Slavery and Rape under the Islamic system.
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Abd or Abeed (Arabic: عبد) is an Arabic word meaning one who is totally subordinated; a slave. It appears in many common Arab names indicating submission to God. For instance Abd-Allah means “servant of Allah” It also means “worshipper of Allah”. Abd also refers to slaves in Arab society, mainly made up of imported African slaves, yet many were from the Caucasus Mountains as well as Eastern Europe. Some of the latter eventually became known as the Mamluk ruling class, having procured education and military training at an early age. Abd: (Arabic Countries) This term, literally “slave” in Arabic, is used as a slur against Blacks and persons of mixed African descent. The name Abd is cognate with Hebrew “Obed”, meaning “servant, worshipper”.[1]
You can listen here:
Sexual relations between a female slave and a Muslim master
Spencer: When I point out that this is permitted — to this day — in Islamic law, I get called an “Islamophobe.” But the Muslim writers yesterday over at Ummah.com don’t have any problem with the concept.
They explain, of course, that it refers only to prisoners of war, and spend a lot of time comparing this peculiar institution favorably to conditions in Western prisons and prisoner-of-war camps. And the slaves can only be legitimately awarded to the Muslims by the caliph — yet another reason why the mujahedin so hope to get the caliphate back up and running again.
* Keep in mind that jihad warfare against ‘all mankind’ is permanent and relentless according to the Islamic Shariah, until all the world is Islamic.
Slavery in Zanzibar. ‘An Arab master’s punishment for a slight offence. The log weighed 32 pounds, and the boy could only move by carrying it on his head.’ Unknown photographer, c. 1890.[17]
The Slave Market (c. 1884), painting by Jean-Leon Gerome.
As one commenter puts it:
I have heard everything now.
From a brisk read through the posts on this thread I can see we now have a sizable group of people who are quite happy to argue that keeping slaves is morally acceptable. Does this one even need discussing?
You do know what the definition of a slave is?
The Forgotten Holocaust:
The Eastern Slave Trade
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Saudis Import Slaves to America- Daniel Pipes
Instances of Arab prejudice regarding Negroid peoples and slaves
Racist opinions occurred in the works of some historians and geographers: so in the 14th century CE Ibn Khaldun could write:
“…the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals…”
However, Ibn Khaldun also wrote of the Arabs themselves:
:“they are the most savage human beings that exist. Compared with sedentary people, they are on a level with wild, untamable animals and dumb beasts of prey … Arabs dominate only on the plains, because they are, by their savage nature, people of pillage and corruption. They pillage everything that they can take without fighting or taking risks, then flee to their refuge in the wilderness, and do not stand and do battle unless in self defence.”[45]
In addition, there is debate over his ethnicity, some refer to him as Andalusian/Spanish (he grew up there, his parents were from there), some say he was a Berber/North African (time spent in Tunis, ancestry), and some say he was an arab (he traced ancestors to Yemen).
Main article: Ibn Khaldun
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It was the Arab slave traders who garnered the slave contingents bound for the Muslim Middle East. These black slaves in the Middle East have been mentioned by the Crusaders. The presence of significant numbers of black African Slaves many of and whom had their tongues cut off and were castrated, took the Crusaders by surprise.
The people of Central Africa fiercely resisted Islam for a long time, often converting nominally to Islam and immediately reverting to their pre-Islamic animistic tribal beliefs. The first recorded Muslim invasions were as early as the 8th century, but these invasions could not make significant inroads in to the deeply forested tribal fastness of Central Africa. Many of the raids were limited to the seizure of black African slaves, who were referred to as “Abeed” which in Arabic means “Black”.
Fitzgerald: Black Africa and the Arab Muslim slave trade
Update:
Condemning European Slavery Sparing Islam, the Bigger Culprit
President Obama, visiting a slave-fort in Ghana, condemned slavery, pointing to a chruch that stood next to the slave-dungeons, to obviate the popular paradigm as to how European Christians, with sanctions from the church, engaged in black slavery, probably the only slavery that existed in history and is worth condemning. But Islam—whose role in slavery is much bigger, crueler, and more tragic—remains thoroughly untouched; as if Islam and its followers were/are untouched by the vice of slavery.
