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"It was said that the definitive issue in the African Holocaust was not systems of enslavement, as they are as old as humanity, but the chattlization of a people to mere commodities, labor units, devoid of language religion and culture. The issue is the continuing legacy of enslavement and social reality of Africans living in the shadow of histories greatest Holocaust: This is the arguing point between Africans and Europeans. Cultural disownership, poor education, inferiority complex, drugs, HIV, is not the result of neither the Arab trade or the inter-African slave system. Therefore, it is fundamental that the focus of the issue with the European trade be restated—it is about legacy."
Arab enslavement of Africans was radically different from its European counterpart. It was more complex and varied depending on time and place. Thus the slavery seen in Iraq with the zanj was not similar to slavery in Zanzibar. Also 'Arab' is not a racial group, some Arabs are African and some are White and Jewish.
One of the biggest differences between Arab slaving and European slaving was that slaves were drawn from all racial groups and they were rarely used as a means of crop production; slaves were not the economic engine behind Arab economies. Arab slavery generally lacked large droves of sugar plantations where slaves toiled to the crack of a whip in the hot sun .
Unlike the European trade in enslaved Africans the physical remnants of this trade are very hard to measure. There are no Ghettos, mental institutions or prisons holding African people. Many women stolen from Africa were stolen to serve the infamous Arabian harems; their children were thus born free to Arab fathers and thus would have been heirs to wealth and status, fully and equally assimilated into the population.
Many African people thus rose to great stations by virtue of their Arab fathers. The infamous eunuchs were infertile, and the other men who were enslaved would have gradually married non-African women, hence facilitating the absorption of African culture and lineage into an Arab one. The contrasting differences between racial definitions on the Arabian continent as oppose to Europe assist in blending the majority of Africans stolen from Africa into the general population of Arabia. However, in the West there was no transcending “racial stigmas.”
SLAVERY IN ARABIAN SOCIETIES ( FROM DARK VOYAGES)
While Europeans targeted men in West Africa, the 'Arab' trade primarily harvested the women of East Africa to serve as domestic slaves, wet nannies and sex-slaves in the infamous harems. This trade trickled over millennia is estimated to have taken 10 million Africans via the Eastern route to India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and also via the Trans-Saharan route to North Africa and the Mediterranean, where in slave markets such as Ceuta, Morocco, Africans were purchased to work as servants in Spain, Portugal, and other European countries.
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ISLAM AND SLAVERY
When Islam arrived, war and servitude were features of African and Arabian life. Judaism existed among certain Arab tribes as well as Christianity, and like them Islam did not blatantly out law slavery; Islam did however blatantly outlawed chattel enslavement. The Qu'ran with every reference to slavery ask the believer to free the slave as atonement for sin, the term "emancipating a slave and feeding an orphan" are repeated constantly throughout the Qu'ran as acts which gain God's favor.
Also there were regulations which enhanced the pre-Islamic laws with respect to the treatment of enslaved people. They were entitled to good care, to the same clothing and food as their masters. These enslaved people were more akin to indentured servants in Europe than Chattel slaves in the Americas.
They are your brothers whom Allah placed under your hands. Feed them with what you eat, clothe them with what you wear and do not impose duties upon them which will overcome them. If you so impose duties, then assist them.
Whoever kills his slave, we will kill him.
Whoever slaps his slave or strikes him, his atonement is to free him" (narrated by Muslim by the way of ibn Umar).
It became a fundamental principle of Islamic jurisprudence that the natural condition, and therefore the presumed status, of mankind was freedom.
Despite this, there were the greedy and the vindictive that sought to make slaves of their Muslim brothers and sisters as well as other Africans. There were also many Christian and Jewish Arab tribes and well as other indigenous Arabs that continued their tradition of slaving. Because Islamic Sharia had laws pertaining to slavery it was seen by the opportunist as a natural God sanctioned feature of life. Conveniently, the numerous laws of manumission were given a social back seat.
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ARABS AND AFRICANS
The Afro-Arab relationship was riddled with complexities lined in a cultural nexus. The greatest thing to appreciate is that the 18 th century definition of "Black" did not exist in this period and some so-called Arabs were Arab linguistically but racially African. Thus, the Arab trade in enslaved Africans was not only conducted by Asiatic and Caucasian Arabs, but also African Arabs: Africans speaking Arabic as a first language embracing an Arab culture.
