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Andrew Bostom writes in The American Thinker (thanks to all who sent this in) about a much-needed protest against Islamic slavery, and some of its implications:
A public protest in Washington, DC, April 5, 2005 highlighted the current (ongoing, for centuries) plight of black Mauritanians enslaved by Arab masters. The final two decades of the 20th century, moreover, witnessed a frank jihad genocide, including mass enslavement, perpetrated by the Arab Muslim Khartoum government against black Christians and animists in the Southern Sudan, and the same governments continued massacres and enslavement of Animist-Muslim blacks in Darfur. These tragic contemporary phenomena reflect the brutal living legacy of jihad slavery.Jihad Slavery
The fixed linkage between jihad- a permanent, uniquely Islamic institution- and enslavement, provides a very tenable explanation for the unparalleled scale and persistence of slavery in Muslim dominions, and societies. This general observation applies as well to “specialized” forms of slavery, including the (procurement and) employment of eunuchs, slave soldiering (especially of adolescents), other forms of child slavery, and harem slavery. Jihad slavery, in its myriad manifestations, became a powerful instrument for both expansive Islamization, and the maintenance of Muslim societies....
Contemporary manifestations of Islamic slavery—-certainly the razzias (raids) waged by Arab Muslim militias against their black Christian, animist, and animist-Muslim prey in both the southern Sudan and Darfur—and even in its own context, the persistence of slavery in Mauritania (again, black slaves, Arab masters)—-reflect the pernicious impact of jihad slavery as an enduring Muslim institution. Even Ottoman society, arguably the most progressive in Muslim history, and upheld just recently at a United Nations conference as a paragon of Islamic ecumenism, never produced a William Wilberforce, much less a broad, religiously-based slavery abolition movement spearheaded by committed Muslim ulema. Indeed, it is only modern Muslim freethinkers, anachronistically referred to as “apostates,” who have had the courage and intellectual integrity to renounce the jihad, including jihad slavery, unequivocally, and based upon an honest acknowledgement of its devastating military and social history. When the voices of these Muslim freethinkers are silenced in the Islamic world—by imprisonment and torture, or execution—the outcome is tragic, but hardly unexpected. That such insightful and courageous voices have been marginalized or ignored altogether in the West is equally tragic and reflects the distressing ignorance of Western policymaking elites.
Lots of important historical background (and links) in the original. Read it all.
Posted by Robert at April 13, 2005 7:13 AM
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A very important article.
For more on other less-known aspects of Jihad-slavery, centering on the one million white Europeans kidnapped by Muslm raiders (who left many more dead, and destroyed and looted villages up and down the coasts of Europe for centuries) see Giles Milton, "White Gold," which centers on the story of a Cornish boy, Thomas Pellow, captured in a raid on Cornwall. Though he lived in the period before Dorothy Pentreath (the last speaker of the Cornish language, who died in 1777) he apparently knew English, and left a memoir of his captivity in Morocco, along with other Christian slaves, and a report on the use of such slaves to build the palace of Moulay Hassan.
In Eastern Europe the slave trade was even more extensive. Several million Slavs are reputed to have been seized and enslaved by Muslims; most of the slim literature on Jihad-conquest and enslavement is in such Bulgarian, Rumanian, and other languages not readily translated. The word "Slav" is, of course, related to the word "slave."
Of particular note was the trade in women of the Caucasus who were seized for their beauty, and taken to be sold in the slave-markets of dar al-Islam. Circassian and Georgian women acquired a reputation for beauty, and were highly sought in Constantinople, in Cairo, in Damascus, even in Jeddah and Riyadh. One may well imagine, when one sees a European-looking Arab Muslim woman today, about what ancestor that girl may have had, seized centuries before, from a remote Circassian village, or in some Georgian gorge, a Krasavitsa, a Georgian beauty, the young daughter of a Georgian worthy, possibly snatched from her home while her father was away at some gathering, raising high a glass of primitive Kindzmarauli, and making a toast -- while back at his house, his daughter had been seized, and was being taken away forever.
Posted by: Hugh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 13, 2005 6:25 PM
Also see 21st Century Slaves in the land of Islam
I'd like to sit down with black Muslims and listen to them rationalize this. They are probably as good at rationalizing as "conservative's" are at rationalizing about Bush and the RNC.
Hugh, an easy to read new book, which documents the slavery of kuffars by Muslims, as well as the devirshme (blood levy, which actually produced the Ottomans best viziers and warriors (Yani Shari's) is
Paul Fregosi's Jihad.
The very lifeblood of the Ottoman court, it's court officials, admirals, generals and viziers were not Turks or born Muslims but young men kidnapped or taken from the Serbs, Croats, and Greeks.
I suggest that it is because they weren't taken until the age of 9. Ignatius Loyola said "Give me a lad until he is 7 and he belongs to me the rest of his life".
Evidently this explains why the Turks waited till the lads were 9, before abducting them. If they had been born and raised in Islam they would have been useless, and braindead, lifeless slaves to Allah, fit only for Jihad, and unable to think for themselves or to show initiative.
Posted by: Giaour at April 13, 2005 6:49 PM
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