Islam’s Role in Slavery
2nd July 2012
Although Islam and black nationalism share a flame-belching, sword-swinging hatred for Western Civ, it’s an odd pairing when you consider history. American blacks who dump Christianity and shack up with Islam seem to think they’re flipping the bird at the creed that enslaved their ancestors, but they’re only swapping it for a religion that has enslaved their ancestors for far longer.
Like Jews joining the Nazi party because they think that America is being mean to them. There are times when ‘clueless’ is entirely inadequate to describe the situation.
Many historians harp about how the Arab slave trade was far more humane than the transatlantic slaving biz. If only for spite, I’ll focus on what was far worse about it.
For starters, it predated the transatlantic slave trade by at least 800 years and has outlived it for 150 years and counting. Whereas the bloodthirsty hallucinating pedophile sandworm Muhammad (c. 570-632) owned both male and female black slaves, European explorers didn’t even begin dipping their beaks into the African human-cattle trade in large numbers until the 1500s.
Roughly three centuries later, Europeans and their American descendants took it upon themselves to put the kibosh on slavery. In contrast with Christendom, there was never a concerted Arabic abolition movement, and slavery was only formally outlawed in the Islamic world due to intense outside pressure. But slavery still openly thrives in places such as Mauritania and, on the downlow, throughout much of Africa and the Middle East.
If you count human bodies equally, the Arab slave trade likely shackled at least as many Africans as the transatlantic trade and possibly twice as many. Although early documentation is scarce due in part to a deafening lack of written languages below the Sahara, historical estimates range from a low of eight million to a high of 25 million. In contrast, the general consensus is that around 11 million Africans were transported to the New World—yet only a mere 5% of those wound up in what is now the USA, although the USA gets 100% of the guilt-tripping.
History is such an inconvenient thing for the ‘progressive’ mind….
July 2nd, 2012 at 10:42
I’ve always found it more than a little ironic that the Nation of Islam has such a following in the black community.
Every transaction requires both a buyer and a seller. Europeans bought the slaves in Africa, but who sold them? The answer, of course, is both Arabs and other Africans. But that question never seems to get asked, much less answered.
Slavery is/was reprehensible, and we should shoulder our fair share of the opprobrium for our participation. But that shouldn’t give the rest of the participants a free pass. There’s plenty of shame and blame for all.