These Africans would have been part of the Arab society; they would have permanently resided within Arabia for generations. They would have seen themselves as Arab as African-Americans define themselves as American it was their nationality and did not conflict with their greater African identity.
There is however no doubt that the status of the African in Arabian society became associated with the enslaved. The word for slave (Abid) became the colloq. word for African. Other words such as Haratin speak to the social inferior class of Africans. Also Caucasoid Arab scholarship has its collection of racist such as Hanns Vischer who believed African "black" skin made them a slave-race.
But equal evidence exist of the contempt for the trade as evident in the writings of Al-Nasiri. Books such as Tanwir al-Gabbash fi fasl al al-Sudan wa al-Habash by Ibn al-Jawzi, and Black and their Superiority over Whites by Ibn al-Marzuban testify to this. So, the legacy of the African presents in these Arab and later Turkish lands were far from that of absolute subjugation.
Africans occupied senior military ranks, they administer provinces and managed the scared Mosque of Mecca. In the mid-eleventh century, the African caliph Al-Mustansir ruled Egypt with his mother, a Sudanese enslaved woman of remarkable strength of character. There are no such parallels in the New World. Africans, even enslaved Africans, played important roles in the history and politics of these regions up until and even including the 1st World War.
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It is important to note that while Islam generally disseminated in Africa peacefully it took wars, such as the Riddah wars, to conquer the Arabs into accepting Islam.
In the mid-tenth century during the rule of the Umayed Caliph Abdul-Rahman III (929-961), Muslims of African origin sailed westward from the Spanish port of Delba (Palos) into the “Ocean of darkness an fog.” They returned after a long absence with much booty from a “strange and curious land.” It is evident that people of Muslim origin are known to have accompanied Columbus and subsequent Spanish explorers to the New World. Also it is reported that the descendants of Kanka Musa of Mali made and epic voyage with a 2000 strong fleet in search of the Americas.
Recent linguistic, cultural and archaeological finds in Brazil and Peru offer documentary evidence" that West African Mandinka Muslims explored the early Americas. Islam spread across to West Africa (by African traders such as the Fulani people)from as early as the 8 th century by African traders and was firmly established by the 11 th century. The peaceful non-obstructive course Islam took in West Africa was mainly because those propagating the faith were culturally and ethnically identical to those receiving it. Also the indigenous African had many features in common
Such similarities between Islam and indigenous African religions facilitated a general peaceful conversion and religious tolerance in West Africa. Islam hence left African culture uniquely African and a traditional African Sufi Islam was formed over the centuries. This brand of Islam in time even reshaped Islamic culture in the lands beyond Africa.
Diop: The primary reason for the success of Islam in Africa, with one exception, consequently stems from the fact that solitary Arabo-Berber Travellers to certain Black kings and notables, who then spread it about them to those under their jurisdiction, promulgated it peacefully, at first... What is to be emphasized here is the peaceful nature of this conversion, regardless of the legend surrounding it. (Pre-colonial Black Africa, page 163.)
Asante: The religion of Islam made each Muslem merchant or traveller an embryonic missionary and the appeal of the religion with its similarities to the African religions was far more powerful than the Christian appeal
When Islam proliferated in West Africa around the 9 th century, one of the first universities was founded by African Muslims. It was called Sankore, Arabs and others came to Sankore which was built in Timbuktu to learn from the African erudites who lectured on Islamic belief, Islamic jurisprudence, astrology, science, and many other subjects. Timbuktu was reputed for African erudition where books and those who traded in books were the wealthiest elites of the merchant society.
The bulk of African history after the Ancient Egyptians Medew Netjer , was written in the Arabic language by both Africans and Arabs. The Arabic script also served as an agami to write languages such as Swahili, Wolof and Mande. For thousands of years Arabic served as the international language of trade as English is today. Some of the hidden histories of Africa are locked in as many as 700,000 Arabic manuscripts written by ancient African scholars. One of these the Tariq-ul-Sudan, details the history of Islamic West Africa, but this manuscript remains inaccessible to non-Arabic speakers.
