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Mauritania court upholds conviction of anti-slavery activists

Aug 21, 2015 10:27 pm By Robert Spencer

Biram Ould Dah Ould AbeidHow inconvenient. Just as Islamic apologists are assuring us that slavery as practiced by the Islamic State has nothing — nothing! — to do with Islam, Muslim Mauritania strikes a blow against…anti-slavery activists. Has Mauritania been taken over by “Islamophobes” bent on making Islam look bad by linking it with slavery? Or does such a link actually exist, despite the best efforts of the apologists to obscure it?

“Mauritania court upholds conviction against anti-slavery activists,” AFP, August 21, 2015

A Mauritanian court on Thursday upheld a two-year prison sentence against three anti-slavery activists who were arrested during a protest against bondage in the west African nation.

Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, runner-up in the 2014 presidential elections and head of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), was jailed in January alongside two other activists.

In an open letter published after the ruling he vowed to continue his fight against slavery and appealed for the United States and European Union to put pressure on Mauritania to act against the practice, including stopping financial aid.

“From my dark cell I urge them to mobilize all legal and diplomatic means, including the suspension of all financial aid, to push the government to take real action to eradicate slavery as well as the racism and exclusion underlying it,” he wrote.

The three activists were arrested in November 2014 while protesting slavery and were found guilty of “belonging to an illegal organization, leading an unauthorized rally, and violence against the police.”

The two others convicted were Bilal Ramdane, an assistant to Ould Abeid, and Djiby Sow, a civic and cultural rights campaigner.

Sow has since been released on parole due to health problems.

“This is a step backwards for freedom in our country, an example of judicial authorities submissiveness to executive orders,” said defense lawyer Brahim Ould Ebetty, who boycotted the hearing along with his clients.

He slammed a “parody of justice” just two weeks after Mauritania adopted a hardened law to crack down on slavery which activists say is widespread in the West African nation despite being criminalized in 2007.

The new law declared slavery a “crime against humanity,” criminalizes a raft of new forms of slavery such as forced marriage, and doubles maximum prison terms to 20 years.

“The intensification of the crackdown on anti-slavery activists in Mauritania has no legal justification in a country which ironically just this month adopted a law indicating slavery is a crime against humanity,” said Alioune Tine, Amnesty International’s director in west Africa….

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Filed Under: Mauritania, Sharia, slavery Tagged With: Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid


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Comments

  1. gravenimage says

    Aug 21, 2015 at 11:15 pm

    Mauritania court upholds conviction of anti-slavery activists
    ……………………..

    And why not? Muslim Mauritania was the last country in the world to abolish slavery–in *1981*. This abolition has never existed except on paper. The ban has never been enforced. An estimated 17% of the population is slaves. Mauritania has the highest population of slaves in the world.

    The government has denied that slavery exists at all in Mauritania. Nothing but Taqiyya…

  2. Saleem Smith says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 2:00 am

    Both slavery and sex slavery are sanctioned by Islamic theology.

    To bring an end to Islamic slavery, Muslim would have to disobey the Quran and acknowledge that it contains the evil doctrines of slavery and rape. But Muslims kill other Muslims for criticizing Islam so that is not going to happen anytime soon.

    We ex-Muslims living with Islam’s formal and informal death penalty for apostasy know that Mohammedanism is complete fraud that must be abandoned and can never be successfully reformed. Muhammad was the most evil human being to have ever supposedly lived.

    >>>>>

    THE QURANIC SANCTION OF SLAVERY

    The institution of slavery in Islam was formalized in the following Quranic verse, in which Allah distinguishes free human beings or masters, who exercise justice and righteousness, from the dumb, useless and burdensome ones, the slaves:

    Quran 16:76: Allah sets forth (another) Parable of two men: one of them dumb, with no power of any sort; a wearisome burden is he to his master; whichever way he directs him, he brings no good: is such a man equal with one who commands Justice, and is on a Straight Way?

    Allah warns the believers against taking the slaves as equal partner in status and in sharing their wealth, lest they have to fear them as anyone else:

    Quran 30:28 …do ye have partners among those whom your right hands possess (i.e., slaves, captives) to share as equals in the wealth We have bestowed on you? Do ye fear them as ye fear each other?

    Allah recognizes some human beings, namely the masters, as more blessed by Himself than the less favored slaves as part of His divine plan. He warns Muslims against sharing His gifts to them equally with their slaves. Those who would take slaves as equal, warns Allah, would deny Him:

    Quran 16:71 Allah has bestowed His gifts of sustenance more freely on some of you than on others: those more favoured are not going to throw back their gifts to those whom their right hands possess, so as to be equal in that respect. Will they then deny the favours of Allah?

    Allah does not only sanction the institution of slavery, He also gave divine blessing to masters (Muslim men only can own slaves) to have sex with the female slaves:

    Quran 70:29–30 And those who guard their private parts, Except in the case of their wives or those whom their right hands possess—for these surely are not to be blamed

    Quran 23:5–6 And who guard their private parts, except before their mates or those whom their right hands possess, for they surely are not blameable

    Therefore, if there are women amongst the captives or slaves, Muslims are divinely sanctioned to have sex with them as they do with their wives. This verdict of Allah founded the institution of sex-slavery or slave-concubinage in Islam, which was widespread in the pre-colonial Muslim world and continued well into the mid-twentieth century. As far as legal marriage is concerned, there is a limitation of four wives for a man at one time [Quran 4:3], but no such limitation on the number of sex-slaves.

