8. SLAVERY IN ISLAM
Islam institutionalizes slavery.
Mohammed himself was a practitioner of slavery. Quran repeatedly allows Muslims
to keep “what right hand possesses”. Mohammed maintained sex slaves. Subsequent
Khalifas had slaves. Abu Bakr was murdered by a slave only. Promoted by Quran,
Muslims carried out slave trade for last 1400 years with a devastating effect.
The Islamic World was a main factor
in slavery from sixth century onward. Islamic law encourages freeing a slave as
a benevolent act but also permits enslavement through capturing in war or raid.
Buying and selling slaves has been a regular feature in all Islamic centres.
The first Khalifa freed all Arab Muslim slaves. Thereafter Arabs are not taken as slaves. Also if a slave is converted
to Islam, their master was expected to free them as an act of piety, and if
they did not, the master had to teach Islam to them. Muslims did not always
treat slaves in accordance with Islamic law. Religious
sanction for keeping non-Muslim slave as well as Muslim slave on condition of
education promoted slavery. Muslims from Arab and North Africa would raid and
capture African pagans and sale them in slave market. Slaves in Muslim world would
be primarily used for sex (women) and military requirement (men).
Slavery in history
Slavery was rare among
hunter-gatherer populations. Slavery took shape along with development of
cultivation and settlement of human population. It developed as a system of
social stratification. Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as
well as almost in every other ancient civilization. Slavery was practiced in
great Roman civilization. In fact one out of three in Rome was a slave. Arabs
practiced slavery before arrival of Islam. Slavery was rampant even among
African people. Only India developed an alternate model of caste system which
is based upon job based social stratification. Slavery was unheard of in India
even though low castes people who carried out scavenging job were ill-treated.
Slavery was introduced in India by Muslim invaders but it was limited to courts.
Hindu society remained by and large free from slavery. China also discouraged slavery
in the sense that no Chinese citizen could be captured and sold as slave.
Slaves bought and brought from outside was permitted. China and India, two
great civilizations, stand out where slavery was really non-existent. However
slavery was a common vice all over globe and it became a very important
commercial activity under Muslims as Islamic slavery from 6th
century onward and subsequently western slavery during colonial rule of sixteenth
century to nineteenth century.
Islamic slavery vs Western slavery
The western world eradicated slavery
in 1865 by 13th amendment of constitution of USA. A common man is
only aware of slave trade of Americas in preceding two centuries through scores
of literature, studies and even by depiction in films. There is lack of common
knowledge about Islamic slave trade. Islamic
slave trade was by far more heinous, more voluminous, spread over fourteen
centuries and still continuing. A
comparison of the Islamic slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some
interesting contrasts.
1. While two out of every
three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were
reversed in the Islamic slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by
the Muslims.
2. While the mortality rate
for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the
percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans Sahara and East African
slave trade was between 80 and 90%!
3. While almost all the
slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the
slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as
concubines. Men were generally castrated and used as guards in harems and for
military service. Women were used for domestic help and sex.
4. While many children were
born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens
in Latin America and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves
that ended up in the Middle East survive.
5. While most slaves who went
to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined
for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women
were killed at birth.
6. It is estimated that about
10 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to
South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions
and 5% of the slaves went to the United States). Again it is estimated that
about 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since 80% of
those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have perished before
reaching the slave markets, it is believed that the death toll from the 14
centuries of Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been over 120 million.
When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number
of African victims of the Trans Saharan and East African slave trade could be
significantly higher than 140 million people.
In fact Muslim slave trade together
with Islamization and Arabization resulted in vanishing of many races, tribes,
languages and cultures. Entire North African population was replaced with Arab-Berber
people. In Asia also Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians were driven out from their land. Zoroastrians of Persia, Copts of Egypt and many others approached extinction.
White slaves
Muslim slave trade was not limited to
African slaves only. They enslaved Europeans also. Historian Robert Davis in
his book "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters - White Slavery in the
Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy", estimates that North African
Muslim pirates abducted and enslaved more than 1 million Europeans between 1530
and 1780. These white Christians were seized in a series of raids which
depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall. Thousands of white
Christians in coastal areas were seized every year to work as galley slaves,
labourers and concubines for Muslim slave masters in what is today Morocco,
Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. Villages and towns on the coast of Italy, Spain,
Portugal and France were the hardest hit, but the Muslim slave raiders also
seized people as far afield as Britain, Ireland and Iceland. They even captured
130 American seamen from ships they boarded in the Atlantic between 1785 and
1793.