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18th CENTURY BOOM
During the 18 th century, the Arab slave trade took a brutal turn. The Portuguese had destroyed the Swahili coast and Zanzibar emerged as the hub of wealth for the Arabian state of Muscat. By 1839, slaving became the prime Arab enterprise. The demand for slaves in Arabia, Egypt, Persia and India, but more notability by the Portuguese who occupied Mozambique created a wave of destruction on Eastern Africa. 45,000 slaves were passing through Zanzibar every year.
Slavery in Zanzibar, 500 Years Later (film)
To satisfy this demand the Arabs hunted deep into the interiors of Africa, they following ancient trails from Bagamoyo, Kilwa, Tanga, where terror and destruction followed in their wake. The Arab plunders met with savage resistance, which meant that the trade had a very high mortality rate. Many documents speak of the roads littered with the weak and the dying, the abandoned and the maimed, left with yokes around their necks. Many as in the case of Tsavo, Kenya became food for lions. Children who became a burden to the coffle gang were brutally murdered in front of their mothers.
"The likes of Livingston would have witness this devastation first-hand but history penned by Europeans recorded it as an endemic characteristic of Africa, as oppose to a very recent genocide that was previously unprecedented in African history. Livingston was the precursor to colonialism, the colonial template was written on salvaging heathen souls for Jesus and civilising them to be the cultural stepchildren of Europeans. Livingston is portrayed as the great White hope whom delivered Africa's from this hell."
Thus in the name of humanity Europeans, namely the British and the Belgians, conquered Africa to destroy Arab slaving. For Africans one horror was traded for the horror that would deliver the mortal blow- Colonialism ! -
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MYTHS ABOUT THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE
Any study of history has to be both a study of historical writings, and sociological patterns, past and present. When Greeks wrote about the Phoenicians, their writings became the body of historical perception towards these 'people of the sea.' However, without an appreciation of the social relationship between the Greeks and the Phoenicians, we are left with an imbalance.
Jewish historical traditions carried in Exodus, narrates of a hatred for their oppressors, the Ancient Egyptians. The writing style and the subsequent glorification and defamation all speak to the social-politics of the period in which the Exodus was written. When European explorers first uncovered the splendor of the Cushitic civilization, they automatically documented the evidence they found as “outside of African origin.”
The social pre-assumptions of the day influenced the basis of their academic study, leaving nothing but mis-history. It is thus critical to study the sociological aspect of who is writing history and the natural agenda behind those casting the pen.
The politics of our time is a factor in determining perspective. When the genocide in Rwanda broke out it was reported as genocide between two groups; ethnic Hutus and ethnic Tutsis, both groups are predominantly Christianity yet this was never a point of debate -- anywhere. However when a similar situation broke out in Darfur it became ‘Arab Muslim and blacks.’ Once upon a time they would have stressed communist forces now it is the mysterious omnipresent Islamistist.
INHERITED & SUPERIMPOSED PERSPECTIVE
The first pitfall of many African academics, especially African-American ones, is to pretend that by knowing about Slavery in the Americas automatically gives them an insight into Slavery in Arabia. The question is of transferred or superimposed experiences. Thus the horrors of being a slave in America and all the dynamics of that system are superimposed onto a world and reality they have no idea about.
But simply transference of experiences where Arabs take the place of Europeans is a disastrous academic venture, for the complexities of Slavery in Arabia (place and time being two factors) is radically different, just as generalizations cannot be used to sum up systems of servitude in Africa. A world as complex and ancient as the African-Arab one cannot be navigated from European controlled Universities by a people who live and breathe in a Pax-Americana reality, where the Islamic and pre-Islamic religions, the surrounding languages, the culture(s) and the histories are not well known.
COMMON MYTHS CORRECTED
Islam is not an Arab cultural invention but a religion born in a multi-racial Arabia; it was actually perceived as “foreign” by most Arab “tribes.” Islam in Africa is just as old as Islam in Arabia. Islam actually flourishes today because of the legal protection the king of Ethiopia gave it. The ideogical foundation of the 3 Abrahamic faiths is African in origin. It is a denial of African history and agency to deny the significance of Africa in the history and formation of the Islamic faith. It is ony an enslaved mind that rejects its own historical claims allowing others full credit. Later Arab and Turkish dominance lessened this history but it is an African history.