It’s a popular wisdom 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 “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 the 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, condemn 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 obviate the paradigm as to how European Christians, with sanctions from the church, engaged in black slavery.
This popular paradigm excludes three major facts about slavery:
Islamic history informs us that Prophet Muhammad himself, armed with affirmed and reaffirmed divine sanctions (Quran 16:76, 30:28, 16:71, 70:29–30, 23:5–6, 33:50 etc.), initiated Islamic slavery by enslaving the women and children of a number of Arabian tribes (Quraiza, Khaybar, Mustaliq and Hawazin etc.). Later, as Islamic power grew in leaps and bounds, slavery witnessed a tremendous burst on the world stage. Everywhere Muslims won victory, the women and children of the vanquished were enslaved in massive numbers: General Musa enslaved 300,000 in his conquest of North Africa in 698 and returned from his conquest of Spain in 715 with the Caliph’s one-fifth share of the booty that included 30,000 white virgins from the Visigothic nobility alone, while Sultan Mahmud returned from his invasion of India in 1001–02 CE with 500,000 enslaved women and children. This is only a tip of the iceberg.
No small victims of Islamic slavery were Europeans themselves, who started falling victims to Islamic assaults in the Mediterranean islands within two decades after Muhammad’s death. And it continued well into the 19th century: the Ottomans, even in their decisive defeat and retreat from the Gates of Vienna in 1683, returned with 80,000 white captives, while Barbary pirates enslaved up to 1.5 million Europeans between the 1530s and 1820s, from European merchant-ships off the North African coast, plus from slave-raiding expeditions to costal villages and islands of Europe.
Even American merchant-ships and their crew suffered horrible Barbary depredations and enslavements. Prior to independence, Britain negotiated the release of captured American ship-crews whenever possible paying heavy ransom. After 1776, America signed treaties with Barbary States for securing safety of her ships by paying hefty tribute. To placate Muslims in Cairo speech, President Obama flaunted this humiliating treaty on America’s part as a respectful past relationship between Islam and America. As demand for higher ransom and depredations of U.S. ships continued, America had to engage in a difficult war to stop horrible enslavement of Americans in North Africa. Putting an end to continued enslavement of Europeans was a major reason behind France’s invasion of Morocco in 1830.
It’s noteworthy that the Europeans, Obama’s exclusive target of condemnation for slavery, were subjected to Islamic enslavement in the cruelest form for some eight centuries, before they themselves embarked on the practice—the widely condemned trans-Atlantic slave-trade.
Moreover, even in the European slave-trade in Africa, it was Muslims—the well-established masters of slave-hunting, -breeding and -trading for many centuries—who supplied over 80% of the slaves to European traders, the latter mainly purchased and transported them. The European slave-trade only offered a stimulus and played a lucrative partner for Muslims to a long-established Islamic vocation in Africa.
What is accurate about Obama’s statement about slavery in Ghana is that European slavery was “where the journey of much of African-American experience began”. The cruel aspect aside, it left a positive end of some kind: the Black Diaspora in the new world, definitely more fortunate today than their left-behind brethren.
Yet, this is only half the truth. There was another African slave-journey—lasting longer and larger in magnitude—that began with the Arab Muslim invasion of Africa in the 7-8th century. And it has left behind no residue whatsoever, an extermination of human species of huge magnitude—thanks to universal castration of black male-slaves destined for Islamic markets.
The inhumanity of Islamic castration of immense number of African men wasn’t the robbing of their most natural identity and endowment, i.e. their manhood, alone, but mortality in castration was about 75 percent. Overall mortality-rate of black slaves headed to the Islamic world, from procurement to reaching the destination, was as high as 90%, but their mortality in transportation by Europeans to the New World was about 10 percent.
Obama’s condemnation of European-Christian slavery, a horror chapter in history, is laudable, but his exclusion of Islam, the crueler partner in the same crime, is not. It does gross injustice to those unfortunate souls that suffered from this tragic Islamic scourge. And those souls also include millions of Christian Europeans, his sole target of condemnation.
European slavery has been thoroughly condemned by all and sundry—Europeans or non-Europeans, Christians or Muslims, scholars or laymen. And despite, Europe’s singular and forceful role in its abolition and from where slavery has been effectively abolished, anti-slavery campaigners have long called today’s Europeans to assume greater responsibility for past slavery and take concrete actions, such as payment of reparations, to combat slavery’s destructive legacy. But Islam—whose role in slavery is much bigger, crueler, and more tragic—remains thoroughly untouched; as if Islam and its followers were/are untouched by the vice of slavery.
