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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Harvard prof: Islamic State sex slavery is bad, but hey, U.S. had slavery

Aug 16, 2015 7:40 pm By Robert Spencer

noah-feldmanNoah Feldman is described as, among other things, “a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University” with “a doctorate in Islamic thought from the University of Oxford,” who “as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq…contributed to the creation of the country’s new constitution.”

Given the blood and chaos that engulfs contemporary Iraq, one might think he wouldn’t be all that proud of that particular resume item anymore, especially in light of the fact that back in 2008, he downplayed and ignored the aspects of Sharia that have made life hell for so many of the nation’s non-Muslims. In a lengthy exposition of what Sharia was all about that Feldman published in the New York Times, he never once mentioned the Sharia provisions mandating second-class status (dhimmitude) for Christians and conversion or death for non-Muslims not considered “People of the Book,” such as Yezidis.

And now in this piece, Feldman actually acknowledges that in taking sex slaves, the Islamic State is “following the practices of the era of the Prophet Muhammad” and wants “to go back in time, to the days of the earliest Muslims and the Prophet’s companions.” He does not, of course, tell his readers that sex slavery is called for in the Qur’an (in the “captives of the right hand” passages, 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, and 33:50), or that sex slavery doesn’t just go back to Muhammad’s era, but was practiced by Muhammad, who is the supreme model for emulation for Muslims (cf. Qur’an 33:21).

Then Feldman compounds that omission by likening “one interpretation of classical Islamic law” — as if there were any mainstream interpretations of Islamic law that forbid sex slavery (there aren’t) — to the U.S. Constitution, in the course of building an argument in praise of progress. This is a fundamentally dishonest comparison, because the U.S. Constitution is a human construct, whereas those who believe in Islamic law believe it not to be a human invention and thus able to be amended and revised, but divine law that is perfect and unchangeable. Mainstream Muslims would no more revise the Sharia than Jews or Christians would revise the Ten Commandments. “Progressive” Muslims in the U.S. who depart from normative Sharia interpretations don’t have any appreciable influence in the Islamic world.

Noah Feldman, what with his doctorate in Islamic thought from the University of Oxford, should be honest enough with his readers to tell them about that difference and its significance.

“Islamic State’s Medieval Morals,” by Noah Feldman, Bloomberg View, August 16, 2015:

It’s been 150 years since U.S. law allowed masters to rape enslaved girls and women. Almost all modern Muslim societies banned slavery in the last century. So why is Islamic State turning back the clock, actively embracing and promoting enslavement of Yazidi women, thereby enabling them to be raped under one interpretation of classical Islamic law?

Islamic State’s goal isn’t primarily about money or sex, but about sending the message that they are creating an Islamic utopia, following the practices of the era of the Prophet Muhammad. They want to go back in time, to the days of the earliest Muslims and the Prophet’s companions. The more medieval the practice, the more they like it.

Our horror at this self-conscious neo-medievalism should teach us a lesson about the evolution of our beliefs and what it means to be modern. Begin with the sober acknowledgment that we aren’t light years ahead of Islamic State — more like a century and a half.

Slavery in the U.S. isn’t a distant relic. We’re still dealing with its aftereffects, in the form of persistent racial inequality and long-lived symbols of the Confederacy.

And we would do well not to forget that American slavery, particularly in its last half-century before abolition, was one of the most brutal slave systems in recorded human history. In comparison, the history of Islamic slavery is relatively mild.

Slaves of African descent were not only tortured to increase cotton yields, but also, in the case of the women, subjected to systematic and lawful rape. My Harvard Law colleague Annette Gordon-Reed has shown in her work on Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson that there were occasional examples of more complicated, partially mutualistic relationships between slave women and masters. But this was, she points out, the exception rather than the rule — and it became increasingly rare as slavery in the Deep South reached its brutal climax, before abolition came by the sword.

What we in the U.S. recently sanctioned, we now find repulsive. And, of course, we’re morally correct to reject slavery and rape in the most stringent and absolute moral terms. These human actions — and institutions — are as wrong as anything can be. They and their aftereffects must be uprooted, by force when necessary.

The process that brings us to this rejection of our own morally repellent traditions makes us modern. We develop new ideas that our ancestors would hardly have recognized — and we come to believe that our old ideas were not just wrong, but horrifyingly wrong. Modern people are prepared to say that we, and our fathers, and our fathers’ fathers’, sinned. The fact that something is old and venerated isn’t a good enough reason to keep it when its immorality becomes manifest.

The modern project is to try and cleanse ourselves of bad things from the past while keeping what was good about it. This attempt to purify and improve is what defines us as modern people.

At the same time, we don’t reject everything about our past. The U.S. Constitution acknowledged and sanctioned slavery created by state laws. But modern Americans don’t reject the Constitution. Instead, we recognize that our Constitution is good in part because it has been able to evolve beyond its origins….

But part of being modern is recognizing an emerging consensus on the wrongness of past practices like slavery. Islamic State is enslaving women to trumpet to the world that it refuses to accept the idea of contemporary progress, an idea that has, in fact, been accepted by the vast majority of Muslims. The only appropriate modern response is horror — and a commitment to do something about it.

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Filed Under: academia, Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), Sharia, slavery Tagged With: Noah Feldman


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Comments

  1. Peggy says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 7:58 pm

    Nothing can justify what IS is doing. Yes, western societies were very brutal in the past but the important thing to remember is that it was in the past.
    We don’t allow slavery, beheadings etc. to happen any longer. We hunt and prosecute rapists and pedophiles.
    Nothing justifies the horror that is Islam.

    • Nimrod says

      Aug 16, 2015 at 8:38 pm

      Every time these people bring up the crusades or some other thing like this, they’re admitting that the Muslim world is living at least hundreds of years in the past.

      It’s not 150 years ago. It’s not 900 years ago. It’s not 1400 years ago. It’s NOW.

      Why aren’t more people asking why a culture hasn’t changed for 1400 years? Why is it that there’s this one culture that seems to be incapable of changing or improving? It is obvious that, aside from a few people like Robert Spencer, the public is not getting honest answers to these questions.

      • voegelinian says

        Aug 16, 2015 at 10:31 pm

        Tu Quoque is a double-edge blade — it gives a smooth shave to the Majority of Moderate Muslims while cutting off its own nose to spite its face.

    • kay says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 10:23 am

      Re: “Nothing can justify what IS is doing.”

      You’re right. And people need the gory details. I summarized some Ramadan 2015 stats from The Religion of Peace.
      And posted them in some places, e.g. for a Southern Christian fellow on an Islamic youtube video. He wants “peace and prosperity” with Islam. So I hit him with this, and also Raymond Ibrahim’s new book.

      From The Religion of Peace
      June 25th thru July 25th 2015 : Recent Islamic fascist terrorist attacks in Syria and Iraq.
      Well over a thousand civilian casualties murdered in cold blood by Sunni / Salafist psychopaths under the “lawful” rule of Islamic State / Islamic Sharia legal code.

      Summary of terrorist attacks recent Sunni / Salafist / Islamic State actions in Iraq and Syria.

