Arab Slave Trade

From Salamm Journal.Org   

By Sister Seneca, Arab Slave Trade
« on: Dec 23^rd, 2007

In the Name of Allah the Beneficent the Merciful, Master Fard Muhammad to Whom is Praised forever.
 
Holy Quran
9:101 And of those around you of the desert Arabs, there are hypocrites; and of the people of Madinah (also) — they persist in hypocrisy. Thou knowest them not; We know them. We will chastise them twice, then they will be turned back to a grievous chastisement.
 
9:99 And of the desert Arabs are those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and consider what they spend and  
the prayers of the Messenger, as bringing them nearer to Allah. Surely they bring them nearer (to Allah); Allah will bring them into His mercy. Surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
 
Message to the Blackman
CHAPTER 81
20 This means that he received two books. One in a foreign language to Arabs and another in the original language. Both called Holy Qur-an. There must be something that is wrong about the Mother city which all the scholars agree is Mecca. Those are the last days, not in the days of Moses — only his work of correcting the ills of the Arabs in Mecca where he was born.
 
13 There are many erroneous mistakes made by the scholars and scientists that have caused much misunderstanding of the truth. There are many Arabs throughout the world who cannot bear witness to anyone that another messenger would rise up after Muhammad, who was here nearly 1,400 years ago. This is due to their misunderstanding of the Holy Qur-an and the scriptures of the Prophets Abraham, Moses, Jesus and even Muhammad, himself.
 
Our Saviour Has Arrived
Chapter 13
18 The Holy Qur’an and the history of Muhammad teach us that Muhammad was only a common Arab as his fellow Arabs were until he was missioned to be an Apostle of Allah; as was the case of Moses and Jesus who was before Muhammad.
 
Pittsburgh Courier Article 1956 (Speech)
April 16th, 1956:
The Arabs or Muslims have tried and are still trying to get the white race to believe and recognize Muhammad as a Divine Prophet of Allah (God) and the Quran, a Divine revelation, as they recognize Musa (Moses) and Isa (Jesus) and the bible as coming from Allah (God).  
 
This is sufficient proof to the worship of Allah (God) Himself; if Allah desires to make the black nation the equal or superior of the white race. Again their objection proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no such thing as a divine relation of brotherhood between the black nation and white race. God forbid.
 
As-Salaam Alaikum
 
Arab Slave Trade
 
Arabs are those who speak Arabic as their native tongue and who identify themselves as
Arabs. The Arab world is not to be confused with the “Middle East,” a strategic
designation developed during the heyday of the British empire, which encompasses such
non-Arab countries as Israel, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.  
 
And though Arab history is intertwined with Muslim history, the Arab world does not correspond to the Muslim world. There are significant non-Muslim Arab communities and most Muslims are, in fact, from large non-Arab countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, and many of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. There are also large Arab and non-Arab Muslim communities in North America.
 
Although the vast majority of Muslims are non-Arabs, Arabic continues to maintain its special status as Muslims around the world study classical Arabic in order to recite the Qur’an.
 
Arab slave trade
The Arab slave trade refers to the practice of slavery in West Asia, North Africa, East Africa. The trade mostly involved North and East Africans and Middle Eastern peoples (Arabs, Berbers, Persians, etc.).
 
Without a knowledge of history, many Africans may be unaware of the fact that Islamic traders carried on a steady slave trade from East African ports for many centuries. Records are available which contain the lists of goods involved in trade with the rest of the world.
 
The manumission of slaves, though recommended as a meritorious act, is not required, and the institution of slavery not only is recognized but is elaborately regulated by Sharia law.  From a Muslim point of view, to forbid what God permits is almost as great an offense as to permit what God forbids – and slavery was authorized and regulated by the holy law.  
 …It was from conservative religious quarters and notably from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina that the strongest resistance to the proposed reform came. The emergence of the holy men and the holy places as the last ditch defenders of slavery against reform is only an apparent paradox. They were upholding an institution sanctified by scripture, law, and tradition and one which in their eyes was necessary to the maintenance of the social structure of Muslim life’.
 
As far as Islam was concerned, the horrors of the abduction and transportation of slaves were the worst part.The way in which slavery was practiced in Islamic countries had both bright and dark sides.  
 
