Slave market in Yemen, 1237
Arab slavery (fl. 650-1962) is slavery as practised by Arabs. Saudi Arabia outlawed it in 1962, Sudan in 2005. Mauritania outlawed slavery at least five times: 1905, 1961, 1961, 1981, 2007. It probably still goes on there. This post is about the sort that went on from 650 to 1962 with the support of Islam and the law.
Some slaves worked in households, fields, mines or galley ships. Some were eunuchs, some were concubines. Some were white, some were black. Some guarded harems, some fought in the army. Some commanded armies, some ruled cities.
Rights and wrongs:
- Islam was cool with slavery so long as Muslims were not made into slaves. Arabs got most of their slaves from beyond the Muslim world – but did not necessarily free those who later converted to Islam.
- Slaves could not in most cases own property, enter contracts (except with their master), marry (unless their master agreed) or give testimony in court.
- Judges could free slaves from cruel masters.
- Umm walad: A slave woman who had a son for her master was, in most cases, freed when her master died, if not sooner.
- Slavery was not race-based. While some argued that blacks and Turks were born to be slaves, the idea never caught on.
- Slaves could work their way up to high positions, especially if they were in the military or the palace guard. Many of these were freed.
Sources:
- War: This was the main source in the early years of the Arab Empire when it was still growing.
- Trade: The main long-term source. Arabs mainly bought slaves from African and European dealers, though they did some slave raiding of their own (even on American shipping). Jews, Genoa and Venice were big on selling Slavs and other whites to Arabs. The trade in white slaves lasted till at least the early 1800s when Russia cracked down on it. The African trade lasted into the 1900s.
- Tribute: Nubia, for example, used to send 442 slaves a year to Egypt as part of a peace treaty.
- Natural increase: This was weak due to castration, high death rate among black slaves (especially from disease), freeing slaves, legitimating sons of concubines, etc.
Kinds of slaves, among others:
- Eunuchs (castrated males): used especially as harem guards. Some in the palace became powerful. Most were castrated between the age of eight and ten. Castration doubled a slave’s market value.
- Concubines (sex slaves): While Islam allows up to four wives, the well-to-do generally had one wife and then one or more concubines. Any children could be made legitimate after the fact. Most prized: women from the Caucasus mountains. Among African women, Ethiopians.
- Slave soldiers: Soldiers and even commanders were often slaves. That sounds like it would not work but it did. Rulers liked it because foreign slaves were far more loyal and dependable than any native force of free men.
Slave uprisings: One of the most famous was in the late 800s in Basra (Iraq) by East African field slaves.
Source: Bernard Lewis, “Race and Slavery in the Middle East” (1990).
See also:
This post works as a perfect refutation of the “Arab slaver”/”But, but other people did it too!”, argument. The sham of chattel slavery is based on immutability, not the act in and of itself. If American slavers/plantation owners hadn’t obliterated the very idea of upward advancement, then black Americans wouldn’t have as high of a level of animosity towards the “peculiar institution” (an appellation that was given to the process when Europeans would ask American slaveowners about “things that *everyone* knows you’re supposed to do when owning another human being”, like payscales, manumission procedures or primogeniture rulings, only to receive a blank stare…) You (should) know that you’re doing something wrong when people who don’t even think that the people who *live across their own country’s borders* are fully human, hear your explanations about your refusal to treat “certain slaves” with their inalienable rights and begin to badmouth you behind your back (and, eventually, to your face.)
Abagond,
Why do you say Arab slavery started on 650?! it started long before? 650 is about the time Islam came.
I have for you something that I wish you read, about Slavery in Islam , maybe it’s offtopic because you specified Arab Slavery but just wanted your opinion.
Regards
Thank you for giving Arab slavery its own post, Abagond, because it should stand on it’s own and not be continuously intertwined with the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and slavery in the America’s.
Slavery in itself was/is an evil institution but it’s been such a huge part in the world’s history and the reason why certain countries have dominated throughout history (China is dominating now based on its “might as well call it” slave labour)
@ Abagond
What do you think of Bernard Lewis’s book?