Arab is not a racial term, to say Arab is almost like saying American: thus, people classified as Arab today, could have been Caucasian (white people), Jewish, Asiatic or even Arabized Africans.
There was no Arab invasion or destruction of African Egypt, Kemet was concluded centuries before by Persians, then Greeks and then Roman invaders. The 1075 conquest of Ancient Ghana by the Almoravids was done by African Berbers. The sacking of Timbuktu by Morisco mercenaries armed with European-style guns in the service of the Moroccan sultan in 1591.
There is a low African Diaspora in the Arab lands due to the proliferation of miscegenation, the dynamics of being classified as an Arab, and the degree or easy of Arabization.
Islam did not bring the Arab slave trade. However, it did respond to it with laws of manumission. These laws were later generally ignored and misinterpretation thus protecting the privilege slaving brought.
Arabs enslaving Africans would not be interested Proselytism as this would grant the enslaved Africans privileges. Thus slaving and the spread of Islam where in direct conflict and slavers played an opposing role in the Islamization of people (Murray Gordon, “Slavery in the Arab World.”)
Muslim and Arab is not the same thing.
Turks are not Arabs, Persians are not Arabs. Berbers are not Arabs, hence the Trans-Saharan or the Ottoman trade is not an Arab Slave Trade.
Arab slaving was not the oldest slave trade in the world (see India and China). It however, was older than the Atlantic Slave trade, but it was scattered and a low priority until the 18th century.
After the 18th century, the horrors of procuring Africans, was the most inhuman aspect of the trade, with castrations, transportation and violent slave raids being the main sources of mortality.
The Arab slave trade in the 18th century was economically tied to the European trade. The Portuguese profited directly and were responsible for the boom in the Arab trade.
The Arabs did not see all Africans as being of a unified “Black” race.
Arab enslavement did not only target Africans.
Arab slavery was primarily domestic, and only in the 18th century was it a mainstay for Arab economies.
Arab Slavery did not leave the social legacy that the European trade continues to leave: prisons, poor education, mental health, etc.
The Arab slave trade had a negligible impact on most Africans in the Diaspora today.
Zanj does not mean all Africans. This is a assumptive linguistic superimposition.
Muslim Africans (and Christians) were not the main suppliers of captives for the Americas. Dahomeny and the Asante kingdom were the main suppliers.
Many African Muslims Kingdoms were the main aggressors to European advances on the continent. Umar Taal, Malick Sy, Ahmadou Bamba, Samory Toure, etc. -
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THE FIRST MISTAKE: ARAB TRADE NOT ONLY AN ARAB TRADE
The first mistake or misnomer in the study of the Arab slave trade is the term “Arab.” The so-called Arab trade is not solely an Arab enterprise. The term for political reasons is used in that context for “saleability.” It is a terrible day for history when convenient packaging labels are employed for ease of academic and political digestion.
The majority of people in Iran are not Arabs, the same for Morocco, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Libya. Thus to assign the slaving activities of Berbers to the Arabs is not only historical inaccurate but also immoral. The blurring of racial definitions in historical Africa has always been mishandled in European institutions leading to complete mangling of reality.
For example the Sanhaja (considered by some to be “Arabs”) would have been seen as a different race by the Mande, but this is equally true for their perception of the Fulani or a the Turaeg ethnic groups. Popular Eurocentrism has created hard definitions such as black, and Arab based upon their worldview of “other.” Terms such as ”oriental trade” “Islamic Trade” as Patrick Manning are implicitly erroneous. The tradition in Western linguistics of lumping (linguistic lumping) is one of the key aspects of historical distortion, not lost on the study of Africa or Arabia.
WHOSE SOURCES
We must begin our journey of historical exploration by asking what are the academic sources for European, Arab and African systems of enslavement. However, if the agency in history is solely a European enterprise, then we have nothing to balance it with.
After Europeans had taken, all they could possibly take via enslavement, it was appropriate for them to find new ways of exploiting Africa’s resources: in came colonialism. The “moral” interface, which facilitated this exploitation, was Christian missionaries, using religion (again) as a scapegoat for colonial rule.