What is regretable now is that this practice among Muslims is seldom openly discussed – as if slavery was exclusively a Western phenomenon. This deliberate silence enables Islamic propagandists in America to represent Muslims as liberators of the people of African origin, contrary to historical fact.
 
Viking, Arab, Greek and Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.
 
Propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.Says Murray Gordon, In “Slavery in the Arab World.” New Amsterdam Press, New York, 1989. Originally published in French by Editions Robert Laffont, S.A. Paris, 1987, page 28.
 
Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998, Le Monde diplomatique. Quote:”The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic.  
 
At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth).” He continues: “Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean”. 
 
The Muslim countries enslaved both Blacks and Whites. And it was the form of slavery that indisputably contributed most to the present situation of Africa. It permanently weakened the continent, led to its colonisation by the Europeans in the nineteenth century, and engendered the racism and contempt from which Africans still suffer.
 
It is not certain that the European slave trade originally derived from the Arab trade. For a long time the Arab slave trade appears to have been a supplement to a much more profitable commerce in Sudanese gold and the precious, rare or exotic products of the African countries. Whereas, despite some exports of gold, ivory and hardwoods, it was the trade in human beings that galvanised the energy of the Europeans along the coast of Africa. Again, the Arab slave trade was geared mainly to the satisfaction of domestic needs.
 
The enslavement of Africans for production was tried in Iraq but proved a disaster. It provoked widespread revolts, the largest of which lasted from 869 to 883 and put paid to the mass exploitation of black labour in the Arab world. Not until the nineteenth century did slavery for production re-emerge in a Muslim country, when black slaves were used on the plantations of Zanzibar to produce goods such as cloves and coconuts that in any case were partly exported to Western markets.  
 
The two slavery systems nevertheless shared the same justification of the unjustifiable: a more or less explicit racism with a strong religious colouring. In both cases, we find the same fallacious interpretation of Genesis, according to which the Blacks of Africa, as the alleged descendants of Ham, are cursed and condemned to slavery.
 
In Africa itself, sporadic raids by Europeans soon gave way to regular commerce. African societies were drawn into the slavery system under duress, hoping that, once inside it, they would be able to derive maximum benefit for themselves.  
 
Nzinga Mbemba, ruler of the Kongo Kingdom, is a good example. He had converted to Christianity in 1491 and referred to the king of Portugal as his brother. When he came to power in 1506, he protested strongly at the fact that the Portuguese, his brother’s subjects, felt entitled to rob his possessions and carry off his people into slavery.  
 
It was to no avail. The African monarch gradually allowed himself to be convinced that the slave trade was both useful and necessary. Among the goods offered in exchange for human beings, rifles took pride of place. And only states equipped with rifles, i.e. participating in the slave trade, were able to resist attacks from their neighbours and pursue expansionist policies.
 
In Angola, Mozambique and certain parts of Guinea, however, Europeans got directly involved in the African warfare and trade networks with the help of local black accomplices or half-castes who were the offspring of white adventurers.  
 
These adventurers had a reputation that was unenviable even in an age of extreme cruelty. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Portuguese lançados (those who dared to “take off” into the interior) were described as “the seed of the devil”, “the essence of evil”, and “murderers, thieves and degenerates”.
 
In time, this group of intermediaries grew large enough to constitute, at several points along the coast, the class of “merchant princes” on whom the slave trade came to rest.
 
In the Senegal valley, for example, the attempts by certain monarchs to enslave and sell their own subjects gave rise, at the end of the 17th century, to the Marabout war and the Toubenan movement (from the word tuub, meaning to convert to Islam). Its founder, Nasir al-Din, proclaimed that “God does not permit kings to pillage, kill or enslave their peoples. He appointed them, on the contrary, to preserve their subjects and protect them from their enemies. Peoples were not made for kings, but kings for peoples.”
 
 
The Unknown Slavery: In the Muslim world, that is — and it’s not over.
From: National Review  |  Date: 5/20/2002  |  Author: Miller, John J.  
 
The phenomenon of Muslim slavery is not often studied, and especially not the Muslim enslavement of black Africans.  
 
“A list of serious scholarly monographs on [Islamic] slavery — in law, in doctrine, or in practice — could be printed on a single page,” wrote Princeton’s Bernard Lewis in his pioneering but brief book Race and Slavery in the Middle East (1990).  
 