In fact, some Islamic countries (Mauritania, Saudi Arabia & Sudan) have continued practising slavery to this days, while Sudan has intensified it in recent decades, thanks to lack of criticism of Muslim engagement in slavery, whether historical or present. Some 600,000 souls in Mauritania remain shackled in continued slavery with no hope for liberation in sight, while tens of thousands of Christians, Animists and even Muslims have been kidnapped and reduced to slavery in Sudan since Islamists came to power in 1985 (Khan, Islamic Jihad, p. 347–49).
Even in trans-Atlantic slave-trade, Muslims were complicit and played the cruelest role.
Fitzgerald: Social justice in Islam
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Daniel Pipes: Saudi Religious Leader Calls for Slavery’s Legalization
“Slavery is a part of Islam,” he announced in a recent lecture. “Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.” He argued against the idea that slavery had ever been abolished, insulting those who espouse this view as “ignorant, not scholars. They are merely writers. Whoever says such things is an infidel.”
Al-Fawzan is no maverick. He is:
A member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body;
A member of the Council of Religious Edicts and Research;
Imam of the Prince Mitaeb Mosque in Riyadh; and
Professor at Imam Mohamed Bin Saud Islamic University, the main Wahhabi center of learning.
That such a viewpoint can be asserted by a card-carrying member of the Saudi religious establishment is a tragic commentary on the state of Islamic discourse today.
* Updated:
Belgium: UAE royals enslaved 17 women
Slavery is taken for granted as acceptable in the Qur’an, and the Islamic world only abolished it under Western pressure; there has never been anything in the Islamic world comparable to the abolitionist movements led by Christian preachers such as Wilberforce in Britain and Garrison in the United States. And despite the official abolition of slavery in much of the Islamic world, because of its Qur’anic sanction it is still widely practiced.
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“Women ‘enslaved’ by Arab royals,” by Bruno Waterfield in the Telegraph, July 2
February 10, 2009
“Slavery is a painful reality in Mauritania”
Sharia Alert: the Qur’an takes slavery for granted. There has never been a Muslim Wilberforce. “Slavery: Still A Painful Reality In Mauritania,” from ANSAmed, February 10 (thanks to DW):
(ANSAmed) – TUNIS, FEBRUARY 10 – “Slavery is a painful reality in Mauritania” said President of the Mauritanian organisation SOS Slaves Bairam Ould Messaoud, at a debate in Tunis. “There are families who still have slaves and use them in their homes and farms, without any intervention by the authorities”, especially in the far east and south of the country. Ould Messaoud pointed out that slavery has been against the law since 1984, and said that the ban has never fully worked because “slaves are tied to their owners by intellectual, religious and financial bonds“.He also pointed out that the government made reforms to the law in 2006, tightening financial sanctions against law breakers. However, added President of the Association of Women Support of the Family, Aminatou Bent, this law has never been observed in practice. And she maintains that the authorities are doing little “to end the suffering of many young women who are victims of varying types of abuse, including sexual abuse”. Young women who are usually taken from the poorest regions of the country, or who have come to the capital to escape areas affected by the droughts of recent years, according to Sarah Al Sadeq, a Mauritanian activist. In her opinion government action is completely insufficient in tackling and even in recognising the situation. Unfortunately, she said “community organisations do not have the financial resources to draw up precise classifications, while the authorities are unlikely to give much attention to the problem”.
According to Mauritanian journalist Maryam Bent Mohamed Laghzaf, “freed slaves cannot be socially independent, as they are in a state of poverty. Because true slavery is financial, and not racial, as many people assume. Many patrons have freed their slaves, but the freed slaves find themselves in very difficult economic circumstances which make them want to go back to living under the authority of their former patrons”. “The State”, said Mohamad Lamain Ould Idad, Human Rights commissioner for Mauritania “is currently engaged in a fight against the effects of slavery and is offering equal opportunities for all social categories”. In his opinion the Mauritanian government insists that slavery belongs to the past and what little remains of it will soon disappear. (ANSAmed).