I’m thinking of ordering it. Is it a good book?
Sorry, I forgot to post the link :/
http://islamqa.info/en/ref/26067
What’s all this talk I’m seeing lately about Arab Slavery, Wage slavery, Transatlantic Slavery, and the unforeseen commercialization of the economy engulfing moral and political rights. THAT’S ENOUGH!
Everyone get back to work IMMEDIATELY! There’s cotton to be picked and pyramids to be built. And Kings to pay tribute to. Alright you lot–STEP LIVELY!!
[...] Arab slavery (abagond.wordpress.com) [...]
That was the most clinical treatment of slavery I’ve seen on this blog in a long time.
Here now…. I think you may have struck upon something there.
good post
Very good and informative piece, Abagond. I teach this material, yet there were things here and in your links that I did not know.
Good post abagond.
I’d like to believe racist trolls would read this and at least drop that tired old “Arab slave trader” argument, but I suppose I know better.
Here now…. I think you may have struck upon something there.
At first, I was like “huh, he has someone in mind?,” and then I was like, “ohh.”
@ Abagond
One of the main differences between slavery in America and the Middle East was that at least slaves could marry Arabs and be accepted into mainstream society while America had anti-miscegenation laws in place to keep the races separate. Like you said, the Arab slave trade ignored race, seeing only religion. However, the Transatlantic slave trade had the express intention of dehumanizing blacks and keeping them separate from whites, as if the two were distinct species.
In Arabia, many Arabs have African blood in their ancestry as they are strongly mixed while in America, the races are highly segregated, despite hundreds of years of opportunities to accept blacks, intermarry, and assimilate. If you were a freed black slave in Arabia, there was no question about your status as a free person. But if you were a freed black slave in America, you would worry every night about raiders who would capture you and sell you back into slavery. That is the explicit difference between the Arab and Transatlantic slave trades.
@ Legion
That will be 22% of your income please
It’s good to be the King!
Such a cruel monarch. We must stage a rebellion!
19.5%?
@ Bulanik
Bernard Lewis writes well and has read more about this stuff than you could ever hope to. He does not seem to read his sources to excuse American slavery. He does not regard racism against blacks as “natural” like White Americans do. I was afraid he would do that and did not.
On the other hand I think he is too soft on Muslim slavery. He goes too much by what law and religion said and not enough about what people were doing. Like there were slave uprisings and a high death rate among blacks – he does not go enough into that. He says Arab slavery was not nearly as harsh as Roman, Greek or Christian slavery but does not say why except to point to what the law said. I was particularly interested in that point but he did not put enough meat on it. He never talks about the part of Genoa, Venice and Jews in the slave trade (he is Jewish and European). Etc.
Imagine how America would seem a thousand years from now if you just read the law and some religious writings. Aaeergh. It would be way too idealized. Apart from Sheltered White Men we all know that things do not always go like they SHOULD.
When I wrote the above post and had to cut it down to 500 words, his worst pie-in-the-skyisms went first. Like how masters were SUPPOSED TO provide medical care, support in old age, etc and not overwork their slaves to a “cruel” degree. Or how there was little racism against those who had black slave mothers because SOME made it to high positions – the black president argument (formerly known as the Oprah argument).
D-Z:
The Arabs did practise slavery before Islam, but as I said in the post: ” This post is about the sort that went on from 650 to 1962 with the support of Islam and the law.”.
I will take a look at your link. Thanks.
@ Churchs
I will be writing a companion post on American slavery, so judge then. Most of what I say about slavery on this blog are against the MORALLY BANKRUPT arguments White Americans make about it.
@ Kiwi
Not only was it not race-based but notice there was no huge effort to keep slaves at the very bottom of society. One White American who was made a slave by Arabs became an adviser of the ruler of Algeria! That is inconceivable to everything Americans think about slavery.
Plenty of people with black slave mothers (Ethiopian concubines in most cases) and Arab fathers made it to top positions – so long as their Arab father legitimated them and backed them. But that is not to say they did not experience racism. That would be the black president argument.
