Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the peculiar dhimmi attitude that black African states have up to now displayed toward Arab states, and why this must be changed:
Even though, under Western pressure, slavery has been officially abolished in Muslim countries (which cannot permanently reject slavery, as it is recognized in Islam) the blacks of sub-Saharan Africa are, whenever they come into contact with Arab or even local Muslims, still being exploited, massacred (as the Biafrans) or sold into slavery (as in the Sudan). This is happening most notably in the Sudan, which a hundred years ago was still mainly black and overwhelmingly non-Muslim, but thanks to steady Jihad encroachments has been taken over by the dominant northern Arabs.It was not Muslims, but the British who suppressed the Arab slave trade in East Africa. That trade had supplied black slaves for many uses, but particularly sought were male children who were castrated on sight where they were seized. Those who survived the primitive operation (with of course no anesthetic) were then taken by slave coffle from the interior and marched either all the way up to the Muslim slave-markets of Egypt and North Africa from Tripolitania to Mauritania, or taken by dhow to the coast, often to Muscat, and from there to the slave-markets of Arabia, Riyadh and Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, even as far as Constantinople and Smyrna. In “The Hideous Trade” Jan Hogedoorn has calculated that the mortality rate due to the castration and subsequent forced marches, ended with barely 10% of those initially taken actually managing to reach those slave markets alive.
This wreaked havoc all over East and Central Africa, and even had consequences in West Africa. V. S. Naipaul has noted that the Muslim conquest of Hindustan left the Indians with a “wounded civilization.” Similarly, in his short monograph on “The Wanderings of Peoples” the British historian A. C. Haddon notes that in Africa “the slave trade, as carried on under Arab influence...contributed powerfully to the dislocation of tribes."
Such dislocation followed upon the activities of the Arab slavers. Think of Tippoo Tib, whom Stanley writes about. His depredations have received little attention, though those of him and other Arab slavers were by far the worst of the calamities visited by outsiders upon black Africa. Unlike the European colonialists, the Arabs who use Islam as the vehicle for their own imperialism have never had to account for this. Yet they have never ceased to press forward, to make demands on black Africa. They helped encourage the “Jihad” – as Colonel Ojukwu called it in his Ahiara Declaration – that led the Christian Ibo in Nigeria to fight for their independence from the Muslim north; with Egyptian pilots strafing Ibo villages, and the entire Western world ignoring the Biafrans. Only Ghana and Israel recognized Biafra diplomatically. And with a million civilians massacred, the Muslims of the north, with that Egyptian help, managed to suppress the Biafran movement. They continue to this day to divert the oil wealth from the largely Christian south to support the Muslim-controlled army and the depressed, inshallah-fatalistic economy of the Muslim north.
Why then do not, at long last, the countries of black Africa make some demands for reparations on the Arabs, awash in money? Black Africa is poor; it is made poorer still by the cutting off of relations with the most successful foreign aid program, one based on encouraging self-sustaiining agricultural development,that of Israel, which was cut off at Arab insistence after the Six-Day War. It is made poorer still by the rise in oil prices, and made yet even poorer by the havoc played by the Arabs wherever they can -- from Khadafy’s pressure on Chad to the Sudanese government’s massacre of blacks in the Sudan, to the enslavement of black by Arab Muslims in Mali and Mauritania, to the Muslims from outside who are putting steady pressure on the Christians in such formerly secure Christian countries as the Ivory Coast and Togo.If Black Africa is poor, the Muslim Arabs are fantastically rich. They have done nothing to deserve that wealth; it is merely a question of sitting on top of oil and gas reserves. An accident of geology. The black Africans have for nearly forty years done the diplomatic bidding of the Arabs. What have they gotten for it? A few of the Big Men may have been paid off to become Muslims – one thinks of Idi Amin, turning Muslim and then retiring for life to Saudi Arabia. Similar stories of others who “reverted” for a payoff could be told. But what about the permanent damage done to black Africa by that “dislocation” and that vast slave trade, and the continuing pressure of the Arabs -- which one can see, for example, in the not-so-veiled threats made by Egypt to Ethiopia, a country that has endured intermittent famine, and that wishes, quite naturally, to at long last divert some of the headwaters of the Nile for irrigation projects? But Egyptian officials mutter darkly that this must not be attempted, that the Nile belongs to Egypt alone, and Egypt will deign to “permit” Ethiopia only so much water, only so much prosperity.