Through pure ignorance and lack of historical evidence, many of the “African” scholars embrace myths about Africa fed to them from strictly European sources. Most heavily relying on the interpretation of Eurocentric scribblings about a continent they did not understand. The same prejudice that washes the notion of Africans enslaving Africans is the same mythology, which plagues the study of Arab enslavement of African people.
The above statements are not meant to exonerate nor apologize for inter-African brutality or Arab enslavement. But are intended to set a new tone towards the study of what actually happened in Africa. It is the establishment of a new bases of perception that is critical, not the validity or denial of any slaving system; true or false, African or Arab.
The same “sin” the so-called Arabized African is guilty of, in defending the brutality of Arab enslavement, is the same sin the “Afrocentric” is guilty of, when defending African-to-African enslavement. The crime is the distortion of truth. And if truth is distorted for personal agendas then the ultimate fruit that should come from studying our human history is lost to the wind. This is why Rwanda happened; this is why Sudan is happening. Denial does not change the facts it just perverts our reality and inhibits our ability to learn from history.
SEEKING TRUTH IN A SEA OF LIES
Once again, this article is not to verify or deny the existence or the extent of the Arab slave trade or to deny or confirm the dynamics of “slavery” among African people. The aim is to highlight, as a disclaimer, a point where history has become distorted. The case being argued is that we should become sensitive to this in our pursuit of the truth.
There is no doubt the Arab slave trade scarred Africa, but the true dynamics of this as expressed in contemporary academics circles is vulgarly malicious, with the sole intention of vindicating the actions of Europeans by setting up a new “devil.” Streamlining their anti-Islamic sentiment with the uprooting of Africa’s Islamic past. We must be socially sensitive to the politics of our time.
In the hands of man, religion continues to be a tool, for good and bad. But the major world religions make easier targets for casting accusations than obscure faiths in the belly of the Congo. However, the systems in indigenous Africa were also perverted. Punishment for minor crimes became immediately punishable by enslavement. The de facto system became enslavement for every foreseeable crime and sin. We cannot for personal reasons excuse one flaw and highlight another because it suits our argument.
Slavery was a crisis for the world. It is testimony to the ugliest side of humanity. Where systems in the Qur’an and the Bible were defiled and used to justify the unjustifiable. A system so evil it presented a mother with the dilemma of which child she could sell to protect the others. A system that deadened all sense of humanity and righteousness from those professing to be subjects of God.
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SO-CALLED ARAB INVASION OF AFRICAN EGYPT
A popular urban legend which was fuelled by many psuedo-historians was of an 'Arab Invasion of an African Egypt.' Egypt had ceased being African in 700 B.C. with the Persian conquest, and then the Greek (332 BC) and Roman conquest (30 BC). Muslim conquered an Egypt that was part of the Byzantine Empire with its capital in Constantinople.
However, it had been occupied just a decade before by the Persian Empire under Khosrau II (616 to 629 AD). The so-called invasion by Amir ibn As was assisted by some Copts, who found the Muslims more tolerant than the Byzantines, and of these some turned to Islam.In return for a tribute of money and food for the troops of occupation, the Christian inhabitants of Egypt were excused from military service and left free in the observance of their religion and the administration of their affairs.
Others sided with the Byzantines, hoping that they would provide a defense against the Arab invaders. Thus far from the blood bath of rape and horror, a common feature of conquest, the Arab invasion was very mild and usurped a European controlled Egypt.
Politically these events have been twisted to create annomousity to both Arabs and Muslims. This doesnt mean that in other parts of Noth Africa, such as Modern day Libiya, that battles were not fought, such as Queen Dahia al-Kahina. But with regards to Egypt the facts are clear.
The next invasion into what is viewed as 'Black Africa' caused the destruction of Ancient Ghana by the Almoravids; a Berber African and West African people.
HIDDEN HISTORY
Knowledge concerning the Arab trade is not traditionally popular for many reasons when compared to the Transatlantic trade. The biggest reason is that Africans of the Americas (including the Caribbean and Brazil) were not affected directly by this trade. So naturally, people discuss slavery that is most relevant to them. Another reason for the obscurity is that there is also limited factual information on the subject. The period of the Arab trade predates the European system and was far more complex, the racial boundaries we accept today didn’t exist in those times.