Arabs, unlike people in India or America, did not seem to think in castes. Partly, I think, because they were in the middle of the cline not at one end: they were not light-skinned people taking over darker-skinned people. Where they lived there were no sharp lines like that – like there were for the British in West Africa 400 years ago and the Indo-Aryans in Dravidian India 3,000 or so years ago.
@ Kiwi
Reading about Arab slavery makes it clearer to me than ever that American racism against blacks comes straight out of slavery and how white people excused it so they could sleep at night. There never was a Mental Emancipation Proclamation for white people.
19.5%?
Hmm, I’ll talk it over with my band of merry men. We’ll get back to you with a definitive response shortly.
what about Nubia?
@ Abagond
Nice. It’s good to know what you really think, Aba.
I’m not any kind of scholar, so his book sounds like a good place for a truly hopeless dyslexic pleb like me to start, don’t it?
Agreed, Professor Lewis does right well and his knowledge tremendous, yet, last year, when I read his book “What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East”, I was put off reading more of his many works.
Why — because he doesn’t seem to discuss Islam in a nuanced way, but more like it’s a monolithic thing. I came away convinced that he did not want to convey the historical complexities and I could not understanding why this was, as it was blatantly obvious he KNEW his stuff, didn’t he? Of course.
I recall too, that Edward Said scoffed at Professor Lewis’s perspective, even saying that the latter knew little about the Arab world.
Nevertheless from what you say it sounds like good book and necessary reading for someone who definitely needs to learn the basics. Like me.
*write well
@ Bulanik
Right, I think it is a good book to start with. Edward Said, I believe, regards Lewis as an Orientalist in the bad sense of that word. He does seem to regard Islam as more monolithic and idealized than you would expect from someone like him.
@ Abagond
I hope you also make use of the number of emailed references I sent to you to enhance your knowledge of the subject, too.
Bernard Lewis worries me for the reason we both seem to see.
But because you, like many, many others perceive the Professor as being being so prodigiously well-read on the subject of the Arabs and Islam, his expertise has put him in rather influential positions:
such George W Bush’s adviser on the Middle East; and being lionized by Dick Cheney lionizing him because the Professor’s wisdom is sought by all the diplomats and policymakers everywhere, etc.
Recall all the marvelous outcomes during the last 20 years throughout the Arab world as a result of those well-advised interventions…?
Professor Lewis is, imo, a Zionist advocate and “colonialist” in tone.
I don’t know, but it’s as though he wants to see the Arabs destroy themselves and says so using a passive voice.
I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s there in his writing.
Ehem!! Mauretania (arab islamic state) made slavery illegal in 2007!!. The first negotiations began in 1981 in the parlament and it “only” took them 26 years to get that slavery perhaps isnt very nice. (sarcasm off) Of course this ban is only on paper, thoose nasty arab and berber tribes keep doing this to their black African countrymen.. 20 % of the population is enslaved is the last numbers I think.
2013 started well. They are even not afraid to behead a under aged girl slave.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Rizana_Nafeek
I think the thing that always worries me about authors like Bernard Lewis, is that it’s hard to tell when they are playing their role as an historian or their role as politician. Or perhaps their ever unstated role of chessmaster.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19790115,00.html
@ King
What you say makes me wonder, too.
Do governments, etc., choose advisers because they can ‘look up to’ them for their great knowledge? Or is it the perception of great knowledge what really matters?
Bernard Lewis, for instance, has read a great deal. He has written a great deal. Is this in itself what gives him authority, makes him trustworthy and know better than someone who has could only dream of reading as much as Professor Lewis had?
@ Bulanik
I personally believe that academic credibility is very often used as the necessary cloak to legitimize agenda setting. Perhaps “the perception of great knowledge” can also justify actions, and that is always a value to governments and the powers behind governments.
@ King
I believe I had some remarkable school teachers — and grandparents — who encouraged us to respect knowledge was one thing.