He went on to suggest that the subject is so “highly sensitive” that it would be “professionally hazardous” for young scholars to take it up. Indeed, among the thousands of professors and graduate students affiliated with Middle Eastern studies programs in the U.S., only a handful have dared to broach the controversial topic, and a comprehensive history and analysis of it remains to be written.
 
This stands in stark contrast to the huge amount of scholarship on slavery in the West. Judging by the sheer volume of material, one might come away with the mistaken impression that nowhere was the vile institution of slavery more entrenched than among the American hypocrites who declared that all men are created equal.  
 And yet throughout Muslim history, starting with Mohammed himself, slavery was a vigorous and central part of Islamic civilization. This is not to say Islamic slavery was worse than American slavery; in many ways, life was easier under Muslim owners than under Mississippi owners.  
 
The problem, rather, is that the Islamic world has not experienced the same kind of moral reckoning on slavery that the West has. Muslim countries proved extremely resistant to abolition; many of them had to be dragged into it by the European colonial powers. It is hard to imagine a serious person calling for America to enslave its enemies.  
 
Yet a prominent Saudi cleric, Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik, recently urged Palestinians to do exactly that with Jews: “Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don’t you enslave their women?”
 
Words are one thing, and actions another. Even today, however, Islamic abolition cannot be called a complete success: Slavery continues to be practiced in at least two nations whose regimes claim to derive their legitimacy from Islam. These nations are Mauritania and Sudan, and Muslims remain virtually silent about the practices of their coreligionists there.
 
Slavery is an ancient institution, as old as recorded history. Aristotle defended it; both the Old and New Testaments accept it as a feature of the human condition. The Koran takes a similar view — though it also encourages (without commanding) slaveholders to treat their slaves well, and urges (without requiring) their release. In Islamic theology, slave ownership is a morally neutral act, but God smiles on those who give slaves their liberty.  
 
…The oddest aspect of Islamic slavery was the eunuch. Castrated male slaves became exceedingly popular in the Middle East sometime after the rise of Islam. They are best known for serving as harem guards, but they were also mosque custodians, administrators, and teachers.  
 
Eunuchs were bought and sold at a premium, in part because their grisly operation resulted in many fatalities. Their popularity remains something of a mystery. “One can only speculate that eunuchs were regarded as likely to be more devoted and dependable in serving their masters than other males, with normal distractions, would be,” writes Segal. Whatever the reason, eunuchs became fixtures of Muslim culture. Islam teaches against physical mutilation, so Muslims found themselves searching for loopholes.  
 
Many eunuchs were castrated in non-Muslim territory immediately before importation, in the belief that this somehow kept Islamic land pure; a business in commercial castration thus developed along the fringes of the Muslim world. (Prague is said to have specialized in this during the period when Islam imported many slaves from Europe.) Muslims later accepted castration within their own lands, so long as non-Muslims performed the deed.
 
Slavery, in short, was an ingrained part of Islamic culture — and it might still have been one today, but for European insistence that Muslims end it. As recently as 1878, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina served as major slave markets, trading 25,000 slaves annually. The eradication of slavery, in fact, is one of the great and unheralded legacies of colonialism.
 
Saudi Arabia and Yemen didn’t get around to abolishing slavery until 1962; three years later, a special report by the U.N. reported that the Saudi royal family continued to keep hundreds in bondage.
 
Mauritania outlawed slavery in 1980, apparently because its two earlier prohibitions (in 1905 and 1960) were ignored. Today, it is illegal for Mauritanians to say that slavery exists in their country — a sure sign that it really does. By some estimates, at least 100,000 of Mauritania’s 2.7 million people continue to live in unpaid servitude, most of them blacks toiling for light-skinned Moorish masters.
 
Reliable information on what’s really happening in Mauritania is hard to come by because the Islamic government won’t allow investigations. Foreign journalists must travel in the company of the secret police and face expulsion if they ask too many questions. In January, the government banned the main opposition party, which has demanded slavery’s eradication. Mauritania has far to go before slavery ceases within its borders.
 
In considering the history of slavery in Islam and in the West, it is a mistake to decide that one branch of the same evil represents the greater sin. Instead, it is probably enough to say the human toll in both places was horrible: Call it “immoral equivalence.”  
 
