It’s a popular fiction that the only slavery existed in history is the black slavery, whereby European traders captured and transported black Africans to the New World (Americas, West Indies).
Ask a Muslim; he/she will tell you so. An America-born young Muslim wrote to me: “Do you know how the American slave-hunters went to Africa, seized the black people and brought them to America as slaves? America’s economic power owes a great deal to the labor of those slaves.”Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan terms the trans-Atlantic slave-trade the “worst and most cruel slavery” in history, adding that some white Americans do not know that “they are in the privileged position… based on what happened to us (Blacks)” in the past. An overwhelming majority of Muslims believe that Islamic history is devoid of the abhorrent practice of slavery. Rocky Davis (aka Shahid Malik), an Australian Aboriginal convert to Islam, told ABC Radio that “Christianity were the founders of slavery. Not Islam.” Indeed, from my own experience of living as a Muslim for 35 years, this is one of the major reasons of why anti-West hatred is so strong amongst Muslims.
When Muslims in India talk about the practice of slavery in the subcontinent, they talk about the harrowing tales of how the Portuguese transported slaves from coastal areas of Goa, Kerala and Bengal in terrible conditions, and nothing else.
However, when I investigated, I was shocked to discover that Muslims, armed with divine and prophetic sanctions, practised slavery of a much greater proportion and tragedy, which I have discussed in my recent book, Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion Imperialism and Slavery.
It is fortunate that President Obama, visiting a former slave-trading fort in Ghana on July 11, condemned this dark chapter in human history rightly as a “great evil”, adding “As African-Americans, there is a special sense that… this place was a place of profound sadness…”
Obama also pointed to a church, standing next to slave-dungeons, to illustrate the fact that European Christians, with sanctions from the church, engaged in black slavery.
This popular paradigm excludes three major facts about slavery:
1) Black slavery was not the only slavery in history. The Arabs, Turks, Indians and even millions of Europeans were also reduced to slavery during the same period and before, with added dimensions of sex-slavery and castration. And the perpetrators were Muslims, not Europeans.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy
I read your piece last night (my time) and found it enlightening and well written. I'm not surprised that nobody has commented on it. Reality and truth seem to get few comments here, unless they challenge the accepted "narrative" in a hostile fashion. Then all the cultural thedakars come out and scream at you.
Intelligent articles like yours get - ignored.
2 - M. A. Khan
Thanks Ruvy,
A more vigorous discussion was expected on a topic like this. Then, that's the reality.
3 - Deano
Well I've pretty much stopped commented on BC because of the relentless predictability and partisan hackery of most of the regular commenters but I will echo Ruvy's comment and say "well done" on your article.
Thnaks for posting it.
4 - Dr Dreadful
Slavery has been part of the human experience since prehistory. Sometimes the practice has been relatively benign - in ancient Greece it was possible to sell oneself into slavery to pay a debt, for instance - and sometimes, sadly, it hasn't.
The egregious thing about the European and North American slave trades, and the principal reason these need to be kept in the public consciousness, is that they were undertaken by a people with pretensions to unprecedented levels of civilization and refinement - who then on the other hand used this as a pretext for the most appalling treatment of those who they perceived to be less civilized.
As far as I'm aware, and as offensive to the modern mind as slavery is, Islam makes no such pretensions.
21st century slavery doesn't get the press, true, but it's far from forgotten. Many organizations, including Amnesty International and Anti-Slavery International, campaign actively against the practice.
5 - roger nowosielski
Good point, Dreadful, but I think the time for pretension is over and the practice of slavery is still as abhorrent as ever. Of course, now we are capable of dressing it up in less objectionable terms, such as exploitation and what not.
6 - roger nowosielski
You're to be commended, Khan, for your courage.
7 - Bliffle
Good point DD.
In particular, "white slavery", the kidnapping of 'white' (i.e., traditionally non slave class, tho they may be dusky or olive, yellow, etc.) females for prostitution occurs around the world, often in relatively civilized environs (Caribbean, Rome, Paris, NYC, Oslo, etc.).