But secondly, to seek that thing to its lair, because to value our own independent minds was the utmost gift we could give to the world.
A few months ago on this blog, I was thinking about this very thing you mention above in relation to US torture policy in Iraq. Here:
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2006/06/28/the-arab-world/#comment-147288
Abagond, many sources, despite being written by scholars or professors at times rely on ignorance or the common views held by that individual’s society rather than on facts. This is especially common in writings by Europeans on the history Africa (especially history prior to European colonization) and Islam or Muslims. They often use fact and ignorance side-by-side, so that some might perceive it as being wholly factual when it is not. This is true for Bernard Lewis’ work that you used as a source.
I will refute your statement that: “Islam was cool with slavery so long as Muslims were not made into slaves. Arabs got most of their slaves from beyond the Muslim world – but did not necessarily free those who later converted to Islam.” I will rely on evidence unlike what Bernard Lewis did in this case.
The Qur’an, the only holy Book Muslims follow since the time of Prophet Mohamed and thus the highest authority in Islamic ideology, does not advocate the capture of slaves or establishment of slavery. In fact, it advocates the freeing of slaves multiple times in the Book. To claim that it justified slavery of non-Muslims is biased and unfounded on any verse of the Qur’an.
“And have shown him the two ways? But he has not broken through the difficult pass. And what can make you know what is [breaking through] the difficult pass? It is the freeing of a slave or feeding on a day of severe hunger, an orphan of near relationship or a needy person in misery And then being among those who believed and advised one another to patience and advised one another to compassion. Those are the companions of the right.” Qur’an 90:10-18
This, and many other verses like it in the Qur’an, show the association between faith and good works, and freeing of a slave is a good work.
Another site words this better than I might have: “The only method mentioned in The Quran for gaining captives (more correctly termed ‘prisoners of war’, not slaves) is during warfare, after which they must be released or ransomed. Keeping them is not an option”:
“Therefore, if you encounter those who deny the truth (in warfare), then bring about the captives until when you have subdued/overcome them, then strengthen the bind. Then after either grace/favour or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens. That, and had God willed, surely He would have gained victory Himself from them, but He tests some of you with others. And those who get killed in the cause of God, He will never let their deeds be put to waste.” Qur’an 47:4
The word used in the above verse that was translated as “the bind” is l-wathāqa. The root word of that word is waw-tha-qaf. Root words often consist of three letters and, depending on the vowels used, can be made into different words. One needs to understand the root in order to understand the word built from the root. The root of wathaqa means: to place trust in any one, rely upon, bind. The particular word wataaq means bond, fetter. A fetter is a chain or manacle used to restrain a prisoner. Ayn-ba-dal (which means slave) is not a root used in this verse. So this shows that this verse refers to political or war prisoners rather than slaves.
Freeing of slaves was one of the most righteous acts a believer could take. It does not advocate solely the freeing of Muslim slaves but of slaves in general.
Link to the site I quoted:
http://www.misconceptions-about-islam.com/islam-quran-abolish-slavery.htm
“David Livingston wrote of the slave trade: “To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility … We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead … We came upon a man dead from starvation … The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves.” Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before ever reaching the slave markets of Zanzibar.[53][54][55][56] Zanzibar was once East Africa’s main slave-trading port, and under Omani Arabs in the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the city each year.[57]“
@ mansuefeci
You said:
*Correction: only mansuefeci’s quote in Blockquote.
With the title being “Arab Slavery”, its easy to see what Abagond really meant was “many Arabs who practiced Islam were cool with slavery”…notice I said not all, and I didnt say all Arabs practice Islam
There is a dissconect with many of the things Islam sais and the what was happening on the ground , the same as in Christianity.
If 80,000 people a year with the Omani Arabs in the 19th century, died on the way to Zanzibar to be sold into slavery, in the Arab slave trade, it just shows on the ground, the numbers lascerate the lofty ideals that Islam was about
OK what if Livingston over exagerated the numbers? What if it was
40,000, which in a decade means 400,000?