Egypt’s former president Anwar Sedat is considered Arab but he is half-African. His African ancestry does not reduce or violate his Arab identity, and vice-versa.
When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab captors child she became “umm walad” or “Mother of a Child” , a status which granted her privileged rights, the child however would have prospered from the wealth of the father and given rights of inheritance. Again this system allowed for greater racial assimilation, hence the reality of a physical African Diaspora in Arab lands is very different from the African Diasporas in the Americas.
The Arab slave trade was not a trade limited to specific racial groups, although at times (later times) it appeared that way. By contrast, the odalisque (concubines) of the Othman Empire was majority European. The soldiers of the Othman armies were the European Mamluks stolen from Georgians, Circassians and Turkics. Africans were not the majority of enslaved people in these Turkish lands.
The hajj has demonstrated since ancient times that neither Africans nor Arabs considered physical barriers or long distances as insurmountable obstacles. Large numbers of African pilgrims never returned to their native lands as far away as Senegal. Instead, they settled throughout the Middle East, including present-day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, the Persian Gulf countries and Turkey. Eve Troutman adds:
“In the United States, of course, and the Caribbean, you had agricultural slavery. You had plantation slavery. In the Middle East, this was very rare. You did not see this certainly in the 18th and 19th century. So African slaves in Egypt would work in people's households, would be part of people’s families, would live in the household, would not have a huge community of other slaves around them, but really would be surrounded by the family of their owners.”
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CRISIS POINT
The primary crisis point the Arab trade poses for Muslim people is the illegal marriage between Islam and Arabism. Separation of these two topics is necessary for the sake of understanding history from an honest point-of-view. Unfortunately, among many Muslim communities the issue of slavery is a topic rather avoided or apologized for (in that order). The dilemma of “religion verses reality” expressed by the devout Christian is revisited here, where the less than divine aspects of religion cast hideous shadows. The Arab-African relationship is far older and more intertwined than the European-African one.
The idea of religion over race has also presented a problem, as any Muslim Africans who would have sold other Africans to Arabs would have seen religious kinship, over racial kinship. Once again, we find African’s devotions to faith being an aspect of their downfall, both with Christianity and Islam. The argument is not to finger religion but to expose a terrible conflict, in the human condition, where the ultimate purpose of religion, righteousness and truth, are arrested and supplanted with misplaced loyalties.
ISLAM AND MUSLIMS
Mauritanian scholar Mohamed Diakho, who has a book in French called L’Esclavage en Islam, which says that the Qur’an actually does everything it can to get rid of slavery, and that it is later interpretations of the Qur’an which, sort of ceding to the powers (the slave-owners), were complicit and complacent about slavery. So the tragedy with Islam; the revealed religion and Islam the practiced religion, highlights the same flaws that Muslims accuse Christians of having. For this reason the religion of Islam and the actions of Muslims are at times two completely different studies.
The social conditions of the time are a black hole for truth. Islamic theocracy is still in the hands of man, and if those hands chose to highlight the legality of Slavery before the Qur’anic legality of manumission, then we have the current legacy to which no apologies can be offered. Even today, the continuation of this barbaric trade still gets little response from Muslim communities. The quote by Halie Selassie is most appropriate:
Again, the human condition is the error and all the efforts of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Candomble, Anago et al, seem weak in curbing the perverse selfish ungodly actions of man. And let us not limit our analysis to religion because in all systems the ruling race-class seek to protect their interest and are always reluctant/unwilling to surrender that which grants them advantage over others.
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
RACISM AND THE CONVERT CLASS
The accusations against Eurocentricity are not lost on Arabized “Islamic” history. The tradition of subverting African history and making it a footnote or as Maulana Karenga said “a forgotten casualty” is not an exclusive European enterprise. From the legacy of the Arab Slave trade, it is clear that the social status of the African in Arabian societies has been obscured and belittled. The magnificent contributions of Africans to the formation of the religion of Islam and Islamic science are at best undermined at worst written out of history.
For example, the first Hijirah (or flight) is recorded as the 622 Hijirah from Mecca to Medina; however, the most critical Hijirah from Arabia to Ethiopia was made in 612 (it is not even given the respectful title of Hijirah). There is no point in blaming a religion for this, for it was not the Qur’an or the prophet of Islam that institutionalized this racism.