But there’s an important difference today. The United States finds itself apologizing for slavery (at least when Bill Clinton visits Africa), handing out huge amounts of foreign aid (partly from a sense of guilt), and giving at least passing thought to financial reparations for the descendants of its own slaves.  
 
Yet when Muslim countries gather at international forums, they discuss none of this — and instead spend their time writing resolutions bashing Israel and the West. They appear to feel no remorse for the past, and no responsibility for the present. While the West has its problems, it does not have this one.
 
 
13th century slave market in the Yemen

  
Mr. Ahmed K. El-Shabazz wrote the following reply to the above:
Salaam——— Holy Quran
9:101″ And of those around you of the desert Arabs, there are hypocrites; and of the people of Madinah (also) — they persist in hypocrisy. Thou knowest them not; We know them. We will chastise them twice, then they will be turned back to a grievous chastisement.”————Great report Sister Seneca, and as the number of people who have read this post shows, this was an important fact of history that the people needed to see. It is un-Islamic to own people, even the Bible’s book of Exodus says that if a man is caught buying and selling a person he shall be killed. The so-called Arabs(whiteman) and his Western kin (Europeans) have always used “religion” to cover their un-Godly actions towards the Blackman.—Look at the above from the Holy Qur’an, ALLAH calls them “HYPOCRITES”, and we see their actions here in America and in the East as being nothing but hypocrisy in the way of religion and in politics.—–Remember, the Messenger Elijah Muhammad(pbuh) said, “The white Muslims over there in the East ARE NOT MUSLIMS BY NATURE. They are Muslims by FAITH and practice. Therefore, it is not too difficult for their KIN BY NATURE, WHITE CHRISTIANS, to set up that which APPEALS TO THEIR BASIC NATURE; the DESIRE TO RULE WITH IMPUNITY. They will do ANYTHING to keep their power, INCLUDING MAKING PACTS WITH THE REAL DEVIL. Some of them are quick to SUBORDINATE THEIR FAITH, when their rule is threatened; and they CALL ON THIS WESTERN DEVIL TO BACK THEM UP.”–THEOLOGY OF TIME—-The white rulers of America and Europe control ALL of the so-called Arabs countries, as the Holy Qur’an warned them (Arabs), “the Devil has gained Mastery of you”. This is why the “Arabs” hate the Nation of Islam and the Messenger Elijah Muhammad and the coming of the Great Mahdi-Master W. Fard Muhammad, because “We know them”.-

True piety does not consist in turning your faces towards the east or the west – but truly pious is he who believes in God, and the Last Day; and the angels, and revelation, and the prophets; and spends his substance – however much he himself may cherish – it – upon his near of kin, and the orphans, and the needy, and the wayfarer, and the beggars, and for the freeing of human beings from bondage…” 2:177 of THE HOLY QU’RAN——This is from the Holy Qu’ran, and it is clear! So, ALL of those who enslaved ANY people, base on race, economics, etc. is guilty of a GRAVE SIN!!! We know that the government of Arabia didnot end slavery until 1962! Yet they hold themselves out as THE UPHOLDERS OF ISLAM! Please! They, and most of the “Arabs”, are just as racist as the “whites” in the west! In fact, when Islam came to Arabia under the Prophet Muhammad(pbuh), the “Arabs”(Jews) looked upon Islam as a “foreign religion”. It was the Black population of Arabia who were the first to come over to Muhammad, as they under stood the science of Islam. Even the Black King of Ethiopia who was a Christian had to submit to what Muhammad and the Qu’ran was saying. The white race has never really followed ANY Prophet of ALLAH. —-We must remember the words of the MESSENGER ELIJAH MUHAMMAD(pbuh), “…..I will say that neither Jeddah nor Mecca have sent me! IAM SENT FROM ALLAH not from the Secretary General of the Muslim League. THERE IS NO MUSLIM IN ARABIA THAT HAS AUTHORITY TO STOP ME FROM DELIVERING THIS MESSAGE THAT I HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED TO BY ALLAH, anymore than they had authority to stop Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. I AM NOT TAKING ORDERS FROM THEM, I AM TAKING ORDERS FROM ALLAH (GOD) HIMSELF.” Message To The Blackman, page 329——-ALLAH-U-AKBAR