Does anyone really think Livingston was just out and out lying?
If these Arabs practicing Islam in the Arab slave trade did beleive in Islam’s virtues about capturing prisoners instead of killing them and later freeing them, it only speaks to how they felt about the people in Africa they went after for slavery.
this is where I disagree with Abagond. I mean just look at the numbers! How many slaves came out of Africa for the Arab slave trade? How many just died on the way to slavery…
In the minds of the people doing it, it might not even play out as racism as we know it, but , it certainly aludes to how the Arab slave traders reguarded the black people in Africa , in certain areas, who didnt practice Islam.
Your point is fairly straightforward.
But, I am wondering, BR, why you have chosen David Livingstone to prove it, if this boils down to:
1, a question of the Arab’s adherence to their Islam, and,
2, numbers.
David Livingstone hardly agreed with slavery, but he was a proponent of trade and Christian missions to be established in central Africa. His motto was “Christianity, Commerce and Civilization.” He opened the way for Europeans in the continent, and with his help, paved the way for the Belgians in Congo…
weren’t the Belgians Christians? Remember what genocides that led to? Could Livingstone have stopped the European’s enslaving imperialist zeal with the sheer strength of his true beliefs and examples?
Also, David Livingstone was not alone in Ujiji.
Henry Morton Stanley, famous for finding David Livingstone with the words:
“Dr Livingstone, I presume”, would shoot the Africans, I quote:
“as if they were monkeys”.
So said Richard Francis Burton, another British explorer, the one who wrote “The Arabian Nights”.
If you chose David Livingstone because he was anti-slavery, you of course realize the part he played in colonial rule being established in Africa and encouraging white settlement, extending further into the interior, and later, the countless millions dead and fall out from that.
In view of this ^^ it’s no wonder when Abagond says “many Arabs who practiced Islam were cool with slavery” is so easy to understand yet what mansuefeci says to refute that, so easy to ignore. Dismiss or play down.
There’s no doubt in my mind about what the Arabs did, or how they did it.
What we all have to look at is the way that story is told.
It seems now that Dr David Livingstone may have lied about his famous account of a slave market massacre, as a study into his 140-year-old diary recounting these events, has suggested. Livingstone’s own men might have participated in the atrocities instead.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8863964/Dr-Livingstone-lied-in-famous-account-of-slave-market-massacre.html
@ Bulanik
Thank you for your comment. I often wonder the same thing – who gets to decide the narrative of history and who decides who these authorities on history are? It does seem to me as though credentials in academia is used to legitimize arguments or narratives that are biased or make invalid claims.
@ B.R.
“With the title being “Arab Slavery”, its easy to see what Abagond really meant was “many Arabs who practiced Islam were cool with slavery”…notice I said not all, and I didnt say all Arabs practice Islam”
I agree with your post for the most part except for this portion. I think it would have been more accurate to say “many Arabs who self-identified as Muslims…”. That is because, if they were to practise Islam’s teachings regarding slavery, they would be freeing slaves rather than concerning themselves with the generation of a slave trade.
@ mansuefec “many Arabs who self-identified as Muslims…”
LOL! You took the words right outta my keyboard
So pleased YOU said this instead…
lol Thank you. If you’d like, take a look at my comment on Abagond’s post “Is Islam violent?”. It’s an older post and, I think, deviates from the usually rational posts found on this site so I had quite a bit to say about it.
@ Mansuefeci
“Is Islam violent?” was written in 2006. 2006.
This is where Abagond said finding out answers about Islam from reading about it was beyond his depth and beside the point, which you addressed:
http://abagond.wordpress.com/2006/10/02/is-islam-violent/#comment-158384
Much, very much, can be learned from this blog, and there is certainly an impressive range for curious minds. Thus, it makes it all the more remarkable to observe the rejection of probity and scope shown right here in favour of its opposite.
