Slavery in the name of Islam

From the Associated Press via Dhimmi Watch:

Most of the boys — 90 percent, the study found — are sent out to beg under the cover of Islam, placing the problem at the complicated intersection of greed and tradition. For among the cruelest facts of Coli's life is that he was not stolen from his family. He was brought to Dakar with their blessing to learn Islam's holy book.

In the name of religion, Coli spent two hours a day memorizing verses from the Quran and over nine hours begging to pad the pockets of the man he called his teacher.

It was getting dark. Coli had less than half the 72 cents he was told to bring back. He was afraid. He knew what happened to children who failed to meet their daily quotas.

They were stripped and doused in cold water. The older boys picked them up like hammocks by their ankles and wrists. Then the teacher whipped them with an
electrical cord until the cord ate their skin.

The article says there are over a million "Coli's" in the world. Read the entire article.

Slavery, a very short history

Earlier this month, First Things; The Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life, published an outstanding article on slavery. Every American needs to read this article. I've copied a few excerpts below but when you have time please read the entire article.

It has become a feature of today’s atheist chic to shy bricks at Christianity for its record on slavery.

Combine this with a historical critique that relentlessly portrays the West as the aggressors against the rest of the world, and as uniquely responsible for its evils, and Westerners’ will to defend something as rotten as Western civilization begins to ebb away.

No culture on earth, Christian or otherwise, ever questioned the morality of slavery until relatively recent times.

But in the popular mind the onus for slavery is squarely on the West.

Some Americans might be surprised to learn that the British, or anyone besides American southerners, ever owned slaves, since after coming through American schools as they stand today many people no doubt have the impression that slavery was invented in Charleston and Mobile.

The first legally recognized slave in the American colonies was owned by a black man
who had himself arrived as an indentured servant.

Likewise unacknowledged has been the role that Christian principles played in the abolition of slavery in the West, which was an enterprise unprecedented in the annals of human history.

Still, there was no consensus about slavery within Christendom. Slavery persisted, and was at times even given ecclesiastical sanction.

The pioneering English abolitionists Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) and William Wilberforce (1759–1833) were both motivated to work for an end to slavery by their deep Christian faith; so was the American anti-slavery crusader William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879)

In the Islamic world, however, the situation is very different. The Muslim prophet Muhammad owned slaves

The Qur’an even gives a man permission to have sexual relations with his slave girls

The Qur’an says that the followers of Muhammad are “ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another” (48:29), and that the unbelievers are the “worst of
created beings” (98:6). One may exercise the Golden Rule in relation to a fellow
Muslim, but according to the worldview presented by such verses and others like
them, the same courtesy is not properly to be extended to unbelievers.

That is one principal reason why the primary source of slaves in the Islamic world
has been non-Muslims, whether Jews, Christians, Hindus or pagans.

Yet while the European and American slave trade get lavish attention from historians...the Islamic slave trade actually lasted longer and brought suffering to a larger number of people. It is exceedingly ironic that Islam has been presented to American blacks as the egalitarian alternative to the “white man’s slave religion” of Christianity, since Islamic slavery operated on a larger scale than did the Western slave trade, and lasted longer.

Slavery was abolished under Western pressure; the Arab Muslim slave trade in Africa was ended by the force of British arms in the nineteenth century.

There is evidence that slavery still continues beneath the surface in some majority-Muslim countries as well—notably Saudi Arabia, which only abolished slavery in 1962, Yemen and Oman, both of which ended legal slavery in 1970, and Niger, which didn’t abolish slavery until 2004. In Niger, the ban is widely ignored, and as many as one million people remain in bondage. Slaves are bred, often raped, and generally
treated like animals.

Slavery is still practiced openly today in two Muslim countries, Sudan and Mauritania. In line with historical practice, Muslim slavers in the Sudan primarily enslave non-Muslims, and chiefly Christians.

Most Westerners have not troubled to learn this history, and no one is telling them about it. If they did, the entire slavery guiltmongering industry would collapse. And we can’t let that happen, now, can we?

A short history of slavery

The recent Jihad Watch post entitled "Hitchens simply cannot be this stupid" provides a short history of slavery. It is very enlightening. Please find time to read it.

Muslim slave trade

Not long ago Dhimmi Watch posted an excellent article on Muslim slave trade. A quote appears below:

The Arab slave trade was stamped out only by the outside, Christian powers,
first by using force. Great Britain through naval power managed in the 19th
century to end the Arab slave trade in blacks seized and brought to Arabia,
though they did not manage to end the practice of slavery by the Muslim Arabs.
The French did the same where their writ ran in North Africa.