      Slaughters of families in their own homes.
      Mothers burned alive with their children.
      Assassinations of Christians, journalists, a doctor and a rival imam.
      Bomb blasts at markets, a power plant and a swimming pool.
      Murders at a school, a restaurant and a bus stop.
      Murder of construction workers by slitting their throats.
      Murder of dissidents.
      Crucifixions for not obeying the Ramadan Islamic daytime fast.
      Islamic State women enforcers beating a woman to death for lifting her veil to read a grocery item label.

      ————-

      But tell me this: Since the IS Islamists are busy wiping out the Christians in Iraq, why am I having to explain this to Christians? Shouldn’t they already know about 1400 years of Islamic slaughter? Plus Boko Haram stealing a couple hundred little Christian girls in Africa? And abduction of over one million from Europe by the Barbary Pirates?
      Why don’t the Christians know that it took 400 years to kick the Muslims out of Spain?

      I think Americans and Christians are pretty much historically illiterate. And that means I gotta go push more Andrew Bostom and Dr. Bill Warner. I really should get a percentage at this point, but at least I generate good karma for helping to save western civilization a little bit.

  2. Janwaar Bibi says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:21 pm

    “American slavery, particularly in its last half-century before abolition, was one of the most brutal slave systems in recorded human history. In comparison, the history of Islamic slavery is relatively mild.”

    Noah Feldman is lying.
    In Islamic societies, male slaves were castrated brutally before being sold. Since Islam does not permit body modification, the castrations were usually performed by non-Muslims like Jews or Christians on the unfortunate male slaves captured in jihad before they were shipped off to Muslim lands. It is estimated that 6 out of every 10 captives died during this process. Marco Polo, who visited India, wrote that the province of Bengal was the biggest supplier of castrated slaves to the Islamic world.
    http://atlantablackstar.com/20…
    https://books.google.com/books…

    As far as female slaves were concerned, rape and sexual slavery were the norm, not the exception. The Koran and the actions of Muhammad permit Muslims to rape female slaves at will, as the Islamic state is doing.

    These bestial beliefs that rape and slavery are pleasing to the Abrahamic god go back to the Old Testament which is filled with exhortations to the ancient Hebrews to enslave, kill and rape other tribes in the Middle East. It is time for Jews and Muslims to stop covering for each other’s evil beliefs and to reform their “holy” books. In the Internet age, telling us fairy-tales will not work anymore.

    • cjk says

      Aug 16, 2015 at 10:28 pm

      You’re as big a liar as Feldman when you say the God of Abraham has ever ehorted anyone to evil. You also show a gigantic ignorance of the subject when you compare the God of the Jews with Satan (Allah).

      • Westman says

        Aug 17, 2015 at 2:38 am

        As an Agnostic I find both arguments on shaky ground. According to the Book Of Job, God bets Satan that Job will remain steadfast through all tribulation. Satan is given power to do anything to Job and his possessions except killing him. This includes the murder of job’s family and servants directly and indirectly as found in Job 1, starting with verse 13.

        In civil law, when someone allows another to commit a crime we find them guilty as an accessory. But let’s allow the Bible to speak:

        Job 42:11 ” Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him…”

        Either the Lord is willing to allow, “..all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him..”, and make a bet with Satan, or the book of Job is fiction.

        Frankly I don’t have dog in this race. I’m simply pointing out that one must be careful with black/white thinking about what God will or will not allow.

        • cjk says

          Aug 17, 2015 at 5:45 pm

          It is the height of ridiculousness to compare Gods interaction with Satan to his laws concerning mankind. DAMN!

      • Janwaar Bibi says

        Aug 17, 2015 at 10:04 am

        “You’re as big a liar as Feldman when you say the God of Abraham has ever exhorted anyone to evil.”

        Leviticus 25:44-46: “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. 45Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. 46You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.”

        Slavery of pagans was permitted by this “merciful” God of Abraham. If this isn’t evil, I don’t know what is.

        • cjk says

          Aug 17, 2015 at 5:49 pm

          Slavery is and has always been a fact of mankind’s existence. Didn’t you know that? Did you know that over half the inhabitants of the Roman Empire were slaves? Don’t you understand that humanity is evil and God has to take that into consideration when dealing with men?
          Do you still classify Mohammedanism as an ‘Abrahamic’ religion? Finally are you a fool?

    • Kathy Brown, Esq. says

      Aug 16, 2015 at 11:18 pm

      ‘Jews and Muslims…covering for each other’? Seriously?

      Show me one-just one-example of a muslim ‘covering’ for a Jew! You’re so anxious to ‘cover’ for islam that you’re trying to equate it to a REAL religion, Judaism!

      I don’t know where you usually market your produce but we’re a rather savvy lot here. I don’t think you’ll get anyone to buy your rotten, fly-swarmed, stinking fruit in this locale.

      • Janwaar Bibi says

        Aug 17, 2015 at 10:17 am

        “Show me one-just one-example of a muslim ‘covering’ for a Jew! You’re so anxious to ‘cover’ for islam that you’re trying to equate it to a REAL religion, Judaism!”

        In Canada like in other places, Jewish and Muslim organizations are working together to introduce speech codes to curtail freedom of speech.

        http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/01/uk-jews-muslims-team-hate-150127091540305.html

        I am an atheist, my ancestors were Hindus and I detest Islam. It is however a fact that most of the terrible practices in Islam like stoning women for adultery and murdering people for made up crimes like apostasy and blasphemy have their origins in the Old Testament. Denying this or hinting that I am anti-Semitic as you did in your post does not change facts and reduces your credibility.

    • sencit says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 2:27 am

      Muslims do NOT worship the God of Abraham, but worship Allah the moon god!

    • harbidoll says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 6:07 am

      they did! A Jewish rabbi said “there is now no longer slave nor free, both are equal in My eyes”! & His followers believed & obeyed. The Torah, within the first 3 books of Bible said one was forbidden to catch & return a runaway slave to his/her master! Does that sound man made?

  3. cs says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:29 pm

    Yes, 150 years ago, shut up moron.

  4. epistemology says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:31 pm

    He’s beating around the bush. He should admit that slavery is is an innate part of Islam. Slavery in Islam is relatively mild, you bet. Ask all those guys who were castrated to become eunuch harem guardians, if they think that’s mild. Most of them didn’t survive. He can put his doctorate somewhere … Only rubbish what he says

  5. Wellington says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:36 pm

    Every corner of the world had slavery, but the West was the first (actually to date the only civilization) to truly realize its great wrong and thus proceeded to end it. It also has apologized again and again for engaging in this heinous institution.

    By contrast, the Islamic world engaged in slavery, and particularly black African slavery, far longer than did the West (Portugal began the Western African slave trade in the 15th century and the Islamic world began it in the 7th) and has NEVER apologized for this. In fact, the Islamic world has tried to perpetuate black African slavery even into our own time, let alone never apologizing for it, yet this overeducated doofus from Harvard (they’re everywhere in academia today) thinks he is actually making a valid point by engaging in the moronic moral equivalency thinking which he has.

    Stunning but true. And dispositive of “higher” (I would now call it “lower”) education in America today.