@ Bulanik
I made it clear why finding out about Islam by reading the Qur’an is very much the point as: “Islam is a religion and is not an individual, a group of people, a country, an event, a time, a garment, or an action other than the submission to God, which is the very meaning of the word “Islam” and which the Qur’an states it to be so. The highest source of information on the Qur’an.” And I don’t believe that the year should ever matter. Unless some indication is made that the facts have been explored and knowledge has been sought and gained, then it still stands.
I have learned much from this blog as well as I’ve been reading it for some time now but I will point out when facts should be used instead of bias and a lack of knowledge.
Yes, Bulanik, Livingston did pave the way for colonialism, and did not know about Islam…do you actualy think he outright lied about the deaths he saw? Its not only him that sais huge amounts of people died on the way to Zanzibar
I mean serioulsy, are you going to say that huge amounts of black slaves dying on route to Zanzibar didnt happen?you would be in denial if you said you dont think so
Mansuaefeci, yes ok, you could subtitute Muslim for Islam
My point is not to put down Islam in any way. My point is that humans are human, and that even with the great teachings of Islam, on the ground something else gets played out, inhumanity to humankind.
Ive said myself, that Arab slave trade doesnt mean Islam.But there was some violence being spread in the name of Islam back then just as there is today…but, by misguided individuals who have warped the teachings..but of course , Islam was spread non violently, just like Christianity is being evangelised in Africa these days.I have no judgement of what religion anyone wants to practice in their home or place of worshop. Im more concerned with smothering incredible folklorico traditions and i have brought in information confirming this
I just see the numbers, they are enormous and they represent something that absolutly isnt Islam, but is the Arab slave trade , and it leaves me to beleive that both ends of the African slave trade were done because the people who perpetuated it had views of the people they took into slavery that they thought justified such a huge depletion of the most valuable recource of all to Africa
BR, what on earth are you talking about now?
Bulanik said no Africans were killed during the Arab slave trade as witnessed during the 19th century? Really. Where? Show me.
I’d prefer if didn’t put words in my mouth.
In the meanwhile, “Livingstone did pave the way for colonialism…” so that little thing gives him huge moral authority about Arab slavery?
Um, maybe you can explain.
Further, even though you say you aren’t putting down Islam again, how come this this is just after you say”…its easy to see what Abagond really meant was “many Arabs who practiced Islam were cool with slavery” ! Hilarious.
Manusuefeci slapped that crap down, and here you are making the Arab Trader Argument all over again….it’s only human….everybody did it…
SMH.
Oh yeah, Bulanik, “many Arabs who practiced Islam were cool with slavery”, that really is blasphemos straight from hades…funny , I dont feel slapped down…Manusuefeci agreed with me except that aspect….and if she can find some agreement, I have no problem conceding to her point of view about that .
Just tell me how many slaves you think died on the way to Zanzibar…?
BR, since you are now in-in-the-know with all this new stuff, could you show me where I said no Africans were captured or enslaved during the Arab slave trade during Livingstone’s experience there? Could you also outline Livingstone’s moral authority with all the slavery and killing going on around him, and what horrors he brought to Africa, and could have prevented?
Whilst you are at it, I’d like to know the different is between “Islamic” and “Islamicist” because you use the words interchangeably even though they are not quantum semantics….! And tell us what a burqa is, since you said a woman in head scarf was wearing one!
I never knew you had such respect for Islam or had respect for anyone’s religion.
But, I think it would be more constructive and you would be interesting if you wrote about the Arab slave trade, and tell us how many slaves YOU think died on the way to Zanzibar. I have read a fair bit about it, but I would be interested to learn a lot, lot more. So knock yourself out…
You absolutly have to be kidding…why dont you tell me what Candomble is or fio dental is
I already brought in on another thread a very detailed blog very thourogly addressing the subject with lots of information that sounds very close to many things you have said and with information about slaves dying on the way to Zanzibar, with photos of dead black Africans on the way there…
Mansuefeci, Id like to ask you a question, how do you think the Himba people would be perceived in Islam
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mH9ZnBz9SE)
Candomble is the clincher to Arab Slavery.
Dissertation awaited.
Reblogged this on oogenhand and commented:
Always interesting to read a fair and balanced view.