Putting slavery in perspective

It may just be my imagination, but it sometimes seems like many on the Left absolutely love to use slavery as a big club to show how evil America is. Michael Medved answers these guilt-mongers with an article entitled, Six inconvenient truths about the U.S. and slavery. Slavery was certainly a horrible evil and Mr. Medved in no way wishes to justify it, but he does an excellent job of putting it in perspective. Some excerpts appear below but please take the time to read his entire article.

“…at least 97% of all African men, women and children who were kidnapped, sold,
and taken from their homes, were sent somewhere other than the British colonies
of North America. In this context there is no historical basis to claim that the
United States bears primary, or even prominent guilt for the depredations of
centuries of African slavery.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution put a formal end to the institution of slavery 89 years after the birth of the Republic; 142 years have passed since this welcome emancipation.

Moreover, the importation of slaves came to an end in 1808 (as provided by the
Constitution), a mere 32 years after independence, and slavery had been outlawed
in most states decades before the Civil War. Even in the South, more than 80% of
the white population never owned slaves. Given the fact that the majority of
today’s non-black Americans descend from immigrants who arrived in this country
after the War Between the States, only a tiny percentage of today’s white
citizens – perhaps as few as 5% -- bear any authentic sort of generational guilt
for the exploitation of slave labor.

In the course of scarcely more than a century following the emergence of the American Republic, men of conscience, principle and unflagging energy succeeded in abolishing slavery not just in the New World but in all nations of the West…This worldwide mass movement (spear-headed in Britain and elsewhere by fervent Evangelical Christians) brought about the most rapid and fundamental transformation in all human history. While the United States (and the British colonies that preceded our independence) played no prominent role in creating the institution of slavery, or even in establishing the long-standing African slave trade pioneered by Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and other merchants long before the
settlement of English North America, Americans did contribute mightily to the
spectacularly successful anti-slavery agitation. As early as 1646, the Puritan
founders of New England expressed their revulsion at the enslavement of their
fellow children of God”

Slavery in India

According to a report by SkyNews, “250,000 women and children are being trafficked every year - many of them forced into the sex trade.”

Sometimes it's just hard to comprehend the depths of evil to which men will sink.

Slavery in Ghana

According to an article in MNN:

Many people believe slavery has been outlawed worldwide. While it has, in
reality it still exists.

President and CEO of IN Network USA Rody Rodeheaver says, "Today there are 27 million people enslaved around the world. This is various kinds of slavery -- sex slaves, it's chattel slavery, it's forced labor and debt bondage."

Rodeheaver says in the Volta region of Ghana, where many slaves were loaded on a ship and sent to the Americas, Trokosi practice is still taking place. "Where Young virgin girls, some as young as five, six and seven years old, are taken as slaves by fetish priests for the payment of the sins of other people," says Rodeheaver.

Read the rest at MNN.

Islam, Christianity and slavery

According to Reuters,

Islam is growing fast among African Americans, who are undeterred by increased
scrutiny of Muslims in the United States since the September 11 attacks,
according to imams and experts.

Converts within the black community say they
are attracted to the disciplines of prayer, the emphasis within Islam on
submission to God and the religion's affinity with people who are oppressed.

Perhaps these black converts to Islam have never been told of Islam’s history of oppression and slavery. For example, Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis writes about huge numbers of slaves captured by Muslim invaders. He distinguishes between those “privileged” slaves employed for domestic or military use, and the usually black slaves, captured or purchased from East Africa who were used for manual labor in mines, fleets, marsh drainage, salt flats. They were herded together in groups ranging from five hundred to fifteen thousand. “Their labour was hard and exacting, and they received only bare and inadequate keep consisting…of flour, semolina, and dates” (Lewis, Bernard. The Arabs in History, New York : Oxford University Press, 1993. 112-113).

Those Muslims who owned black slaves in the centuries after Muhammad were just following the example of their Prophet Muhammad who regularly captured and sold slaves. In fact, Muhammad himself once allowed one of his wives’ black slaves to be beaten just to get information about his wife.

On the other hand, the “Christians” who owned slaves in early American history were doing so in direct violation to the spirit and teachings of the New Testament. They tried to justify their savagery by appealing to the Old Testament but nowhere in the Old Testament is there justification for singling out a group of innocent people on the basis of skin color, purely for economic advantage and greed, and ripping them away from homes and families and treating them worse than animals.

In fact, it was largely due to the efforts of Christians that slavery in Britain and the U.S. was finally abolished. Unfortunately, worldwide slave trade still flurishes today.