    • Nimrod says

      Aug 16, 2015 at 8:41 pm

      Higher education + neo-Lysinkoism = lower education

    • mortimer says

      Aug 16, 2015 at 11:11 pm

      Good point from Wellington: Islam CANNOT apologize for slavery, since it would be a repudiation of Allah’s words and laws and a repudiation of Mohammed’s practices.

    • Mirren10 says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 10:10 am

      Wellington says;

      ”Every corner of the world had slavery, but the West was the first (actually to date the only civilization) to truly realize its great wrong and thus proceeded to end it.”

      Very, very true, Wellington. And there was never a mohammedan Wilberforce.

      People like this fool, who are so eager to flagellate themselves over long past history, consistently fail to bring up these points. I wonder why ? Well, no, I don’t really. It’s all part of patting themselves on the back for being so special as to be able to say, ”well, we did it too”, and demonstrate their pc/mc credentials. Twats.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 6:14 pm

      All very true, Wellington. There has never been a Muslim William Wilberforce or a Muslim Abraham Lincoln, nor could there be.

  6. Jay Boo says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:39 pm

    Supposed Christian Obama even suggested (yes correctly) that some people tried to use the Bible to rationalize slavery and let it hang at that as if to imply Christianity is culpable by association.

    Yet Obama bends over backwards to kiss the butt of Islamic ideology while covering up the obvious direct link to its slave trader Muhammad.

  7. mike says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:41 pm

    Another egg head liberal from Harvard heard from.

  8. Jay Boo says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:45 pm

    Few women in Muhammad’s time had wealth.
    Yet pimp daddy Muhammad’s first wife was already a wealthy woman before marrying caravan raider MO.
    She supplied the caravans.

    Duh!

  9. Angemon says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:46 pm

    Our horror at this self-conscious neo-medievalism should teach us a lesson about the evolution of our beliefs and what it means to be modern. Begin with the sober acknowledgment that we aren’t light years ahead of Islamic State — more like a century and a half.

    Slavery in the U.S. isn’t a distant relic. We’re still dealing with its aftereffects, in the form of persistent racial inequality and long-lived symbols of the Confederacy.

    Oh, for f***’s sake, peddling false equivalences? Look, it doesn’t really matter if the US abolished slavery yesterday or two millenniums ago. Today, slavery is illegal in the US and it isn’t in the islamic state, period. That’s the comparison. As for “persistent racial inequality“, you can thank leftists and race-baiters – how many black people in the US today feel that abiding by the law and educating themselves is “selling out” or “acing white”? Who insists in telling African-Americans that that the White Man is actively interfering with their daily life, bringing them down, and, as such they’re entitled to “reparations”? Who sanctifies thugs and demonizes the police that dispatches them? Who? Who? As fr the symbols of Confederacy, take it up to the Democrat party – they’re the ones who fought to let people have the right to own other people.

    And we would do well not to forget that American slavery, particularly in its last half-century before abolition, was one of the most brutal slave systems in recorded human history. In comparison, the history of Islamic slavery is relatively mild.

    This is demonstrably false, and Noah Feldman is either incredibly ignorant or an unrepentant liar. Islamic slavery dwarfs American slavery in duration, scope and treatment of slaves. Suffice to say that for an American, a slave was an expensive investment, and it was in their best interest not to let the slave die while for an Arab muslim slaves were cheap and plentiful, so no harm came from slaughtering one or one thousand. And there’s a reason to why this “relatively mild” slavery didn’t produce a diaspora in Arab muslim countries: African slaves were castrated because Arabs believed Africans couldn’t control their sexual urges (and I suspect the sham will take the chance to blame Jews and Christians for it).

    Islamic State is enslaving women to trumpet to the world that it refuses to accept the idea of contemporary progress

    No, the islamic state is enslaving women because the taking of slaves is enshrined by allah – it’s a religious imperative straight from the mouth of their god (or angel, or prophet, who allegedly got it from an angel who in turn got it from their god).

    an idea that has, in fact, been accepted by the vast majority of Muslims.

    Not according to polls…

  10. VRWC member77 says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:57 pm

    Well most everyone has pointed out what I immediately thought of this hubristic boob.

    A doctorate in “Islamic thought”???? Can someone also get a doctorate in Islamic burka critiquing at harvard?

    –“we recognize that our Constitution is good in part because it has been able to evolve beyond its origins”–

    No, mr. MORONIC doctor of “Islamic thought.” The Constitution does not “evolve beyond its origins.” There’s something called the Amendment process with which changes to the Constitution can be made. Ignorant left wing punks like this need to be called on this idea of constitutional evolution.

  11. Peggy says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 8:59 pm

    I wonder if people like this guy actually devalue degrees from Harvard and Oxford?
    If they have these sort of people lecturing there how educated are graduates then?

    • Kathy Brown, Esq. says

      Aug 16, 2015 at 11:25 pm

      Take a look at Noah. That’s what the ‘Ivy League’ produces.

      A self-hating Jew so ignorant he doesn’t know his is the first throat to be cut when his ‘islamic thinkers’ get their way with the West.

      He probably wouldn’t even defend his own wife and children. Presuming, of course, that he’s not married to some other boy out of the Left Fringe; one just as revisionist and depraved as himself.

  12. vlparker says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 9:13 pm

    What a disingenuous crock of historical revisionist baloney. The US was born into a world in which slavery already existed. The Founders didn’t invent slavery and many of them abhorred it. Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush were both founding members of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society. Even George Washington manumitted his slaves upon his death.

    If the anti-slavery Founders had insisted that slavery be abolished or they wouldn’t support the Constitution there wouldn’t be a United States. So they compromised (with the slave-owning future leaders of the Democrat party). They put into the Constitution a clause that stated that the importation of slaves could be banned starting in 1808. Thomas Jefferson signed the law on March 2nd of 1807 that would ban slave importation starting Jan 1, 1808.

    The especially brutal last 50 years of slavery was brought to you courtesy of the Democrat Party. Even 100 years after the abolition of slavery the Democrat party was still fighting for segregation and racial apartheid. And I would bet 100 dollars to a doughnut that the professor has been a Democrat all his life.

    • Westman says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 7:58 am

      Exactly right vlparker,

      The United States could not be born without compromise on the question of slavery. It is sad that it took so long to abolish it. The US is now the strongest advocate of freedom and a strong critic of Islamic-doctrine-justified physical slavery and a significantly weaker critic of Islam’s mental slavery.

  13. Voytek Gagalka says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 9:26 pm

    Yet another Ivory Tower moron disguised as a “professor”! My dog has more intelligence and sensitivity than this poodle of the left!

  14. Linde Barrera says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 9:51 pm

    I just found this author, Noah Feldman, on Facebook. It mentions Harvard, Oxford, Islamic thought and Bloomberg View, and the Facebook photo is similar to the one shown here. I will see if I can send him an Instant Message on his FB page, giving my not very favorable opinion of his article on sex slavery by IS.

  15. Thomas says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 10:04 pm

    This moron is the reason why we are going to lose and Islam will take over the world. Say something against Islam and you will be arrested or worse.

