliest European sources on anything Arab started by the likes of João de Castro (around 1538), prior to that the sources are all Arab (oldest being Al-Masudi ) or African (African, Ajami and Ethiopian). Oral traditions add to, complement or contradict our understanding of this study, but oral tradition does not tell us what happened 1000 years ago. We also have genetic evidence, history of large demographic shifts in the archeological records. But that is it. So no one, regardless of if it is Bernard Lewis or Muhammad Shareef has access to anything beyond this. (This author depends on Shareef for accurate translation of Arabic text)
TARIKH AS-SUDAN (translated by Muhammad Shareef 2003)
Al-Masudi (died 957)
Ya'qubi (9th century)
Ibn Battuta (died circa 1377)
Al-Maqrizi (died in 1442)
Leo Africanus (died circa 1548)
Rifa'a el-Tahtawi (1801–1873)
After enslavement, it was appropriate to find new ways of exploiting Africa’s resources: in came colonialism. The “moral” interface, which facilitated this exploitation, was Christian missionaries, using religion (again) as a scapegoat for colonial rule.
Having to account for their past in enslavement, they then enterprisingly started pointing fingers in two principle directions, Arab and African. As Muhammad Shareef outlines, European drawings, started to skillfully portray slave raiders as Muslim African or Arab. So today, when we look at our understanding of Africa, we find that the majority of these sources are European bias, and this is the viewpoint that has been subsequently inherited--without question.
Arab Slave Trade
Maafa: Audio sample of Dark Voyage: Arab Slave Trade
Through pure ignorance and lack of historical evidence, many of the “African” scholars embrace myths about Africa fed to them from strictly European sources. Most heavily relying on the interpretation of Eurocentric scribblings about a continent they did not understand. The same prejudice that washes the notion of Africans enslaving Africans is the same mythology, which plagues the study of Arab enslavement of African people. The above statements are not meant to exonerate nor apologize for inter-African brutality or Arab enslavement. But are intended to set a new tone towards the study of what actually happened in Africa. It is the establishment of a new bases of perception that is critical, not the validity or denial of any slaving system; true or false, African or Arab. The same “sin” the so-called Arabized African is guilty of, in defending the brutality of Arab enslavement, is the same sin the “Afrocentric” is guilty of, when defending African-to-African enslavement. The crime is the distortion of truth. And if truth is distorted for personal agendas then the ultimate fruit that should come from studying our human history is lost to the wind.
NOMINAL MUSLIMS?
A re-emerging term which is awkwardly re-asserted in history is that of the nominal Muslim in African history. Unless we are saying Islam itself is an absolute value which has degrees of purity set against some Saudi Arabian standard then it is impossible to discuss the spiritual purity of Islam as expressed by one culture against another. People of Islamic heritage are generally called Muslims. Clearly some societies are more adherences to the doctrine of the faith; say Nigerian Muslims verses Islam in Turkey. Some claim African Muslims blended ancient African traditions into the “pure” Islamic they encountered coming from Arabia. Every single form of Traditional Islam absorbs aspects of its culture where ever it goes. So In Bangladesh we see the Barelwi flavor of Islam, bringing in aspects which are part of pre-Islamic Bengali spirituality, and again in North Africa and Saudi Arabia. The customs and cultures of Arabia inevitable get blended in with the so-called mainstream Islamic theology. So this pattern is not only true for Africa, nor is it unique to the Islamic faith (see religions of Brazil and Hati). Its not the place of history to hold up some litmus test to religions and weight them against some imaginary standard of purity. Because it supports the idea that everything the Saudi Arabian brand of Islam does is 100% and anything which varies from this is impure. Sonni Ali Ber may have been less religious in zeal than say Uthman Dan Fodio but both of them were members of the Islamic faith, and thus historically Islamic.
SEEKING TRUTH IN A SEA OF LIES
Most Westerners would not know an Arab if they bumped into one in Mecca. Confusing Turks, Indians and anyone with brown skin as "Arabs." 80% of those Arabs that engaged in slaving were racially White people. Arab is a political term, there is no Arab race. Arab is an easy way of saying people who are not members of the EU, so soon Turkey will be exempt from this stigma.
Once again, this article is not to verify or deny the existence or the extent of the Arab slave trade or to deny or confirm the dynamics of “slavery” among African people. The aim is to highlight, as a disclaimer, a point where history has become distorted. The case being argued is that we should become sensitive to this in our pursuit of the truth. There is no doubt the Arab slave trade scarred Africa, but the true dynamics of this as expressed in contemporary academics circles is vulgarly malicious, with the sole intention of vindicating the actions of Europeans by setting up a new “devil.” Streamlining their anti-Islamic sentiment with the uprooting of Africa’s Islamic past. We must be socially sensitive to the politics of our time.
In the hands of man, religion continues to be a tool, for good and bad. But the major world religions make easier targets for casting accusations than obscure faiths in the belly of the Congo. However, the systems in indigenous Africa were also perverted. Punishment for minor crimes became immediately punishable by enslavement. The de facto system became enslavement for every foreseeable crime and sin. We cannot for personal reasons excuse one flaw and highlight another because it suits our argument. Slavery was a crisis for the world. It is testimony to the ugliest side of humanity. Where systems in the Qur’an and the Bible were defiled and used to justify the unjustifiable. A system so evil it presented a mother with the dilemma of which child she could sell to protect the others. A system that deadened all sense of humanity and righteousness from those professing to be subjects of God.
ARAB INVASION OF AFRICAN EGYPT
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
A popular urban legend which was fuelled by many psuedo-historians was of an 'Arab Invasion of an African Egypt.' Egypt had ceased being African in 700 B.C. with the Persian conquest, and then the Greek (332 BC) and Roman conquest (30 BC). Before the Muslim invasion of Egypt began, the Byzantine Empire had already lost the Levant and its Arab , the Ghassanid Kingdom, to the Muslims. This all left the Byzantine Empire dangerously exposed and vulnerable to the Muslim forces.
Arab Myths of Slavery
A dishonest cover art shows Arabs conquering African Egyptians.
Muslim conquered an Egypt that was part of the Byzantine Empire with its capital in Constantinople. However, it had been occupied just a decade before by the Persian Empire under Khosrau II (616 to 629 AD). The so-called invasion by Amir ibn As was assisted by some Copts, who found the Muslims more tolerant than the Byzantines, and of these some turned to Islam.
In return for a tribute of money and food for the troops of occupation, the Christain inhabitants of Egypt were excused from military service and left free in the observance of their religion and the administration of their affairs.Others sided with the Byzantines, hoping that they would provide a defense against the Arab invaders. Thus far from the blood bath of rape and horror, a common feature of conquest, the Arab invasion was very mild and usurped a European controlled Egypt. " The Destruction of Black Civilization (US, Third World Press, 1987, p.207), claimed that: ‘In the Muslim destruction of the Songhay empire, the main centres of learning with all of their precious libraries and original manuscripts were destroyed first.’ -- The question of "what was the religion of Songhay gets skipped to nail home a bigoted distorted history.So such carefulful laid bad scholarship has the role of doing what? Even the biggest Eurocentric racist will not do this type of work. They do damage with omission and emphasis. But how can people be "Muslim" in one instant "Arab" in another with regard to the same event? There was no religious dispute between Timbuktu and the 1591 European/Berber lead attack under the Saadi ruler of Morocco, Ahmad I al-Mansur, and were led by Judar Pasha in search of gold mines.