    Allah also gave a divine sanction to Muslims for acquiring female slaves for sexual engagement by waging wars against the infidels:

    Quran 33:50 O Prophet! surely We have made lawful to you your wives whom you have given their dowries, and those whom your right hand possesses out of those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of war…

    Muslims can engage in sex with the captured slave women even if they are married, but not with the married free Muslim women:

    Quran 4:24 Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess…

    There are other verses in the Quran that talks approvingly of slaves and capturing them in wars. Thus, according to the divine commands of the Islamic God as enshrined in the holy Quran, Muslims are allowed to keep slaves. They can amass slaves by waging wars, have sex with the female slaves, and of course, use them as they wish. For Muslims, having sex with female slaves is as legal as having sex with their married wives. Slavery appears to be one of the most desired divine privileges in Islam, since Allah took the pain of reminding Muslims about this divine right time and again in so many verses.

    http://www.faithfreedom.org/

    • Enfant Terrible says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 6:31 am

      Good post -thanks

    • Dr. Divinity says

      Aug 23, 2015 at 8:07 pm

      SLAVRERY?????…..The greatest slavery that comes to mind is the slavery of the Muslim peoples to Islam.what a waste of humanity

  3. Kepha says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 7:30 am

    You wrote:

    “Allah recognizes some human beings, namely the masters, as more blessed by Himself than the less favored slaves as part of His divine plan. He warns Muslims against sharing His gifts to them equally with their slaves. Those who would take slaves as equal, warns Allah, would deny Him::”

    “The LORD maketh poor, He bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among the princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory…” (I Sam.2:7-8–Hannah, mother of Samuel, on finally getting a child).

    “For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever; not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord?” (Philemon 15-16—Paul, interceding for the apparently escaped slave Onesimus, to Onesimus’ master Philemon).

    Commentary: Yes, the Bible, including the New Testament, sanctions slavery (at least in its ancient Mediterranean form); even if there is no racial dimension to it. But note what Paul says about the proper relationship between master and slave, especially if both confess Christ.

    Further, a generation later, Ignatius of Antioch records that Onesimus became bishop of Ephesus.

    There is also the adage from both Deuteronomy and the Gospel that the poor we always have with us, and thus to be generous to a brother in need.

    In any case, the Old and New Testaments see mobility and the possibility that a change in condition may occur as part of God’s workings among his creatures.

    I will also note that Christian abolitionism arose in protest against the permanent enslavement of Africans. Its literature goes on and on about the differences between the slavery as practiced in the Anglosphere during the 18th and 19th centuries and its practice both among the Hebrews and in Graeco-Roman culture.

  4. epistemology says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 8:18 am

    Muzzie logic, slavery is legal it’s sanctioned by the unholy Koran, so anti-slavery activists must belong to an illegal organisation. Makes perfect sense.

  5. mortimer says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 9:15 am

    “And whatever of blessings (sex slaves) and good things (slaves) you have, it is from Allah” 16:53

    In 1981, Mauritania became the last country in the world to abolish slavery, when a presidential decree abolished the practice. However, no criminal laws were passed to enforce the ban. In 2007, “under international pressure”, the government passed a law allowing slaveholders to be prosecuted. Despite this, the number of slaves in the country has been estimated by the organization SOS Slavery to be up to 600,000 (or 17% of the population), and by Global Slavery Index to be at least 140,000 (or 4% of the population).[2] Sociologist Kevin Bales and Global Slavery Index estimate that Mauritania has the highest proportion of people in slavery of any country in the world. While other countries in the region have people in “slavelike conditions”, the situation in Mauritania is “unusually severe”, according to African history professor Bruce Hall.

    The government of Mauritania (which is dominated by Beydanes) denies that slavery exists in the country. According to Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane, a political adviser to the African Union and a co-founder of the abolitionist group SOS Slaves, the Mauritanian government’s “line” on slavery is: “Slavery no longer exists, and talk of it suggests manipulation by the West, an act of enmity toward Islam, or influence from the worldwide Jewish conspiracy.”

    • gravenimage says

      Aug 22, 2015 at 2:11 pm

      I’d missed that last little bit, Mortimer–blaming any mention of slavery in Mauritania on the Jooooooos.

  6. Angemon says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 3:58 pm

    In an open letter published after the ruling he vowed to continue his fight against slavery and appealed for the United States and European Union to put pressure on Mauritania to act against the practice, including stopping financial aid.

    Not just Mauritania, but any and all muslim countries.

  7. mike says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 4:33 pm

    they have 0,5 million slaves-but only BLACKS!!!they have no arab or berber slaves…

  8. Jay Boo says

    Aug 22, 2015 at 6:51 pm

    Strange that I did not hear about this on BBC World or on Al Jazeera sponsored NPR (National Propaganda Radio).

    I did hear instead story in great detail about a Christian preacher in Kenya charged with corruption. This was right after BBC did a sob story report about why Europe should yet do even more to help Muslims emigrate into the EU.
    Always the same pattern at BBC Muslims are good Christians are bad meme.
    The puppets of Muslims unknowingly reveal what Muslims truly are up to.

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