    • Jay Boo says

      Aug 16, 2015 at 10:12 pm

      There you go again Thomas.
      Islam is do-do
      Muhammad’s do-do will not take over the world.
      Muslims turn on each other and fight over Islam like flies swarming over a fresh pile of pig dung.

      • cjk says

        Aug 16, 2015 at 10:33 pm

        They are most definitely going to win unless some unforeseen major spiritual awakening takes place in the West.

        • kay says

          Aug 17, 2015 at 3:54 am

          Re: “They are most definitely going to win unless some unforeseen major spiritual awakening takes place in the West.”

          This is basically true. At current rates of social change, the Islamists will win a much bigger chunk of the planet within a hundred years unless we start waking up and work together in a very different integrative “alternative framework”.

          That is actually doable. All the components of a radically different approach to life and society are there. I am not proselytizing for one specific approach. Just saying that we already have the toolkit.
          The toolkit has to be the biggest possible toolkit. John Locke. John Stuart Mill. Lots of Voltaire and satire. Philosophy. Ethics. Critical thinking and dialectics. International human rights law. Laicite. Real feminism. Negotiation theory. Massive social media outreach.
          In my own case I add bushido and Mahayana dharma. And lots of quotes. And chocolate.

          People have to go with sustainable hope. There is no reason to think that Europe is lost. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a cowardly failure. But Europe has to wake up, and soon. And we have to fight above all for free speech and equality under the law, and reject all forms of theocratic thinking and practice. Theocracy is the enemy.

          I work on the spiritual angle. There are powerful spiritual tools that can be brought to bear. But unless people have the commitment, the discipline, the tools, and the willingness to work together to confront evil, these tools will not work well enough to win. What we need is a big win for everybody.

          “The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth… In a world struggling in violence and dishonesty, the further development of non-violence – not only as a philosophy but as a way of life, as a force on the streets, in the market squares . . . – becomes one of the most urgent priorities.”
          — Petra Kelly, Green Movement organizer

          “The future has several names. For the weak it is the impossible. For the fainthearted it is the unknown. For the thoughtful and valiant it is the ideal.”
          — Victor Hugo

        • cjk says

          Aug 17, 2015 at 6:15 pm

          What is evil? What is good? What is right? What is wrong? These terms mean nothing ultimately if there is no God to tell us. Things will inevitably corrode down to what we currently have and worse to come. As long as the West believed in the God of the Bible it prospered and was invincible. We are now seeing the results of God removing his favor from us. Even an evil god will defeat no God.

        • kay says

          Aug 17, 2015 at 8:05 pm

          Re: “As long as the West believed in the God of the Bible it prospered and was invincible.”

          No. The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Christians could not get along.
          Rome failed to save the Byzantines. And maybe Byzantium failed to co-operate with the crusades against Islam. The Catholics and Orthodox Christians excommunicated each other.
          Also, there was a vicious bandit “Christian” crusade against Byzantium.
          Plus the Thirty Years War, the Hundred Years War, and general Protestant versus Catholic mayhem.
          You are completely clueless about European history. the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Reformation and so forth.
          Protestantism served as a strength and culture for bourgeois capitalism and trade capitalism against royalism and Catholicism.
          It wasn’t faith in God that did anything. What worked was the breakdown of Catholicism in Northern Europe and the development of commerce, banking, shipping, the printing press, and scientific research.
          The Germans, the English, and the Dutch held off the Vatican forces thru economic power. I guess you never heard of them. They broke free of the Catholic Church. Despite the Spanish attacks on the North.
          Anyway, Europe was not invincible. The Ottoman battle for Vienna came within HOURS or even minutes of complete victory over Christian Europe.
          The Ottoman Turks almost ate up all of Eastern Europe and they could have broken the back of Europe by taking Vienna.

          Furthermore, in early World War II Britain came within weeks or even days of falling to Hitler’s air attacks. The only thing that saved Britain was massive American resupply. Britain was already completely lost. Put your faith in the Americans military machine, not God. Pope Pius XI was not one of the good guys. Catholic / royalist / fascist Spain under Franco was neutral in WW II and they got help from the Nazi bomber squadrons. The Spanish Republicans, like the First French Republic, fought the Catholic Church aligned Fascist loyalists.
          Big chunks of Europe were destroyed in WW I and WW II. Apparently you didn’t get the memo. The only reason western Europe pulled out was the American Marshall Plan. Thus the Americans saved Europe twice. God and Christian faith had nothing to do with it. It was FDR and Winston Churchill plus massive blood, sweat and tears.
          There will be more blood sweat and tears for Europe. Looks like the Christians are not in the coming fight for Europe. Christianity is fading from parts of Europe, and western Europe is really looking post-Christian. Pope Francis and the Catholic Church are zero help. I really think that outside Italy and Poland, the Catholic Church is becoming irrelevant to Europe.
          You are also unfamiliar with the history of North America. People like Franklin and Jefferson set the tone for America. They were social pragmatists and not Christian per se, but freethinking Deists. And 21st century USAmerica is going post-Christian. How did you not understand anything at all about the West? Your religious faith blinds you to political and social realities. Most religion is like that.

        • ECAW says

          Aug 18, 2015 at 2:55 am

          “What is evil? What is good? What is right? What is wrong? These terms mean nothing ultimately if there is no God to tell us.”

          I usually skip over the God botherers but occasionally the arrant nonsense is so arrant it calls for a response.

          There have been plenty of gods to tell us about right and wrong and they all come up with different versions – Allah…vile, Yahweh/God…a mixed bag, the Aztec god… also vile, the Sikh version…pretty benign – so they don’t help much.

          Ethics are a uniquely human enterprise and it is insulting to humans to project the issue onto your various gods who just issue orders to save you the struggle of working it out for yourselves.

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 6:17 pm

      Thomas, there are those of us here who plan to stand up and resist. You do staunch Anti-Jihadists like Robert Spencer no credit here by constantly counseling surrender.

  16. Jay Boo says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 10:18 pm

    Feldman steps into a pile of Islam and then invites himself into our living rooms where he hopes to discretely wipe his shoes on our carpet when we are not looking.

    • cjk says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 6:19 pm

      To us who know, he’s wiping em on the sofa.

  17. Karen says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 10:26 pm

    This wasn’t the worst article I’ve ever read, but as is often done when discussing Islamism, the writer can’t resist wagging a chiding finger at the American reader; “Remember, you’re no better than they are!!”. Standard fare, yawn. Are there any people on Earth with a clean enough pedigree to criticize ISIS, radical Islam, etc.?

    I’ve never understood the comparison of American slavery to the ‘regular’ kind, as if there was a good, benign kind of slavery elsewhere. If the ISIS slave owners of today are emulating the good old days, then they are showing that Islamic slavery is and was as evil as all the rest.

    BTW, 150 years *is* a long time; since slavery ended in the U.S., there have been 6 generations born, 28 presidents have some and gone, with numerous social and cultural revolutions in between. We do not have 19th century minds, and no one in the West is looking to bring back that evil institution.