AGAIN! The arab slavery has officially ended 2007 when it was finally made a criminal act by the state of Mauritania. Lewis is probably basing this Yemen since they made the act illegal then..
Not sure what is going on in Mauritania:
1981: Mauritania abolishes slavery.[65][66][67]
2007: Mauritania makes it illegal to own slaves.
2012: A CNN report describes Mauritania as “Slavery’s Last Stronghold” (report has same title).[68]
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline
I changed the opening paragraph to:
As an African i’m really disappointed by the tone of this post. It’s almost making light over arab slavery. Why on earth are we walking on eggshells? Arab slavery isn’t based on skin colour? Arabs have been committing sick atrocities against Africans (blacks) for far too long now. Excusing themselves because of our ‘evil’ dark skin, calling us Kaffirs – regardless of conversion to Islam. Many of you living in the Western world turn a blind eye to this and only voice your opinion when Darfur becomes the charity flavour of the month. Africans too long have been brutalized and tortured by these people. And everyone, turns a blind eye, blacks in the diaspora included. This discussion would sound very different if the author and commenters were from/living in Africa. Just because the oppressor has brown skin, doesn’t mean they are less evil or our suffering isn’t ‘as bad’. The suffering is REAL and slavery in it’s humiliating glory is very much alive. Not some PBS documentary. I’m really disappointed this time Abagond, you can do so much better.
so when did africans came to america (year)
@somebody that know
1619, the first kidnapped African arrived by boat in Virginia
“As an African i’m really disappointed by the tone of this post. It’s almost making light over arab slavery. Why on earth are we walking on eggshells?…. This discussion would sound very different if the author and commenters were from/living in Africa. “” My thoughts exactly Roxanne! (commentator a scroll up)
Here is probably the best presentation of the Arab slavery i have ever seen. A two hour presentation of the middle eastern slavery of Black Africans and all the jihads into africa and europe. (as well as the whole exploitation of Africa by outside forces,,, Europe and the Arab word)
really educationall but kinda long.. Man he is exactly like his father x)
at 1:04 45 it is interesting cause he explaines why it is so little knowledge about the arab slave trade.
the part that really got to me was the way many black muslims still dissapear(likely enslaved) during their Hajjs to Mecka…. at around 54 minutes into the clip.
I am a white canadian woman wow this is very interesting. All we get here is the guilt trip from blacks over slavery when it has happened in other nations and cultures too. I also wanted to mention that Irish were slaves for British people for a few hundred years when England took over Irish land 700 years ago- poisoned the potatoes, took hundreds of pretty irish women to england to work as maids, nannys etc- that is why there are so many irish people who live in england but seem british. Also some of the slaveowners in america were very kind to their slaves- not all were beaten and repressed. Alot gave their wealth and home to their slaves after they died and became very close freinds to them- as well as their kids would have been very close.
What I am seeing now is scaring me. I see canada becoming a dumping ground for 3rd world nations so that the government can use cheap labor. The wages keep dropping and so do the working conditions. The government will not hire WHITES or CITIZENS of canada they bring in outsiders on working visas by 300000 a year aside from 250000 immigrants we get. It is only western nations doing this, not asian. Japan has a low birth rate but has little immigration. Some asian nations are alot wealthier than north america but they dont bring outsiders to work in the masses. I think this is leading back to slavery and our working rights are going down all the time here.
Another comment is about saudi arabia. They still have slaves- all the workers there are from other nations in asia etc and are mistreated for the most part. You can never become a citizen in saudi arabia even if you are there generations! So I think that is pretty elitist and racist mentality. I get sick of hearing how whites are racist when if you go to one of these 3rd world nations you would have NO RIGHTS, no social housing, no programs to help you improve, no free healthcare and no rights to government jobs like outsiders who come to my country have over me. My family is here since 1630, one of the first settlers from France to come to Quebec and started the fur trade with the natives…….so I feel I should have more rights than a foreigner who lands here and I dont care what color her or she is it just is not right……….