Guilt sits with those who inherited control of Islamic history: The same ones who interpreted a Sharia that favoured enslavement over manumission. Still today African people are written out of Islamic history from every corner: by non-African Muslims, Eurocentric’s and Afrocentrics alike.. Volumes of books are written on Islamic empires and no reference is made to Sokoto, Mali, or Songhai (the largest African empire). The problem is the general lack of African agency in all aspects of history.
Despite all the brother and sisterhood promised in the canon of Islam, it rarely manifest itself in Muslim societies, there is an unimaginable degree of racial segregation. This is not a historical occurrence for in more ancient times inter-racial marriage was far more “tolerated.” But it must be stated that historically the spread of Islam among the Berbers did not guarantee their support for the Arab-dominated caliphate.
The ruling Arabs alienated the Berbers by taxing them heavily; treating converts as second-class Muslims and, at worst, by enslaving them. As a result, widespread opposition took the form of open revolt in 739-40 under the banner of Kharijite Islam. So Arbaization has been a historical problem which has always been opposed.
Today the class- mentality is still present between Caribbean and say Pakistani Muslims, where African-Caribbean are perceived as 'not real Muslims.' and regardless of being 1st, 2nd or 3rd generation Muslims viewed as 'converts' (a term that has no historical precedent in original Islamic doctoring). In the West, Muslim communities are just as racist towards African minorities as the Europeans. In Islam, leadership are based on merit but in these communities it is based on a lingering caste system. The isolation and lack of dialogue has compounded the problem leading to greater racial fragmentation.
RACISM IN ARABIA
African-Iraqis have been in Iraq for around 2000 years and still are actively discriminated against in a society which is hidden and untreated. The social change witnessed in the USA where active desegregation and issues of race are very public is absent from Arab society. As a result the Arab world in general is very regressive in race-development.
The history of discrimination is clearly visible: Many African- Iraqis in Zubayr live in stone and mud huts that are little changed since they were built three centuries ago. Africans do the menial jobs and are excluded from Politics and business. Even the relatively affluent face problems. Khalid Majid, 39, said he took his 6-year-old daughter out of school because she suffered constant harassment from classmates who called her abd, the Arabic word for slave, and other derogatory names. LINK
CULTURAL DOMINATION
Practiced Islam, like practiced Christianity, became the context for the cultural prevalence of Arab culture: Arab names became Islamic names and those who adopted Islam automatically adopted Arab culture in an attempt to become "Islamic." Today we see the uniformed African entering into Islam, and as opposed to taking on African Muslim names and wearing African Islamic attire they wear the cultural dress of Saudi Arabian Arabs, they adopt the mannerisms and cultural mind set of an Arabized people, which is not much better than being Europeanized.
Looking at Islam in Turkey, West Africa, Indonesia and China we see a strong de-emphasis on this Arabized Islamic version. This is testimony to the agency at work within these places.
The standard or Orthodox Islam is thus one cultural dimension on a much broader faith. And just like the Roman church, this cultural interpretation is a symbol of racial and cultural dominance. There is no more validity in Sufi Islam in Mali than the Wahabi fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia. People resisting globalization must be aware of cultural religious globalization as well and also recognize it is a violation of the Qur’anic verse.
"O people! Behold, we have created you from a male and a female and have made you into nations and ethnicity so that you might come to know one another…" [Qur'an 49:13] -
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LEGACY
The legacy of Islam, as an agent of African liberation and resistance to both slavery and colonialism is now being disingenuously denied, because of the parallel existence of an African-Arab slave trade. The downplaying of Africa’s Islamic history ultimately serves the desires of Eurocentrism’s attempt to remove all agency from African people.
The failure to see this design has some African historians vilifying or neglecting Islamic African history; they speak of Africa and deliberately avoid Timbuktu, Futa Tora, Sokoto, Ancient Ghana et al from nobility, thus thinning the African historical reality. They reduce greats like Uthman Dan Fodiwa, Muhammad Bello, Umar Taal from the pages of glory. We end up with African history “restored” back to obscurity and ignobility: to the applaud of the Eurocentrics.