  18. mortimer says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 10:38 pm

    Disagreeing with Dr. Feldman’s ‘moral equivalency’ theory: Arab slavery was worse in cruelty and more extensive by a factor of ten.

    -between A.D. 650 and 1900, 10 to 20 million people were enslaved by Arab slave traders
    -over 80 million Black people more died en route, and many others from the result of war and abandonment, particularly children and old people left behind
    -the Arab slave trade typically dealt in the sale of castrated male slaves. Black boys between the age of 8 and 12 had their scrotums and penises completely amputated to prevent them from reproducing. About six of every 10 boys bled to death during the procedure
    -the caliphate in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th Century had 7,000 black eunuchs and 4,000 white eunuchs in his palace
    -the word for slave in Arabic – Abid – became a colloquialism for African
    -eastern Arab slave trade dealt primarily with African women, maintaining a ratio of two women for each man
    -the abuse of African women by Arabs has gone on for 1400 years
    -the existing Arab slave trade ushered in the European slave trade and benefited from it
    -propagators of Islam often revealed a cautious attitude toward proselytizing Africans, since converting enslaved Africans to Muslim would grant them more rights and reduce the potential reservoir of people to enslave
    -the Arab slave trade was the longest yet least discussed of the two major slave trades
    -one of the biggest differences between the Arab slave trade and European slaving was that the Arabs drew slaves from all racial groups. Islamic slavery is based primarily on religion

    source: http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/06/02/10-facts-about-the-arab-enslavement-of-black-people-not-taught-in-schools/

    • Kilfincelt says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 12:19 am

      Well done! Of course, this Harvard idiot doesn’t bother to mention the number of people from other non-Islamic countries that ended up in slavery in the Muslim world, particularly the million Europeans, especially Italians, that were captured and either ransomed or sold into slavery. Our first war as a nation was against the Barbary pirates who were attacking our ships and either ransoming those on board or enslaving them.

      In any case I have said for a long time that Harvard is highly overrated as an institution of higher learning. This idiot just proves my point.

  19. mortimer says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 10:54 pm

    Robert Spencer raises a superb MORAL point about Islamic slavery: “Mainstream Muslims would no more revise the Sharia than Jews or Christians would revise the Ten Commandments.”

    In other words, Muslims may not ‘modernize’ or reject slavery as ‘immoral’.

    A HUGE amount of text in Sharia law manuals is dedicated to slavery. These are not ‘man-made’ laws to a Muslim, but DIVINE laws. Slavery is the absolute commandment of Allah. Muslims are supposed to take slaves to punish the kafirs and as a reward for Muslims in this world. Each Muslim receives a minimum of 70,000 slaves in the Muslim paradise.

    At the moment, Islamic slavery is not permanently abrogated, but it is merely not practiced in most Islamic countries.

  20. Roy Mears says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 11:06 pm

    There is little comparison between what happen in the U.S. and what is happening with Islam. The slavery was ended over a hundred years ago in the U.S.. Islam has had it for 1400 years and there is no place for this sickness in the 21st century. The fact it is still condoned by this cult is a good indication of just how sick the cult really is.

  21. DjDingo says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 11:19 pm

    What kind of study, memorial, flag, or word can be put out there to commemorate all the Africans who sold their fellow Africans into worldwide slavery? I’m sure that many latter-day American Africans must be so proud of that achievement. What other continent and people so proudly and ruthlessly sold literally millions of their fellow citizens and neighbors to live and work as slaves? I wonder how much money the African Africans made selling their fellow Africans like cattle and chattel! I don’t think that many African Africans regretted what they did or gave their lives fighting for the freedom of their fellow designated slaves, but I could be wrong! Selling fellow human beings and fellow citizens into forced slavery has to be the worst atrocity ever done in the history of the world! Add that to the destruction and separation of families and it becomes simply sub-human! Amazing, only the buyers are condemned and ostracized while the sellers skate! Must be a black and white issue!

    • ECAW says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 4:04 am

      True. When slavery was about to be banned in the British Empire the West African kings sent a delegation to parliament to argue against it in order to protect their revenue.

  22. celticwarriorcanada says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 11:50 pm

    It is a HISTORICAL FACT that Christians were the FIRST ABOLITIONISTS . John Brown was a Calvinist Christian and a Fanatical Abolitionist for which he was eventually executed . Then there was Wilberforce in Britain and John Newton . Of course the Leftists and the Secular Humanists never mention this ! Nor do they mention THE HISTORICAL FACT that ROBERT E. LEE the leader of the CONFEDERATES, who was also a CHRISTIAN : Never OWNED SLAVES ! Further proof that Christianity ( unlike islam ) EMANCIPATES rather than ENSLAVES, (2Corinth 3:17.) ” and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Liberty .” Since the seventh Century till this present moment, the islamic poison has enslaved the minds ,hearts and lives of literally thousands of people . Especially women and children !

    • mortimer says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 12:36 am

      The rediscovery of the Golden Rule by Jesuits and Quakers in the 17th and 18th centuries led to the abolitionist movement.

      • celticwarriorcanada says

        Aug 17, 2015 at 11:16 am

        The Jesuits were not welcome in 17 and 18 century Protestant England ! And certainly had no political say whatsoever.The Quakers were abolitionists , but again , no political clout ! It was William Wilberforce and other Evangelical Anglicans in the British Parliament who were the people who actually and legally outlawed Slavery in the British Commonwealth, Both the Quakers and the Jesuits learned the so called Golden Rule from the Bible . Can you give me the names of first Jesuits and Quakers involved in the abolitionist movement in the 17 and 18 century ? The point is pal , ISLAM ENSLAVES CHRISTIANITY EMANCIPATES. Perhaps you don’t consider Jesuits and Quakers as being Christians !

  23. Dan says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 12:32 am

    Hey Prof.

    When the U.S. had slavery back then?

    Pretty much the whole dang world was either using slaves, or running them too.

    I’m not American so I can say this to the rest of the world: Get off the U.S.’s back already, Jezuz, you all like effing broken records.

    Every country from Mexico on south is a dictatorship, and ALL you either had/ran slaves, or pretty much wiped out the indigenous populations..

    Pretty much every single solitary country colonized by the Spanish is a third world corrupt cess pool.

    Every country under communism is a third world corrupt cess pool.

    And pretty much every country under Islamic rule is a sandy cess pool

    Africans sold their own people into slavery and the reason their countries are all largely crap holes is because their cultures are so corrupt who ever claws his way to the top, treats the rest of his/her people like garbage, and fatten their own wallets off the backs of their own people.

    Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa are nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to how Africans want to rule their countries.

    Most Asian countries, at best, are benevolent dictatorships. Mao and Pol Pot just had more “ambition” than everybody else.

    You all bitch, whine and moan when you make your own problems, and then beg for the States to help.

    And in cases when the States does come in to help, and tries to maintain law and order, everybody bitches, whines and moans that the U.S. is trying to take over.

    And now the States has its own problems because, as always goes in every single one of those other socialist/communist systems, the honest hard workers have gotten sick and tired of paying for the slackers, and have simply given up.

    Slackers CAN’T survive without a ton of honest Joe and Jane Averages trying to make an honest living.