Is it beyond the wit of the Infidels in the West, in Europe and America, to back up black Africa as it makes demands for reasonable reparations from the Arabs? The Arab slave trade did so much damage; yet Arabs, unlike Americans and Europeans, have never publicly recognized their own role, much less attempted to offer the kind of grants to Africa that have come from Europe and America. Why should the billionaires of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Kuwait be allowed to pretend to be members of the “Third World,” as they have ever since Bandung? Why is the farce not exposed, and demands made, and unless those demands are met, the states of black Africa end their imposed role of dutifully echoing whatever those rich Arabs demand of them?
Somewhere, in all of those schemes and pan-African dreams, there must be some black African leaders willing and able to demand that the Arabs make up for their slave trade in black Africa, which began earlier, ended (if it ended at all) later, and was far more extensive, than the European slave trade -- and to do in the only coin that is now recognized – that is, coin.
If Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the U.A.E., were forced to disgorge, as pentitential pence, to black Africa every year, say, $50 billion (for the three of them together, that is only about 2-3 weeks income from oil, it would be at least one way of compensating for the damage inflicted by the Arab slave trade on black Africa. It would also use up some of the money that otherwise, inevitably, goes to fund mosques, madrasas, propaganda, Da’wa, arms acquisition, and other instruments of the Jihad.
Suppose the Arabs refuse to come through with the sums requested. The very act of raising the issue may force them to come through with something. In any case, the truth about Arab supremacism, and the continued Muslim recognition, validation and permanent legitimization of slavery (because of its appearance in the Qur’an and its being practiced by Muhammad), may make it just a bit harder for Da’wa to be conducted quite so successfully as it is now among carefully identified black populations both in Africa, and still more important, within Europe and North America. And that result would be highly desirable. It requires only the truth.
Mecca had a huge slave market in former times.
The rebellion of the Zanj in what is now Iraq was because of the brutality with which the Africans were treated by Arabs. Thousands of Africans were cruelly butchered in a ruthless massacre.
Somehow the "Black Muslims" and the "Nation of Islam" swallowed this camel, that Islam was so "good" to Africans.
Rocky,
Mecca had a thriving slave market in the 1960's which shocked Malcolm X when he did the Hajj.
He chose to remain silent about this when he returned to America. For the 'Nation of Islam' it suits them to blame everything on white people.
Thawrat al-Zanj, The Rebellion of the Blacks, broke out in southern Mesopotamia in the 14th century, and quickly spread to southwest Iran and the Arabian shores of the Persian Gulf.
An army of rebels also invaded Mecca and brought the black stone of the Ka'aba to Bahrain. Since black slaves from Africa formed the bulk of the rebel armies, the movement became known as the 'Revolt of the Negroes'.
All the while I was reading this great piece, I was wondering if Louis Farrakhan was aware of Arab/Muslim history with regard to the slave trade in Africa. He has to don't you think?
I was unaware of the extent of the Arab-Africa slavery issue.
Now I am even more disgusted with Islam and even more so of the PC types.
That American blacks continue to convert to Islam ignoring its ignoble history vis a vis slavery, and its current genocidal war on their African brethren is impossible to fathom, so I guess it's hardly surprising that the "anti-globalization" types are totally unaware of the economic imperialism conducted by stealth of Arab/Muslim nations.
Muslims did not only enslave black Africans. They also enslaved central Asians, southeast Asians, southest Europeans (Slavs), central Europeans, Scandinavians, and anyone else who fell within their imperialist ambit.
The Muslim slave trade was probably the largest and most systematic in world history, far outstripping the other two great slave empires -- the Roman and the Western.