Politically these events have been twisted to create annomousity to both Arabs and Muslims. This doesnt mean that in other parts of Noth Africa, such as Modern day Libiya, that battles were not fought, such as Queen Dahia al-Kahina. When the Arabs (linguistically) clashed with the Berbers these again were not a people Afrocentrics would consider African. Proof of this is Afrocentric interpretation of the Almoravid conquest of West Africa. It seems when Arabs invade an attack someone in Africa, those people are African. When these same people attack another group of Africans (Almoravid conquest) they then become Arab - convenient political history at best.
The first major invasion into what is viewed as 'Black Africa' caused the destruction of Ancient Ghana by the Almoravids; a Berber African and West African people. The final one happened Following the Moroccan lead Battle of Tondibi, the city was captured in 1591 by an expedition of European mercenaries and Arma (Spanish word for firearms). They were sent by the Saadi ruler of Morocco, Ahmad I al-Mansur, and were led by Judar Pasha in search of gold mines. This one ended the Songhai Empire and despite regaining soverignity with the Massina Empire, Tureag and Arma rule ultimately ended in French Colonialism of the region.
HIDDEN HISTORY
Knowledge concerning the Arab trade is not traditionally popular for many reasons when compared to the Transatlantic trade. The biggest reason is that Africans of the Americas (including the Caribbean and Brazil) were not affected directly by this trade. So naturally, people discuss slavery that is most relevant to them. Another reason for the obscurity is that there is also limited factual information on the subject. The period of the Arab trade predates the European system and was far more complex, the racial boundaries we accept today didn’t exist in those times. Egypt’s former president Anwar Sedat is considered Arab but he is half-African. His African ancestry does not reduce or violate his Arab identity, and vice-versa. When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab captors child she became “umm walad” or “Mother of a Child” , a status, which granted her privileged rights, the child however would have prospered from the wealth of the father and given rights of inheritance. Again this system allowed for greater racial assimilation, hence the reality of a physical African Diaspora in Arab lands is very different from the African Diasporas in the Americas.
The Arab slave trade was not a trade limited to specific racial groups, although at times (later times) it appeared that way. By contrast, the odalisque (concubines) of the Othman Empire was majority European. The soldiers of the Othman armies were the European Mamluks stolen from Georgians, Circassians and Turkics. Africans were not the majority of enslaved people in these Turkish lands.
The hajj has demonstrated since ancient times that neither Africans nor Arabs considered physical barriers or long distances as insurmountable obstacles. Large numbers of African pilgrims never returned to their native lands as far away as Senegal. Instead, they settled throughout the Middle East, including present-day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, the Persian Gulf countries and Turkey. Eve Troutman adds:
“In the United States, of course, and the Caribbean, you had agricultural slavery. You had plantation slavery. In the Middle East, this was very rare. You did not see this certainly in the 18th and 19th century. So African slaves in Egypt would work in people's households, would be part of people’s families, would live in the household, would not have a huge community of other slaves around them, but really would be surrounded by the family of their owners.”
CRISIS POINT
The primary crisis point the Arab trade poses for Muslim people is the illegal marriage between Islam and Arabism. Separation of these two topics is necessary for the sake of understanding history from an honest point-of-view. Unfortunately, among many Muslim communities the issue of slavery is a topic rather avoided or apologized for (in that order). The dilemma of “religion verses reality” expressed by the devout Christian is revisited here, where the less than divine aspects of religion cast hideous shadows. The Arab-African relationship is far older and more intertwined than the European-African one. The idea of religion over race has also presented a problem, as any Muslim Africans who would have sold other Africans to Arabs would have seen religious kinship, over racial kinship. Once again, we find African’s devotions to faith being an aspect of their downfall, both with Christianity and Islam. The argument is not to finger religion but to expose a terrible conflict, in the human condition, where the ultimate purpose of religion, righteousness and truth, are arrested and supplanted with misplaced loyalties.
ISLAM AND MUSLIMS
Mauritanian scholar Mohamed Diakho, who has a book in French called L’Esclavage en Islam, which says that the Qur’an actually does everything it can to get rid of slavery, and that it is later interpretations of the Qur’an which, sort of ceding to the powers (the slave-owners), were complicit and complacent about slavery. So the tragedy with Islam; the revealed religion and Islam the practiced religion, highlights the same flaws that Muslims accuse Christians of having. For this reason the religion of Islam and the actions of Muslims are at times two completely different studies. The social conditions of the time are a black hole for truth. Islamic theocracy is still in the hands of man, and if those hands chose to highlight the legality of Slavery before the Qur’anic legality of manumission, then we have the current legacy to which no apologies can be offered. Even today, the continuation of this barbaric trade still gets little response from Muslim communities. The quote by Halie Selassie is most appropriate:
Again, the human condition is the error and all the efforts of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Candomble, Anago et al, seem weak in curbing the perverse selfish ungodly actions of man. And let us not limit our analysis to religion because in all systems the ruling race-class seek to protect their interest and are always reluctant/unwilling to surrender that which grants them advantage over others.
ARAB RACISM
Racism in Arab societies is more complex due to the long history of coexistence, but at the same time the racial ills remain generally untreated. It has to be noted that Arab racism today is usually more contained in societies which are Arab dominated, unlike European racism, is less pronounced in exerting influence on the people outside of its spheres of influence. There is therefore less of a "post-colonial" racism in the Arab world. But we do see its afterbirth teaming up with the legacy of European colonization, and shaping attitudes in countries such as Sudan, Somalia, Zanzibar (before the revolution), and Mauritania among the elite. It is hard to sometimes separate what is because of European's White supremacy and what is because of Arab supremacy, both have the inherent tendency to devalue all things African. But perhaps the most telling difference is while the Arab racism in academia (which was never dominant) has dropped off 100's of years ago, the European discourse in corrupting, footnoting, washing out the history of Africans is a burgeoning industry.
Perhaps the lack of heavy oppression in the Arab world never created the need for a Civil Rights Struggle, or any serious African consciousness. The issue of absorption allows a lot of room for an inferiority complex to grow, similar to much of the French Caribbean. You can belong to the master race in some shape or form. Hence the racism is never challenged but flourishes. Racism in the Arab world is rarely vocalized like in the Western hemisphere, and the languages barrier stops exchanges between Africans in Arabia and Africans in the West. Experiences are rarely compared again because of the cultural-language barrier.
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
The accusations against Eurocentricity are not lost on Arabized “Islamic” history. The tradition of subverting African history and making it a footnote or as Maulana Karenga said “a forgotten casualty” is not an exclusive European enterprise. From the legacy of the Arab Slave trade, it is clear that the social status of the African in Arabian societies has been obscured and belittled. The magnificent contributions of Africans to the formation of the religion of Islam and Islamic science are at best undermined at worst written out of history. For example, the first Hijirah (or flight) is recorded as the 622 Hijirah from Mecca to Medina; however, the most critical Hijirah from Arabia to Ethiopia was made in 612 (it is not even given the respectful title of Hijirah). There is no point in blaming a religion for this, for it was not the Qur’an or the prophet of Islam that institutionalized this racism. Guilt sits with those who inherited control of Islamic history: The same ones who interpreted a Sharia that favoured enslavement over manumission. Still today African people are written out of Islamic history from every corner: by non-African Muslims, Eurocentric’s and Afrocentrics alike.. Volumes of books are written on Islamic empires and no reference is made to Sokoto, Mali, or Songhai (the largest African empire). The problem is the general lack of African agency in all aspects of history.