    I’ve had it with Americans being the bad guys.

    Cause when it comes right down to it, the vast majority of countries in the world have done far, far worse, and none have done better.

    Not even my own country.

    Just shut up already.

    And stop asking for handouts.

    None of you have done anything but pad your accounts.

    • terry says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 4:52 am

      Thank you sir.

    • Kilfincelt says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 7:40 am

      A heart felt thank you.

  24. somehistory says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 1:39 am

    Well let’s just see: Two wrongs make a right. No, that’s wrong Especially when one is of long ago and the other is current and growing steadily.

    When I read this, many things came to mind. One is the thing that it is just plain stupid, much like the couple discussing the ruined car engine because it was driven without oil and when confronted with the fact the engine will not run again, the guilty spouse challenges the *wrong* with, “Well, you put the tissue roll on backward.”

    He is old enough to know better than this, but evidently too stupid….after his study of islam….to care. Studies in *islamic thought*…have left him with no rational, logical, thought processes as in islam, there is no logic.

  25. kay says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 4:10 am

    Professor Noah Feldman is completely clueless and/ or completely dishonest. Slavery on all levels is INTEGRAL to Islam. So are fascism and mind control. That’s all proven in the Bostom books, but let’s discuss. Slavery Is Not Just Physical Slavery. That is the key point! For Islam, slavery is on ALL LEVELS. That’s how the whole system stays together.

    In Islam, mind control is a given. The whole culture of Islam and Sharia is based on mind control as Sharia crushes and disallows the basic freedoms of thought, speech and assembly.
    What are the actual mechanisms of mind control? Again these are obvious: chanting and prayer, every day, several times a day, typically in a group context. These work by massive repetition and emotional identification and social reinforcement, combined with a fierce exclusion of other social influences and ways of thinking.

    There is a real reason why the Afghan Taliban shot up schools and little schoolgirls. Literacy and the development of thinking skills promote an independent perspective, self respect, access to broader and different perspectives. These are taken for granted in much of the West, but they are critically important.
    The whole “theology” of Islam is based on mind control. In Islam one does not talk to Christians about Christianity, nor are Christian books allowed for personal study, even tho Islam claims to be a continuation of the Abrahamic tradition.
    Fundamental to Islamic psychology, society and law is the denial of the individual as a self-standing autonomous agent. On the most basic level, Muslims do NOT have rights and Muslims are NOT individuals. Muslims are those who SUBMIT, and the whole system is based on OBLIGATIONS WITHOUT RIGHTS. Islam has always been and will always remain a doctrine of slavery. See
    http://answering-islam.org/Silas/slavery.htm

    And this system must be UNTHINKINGLY accepted IN ENTIRETY, and it CANNOT CHANGE.
    Altho cult thinking and absolute loyalty are found in different totalitarian social systems, such as Imperial Japan, Maoist China, Scientology and so forth, only Islam has effectively sustained a fascist culture of total mind control from cradle to grave over many generations.
    This system of faith and social relations works on all levels, is completely dualistic, and all-encompassing. It governs all aspects of life and is all-encompassing. It governs not only society and economics but also all relations with Jews and Christians and non-Muslim nations. It is essentially a doctrine of the Total Society and a doctrine of Total War against all ( non-Muslim ) societies, against women, against culture and learning, and philosophy, against all real civilization.

    A primary and explicit mechanism of Islamic mind control – and social slavery- is the stipulated death sentence for apostates from Islam, which can be executed by ANYONE, and the death sentence for social opponents or even basic critics of Islam, near or far.
    Islam claims authority over ALL other authorities and all societies as a final revelation from a divinity who owns all of humanity by fiat. Thus Europeans and Americans are not accorded basic rights of free speech ( Garland Texas and Paris France, Denmark, Sweden etc. ) because opposition to this divine law is a great sin by anyone anywhere. That intimidation is a very real kind of attempted enslavement.
    Shutting down free speech must always be a primary goal of this fascist theology. So is the incremental development of Sharia law courts in Islamic cultural colonies anywhere and everywhere in the West. Sharia courts set up and reinforce the all-encompassing Sharia thinking and culture among host countries as a personal and subcultural social psychology in an open society. That is social enslavement.

    Even for intelligent and emotionally strong people it can take years to become free of Islamic conditioning. The conditioning is simultaneously emotional and psychological and social and religious. This becomes internalized enslavement. It is all encompassing, and by saturation it becomes integral to the emotional makeup of a person and their only worldview.

    Islam is irrational, anti-social and violent on all levels and in all directions by definition.
    As philosopher A.C. Grayling said in May 2013:
    “Defenders of religion like to portray faith as a source of peace and fellowship and condemn those who commit atrocities in its name as untrue believers. But the daily news media show how far this is from being invariably true. In fact the relentlessly bad news about religion-prompted violence in the world shows that the more zealous people are in their religious beliefs the more likely they are to behave in non-rational and anti-social violent ways.”

    Approximately half of all Muslims worldwide are either sociopathic ( pro-Sharia ) or completely psychopathic ( pro-Sharia and pro-jihad ). This is literally mass insanity and globalized criminal insanity. Therefore the narratives and principles of Sharia and jihad must be broken. People must be freed from the Total Society slavery and psychological slavery of Islamic thinking because humanity must be freed from fascism. The only exact title of Islam as a totalistic culture is therefore Islamofascism.
    Go Team Civilization! Beat Team Islam!
    Liberte’. Egalite’. Fraternite’. Laicite’. Authenticite’. Solidarite’.

  26. Mike Grivard says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 4:14 am

    In 1860 not more than 8% of families owned slaves. This includes black families too.
    http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html

    Also, NOT more than 5% of white people owned slaves. There were white slaves too.

    Do some reasearch and you will find out that most slave owners had less than 5 slaves; they worked along side their slaves in field or shop; they slept in the same house; they ate together at the same table; they thought them a trade and after some years of service were freed and went on to start their own business. There were black slave magnets ( owned 50 or more slaves ). There were successful black businessmen working in the south ( selling to whites ).

    Slavery as depicted in “Roots” was more the exception than the norm. It was bad.

    Slavery is wrong, and thanks to those right-wing conservative Christians, (as we would call them today ) slavery no longer legally exists in America. Do some research and see for yourself who opposed slavery and what they were willing to do.

    Ever wonder where the white slave traders bought the slaves in Africa? From Muslim slave traders – the whites didn’t go inland to capture slaves, they went to slave markets on the coast.
    Some estimates suggest that more white, European slaves were taken by Muslims then then number of black slaves brought to the Americas. (Battle of Algeirs) Muslims also bought black slaves, the men were castrated and the women were used as sex slaves, but not allowed to have children; here too some estimates suggest the Muslim world bought more black slaves then the number brought to the Americas. The Muslims had a fine tuned slave trade economy long before America was dealing in African slaves.

  27. ECAW says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 4:25 am

    Even now, after exposure to so much self blaming moral equivalency, this litany of weaselly half truths and evasions stands out.