ISLAMAPHOBIA: DARFUR ET AL
The biased targeting of Islam and Arabs in all areas is beyond argument. A case in point is ‘Muslim and Slavery’ and ‘Judaism and Slavery’ in Wikipedia proves this agenda. By strategic neglect of factual information and artistic licence the reader is left to assume Jews have only been the victims of Slavery but never the perpetuators of Slavery. Now it must be reiterated that being Jewish, Muslim or anything is not directly related to Slavery, it is an act humans do, it is not because of their religion; it is because of their human weaknesses. If it was due to religion then why does slavery, war, etc predate all known major world religions? More often than not religion is why vastly different communities are able to coexist with tolerance. So to assume Muslims or Arabs, and not Jews, by virtue of religion are more inclined to slavery is vulgar. It is the same racism that sells the fact that African-Americans by virtue of their race are more inclined to rape, steal and kill.
Statements like ‘Slavery predates Islam, but continues under Islam and the Muslim Arab rulers’ are statements loaded with a false focus on the Islamic religion and sets up a casual relationship between slavery and Islam. When Darfur occurred Islam and Arab was splashed all over the story, yet this was not true for Rwanda, or Sierra Leon, or Mozambique when the majority were Christian. Nowhere was the religion of people an issue when discussing other world conflicts. It seems that the audience is to believe that Islam is recklessly tied to slavery, war, inhumanity, oppression and women’s abuse.
The agenda thus is to portray Muslims as champions of the most fearful aspects of our modern world. The question must be asked why is religion a focus in Slavery when Muslims are involved, but excluded when Christians and especially Jews are involved? The sanitizing of history has been part of the most sinful aspect of bringing justice. There are a growing plethora of Christian websites which claim to ‘reveal’ the ‘truth’ behind Islam and Slavery, but in their entire argument neglects the role religion blatantly played in the biggest Holocaust in history, the one brought by so-called Christian missionaries.
Some of the most ill-read Afrocentrics are guilty of the same hypocrisy and double standards. The biggest slavers in Africa where neither Muslim nor Christian, yet they constantly neglect Dahomy and focus on Arabs and Muslims as agents of enslavement.
"The resurgence of Islamaphobia has brought this aspect of history to the foreground as a form of anti-Arab sentiment in an attempt to further the riff between African people and Arabs, and ultimately between African Muslims and other Africans. Considering 50% of the African continent is split between these two faiths, little imagination is needed to appreciate the outcome of agitating the religious divide. Still today, the fastest way to get a book published as an African is to write on Arab/African slavery."
Looking deeper shows great political and economic support from far-right "special interest" Christian American fundamentalist. The best recent example of this malicious activity occurred during the Darfur crisis where it was said that “Arabs were killing Africans.”
"Anyone who is familiar with the ethnic dynamics of Sudan immediately would understand how nonsensical this is. The so-called Arabs are really Africans, there are no different from the so-called non-Arabs of Sudan—they are generally the same complexion and both groups are Muslim. The meaning of Arab in Sudan is radically different from that definition in the West. Nevertheless, the Western press is fully aware of the racial tension that mislabeling these so-called Arabs would cause and have exploited race dynamics to their end."
The problem is the uniformed Africans in the west joins the anti-Arab camp because of their lack of cultural information on their own motherland. The political agenda of our time if not considered, with a wise mind, is an accident that has already happened. See The US Role In Darfur by Sara Flounders. -
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THE WAY FORWARD
It was said that the definitive issue in the African Holocaust was not systems of enslavement, as they are as old as humanity, but the chattlization of a people to mere commodities, labor units, devoid of language religion and culture.
The issue is the continuing legacy of enslavement and social reality of Africans living in the shadow of histories greatest Holocaust: This is the arguing point between Africans and Europeans. Cultural disownership, poor education, inferiority complex, drugs, HIV, is not the result of neither the Arab trade or the inter-African slave system. Therefore, it is fundamental that the focus of the issue with the European trade be restated—it is about legacy.
The continuation of dishonest scholarship, loaded with one-sided arguments that work one way but not the other, pervert the African historical narrative and reduce the quality of scholarship.
A new era demands a new study, a new agenda for a new outcome. African people today are no more informed on the realities of enslavement compared to 20 years ago. History is not always pretty and requires a strong stomach and a brave face to plunge into the horrors of the past.
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