Despite all the brother and sisterhood promised in the canon of Islam, it rarely manifest itself in Muslim societies, there is an unimaginable degree of racial segregation. This is not a historical occurrence for in more ancient times inter-racial marriage was far more “tolerated.” But it must be stated that historically the spread of Islam among the Berbers did not guarantee their support for the Arab-dominated caliphate. The ruling Arabs alienated the Berbers by taxing them heavily; treating converts as second-class Muslims and, at worst, by enslaving them. As a result, widespread opposition took the form of open revolt in 739-40 under the banner of Kharijite Islam. So Arbaization has been a historical problem which has always been opposed.
Today the superiority mentality is still present between Caribbean and say Pakistani Muslims, where African-Caribbean are perceived as 'not real Muslims.' and regardless of being 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation Muslims viewed as 'converts' (a term that has no historical precedent in original Islamic doctoring). In the West, Muslim communities are just as racist towards African minorities as the Europeans. In Islam, leadership are based on merit but in these communities it is based on a lingering caste system. The isolation and lack of dialogue has compounded the problem leading to greater racial fragmentation.
SLAVERY TODAY (SUDAN AND ARABIA)
It is often cited that the Arab slave trade is still an ongoing activity, especially in places such as Sudan and Mauritania. And this is true, despite it being legally outlawed. But what is not mentioned is slavery goes on all over the world. 27 million people are trapped in some form of slavery may it be white sex slaves in Israel and Eastern Europe, Child slavery in Ghana, ritual slavery in South Africa.
Darfur & S Sudan
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Modern slavery in Africa can be seen as a continuation or outgrowth of slave-trading practices in the past. Africans have stepped into the boots and habits of the retreating colonizers. Forced labor was used to an overwhelming extent in King Leopold's Congo Free State and on Portuguese plantations of Cape Verde and San Tome. But the majority factor is abject poverty, if the poverty is fixed it will automatically fix the slavery.
In Sudan and Mauritania and parts of Mali and Chad the slavery vacated by the abolishion of what is called Arab slavery still continue in pockets of the country (explained in the video by Ali Mazrui). It is often cited that the Arab slave trade is still an ongoing activity, especially in places such as Sudan and Mauritania. And this is true, despite it being legally outlawed. But what is not mentioned is slavery goes on all over the world.
But while slavery in South Africa, West Africa etc are disconnected from Atlantic and African systems, the Arab slave trade is politically connected to the modern trade in the Muslim world. The truth is none of them are disconnected. The retreating colonialist left systems of servitude which were exploited by African groups taking over in the post-colonial era. Indigenous slave systems also never died out (Trokosi ) and are continued. The politics of the word continuation is the only difference between the Arab slave trade and the native African slave trade. Both of them are scattered and infrequent in Africa. The social remnants of color-class and inferiority are still challenges in Mauritania as well as Sudan. The inferiority of the Bayaka, for example and other so-called Pygmy people, is also another social dilemma of internal "racism."
IN IRAQ
African-Iraqis have been in Iraq for around 2000 years and still are actively discriminated against in a society which is hidden and untreated. The social change witnessed in the USA where active desegregation and issues of race are very public is absent from Arab society. As a result the Arab world in general is very regressive in race-development. The history of discrimination is clearly visible: Many African- Iraqis in Zubayr live in stone and mud huts that are little changed since they were built three centuries ago. Africans do the menial jobs and are excluded from Politics and business. Even the relatively affluent face problems. Khalid Majid, 39, said he took his 6-year-old daughter out of school because she suffered constant harassment from classmates who called her abd, the Arabic word for slave, and other derogatory names. LINK
ARABIZATION | CULTURAL DOMINATION
Practiced Islam, like practiced Christianity, became the context for the cultural prevalence of Arab culture: Arab names became Islamic names and those who adopted Islam automatically adopted Arab culture in an attempt to become "Islamic." Today we see the uniformed African entering into Islam, and as opposed to taking on African Muslim names and wearing African Islamic attire they wear the cultural dress of Saudi Arabian Arabs, they adopt the mannerisms and cultural mind set of an Arabized people, which is not much better than being Europeanized.
Looking at Islam in Turkey, West Africa, Indonesia and China we see a strong de-emphasis on this Arabized Islamic version.
This is testimony to the agency at work within these places. The standard or Orthodox Islam is thus one cultural dimension on a much broader faith. And just like the Roman church, this cultural interpretation is a symbol of racial and cultural dominance.
Dr. Mazrui: Arabization
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There is no more validity in Sufi Islam in Mali than the Wahabi fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia. People resisting globalization must be aware of cultural religious globalization as well and also recognize it is a violation of the Qur’anic verse:
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O people! Behold, we have created you from a male and a female and have made you into nations and ethnicity so that you might come to know one another… Holocaust
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Holocaust Qur'an 49:13
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A lot is written about the "confused Arabized people of Sudan" but when we compare histories how are they any different from the creole class in Jamaica (like Mary Seacole), or the mulattoes of Brazil , or the brown-paper bag on America? It is critical when studying a people to do so comparatively because often Sudan is made out to be some peculiarity created by Islam and Arabs. But we find this pattern everywhere.
Historically it has to be stated that it has never been in the general interest of conquering Arabs, unlike conquering Europeans, to convert anyone to Islam. The casual association between these two factors is not an absolute fact. Creating Muslims out of your slave population would increase their chances of seeking manumission, or appealing for better treatment. An Arab slave trader would be chastized for abusing an enslaved African who became Muslim far more readily than someone viewed as "pagan." This has to be weighted against the reality that converting people to Islam would have brought spiritual benefit. So between these two realities it is clear that there were opposing interest which could swing either way, but not necessarily in favor of the argument of "instant conversion." While in the Atlantic trade, becoming Christian was part of the enslavement process.
LEGACY
The legacy of Islam, as an agent of African liberation and resistance to both slavery and colonialism is now being disingenuously denied, because of the parallel existence of an African-Arab slave trade. The downplaying of Africa’s Islamic history ultimately serves the desires of Eurocentrism’s attempt to remove all agency from African people. The failure to see this design has some African historians vilifying or neglecting Islamic African history; they speak of Africa and deliberately avoid Timbuktu, Futa Tora, Sokoto, Ancient Ghana et al from nobility, thus thinning the African historical reality. They reduce greats like Uthman Dan Fodiwa, Muhammad Bello, Umar Taal from the pages of glory. We end up with African history “restored” back to obscurity and ignobility: to the applaud of the Eurocentrics.
Islamophobia: DARFUR ET AL
See Darfur Report
The biased targeting of Islam and Arabs in all areas is beyond argument. If a man who happens to be Muslim kills a child, it is Islam. If a woman is beaten and abused and is Christain she is just a batter woman, if she is a Muslim it is a victim of oppressive Islam. When suicide bombing is used in war it is called a tactic, when Muslims do it, it becomes religious fundamentalism and extremism.