According to one report, 7000 English
people were abducted between 1622 to 1644, many of them ship crews and
passengers. But the Corsairs also landed on unguarded beaches, often at night,
to snatch the unwary. Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore,
in Ireland, were captured in 1631, and there were other raids in Devon and
Cornwall. Many of these white, Christian slaves were put to work in quarries,
building sites and galleys and endured malnutrition, disease and mistreatment
at the hands of their Muslim slave masters. Many of them were used for public
works such as building harbours.
Female captives were sexually abused
in palace harems and others were held as hostages and bargained for ransom.
"The most unlucky ended up stuck and forgotten out in the desert, in some
sleepy town such as Suez, or in Turkish Sultanate galleys, where some slaves
rowed for decades without ever setting foot on shore." Professor Davis
estimates that up to 1.25 million Europeans were enslaved by Muslim slave
raiders between 1500 to 1800.
Modern day
In modern time also slavery is practiced in Muslim countries and Muslim communities. In Mauritania slavery has long been abolished officially but the law has never been enforced and there are an estimated 600,000 slaves, almost one in five of the country's 3.2 million people, almost 150 years since the American civil war.
Black African women of Mauritania's
Haratine caste continue to born into slavery and grew up as the property of
Arabic-speaking Berber families, in oasis town deep in the desert. While
masters’ children go to school, slave children must toil for cooking, cleaning
and washing from dawn to dusk and suffer beatings.
Centuries of indoctrination have
persuaded the Sahara's captives that slavery is religiously ordained - slaves
are taught that if they run away they will be barred from heaven. A local
saying puts it: "Paradise is under your master's foot." In some remote places a runaway will still be
hunted down by nomad masters.
Slave-holding has been abolished
three times, first by the country's former French overlords and then twice by
different rulers of the independent state, most recently in 2007. But the law
has never been enforced and no slave owner has ever been prosecuted
In Saudi Arabia Children
between five and 12 years old are sold to wealthy men in Saudi Arabia, where
they are held as sex slaves. When they reach maturity, they are thrown out on
the street and they end up quickly as a prostitute.
The conflict between Muslim North and
Christian South in Sudan is seen as a "holy war" -- a jihad against
the Christian South and its allies in the Nuba Mountains. Muslim Sudan Government- backed Arab militias
known as mujahideen raided Southern villages and captured hundreds of thousands
of blacks, mostly women and children, transported to the North and enslaved.
Since 1995, AASG's partner, Christian
Solidarity International (CSI), has been working to free Sudan's slaves. The
organization provides funds to the indigenous network of Africans and Arabs who
cooperate on returning the captives. CSI's efforts resulted in the liberation
of over 80,000 slaves.
In 2005, under guidance of the US
Government, the North and the South signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(CPA) that ended the war and provided for Southern self-determination. The CPA
ended the slave raids, but left the fate of those already in bondage
unresolved. According to the recent estimate approximately 35,000 are still
serving their masters in parts of Southern Darfur and Kordofan.
Officially, slavery was abolished
back in 1962 in Yemen but a judge's decision to pass on the title deed
of a "slave" from one master to another has blown the lid off the
hidden bondage of hundreds of Yemenis. The judge in the town of Hajjasaid said
he had certified the transfer only because the new owner planned to free the
slave.
Conclusion
Muslims live in 6th century. Slavery
was permitted then. Islam legalizes slavery. Quran promotes concept of sex
slave. A man has right on the body of a woman who is either bought or
conquered. Mohammed himself had practiced it. He had a son born out of a sex
slave who died young. But this makes Muslim mind corrupt. No law enacted by any
Government can dissuade a Muslim from taking slave in a conductive situation.
Until and unless Muslims are educated and Islam is reformed and Quran is accepted as an outdated scripture through debate and discussion
such criminal practices will not die.