The guilt and shame and self-criticism of the Western slave trade has spawned, in the modern West, thousands of books, and thousands of school & college classroom curriculums, and innumerable college sub-departments and professorships (in "cultural anthropology" and "slave literature" etc.), not to mention a few blockbuster Hollywood movies and scores of prime-time television movies and mini-series (Roots being only the most famous).
There is in modern Muslim culture no evidence of any guilt, shame and self-criticism (let alone of scholarly study) about their larger and worse slave trade (which, as Hugh points out, continues in large pockets and probably continues under other names in the vast domestic servant service throughout the Muslim world utilizing Asians and blacks in degradating and inhumane and often dangerous (if they get out of line or perhaps simply refuse sex with the Muslim man of the house) employment).
The colossal disparity between the Western mea culpa and the Muslim arrogance, in addition to the colossal myopia in the modern West about this colossal disparity, is mostly the fault of the Leftists, who created and continue to nourish PC which now dominates our sociopolitical culture.
Frankly, one should immediately get a vision of the slave market when thinking of Islam. Few understand that Islam enslaves physically and psychologically all that come under the influence of this predatory ideology. Then there's the actual slave trade...
Also Duting the latter Middle Ages into the Renascience, it was estimated that Islam took about 1 million slaves through raids of the southern coastlines of the Europeans AKA Christian Nations.
No it was easy that Fharrakan and the Nation Of Islam, were not aware initailly what and who were involved in the Slave Trade, theres was a complete
whackery of trying to create a Black Islamic front.
It was an easy fix in the late 30's beyond to growing frustrations in what was perceived as the White Christian Monopoly, and at a time when segration was still rampant in the South. The problem is and was, that this Cult and I lable it as such, has been not much different than some of the complete cults of our day and age, point the finger on blame on a group, utilize it for YOUR own purposes, and exploit and brainwash the rest with your rhetoric. Your not going to tell them about
Islams slave trade, when in essence they want to switch the roles and enslave you with their rhetoric. Are they aware of Islams truth of Arabic racism? TO them it doesnt matter, they feel that there is nothing but White Racism, Anti Semitics, ect but since they see the same percieved enemy, then they feel some affliation with the likes of Al Qaeda who also exploits this same anti white thetoric, through his Arabic Racism, Muslims I have read and spoke to, find Fharrakhan a complete whack. and one only to needs to look at the orgins of the White Race in the whack THeology of the Nation of ISlam, though they probably have toned it down somewhat, who knows, the truth will always shine, no matter how painful it is.
Scott
Yet one more reminder of how thoroughly disgusting Islam and Moslems are. Is there anything about either of them that is worth saving? Really, the sooner the better.
Islam, NOT muslims per se. Humans are humans.
Geoff
PLEASE don't take this pretext away from Blacks and Muslims...
It's one of Black Islam's last refuges, not to mention the "social justice" crowd which includes so many self loathing white expiators along with all the black America racists -- to blame EVERYTHING on white transgressions...
At all costs, we must NEVER let real truth and justice get in the way of their respective Jihads to destroy American power by undermining our morale and lying about the historical record. It is certainly unacceptable to allow little things like facts to get in the way of their hate filled and mendacious zealotry...
Little details of history are ignored by these fanatics... Details like the truth about black Africa's complete historical complicity in the slave trade, through and including TODAY... Or the truth about Muslim complicity in slavery from its inception until today just won't be mentioned. It's never right, according to them, to blame anything on brown or black people -- It's all got to be about white faults and white transgressions...
What Hugh says here is very important. We have to try to make Black people aware of the oppression and enslavement of Blacks by Muslims, especially Arabs, and particularly the genocide that has been going on in the Sudan for almost 50 years.
Of course, the Muslims were equal opportunity enslavers, taking whites, Sri Lankans, whomever they could catch and was vulnerable.
But now Black Africa is vulnerable. People have to know that these things go on.
After all, it is the future of civilization that is at stake. Is there going to be civilization.