Darfur & S Sudan
Buy now Motherland
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
By strategic neglect of factual information and artistic licence the reader is left to assume Jews have only been the victims of Slavery but never the perpetuators of Slavery. Now it must be reiterated that being Jewish, Muslim or anything is not directly related to Slavery, it is an act humans do, it is not because of their religion; it is because of their human weaknesses. If it was due to religion then why does slavery, war, etc predate all known major world religions? More often than not religion is why vastly different communities are able to coexist with tolerance. So to assume Muslims or Arabs, and not Jews, by virtue of religion are more inclined to slavery is vulgar. It is the same racism that sells the fact that African-Americans by virtue of their race are more inclined to rape, steal and kill. Statements like ‘Slavery predates Islam, but continues under Islam and the Muslim Arab rulers’ are statements loaded with a false focus on the Islamic religion and sets up a casual relationship between slavery and Islam. When Darfur occurred Islam and Arab was splashed all over the story, yet this was not true for Rwanda, or Sierra Leon, or Mozambique when the majority were Christain.
No where was the religion of people an issue when discussing other world conflicts. It seems that the audience is to believe that Islam is recklessly tied to slavery, war, inhumanity, oppression and women’s abuse.The agenda thus is to portray Muslims as champions of the most fearful aspects of our modern world. The question must be asked why is religion a focus in Slavery when Muslims are involved, but excluded when Christians and especially Jews are involved?
Darfur Genocide?
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The sanitizing of history has been part of the most sinful aspect of bringing justice. There are a growing plethora of Christain websites which claim to ‘reveal’ the ‘truth’ behind Islam and Slavery, but in their entire argument neglects the role religion blatantly played in the biggest Holocaust in history, the one brought by so-called Christain missionaries.
Some of the most ill-read Afrocentrics are guilty of the same hypocrisy and double standards. The biggest slavers in Africa where neither Muslim nor Christain, yet they constantly neglect Dahomy and focus on Arabs and Muslims as agents of enslavement. Afrocentric history on one page vilifies these religions but then on the next page tries to score racial points by claiming the glories of the Islamic and Christain contributions such as Mali, Aksum and Songhai. They try to claim the history of Sunni Ali Ber and discount his Islamic heritage. They pose the libraries of Timbuktu to the world as testimony of African accomplishment yet deny the Islamic backbone. The blood lust of Dahomey is washed over yet the Jihads of the Islamic states are sold as some extra-historical event that was totally unprecedented in African history. African states have always fought wars, Kemet crushed Nubia and then Ethiopia finally destroyed an annexed Nubia in A.D 350, why then do Afrocentrics bring a peculiar lens when Muslims conquer others in West Africa?
Terms like "Islamic Invasion" and "foreign religions" are painted all over African history exclusively as if this was the process by which Christianity and Islam came into Africa. Islam has been a native part of the African landscape for 1418 years, Christianity for 2000 and Judaism for far longer. Yet history paints Christianity in Europe as if it was fundamentally a European institution, they pain Buddhism in China as if its origins where Chinese. Anthropologist seeks to extract religion from reality and make Africa the perpetual victim. This unique thesis where Africans are concern reasserts the lack of agency and racist perception of a "child like” and weak Africa. [4]
The resurgence of Islamophobia has brought this aspect of history to the foreground as a form of anti- Arab sentiment in an attempt to further the riff between African people and Arabs, and ultimately between African Muslims and other Africans. Considering 50% of the African continent is split between these two faiths, little imagination is needed to appreciate the outcome of agitating the religious divide. Still today, the fastest way to get a book published as an African is to write on Arab/African slavery.
Arab Slave Trade
Maafa: Audio sample of Dark Voyage: Arab Slave Trade
Looking deeper shows great political and economic support from far-right "special interest" Christain American fundamentalist. The best recent example of this malicious activity occurred during the Darfur crisis where it was said that “Arabs were killing Africans.”
Anyone who is familiar with the ethnic dynamics of Sudan immediately would understand how nonsensical this is. The so-called Arabs are really Africans, there are no different from the so-called non-Arabs of Sudan—they are generally the same complexion and both groups are Muslim. The meaning of Arab in Sudan is radically different from that definition in the West. Nevertheless, the Western press is fully aware of the racial tension that mislabeling these so-called Arabs would cause and have exploited race dynamics to their end.
The problem is the uniformed Africans in the west joins the anti-Arab camp because of their lack of cultural information on their own motherland. The political agenda of our time if not considered, with a wise mind, is an accident that has already happened. See The US Role In Darfur by Sara Flounders.
THE WAY FORWARD
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Islam and African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Convert Identity
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Israeli Racism
How Many Lost
African Holocaust
Slavery in America
Slavery in Ethiopia
Africa Before Slavery
21st Century Slavery
TransAtlantic Slavery
Mental Slavery
It was said that the definitive issue in the African Holocaust was not systems of enslavement, as they are as old as humanity, but the chattlization of a people to mere commodities, labor units, devoid of language religion and culture. The issue is the continuing legacy of enslavement and social reality of Africans living in the shadow of histories greatest Holocaust: This is the arguing point between Africans and Europeans. Cultural disownership, poor education, inferiority complex, drugs, HIV, is not the result of neither the Arab trade or the inter-African slave system. Therefore, it is fundamental that the focus of the issue with the European trade be restated—it is about legacy.
The continuation of dishonest scholarship, loaded with one-sided arguments that work one way but not the other, pervert the African historical narrative and reduce the quality of scholarship. The driver behind many so-called African-centred scholarship is an appeal to base emotions.
We cannot honestly continue to look at the issue of slavery from the well-dressed self-empowering windows of old. A new era demands a new study, a new agenda for a new outcome. African people today are no more informed on the realities of enslavement compared to 20 years ago. The divide or inactivity in African-centered academics has created a wide enough space for the continuing assertion of Eurocentric scholarship.
History is not always pretty and requires a strong stomach and a brave face to plunge into the horrors of the past. There is nothing romantic about history, the myths and stories of old are rarely cast from the hard stone of reality. If our claim is the restoration of humanity then those profiting from the inherent ignorance of impoverished communities are only riding thin emotional lines, while all the while exploiting racial phobias.
It is our duty to initiate a new discourse on African history built on an authentic foundation, or we can continue to revamp and polish the racist laden lies that created the dilemma in the first place.
