Why Do We Ignore Islamic Slavery?
13th June 2023
The beautiful Siwa Oasis in the far western deserts of Egypt is a remarkable place, for multiple reasons. It’s probably been inhabited, continuously, for 12,000 years. Alexander the Great came here to consult the already renowned Oracle of Amun-Ra in 332 BC (some say he is buried here, as he loved Siwa so much). You can swim in Roman cisterns fed by one of the 300 natural springs — which also nourish thousands of date palms and olive groves. The locals have their own Berber language — Siwi — spoken nowhere else on earth.
But there’s one facet of Siwa’s history which is less talked about. Within living memory, they had black slaves here, generally fetched from further south in Africa, and trafficked along Saharan routes trodden by Muslim pilgrims, ultimately heading for Mecca.
As I read about this nugget of history, last week — sitting on the stunningly silent, mud-brick balcony of Adrere Amellal, a hotel which overlooks the oasis — it jarred quite hard with a news story I’d read an hour previously. Namely, that politicians in California are proposing to pay reparations to black Californians who can prove they descend from slaves. The sums being discussed are not trivial. The official task force has decided that entitled individuals should each get up to $1.2 million; others say this is nowhere near enough, and every individual should get $200 million — that is not a typo.
Islam has no problem with slavery. Never did. Saudi Arabia had black slaves into the 1960s.