Muslims do their share of this because 'white' concubines bring a premium price and need be treated no better than animals because they are heathens and infidels, and their governments protect them.
8 - Mr. Lee X Slave
I am Muslim follower of the Most Hon. Elijah Muhammad Under the Divine Guidance of The Hon. Louis Farrakhan, and I have been so for close to forty years. We teach the truth, yes Arabs and Africans, sold Us to you good God fearing white anglo protestants. However what makes Us so angry is what devilment happened when the cast out and dregs of European society, got a hold to Us.
The atrocities are so horrible and numerous to mention, if you compare what your fore parents did to mine and what Adolf Hitler did the his fellow european countymen, it would be like comparing Diamonds to coal.
Just because some evil Arabs and hateful Africans sold Us did not give you people the right to "MAKE US INTO SAVAGES".
May Allah have Mercy
[Personal contact info deleted]
9 - M. A. Khan
Mr. Lee, it's not some, but all, Arabs, who settled in Africa, wholly engaged in slave-hunting and slave-trade. And it's Allah's mercy that Arabs became the master enslaver, till today since the days of Muhammad, who himself, with Allah's sanctions (Quranic verses) started enslaving the people in Arabia in hundreds: he slaughtered all grown-up males of communities and enslaved all the women and children. This tradition or Sunnah of Muhammad moved to Africa and all over the world (sunnah is of eternal relevance, isn't it?).
And atrocities in their slave-hunting in Africa matched to Muhamamd's in Arabia. Sometimes, for harvesting some 50 young black women to be sent to the Muslim world for sex-slavery, a community of 1,000 people were completely annihilated.
And you are obviously lucky to be able to express gratutide to Allah--thanks to the fact that your forefathers fell into Europeans hands. If they were sent to the Muslim markets, they would be summarily castrated and would leave no offspring to express gratitude to Allah or whatever god.
10 - Hipamerican
Your assertion that Black males were routinely castrated is the first I've heard of such, during the Arab trade. What all these refer to is the mindset that developed into white supremacy, for the common target of enslavement was the darker, by the lighter, and as well, the talented by the untalented, the peaceful, by the greedy, the content by the jealous, the civil by the violent, indeed, the civilized by the uncivilized. The quality of enslavement can be determined by the motive, and as the motive became more and more crystallized as white supremacist, it became less and less humane, so that the last edition was indeed the worst, and held the greatest percentage of Black victims. This is the edition that founded America, and by the principles of America, it constitutes a crime by citizen against citizen, whites robbing blacks of their rights, in individual and collective collusions. The detris remains. Blacks are America's most indigenous ethnic group, and the only one in the world denoted without reference to territory or culture. The secondary reference as African American is not exclusive to our experience, as truly immigrant Africans are included under that label, and it is merely continental in reference to our origin. Yet, Black is seldom capitalized, being accepted and applied more as a descriptive than as a nomitive term. By the same token, European and Muslim are not exclusive terms, and the same is true for Muslim and African. It was during and for the pillaging of America by Europeans that enslavement became the condition favored for African blacks, and that those so enslaved became completely chattelized, in the European marketplace and under the law. "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" details that most prominent and aggresive of slave merchants were Jews scattered throughout the populations of involved Europeans, and that most of the religious doctrines for the protection of slaves were abandoned. Obama, being America's president, has a responsibility to address those issues that have had a profound and direct effect on the estaglishment and progress of America. As all of America's conduct extends from the presence of this most horrific chapter in humanity, I am pleased to see it addressed, even so lightly, at the Presidential level. As all Americans are profoundly affected, it is foolish and dangerous, even tragic, that the conversation is not constant, to drive solution and reparation. Our national voice cannot truly be a voice for justice, cannot be respected as an authority of equality, until we have answered and settled these inner questions. Our freedom depends on our bravery, which in this case, must be intellectual and emotional, to face how violence has been used, and find how it must be healed.