BONUS | SLAVERY IN CHRISTIANITY
Christianity, like Judaism and Islam does not outlaw domestic slavery; slavery was a feature of the time, which dealt with prisoners of war, debt, and criminals. It was integrated into the social fabric in which these three faiths were born into. In the case of Christianity, the numerous references to slavery do not facilitate racial Chattel Slavery. Both from time to time insist on the basic need for humanity within slavery. However both the Old and New Testament recognises and accepts the institution of slavery. The Jews are frequently reminded, in both the Bible and the Talmud, that they too were slaves in Egypt and should therefore treat their conquered people decently. Numerous Biblical references allude to equality :
contents
Slavery and Arab Societies
Slaving Zones
Swahili Markets
Islam and African
Atlantic, Arabic & African
Zanj Uprising
Legacy
Arab Slavery Today
Who is Who in this Debate
Arab Invasion
Arabization v Islamization
Myths About the Arab Trade
Racism by Arabs
Cultural Crisis
Facts of Arab Slavery
Islamophobia
Judaism and Slavery
Christianity and Slavery
Historical Sources
How Many Lost
[ Comments ]
African Holocaust
Slavery in America
Slavery in Ethiopia
Africa Before Slavery
21st Century Slavery
TransAtlantic Slavery
Mental Slavery
Darfur TruthDid not He that made me in the womb make him [the slave]? And did not One fashion us both?" (Job 31:15). Darfur report
But slavery was a clear reality of the Biblical Judo-Christian societies.
Darfur TruthAs for your male and female slaves who may belong to you, you may buy male and female slaves from the nations all around you. Darfur report(25:44)
Darfur TruthAlso you may buy slaves from the children of the foreigners who reside with you, and from their families that are with you, whom they have fathered in your land, they may become your property. Darfur report(25:45)
Darfur TruthYou may give them as inheritance to your children after you to possess as property. You may enslave them perpetually. However, as for your brothers the Israelites, no man may rule over his brother harshly. Darfur report(25:46)
It is also clear that slavery is accepted in the New Testament as a fact of life. Some passages in the Pauline Epistles even endorse it. Thus in the Epistle to Philemon, a runaway slave is returned to his master; in Ephesians 6, the duty owed by a slave to his master is compared with the duty owed by a child to his parent:
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To be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, in fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ Holocaust
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Parents and masters are likewise enjoined to show consideration for their children and slaves. Thus it can be concluded, In Christianity, all humans, of the faith, are equal in the eyes of God and in the afterlife however this equality didn't extend to, and hence was not recognised before the secular laws of man. Those not of the faith, were in another, and in most respect an inferior group. In this respect, Greek perception of the barbarian and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic perception of the unbeliever coincide.
Jesus, though he repeatedly denounced sin as a kind of moral slavery, said not a word against slavery as a social institution." Now slavery was all around the world in which Jesus preached, there is no escaping this reality. He would have dealt with it on a daily basis yet did not see cause to renounce it in all of his messages. The writers of the New Testament did not oppose slavery either.( Cardinal Dulles, Avery. "Development or Reversal?".) Slaves were told that their suffering was similar to the suffering that Christ endured. Paul also puts forward that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The Epistle to Philemon has become an important text in regard to slavery, being used by pro-slavery advocates as well as by abolitionists. In the epistle, Paul writes that he is returning Onesimus, a fugitive slave, back to his master Philemon. Paul also entreats Philemon to regard Onesimus as a beloved brother in Christ. Cardinal Dulles points out that, "while discreetly suggesting that he manumit Onesimus, [Paul] does not say that Philemon is morally obliged to free Onesimus and any other slaves he may have had." According to tradition, Philemon did free Onesimus, and both were eventually recognized as saints by the Church. T. David Curp asserts that, "Given that the Church received Philemon as inspired Scripture, Paul's ambiguity effectively blocked the early Fathers of the Church from denouncing slavery outright." In the Epistle of Paul to Titus, Paul appears to support the servitude of slaves: "Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior."
CHRISTIANITY AS A TOOL OF SUPPRESSION
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One of the most destructive elements in the making of the slave-master paradigm was Eurocentric Christianity's depiction of God, and subsequently the divine ethnic social dynamic, which placed Whites as masters, Africans as Slaves. The blue-eyed blond-hair God cast an inferiority complex that would span every successive generation of African peoples. These images single-handedly upheld a system of subjugation and oppression: God is white as your master is white, obey God, and obey your master for you master is God. Mental enslavement served the physical enslavement as slaves were cast into the understanding that it was simply the way of the world-their lot in life. The malicious prevalence of Christianity was strategic with military precision, a gospel for undermining African culture and laying the way for colonial servitude. It pacified and eliminated the last notion of home from the displaced Africans.
The rebellious and discontent emotions were appeased with the promise of heaven that would only come for a slave when they died after serving their master well. Without the implantation of Christianity the slave would have quickly become discontented and despair at the horrors around them
. In time, those left in Africa and those in the New World thanked God for the White man who saved them from so-called paganism and delivered them into glory.
Noble Afrikans names like Achebe, Ayesha and Askia were replaced with trite European names like Elizabeth, Charles and Johnny. And so, in this was a mental trap that would span into the present-day. The act of Baptizing was not one of surrendering your soul to Christ but to the White man. Though many Afrikan converts to Christianity saw the vulgar contradictions between the Bible and the Europeans, without power there objections were rendered mute. Interestingly, in Africa some rulers who became devote Christians labelled Christian Europeans as infidels as the Christian gospel and European actions were in such sever conflict. Some of us in this mental religious prison, constructed by our oppressors, gave absolute loyalty to our slave masters who become the parent, the representation of god on Earth. A divine being, though harsh, still represented our best interest. It was thus the ultimate goal of the Negro to emulate the habits, customs, and precepts of the European. The master's loves and hates became our loves and hates, his code of dress became our code of dress. The pale skin and straight hair became the standard of beauty and all means were taken to lighten dark skin and un-kink curly hair to look as massa looked. In this social chaos we became the cultural step children of Europe living and dying within a European defined framework.
REFERENCES
Translation From Arabic documents (Tarikh Ul Sudan) to English done by Muhammad Shareef who liased with John Hunwick on the monumental translation.
* Catherine Lowe Besteman, Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery, (University of Pennsylvania Press: 1999),
Umayyad were Arab-centric, Pan-Arab who saw Islam and their personal possession. Dispossessing and marginalizing non-Arabs, despite the fact that many non-Arabs predated the "Arab" association with Islam (Arabs were resistant to Islam which attracted non-Arab people who were persecuted by Arabs). The Muslim Arabs were the elites of Umayyad society, and saw it as their duty to rule over the conquered areas. Despite the fact that Islam teaches the equality of all Muslims, the Arab Muslims held themselves in higher social rank (regardless of piety) than Muslim non-Arabs, and generally did not mix with other Muslims. Islam was not encouraged among conquered peoples. "Islam was in fact regarded as the property of the conquering aristocracy." (Hawting)
Not all African women were raped or used for sex slavery. The Bantu (Hudwick) were less frequently used for sex-slavery as they were not seen as attractive as Habesha (Ethiopian) slaves. The Somali slavers avoided all sexual contact with Bantu slaves due to perceived racial superiority. (Besteman1999)
Any institution brought from another people carries the cultural flavor of those people bringing it. Asia which had a strong cultural agency accepted Islam and made it Asian, the same is true for the Far East, the same is true for Ethiopia and West Africa. When people of less cultural power are impacted they cannot filter out the culture of the bearers. This is not only true for religion, it is true for technology also: Everything humans do is scented with their cultural disposition.