    Slavery is utterly, inescapably at the heart of Islam because Allah repeatedly refers to believers as his slaves. Submitting to Allah is to become his slave. It’s particularly strange that Black Americans become Muslims – unless there’s a hankering for the good ol’ times.

  28. Ed says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 4:30 am

    Someone in academia being an underhanded apologist with digs at the West?! Whatever next?!
    The only surprise was he didn’t find a way to somehow blame Israel.

  29. duh_swami says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 6:41 am

    A doctorate in Islamic thought…now that’s special…People who post here are specialists in Islamic thought but get no doctorate for it….I think a lot about Islamic thought myself, but only get a headache doing it. The study of Islamic thought is like pounding round pegs into square holes.

    The reasons why anyone would fight for the Confederacy, varied…but few of the grunts on the field were fighting to preserve slavery. Some thought it as an adventure, some thought it was for states rights, and some saw it as fighting for freedom after the north invaded the south, and some were conscripted.
    Very few of the actual combatants owned slaves. There were a lot of deserters, some for ideological reasons, and many because they got word that their families back on the farm, were being impoverished by frequent visits by various soldier who confiscated food, food animals, and anything else they
    needed, leaving the wife and kids with next to nothing…The ’20 slave rule’ that exempted rich slave owners with more than 20 slaves, from military duty, was also not appreciated by the rank and file who were now in the position of fighting to keep rich guys rich and safe. There are a million stories about the Civil War, some of them deserve a movie, but most have been lost to history…

  30. ich says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 6:44 am

    He thinks hes a rock star.

    I am betting he feels he now has a friend in Islam.

    They will all welcome him with open arms.

    IDIOT

  31. Jack HOLAN says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 7:03 am

    It sounds very much like Dr Feldman and Barack Hussein Obama Esq have colluded to get that all importAnt message out to the public. Christians Jews and all other Non-Believers don’t det on your high horse.it wasn’t that long ago that you kept slaves Jim Crow and so on. I do have an answer for but I’m skipping civil and academic one for just Get the the Hell Out of Our Country!

  32. Dwight says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 7:21 am

    The issue of sex slavery in Islam should not be rererred to as “giing back in time” but should relay the fact that this practise has never been abrogated in Islam. The slaves taken in Bosnia have been traded at slave markets in the Middle East.
    Trying to implicate the slave trading of the U.S. Is a very weak justification and a distraction from the current problem. It is the slaves of today who need to be rescued, the slaves of the past are dead as are their slave owners.
    I have no guilt and do not accept the implication this professor offers.

  33. kay says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 7:30 am

    Islam’s disturbing legacy of slavery
    http://freethoughtnation.com/islams-disturbing-legacy-of-slavery/

    We are often told that Islam is “peaceful,” but few know about the long practice of slavery within Islam, which continues to this day.

    “Slavery is a part of Islam… Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam… [Those who argue that slavery has been abolished are] ignorant, not scholars. They are merely writers. Whoever says such things is an infidel.”
    — Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan, member of Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body (2003)

    “Slavery still exists in a host of majority-Muslim countries (especially Sudan and Mauritania, also Saudi Arabia and Pakistan)….”
    –Dr. Daniel Pipes, New York Post (July 30, 2002)

    “Conservative estimates place the number of Africans enslaved by Arab Muslims over the past 1,400 years at between 11 and 18 million, while others say that, when those killed in the raids or who died in transit to the Arab slave markets – some 80% – are factored in, the toll is at least 112 million. Hundreds of thousands of white Europeans also ended up in Islamic slave markets, the women being a particular favorite of Arab slavers.”

    “…But chattel slavery was a well-established African as well as European institution, and its victims were not exclusively people of color…the Barbary states of North Africa used Islamic pirates, or corsairs, to conduct slave raids, which fed the flourishing slave markets of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Many of the enslaved were white Europeans or North Americans captured at sea.”
    — White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and Islam’s One Million White Slaves.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_views_on_slavery
    Arab slave trade
    “For a long time, until the early 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. Between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.[101]”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

    “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.”
    — David Livingstone

    Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before ever reaching the slave markets of Zanzibar.[34][35][73][74] 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.[75]

    http://streamafrica.com/news/veiled-genocide-reexamination-past-arab-african-interactions/

    “While the Transatlantic trade lasted four centuries, the Oriental & Trans-Saharan Trades (the main route for slaves into the Middle East) lasted 14 centuries, and according to estimates, as many as 25 million Africans were ferried into the Middle East, predominantly from the East African coast and the Red Sea. There were also about 1.25 million Europeans, snatched from as far away as Iceland and Britain, but often France and Spain, who found themselves heading to the Middle East for a lifetime of servitude.

    “…In the Middle East, citizens of African descent are virtually invisible, and with the exception of Basra, you will be hard pressed to find any such people in significant numbers…So why are there very few citizens of African descent in the Middle East, even though more slaves were brought in the Middle East than taken to the Americas? It emerges that these slaves were often castrated, and that was not a very sanitary process. So a good deal died, and those that survived were mostly eunuchs, so that was the end of the line as far as offspring were concerned.”

  34. Januk36 says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 7:48 am

    Need I state the obvious that people are confusing social issues with race ?

    Are the media reporting similar social problems for instance in Brazil or Cuba ?

    How do the descendents of subsaharan slaves live in the islamic world today compared to those in the US ?

    Is there an subsaharan african country offering a better living standard to their people that have never been enslaved ? My bad – I forgot colonization….we’ll need to check pre-colonisation records for the chieftans expenses on schooling, road-building, health-service.

  35. Morton Doodslag says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 8:33 am

    This man is an arch criminal that belongs in jail. He drafted the constitutions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, enshrining genocidal Sharia law into each document, thus guaranteeing that all our suffering, all our sacrifices, all our loot in waging those two wars would be ultimately squandered.

    Noah Feldman has the blood of every service man and woman who served and suffered in the Iraq/Afghanistan theaters…

    He is an arch criminal.

    • kay says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 10:09 am

      Re: “He [ Feldman ] drafted the constitutions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, enshrining genocidal Sharia law into each document, thus guaranteeing that all our suffering, all our sacrifices, all our loot in waging those two wars would be ultimately squandered.”

      I really want to see the references for that. Sharia law is really complicated and ugly with all the hadiths and so forth. It’s a complete mess. AND it does not work for Yazidis and Christians. So that is act of extreme cruelty for those non-Muslim minorities.

      On a side note, the fact that Iraq now has Sharia as part of their constitution means that officially every Iraqi citizen is an enemy of the kaffir countries Australia, the United States, Britain, and France. Oh yeah, and India too. To Sharia fanatics we in the West are “the House of War” and their main job is to destroy our resistance to Sharia.

      Which is really funny, since Iraq and Syria are destroyed by Islamic war while the western countries are peaceful thru having only small amounts of psychopathic Islam.

