ISLAMIC SLAVERY

In the Islamic world, the story regarding slavery is very different to that of the West. There was no organised abolitionist movement at any time within the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, in modern Turkey, the abolition of slavery is not taught in the educational curriculum.

Muslims had an even greater hand in the African slave trade than did the West. It is estimated that around 11 million slaves were deported in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, while Muslims are believed to have taken over 17 million Africans as slaves between the seventh and nineteenth centuries. Muslims dealing with black slaves were prone to racist attitudes that modern liberal thinkers tend to attribute exclusively to white Westerners. For example, the great Muslim thinker Ibn Khaldun (d.1406) wrote that blacks submitted willingly to slavery because they “have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals”.

Little known to the average Westerner is the history of the “hideous trade” in eunuch slaves from Africa in Muslim societies. Slaves from sub-Saharan Africa underwent dangerous and painful operations whereby their penis and testicles were completely removed. This operation often caused extensive hemorrhaging and urethral infection, and it is estimated that up to 90% of those castrated died as a result of it.

Even less well-known to the average Westerner is the enslavement of white Europeans and Americans by Arab Muslims. Between 1530 and 1780, there were at least one million white European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary coast. These white slaves were treated abysmally, often subjected to torture in order to force them to convert to Islam. One English slave, Thomas Pellow, who was captured in 1716, eventually succumbed to the intimidation after his torturer resorted to setting his flesh on fire on multiple occasions.

Interestingly, the Muslim rulers would often employ black slaves to oversee their white counterparts in their forced labour. The blacks were cruel and vicious, often beating the workers with cudgels and entertaining themselves by waking the Christian slaves at night, beating them, and forcing them to do more hard labour. These inhuman conditions were only lifted in 1816, not through Islamic reform but by British military force, with the total destruction of Algiers.

A major reason for the Islamic tolerance of slavery is that the Qur'an itself, like the Bible, takes the practice for granted. It even goes so far as to give Muslim men permission to have sex with slave girls: “And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.” (4:24) The Prophet Muhammad himself is recorded to have owned around sixty slaves in his lifetime, and although Muslims are keen to point to a couple of examples in which he freed individual slaves, there is no evidence to suggest that he disapproved of slavery in principle. Muslims of future generations justified slavery with reference to Islamic theology, and as a result tended to take slaves from non-Muslim populations. The Muslim jurist al-Wanshirisi (d.1508), for example, said that slavery is an affliction against unbelievers, and a way of deliberately humiliating them for their infidelity.

Unlike Christianity, however, Islamic tradition never developed a pluralistic conception of the unity of mankind which could lead to the discarding of such a worldview, and the Qur'an contains a sharp distinction between believers and unbelievers that does not allow for the equal dignity and rights of all people in Muslim societies.

Thus it is not surprising that anti-slavery views did not resonate anywhere in the Islamic world until Western powers began to intervene. Slavery was not abolished in Saudi Arabia until 1962, and Yemen and Oman in 1970. Although slavery was “officially” abolished in Mauritania in 1980, it nevertheless still goes on there. Niger did not ban slavery until 2004, although these laws are largely ignored and as many as a million people remain in bondage. There has also been a recrudescence of slavery in the Sudan since 1983.

CONCLUSIONS

The double standards of African reparations groups and white liberals are clear. There is no reason for Britain to be making grovelling apologies for the slave trade, when some of its greatest citizens are responsible for bringing about the end of that degrading traffic. Britain has already done more than enough to apologise to Africans.

It is also notable how no one is asking for an apology from Muslims for the cruelty of their ancestors, whose own slave trade brought suffering to more people and lasted longer, nor for the ongoing slavery in some Muslim countries. Furthermore, no whites are demanding reparations for the way their ancestors were treated centuries ago, not only by Arab Muslims but by blacks also.

It is time for Britain to say, “enough”. We must stand up and be proud of what we did to bring about the end of slavery, rather than apologising for things that we have already apologised for in the most sacrificial way possible. We must also demand that Muslims take responsibility for the crimes of their forefathers, and work to end the trafficking of slaves in their own countries in the modern era.

If they do not, innocent people will continue to suffer.