The Eurocentric opinions of Orientalist scholarship has been copied into Africanist europhone writings. These attitudes reflect a failure to account for the full complexities and heterogeneity of Islam and its history in Sub-Saharan Africa. (Bangura)
* [1] Paul Lovejoy, Slavery On the Frontiers of Islam
* Catherine Lowe Besteman, Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery, (University of Pennsylvania Press: 1999)
* Investment banks Brown Bros. Harriman and Lehman Bros. Railroads Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National. Textile maker WestPoint Stevens. Newspaper publishers Knight Ridder, Tribune, Media General, Advance Publications, E.W. Scripps and Gannett, parent and publisher of USA TODAY. 850 The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad, part of CSX today, paid slave owners $30 to $150 apiece to rent slaves for a year. Price in 1850: $150 In today's dollars: $3,379 1856 The Mobile & Girard, now part of Norfolk Southern, offered slaveholders $180 apiece for slaves they would rent to the railroad for one year. 1856: $180 Today: $3,737 1859 The Central of Georgia, a Norfolk Southern line today, valued its slaves at $31,303. 1859: $31,303 Today: $663,033 1865 The Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, today part of CSX, placed a value of $128,773 on the slaves it lost as a result of emancipation at the conclusion of the Civil War. 1865: $128,773 Today: $1.4 million 1865 The Mobile & Ohio, now part of Canadian National, valued slaves lost to the war and emancipation at $199,691. 1865: $199,691 Today: $2.2 million Sources: Economic History Services, USA TODAY research The list of corporations tied to slavery is likely to grow. Eventually, it could include energy companies that once used slaves to lay oil lines beneath Southern cities, mining companies whose slaves dug for coal and salt, tobacco marketers that relied on slaves to cultivate and cure tobacco. Slavery's long shadow also could fall over some of Europe's oldest financial houses, which were leading financiers of the antebellum cotton trade. Lloyd's of London, the giant insurance marketplace, could become a target because member brokerages are believed to have insured ships that brought slaves from Africa to the USA and cotton from the South to mills in New England and Britain.
* Most of the resources in African controlled by non-Africans are in the hands of Europeans not Arabs or Turks.
COMMENTS
ARABIC HISTORICAL SOURCES
Taken from http://bewley.virtualave.net/tashfinbib2.html
Given the shortage of archive documents, epigraphic and archaeological documents, we are reduced to second-hand literary information since most of the great Murabitun chronicles have not reached us. The critical examination which follows will stress the fundamental distinction between primary works and works which are compilations. We will deal with the lost Murabitun chronicles from which some extracts have reached us by means of later works.
I. The Lost Murabitun Chronicles
1. Kitâb al-anwâr al-jaliyya fî akhbâr ad-dawla al-Murâbitiyya. (The Book of Splendid Lights concerning the history of the Murabitun Dynasty) by Ibn as-Sayrafî.
An Andalusian poet, historian and traditionalist, born in Cordoba in 467 /1074, Ibn as-Sayrafî was the secretary of the Murabit prince Abu Muhammad b. Tashfin, who ruled Spain from 520 to 531 AH. His work retraced the history of the Lamtuna. Ibn al-Khatib says that it contained the accounts of the great events which took place in Spain up until 530 /1135-6. It first stopped at that year, and then was continued by its author up until his death in 557/1162 or 570/1174-1175. There are only some extracts left which are found in the Bayân of Ibn 'Idhâri, al-Hulal al-Mawshiyya and the works of Ibn al-Khatib.
2. Kitâb al-muqtabis fî akhbâr al-Maghrib wa'l-Andalus wa Fâs. (The Book of the one who desires to know the history of the Maghrib and Andalus and Fes) by Abu Marwan 'Abd al-Malik b. Musa al-Warrâq.
We know nothing about this author which cannot be confused with Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Warraq (904-973), the informant of al-Bakri. This work must have been a history of the Maghrib and Andalusia of the genre of the Muqtabis of Ibn Hayân (d/460/1070).
Some passages of this work are quoted in Mafakhir al-Barbar (pp. 53, 81), which gives us two long extracts: the first deals with the activities of Yusuf b. Tashfin against the Zanata; and the second gives a detailed list of the various Lamtuna governments which administered Cordoba, Seville, Granada, Valencia and Saragossa, from the conquest of Yusuf b. Tashfin up to the disappearance of the movement under Muwahhid pressure.
3. Kitâb al-Bayân al-wadih 'an al-mulimm al-fâdih by Ibn Alqama about which we have no information whatsoever.
4. Kitâb al-muftariq which is anonymous, or the Majmû' al-muftariq which is mentioned by Ibn 'Idhâri (Bayan, 48), but we know nothing more about its subject.
5. It is the same with the Kitâb Ansâb al-Barbar by Abu 'Abdullah b. Abi al-Majd al-Majili, quoted by in Mafakhir al-Barbar (pp. 57-58).
II. The Muwahhidun Chronicles
6. Nazm al-jumân fî akhbâr az-zamân by Ibn al-Qattân (d. 628 /1230), who was the qadi of Sijilmassa. He was a famous traditionalist who enjoyed great fame. Ibn 'Idhâri quotes him among his sources and uses him for information long before the arrival of the Muwahhidun and information about the Murabitun. This work is divided into seven parts. The part which has reached us covers the Murabitun and Muwahhidun period, the end of the fifth century to the beginning of the sixth century of the hijra, particularly regarding the events dealing with the reign of Yusuf b. Tashfin and his son 'Ali.
7. Kitâb al-mu'jib fî talkhîs akhbâr al-Maghrib of 'Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi who, in 621 h/1124, managed to abridge the history of the Muslim West. Born in Marrakech on 7 Rabi' II 581/8 July 1185, this bard of the Muwahhid dynasty does not report the activities of Yusuf b. Tashfin other than his battles with the Taifa kings and the Christian princes.
8. Al-Hulal al-Mawshiyya is an anonymous chronicle by a Spanish author living in the time of Muhammad V of Granada, whom he praises in the introduction of his book. It was attributed to Ibn al-Khatib and to Ibn Battuta. Completed in 793 /1381-1382, it was a compilation of the various historical sources borrowed from better informed authors, like Ibn as-Sayrafi, Ibn Sahib as-Sala, Abu Yahya b. al-Yasa', al-Baydhaq, Ibn al-Qattan and others, but it also includes official letters whose authenticity is doubtful as well as various legends.
Contrary to what the complete title of the book implies, it is not a history of Marrakech, the capital of Morocco, but actually a résumé of the facts concerning the reign of the Murabitun and the beginning of the Muwahhid empire up until the reign of 'Abd al-Mu'min. This chronicle, written at the time of the Crusades when Islam saw itself violently attacked in the East as well as in the West is marked by the desire to exalt the feats of arms of the Muslim princes to the point of exaggeration.
III. Maghribi and Eastern Compilations
9. Kitâb al-Iktifâ' fî akhbâr al-Khulafâ' of Ibn al-Kardabus recounts the historical facts up to the reign of the Muwahhid khalif Abu Ya'qub Yusuf b. 'Abd al-Mu'min (558-580 /1184-1185). The part of this history which deals with the history of the Murabitun is to be used with caution because, most of the time, the chronology is in disagreement with the majority of other sources.
10. Bayân al-Mughrib fî akhbâr al-Maghrib. These annals of the Maghrib and Spain, compiled by Ibn 'Idhari, qa'id of Fes, which were still being written in 712 /1312-1313, are a basic source for the history of the Maghrib and Andalusia because it gathers together chronicles which are mostly lost.