      • gravenimage says

        Aug 17, 2015 at 6:06 pm

        “He [ Feldman ] drafted the constitutions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, enshrining genocidal Sharia law into each document…”

        I really want to see the references for that…
        ………………………

        Noah Feldman did help draft the Iraqi constitution:

        “In 2003 he served as senior constitutional advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and subsequently advised members of the Iraqi Governing Council on the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law or interim constitution”

        http://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10257/Feldman

        And he has lauded the enshrinement of Shari’ah law in the Iraqi and Afghan constitutions:

        “The new constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan, despite being drafted in the shadow of U.S. occupation, both make Islam the official religion and shari‘a a source of law; both also bar laws that contradict certain aspects of Islamic law. These are democratic and Islamic constitutions. And whatever their many flaws, they are the two constitutions most recently drafted under relatively free conditions in the Muslim world.”

        http://harpers.org/blog/2008/04/six-questions-for-noah-feldman-author-of-the-fall-and-rise-of-the-islamic-state/

        • kay says

          Aug 17, 2015 at 6:54 pm

          Re: “Noah Feldman did help draft the Iraqi constitution…”

          TX TX

        • gravenimage says

          Aug 19, 2015 at 1:59 am

          You’re welcome, Kay. Glad that was useful.

  36. gordon miller says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 9:47 am

    I don’t care how many degrees this Feldman fellow has, he is not giving us an honest view of history and reality. The fact that he is from Harvard should put up the caution flag.
    He is dead wrong in his view of slavery as it is practiced today by Islamists. I don’t need to reiterate the retort that Spencer made in the article. He is spot on.

    • David says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 10:40 am

      We will see how spot on he is when he a muslim beheads you or your loved one. Spot on your neck!

  37. Baucent says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 10:12 am

    “In comparison, the history of Islamic slavery is relatively mild.”

    That is a disgraceful statement from someone who knows better.

    He fails to mention that the African slave trade was largely run in Africa by muslim Arabs, who supplied the slaves to those ships to the Americas.

    For hundreds of years muslim Barbary pirates terrorized and enslaved the European crew and passengers of ships they intercepted near the North African coast.

    But Feldman obviously has a fascination with Islam (why else study it?) and if not already a muslim is definately a sympathizer and apologist.

  38. David says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 10:36 am

    Hey Noah,

    Here it is short and sweet for you. The world and America is about to be taken over by a bunch of muslims and you take that god damn postion? Do you realize what your life will be like under muslim law.
    Get real man. Your a absoulute idiot of the Harvard staff. I am more qualified for your postion based on your dumb way of thinking. Hope they behead you in the first wave. You deserve it.

  39. Enfant Terrible says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 11:54 am

    “The only appropriate modern response is horror — and a commitment to do something about it.” – So, when do Turkey and other primarily Sunni Muslim nations officially express this horror and commit to do something about it Feldman ?…you presumptuous, condescending, self-indulgent, moralizing elitist a**hole?

  40. DjBombo says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 1:15 pm

    Slavery was totally a noble cause. The Africans got to sell their excess human baggage for a profit and the other countries created a lot of jobs that needed doing. And now, many of the slave descendants are better off than those descendants that stayed and now live in Africa. They number at least one billionaire, multi-millionaires, pop stars, movie stars, singers, politicians, sports idols, and a half black pseudo president!

  41. Guy Macher says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 1:57 pm

    How does such a sloppy “thinker’ get job at Harvard? Talk about grade inflation for women and Negroes! Now, it’s happening with libtarded males, white ones at that!

    • shams78 says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 2:53 pm

      Jews do not consider themselves “white” as in having a common identity with Christian Europeans. They might consider themselves “white” if you extend the definition to the entire caucasian race (including Arabs). Many Arabs are lighter skinned than some Europeans.

  42. EYESOPEN says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 2:55 pm

    Yep, sure enough. This idiot is a “Rhodes Scholar”. Why am I not surprised?

  43. Uncle Vladdi says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 3:34 pm

    Criminal’s favorite critical thinking logical fallacy, the Argumentum Tu Quoque in action:

    “ISLAM ISN’T AN EVIL CRIME BECAUSE WE (i.e: you) ALL DO IT, (or did it) TOO! WHEE!!!”

    IT’S THE EXACT SAME ANSWER TO ISLAMIC THREATS FROM LIBERALS, EVERY TIME!

    ;-(

  44. Franz says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 5:38 pm

    Send him to a Yezide village and lett him tell his nonsense there!

  45. gravenimage says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 5:54 pm

    Harvard prof: Islamic State sex slavery is bad, but hey, U.S. had slavery
    ………………………

    Yeah–we also *ended* slavery, at considerable cost in blood and treasure.

    Does the witless Noah Feldman believe the Islamic State is poised to abolish slavery anytime soon?

    The truth is that the Muslim world only abolished slavery–to the extent that it did–due to pressure from the civilized West.

  46. Carlos Danger says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 6:08 pm

    When an Islamic Utopia is established in North Amerika, perhaps Herr Doktor Noah Feldman will be appointed a KAPO.

    the Crocodile will devour him last of all.

  47. gravenimage says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 6:39 pm

    Here’s dhimmi Noah Feldman shilling for brutal Islamic law:

    “Why Shariah?”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16Shariah-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    He chalks up civilized Westerners horror of barbaric Shari’ah to this:

    “No legal system has ever had worse press.”

    Of course! Certainly, it can’t have anything to do with Shari’ah’s institutional oppression of women and Infidels, its amputation of the limbs of petty thieves, beheading, and stoning of women, could it? sarc/off

    He uses more false Tu Quoque in the NYT’s article, as well.

    Shockingly, he compares stoning women to death for adultery favorably with harsh sentences for drug crimes. Utter madness.

    Also, his claim that no one ever criticizes Western justice systems must be laughable to anyone who has so much as glanced at the Op-Ed page of any newspaper.

    • kay says

      Aug 24, 2015 at 5:56 pm

      Thanks Graven for the NYT reference. This is CRUCIALLY important. 🙂
      You’re right. He IS a total shill.

  48. abad says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 8:28 pm

    You have to wonder why Feldman (I do not know what his religious status is; he could be secular Jewish for all I know) would be defending Islam, a religion that is hell-bent on eliminating Jewish people wherever Muslims are near them, such as France.

    FWIW my college poli-sci professor was a secular Jew and also pro-Islamic state.

    What in hell goes through their heads that they defend their enemies so much?????

    • st patrick says

      Aug 17, 2015 at 9:55 pm

      Fear..Chickenshit.
      Coward..

  49. Cartimandua says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 9:55 pm

    Despite all his education he’s quite a dummy, isn’t he? Or is that dhimmi?

  50. ninetyninepct says

    Aug 17, 2015 at 10:27 pm

    The U.S. had slavery – correct. His parents also had access to birth control but failed to use it.

  51. Paulla says

    Aug 18, 2015 at 2:41 am

    Because the U.S. slaveholders kept and mistreated slaves does that mean we should not try to stop and punish Muslim slave holders today? We should not get on our high horse? Well, then— what should we do? Ignore it?

    • karen says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 5:23 pm

      Yes, remember, Mr. Obama told us to get off that high horse! (Crusaders, 700 years ago…..)

      Ignore it? Well, we can send our money to Washington, but we should never say anything, cause that would be all arrogant an’ stuff.

      Paula, you might enjoy this video of David Wood and CL Edwards….good stuff concerning your very question!

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