The third part deals with the history of the Murabitun and Muwahhid empires, the dynasties of the Hafsids in Ifriqiya, the Banu Hud and the Nasrids in Andalusia, and the Banu Marin of Morocco.
The Bayan is of great interest for the Murabitun period. Ibn 'Idhâri deals with contemporary sources of events on the genesis and development of this movement.
The acephalous manuscript of the Bayan concerning this period, published by A. Huici Miranda, begins with a conversation between the amir of the Juddala, Yahya b. Ibrahim, and Abu 'Imran Musa al-Fasi at the Qayrawan, his visit to Wajjaj in Malkus, the selection of 'Abdullah b. Yasin, and follows the course of the history of Yahya b. Ibrahim, following a very different chronology from that of the Rawd al-Qirtas. Moreover, it is unfortunate that a large gap in the manuscript deprives us of the account of the events which took place between 451 /1059 and 460/1067-1068. But it also relates to us events which are absolutely unpublished.
11. Kitâb Mafâkhir al-Barbar, a work compiled in 712 h/1312, by an anonymous author, provides interesting information about 'Abdullah b. Yasin, Yahya b. 'Umar, Abu Bakr b. 'Umar and Yusuf b. Tashfin, in particular the same date of the foundation of Marrakech as Ibn al-Athir, Ibn 'Idhâri and al-Hulal al-Mawshiyya, i.e. 462/1070. Sometimes he uses the quotations of the Dhakhira of Ibn Bassam about the capture of Tangier and Ceuta, from the Kitâb al-muqtabis fî akhbâr al-Maghrib wa'l-Andalus of Ibn Khamado of Ceuta, from Mizân al-'amal fî ayyâm ad-duwal of Ibn Rashiq, of the Muqtabis fî akhbâr al-Maghrib wa'l-Andalus wa Fâs of Abu Marwan al-Warraq, of the Kitâb Ansâb al-Barbar of Abu 'Abdullah b. Abi al-Majd.
12. Kitâb al-anis al-mutrib bi-rawd al-qirtas. Drafted during the first third of the 14th century, 726/1326 by Ibn Abi Zar', this history of Fes and Morocco is a plagiarism of the Bayân of Ibn 'Idhâri. Inspired by al-Bakri, the Rawd al-Qirtas and the Bayân tally in their description of the nomadic life of the Saharans and the facts relating to Yahya b. Ibrahim. Subsequently, the Rawd al-Qirtas begins by confusing the chronology and leading us astray by imaginary facts and silence on the events related by the Bayân and al-Hulal al-Mawshiyya.
13. Kitâb al-'Ibar by Ibn Khaldun (732-784/1332-1382), a well-known historian, sociologist, and philosopher. This author devotes a large place to the history of the Murabitun movement. He also concentrates a lot on the contribution of the works of al-Bakri, Ibn Abi Zar', Mafakhir al-Barbar as well as the Bayân of Ibn 'Idhâri. For the chronology of the first period of the movement up until the death of 'Abdullah b. Yasin and his successor Ibn 'Abbu, he adopts the chronology of al-Bakri, Ibn 'Idhâri, al-Hulal al-Mawshiyya, and Mafakhir al-Barbar. Subsequently, after 452 AH, he followed the presentation of events presented by the Rawd al-Qirtas, differing from the other sources and allowing himself to be drawn into an account which seems to err about events, especially concerning the government of Abu Bakr b. 'Umar and the lieutenancy of Yusuf b. Tashfin. He does not return to the primary sources until after the capture of Ceuta in 476 AH and the first crossing of Yusuf b. Tashfin to Andalusia. To describe the activity of the Murabitun in Andalusia, he uses both categories of sources which we are going to discuss, as well as Ibn Kardabus up until the death of Yusuf b. Tashfin.
14. Kitâb A'mâl al-a'lam by Ibn al-Khatib, wazir and historian of Granada. It is an unfinished history of Islam. Its first part is devoted to the east and the second to Muslim Spain, with an appendix on the Christian kings of the Reconquest, and the third part is about North Africa and Sicily.
Written around 776/1374, this work is especially useful for learning about the policy followed by Yusuf b. Tashfin in Andalusia and the situation of the Taifa kings vis-à-vis the king of Castille, Alphonso VI. However, his information is very condensed and must have been borrowed from Ibn 'Idhâri. It is certain that he did not take into account Ibn Kardabus, because the dates which he gives us do not coincide with those given by that writer. It is possible that he did not possess the Rawd al-Qirtas of Ibn Abi Zar', the first third of which was written in 726 h. But it is difficult to recognise his sources for the period which concerns us because he does not name them.
15. Kitâb al-kâmil fî't-tarîkh of Ibn al-Athir who was born 4 Jumada I 555/12 May 1160. He spent most of his life in Mosul.
Volumes ix and x include some chronicles which deal with the beginnings of the Murabitun movement , the reign of Abu Bakr b. 'Umar and that of Yusuf b. Tashfin, whose role in Andalusia seems to have caught the interest of our author who quotes long passages on this subject from Ibn al-Labbana, the poet and friend of the prince of Seville, al-Mu'tamid. But it must be said that the chronology given is not always satisfactory. Moreover, this book strongly influenced Ibn Khallikan in his composition of the article of the Wafayât which deals with Yusuf b. Tashfin.
IV. Geographers
16. Kitâb al-Mughrib fî dhikr bilâd Ifriqiya wa'l-Maghrib, or Kitâb al-Masâlik wa'l-Mamâlik. Abu 'Ubayd al-Bakri, died in 487/1094, composed this work in 461 h/1068 assisted by literary and oral information, from his residence in Spain which he never left.
His worth is inestimable for enabling us to grasp the religious context which gave birth to the Mulaththimun movement. A contemporary of the events which concern us, he provides a narrative of the events in which 'Abdullah b. Yasin and the first amirs of Juddala, Yahya b. Ibrahim, Yahya b. 'Umar, and his brother Abu Bakr b. 'Umar, participated. One can state, in view of his account, that he did not conceive of the happy fortune of this burgeoning movement, so his information is all the more objective and worthy of credence.
Elsewhere he paints a very interesting picture of the religious situation of Maghrib al-Aqsa and the powerful sects of the Bajaliyya and Barghawata which were well entrenched in these regions, not to mention the economic information which one can extract from this book which enables us to grasp the nature of the exchanges which existed at this period. It is unfortunate that as he was a witness of the military and political intervention of Yusuf ibn Tashfin in Spain and to the successive dethronement of the Taifa kings, we do not find an echo of this in his work. He was above all a geographer, but his historical digressions are invaluable.
17. Kitâb nuzhat al-mushtâq fî ikhtirâq al-afâq. Al-Idrisi owes his fame to this work of descriptive geography. This book was written at the command of Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily, to illustrate a large silver planisphere which the author himself had built. It is for this reason that the work was called Kitâb Rujâr (The Book of Roger). This book was completed in 548/1154. It does not give hardly any historical elements about the birth of the Murabitun movement, but it gives an understanding of the economic activity in the 11th and 12th centuries. His contribution is useful for us in the description of the fortresses and fortified towns of Maghrib al-Aqsa, and the allusion to some illegal taxes imposed on merchandise, and the economic characteristics of each area of the Sahara, Sus and Maghrib al-Aqsa. He nevertheless owes a lot to Ibn Hawqal.
18. Kitâb al-Istibsâr. This work, compiled in 587 /1191, whose author is unknown, is a description of Egypt and the Maghrib. Certain passages suggest that its author lived during the reign of the Muwahhid Ya'qub al-Mansur, and that his patron was a high dignitary, Shaykh Abu 'Imran b. Abi Yahya b. 'Uqtin, a patron to whom he dedicated his book and whose favours he sought. It seems that he wrote this book in 587 /1191 in the month of Ramadan/September-October.
The details which he gives on Meknes, Fes and Marrakech show a deep familiarity with these towns. He certainly lived there. When he dealt with the Sudan, he says that he consulted official letters sent in the name of Gana, king of one of these countries and destined for Yusuf b. Tashfin, which is to say that he had in his possession the ancient Murabitun archives.
IV. Historico-biographical sources
19. We should mention the Memoirs of 'Abdullah, the last Zirid of Granada (460-483 /1076-1091). He wrote them at Aghmat after having been deposed by Yusuf b. Tashfin in 483 /1090. There we have a first-hand description of the Andalusian policy of the Murabitun. But he remains silent on the events which preceded the first crossing of the Amir al-Muslimin to Andalusia.
20. In dealing with the resistance of Suqut al-Barghawati, the king of Tangier and Ceuta, to the invasion of the Murabitun, we have used some extracts from the Dhakhira fî mahâsin ahl al-Gazira of Ibn Bassam (d. 542 /1147). Information on the political life and administrative organisation has been collected in the Kitâb as-Sila of Ibn Bashkuwal (d. 578/1183); Bughyat al-multamis fî ta'rikh rijâl al-Andalus by ad-Dabbi (d. 599/1203); al-Hulla as-Siyarâ of Ibn al-Abbar (d. 658 /1260), the Analects (Nafh at-Tîb) of al-Maqqari (d. 1061 h/1651) and the Wafayât which Ibn Khallikan finished in 673 /1274.
PERSONAL NOTES - 8 Years Later
Quick note 2012 that I was asked to write by AHS and numerous readers
By Alik Shahadah
History is so pliable that it is the victim of incessant devious politics. It is susceptible to such diverse reading that it can be used to justify and prove almost any agenda the writer wants: Therefore history and politics need to be studied as one.
So If a Jewish man from way down in South Africa is writing about Islam’s Black slaves then we must factor in the relationship between Judaism and Islam today (not historically - but today). Just like we must factor in if this author's Surname is Shahadah (Swahili Muslim name) that self-interest means defending my faith. These are just things we must factor in, none are foregone conclusions of anything either way. But what is dishonest is to write an article on slavery and only present one kind of information -- that which favors your agenda. Then we need to discount it and move on.
I strongly believe in what i wrote here War Myth of Religion and have very little tolerance for the pseudo-historical rants that try to make every action by every Arab and Muslim representative of the Islamic faith. Every African American rapist is certainly not the representative of African Americans. Every crime I committed in my life is not a reflection on Africa nor Islam. If i want to be wicked and greedy then that is my human nature. Screaming "God told me to do it" has zero bearing on my motives; it is just a scapegoat. To then scan through history and record the deeds of every White Christian person to make a case against Christianity is just as problematic. People kill and exploit each other for numerous reasons, religion and race are often the best political excuses for these actions.
The history of the bigot is obvious; if has a conclusion before even starting the research. It appears “honest” because of a collation of dates and incidence, but anyone can assemble every negative report, every negative statement and compile it. Every antisemite and racist is skilled at the unbalance compilation of everything bad about their enemy. The gift of true scholarship is not in a bullet list of points, but in analysis and comparative study. So if discussing the Arab supremacy in Sudan, we must contrast it against the light-skin supremacy in Martinique. If discussing slavery today in Mauritania, please let us not forget South Africa and Ghana.
I have been studying Islam and Africa long enough and have read almost all the major Islam and Africa topics. I still feel a little ignorant on many areas and have to always brush up and re-read. This is why I have updated this article to add more nuance. I have travelled to the Middle East, East Africa and all the Islamic centers in Africa and done research. As a Muslim I do have an advantage accessing and understanding elements of Islam and its society. I am fully aware of the flaws inside of my religion as well as the endless list of accomplishments. And it is "my religion", that I believe makes me want to seek truth. And like being African, or being a man of the human speicies, I have to face some terrible aspects of all the things that define me (Male, Muslim, Western, and African). In this quest, I have found both good and bad in the conduct of Muslim people, Arabs, Europeans, and Africans as a distinct identity. I have found the best way to write this article, which has been going on for over 1 decade, is to present a balance. That means I cannot, and should never cherry pick, or washout history. I also am very conscious of maintaining the some pattern of objectivity across different articles such as African Holocaust (which is actually part of this article which is the extension of the Audio below).
Bias is inherent in every author, and anyone claiming not to be is a liar. But in this article all the major facts I have come across are presented and discussed. Racism towards Muslims, as well as Racism inside Islam. Racism towards Arabs, as well as racism Arabs have towards Africans, and African racism towards Arabs inherited from Eurocentrism by the Afro-Orientalist. This is what is meant by an attempt at balance. I discuss the legacy of cultural imperialism of the “other” and hide nothing in that study. The problems of Arabization and Islamization are openly stated, the glories of Islam and Africa are also openly stated—without apology. And balance when the West has Islam in the cross-hairs of a gun, needs to also bring that entire discourse into the academic theatre.
Last point of note, which may affect how this article is read. Balance is not only balancing this article against itself (which is my primary concern), balance is also balancing this article against the plethora of anti-Arab and Islamophobic content out there. So appreciate what balance means. There is no shortage of Islamic and Arab hate sites, feel free to contrast them against this one. So balance includes countering the "status quo", had this article been written for an exclusive Arab/Muslim audience it would be adjusted to balance against Muslim notions of a perfect innocent history. So for some this article is too hard, for others it is too soft, for most it is a welcomed break from a polarized study. But I want my legacy to be balance. As I myself abhor reading a book, which has a overt binary agenda. I want to, as I request of those reading this article, trust the author with honesty. -- In Peace 'Alik Shahadah
http://www.africanholocaust.net/news_ah/arabslavetrade.htm
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Black people in North America, Europe, and probably in Africa do not want to hear that black slavery was always about blacks getting rich selling blacks to other people. There is just too much for them to lose if public awareness is risen about black slavery not being solely a crime of the whites.
ReplyDeleteIf blacks profiting for hundreds of years from selling blacks were public knowledge, blacks today would lose their grasp on the billions of government dollars per year being wasted on giving "the poor blacks" a free ride in every aspect of life today.
If the world wanted justice it would stop blaming slavery on whites, and start hunting down the black and Arab family members who have gained millions of dollars over hundreds of years, through many generations, who have sold and continue to sell blacks to other blacks and Arabs, That would be justice, and finally get out of the wallets of white people, most of whom have gained nothing from black slavery ever.
that was me saying that, don't know why it posted as unknown. I have no shame in what I say, as it is truth.
DeleteI don't know why it says unknown, my profile name is Tamara Downey.
ReplyDelete