Election of an Islamorealist president to replace today’s Islamophile offers hope in the fight against many jihads. Looking to the future, though, what will happen four or eight years from now, or ten, 20, or 30? That will be determined by many things, chief among them the Ohio State University-type jihad attacks of the future. But an important role will be played by the propaganda that’s filling young minds – today. We see the result of children “educated” via Common Core gibberish: college students who think slavery was invented in the United States in the 18th century.
Why does this happen? Check out a school textbook used widely in public and parochial schools, and it’s no shock. Pearson’s 6th grade social studies textbook myWorld History makes only this passing reference to slavery in the Muslim world:
Society in the Arab Muslim Empire
Islam stressed the equality of all believers. Still, social divisions existed in the Arab Muslim empire.
Social Division. In the early days of the Arab Muslim empire, Muslim society was split into four main groups. Arab Muslims were at the top. Next came non-Arab Muslims. The third group consisted of Jews and Christians, although some Jews and Christians rose to high positions in society. Slaves were the lowest class.
Slaves were usually non-Muslims captured in war. They did not have all the rights of free people, but Islam required that they should be treated kindly and encouraged freeing slaves. Under some Muslims rulers, many slaves served as soldiers or key government officials. Some slaves even became rulers themselves. (Pearson Education, Inc, 2016, 6th grade social studies textbook my World History, pp. 462)
There’s no need at this website to go into all the problems with such John Esposito-inspired drivel, as Robert Spencer and others such as Bat Ye’or have been doing so for years and years. The only reason I reproduce it here is to call attention to the way slavery in the Muslim world is depicted to our children: as a gentler and kinder thing than other slavery, an avenue for upward social mobility, even.
It’s only in this Dali-esque world of “better” and “worse” slaveries that Muslims and Islam could be written into American abolitionism, but it’s being done – not only in primary education, but also on college campuses and by “civil rights” groups.
It will come as no surprise that the Southern Poverty Law Center has a hand in this. Its Teaching Tolerance Project, which deceitfully claims to disseminate free “anti-bias” resources to American teachers, has this to “teach”:
The history of American Muslims goes back more than 400 years. Although some evidence suggests that there were Muslims on Columbus’ ships, the first clearly documented arrival of Muslims in America occurred in the 17th century with the arrival of slaves from Africa. Scholars estimate that anywhere from a quarter to a third of the enslaved Africans brought to the United States were Muslims. Large numbers of Moriscos (former Muslims of Spain and Portugal) also came to the Spanish colonies, including many areas of what is today the United States. Although enslaved people were denied freedom of religion, many did practice their faith in secret and pass it on to their children. There are several autobiographies of Muslim slaves that survive from this period, including some by individuals who were involved in the Abolitionist movement and were Union soldiers during the Civil War. [emphasis mine]
No reference is given for the bolded claim, of Muslims as abolitionists or Union solders, so we’re left to cast about for sources.
One likely source is the “research” of Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, who describes herself on her website as follows: “author, award-winning speaker, poetess, publisher, and Harvard-trained researcher.” She goes on to say that she is “taking the time to live in and engage the ‘real’ world before pursuing a doctorate. Until then, she will have to continue to tell people that invite her to speak to stop calling her ‘Dr. Muhammad,’ which can be quite embarrassing at times, especially when it is announced as such right before she reaches the podium.”
Her website also notes that the future-Dr. Muhammad “discovered, edited, and introduced The Autobiography of Nicholas Said: A Native of Bornou, Eastern Soudan, Central Africa, a narrative about the Muslim ex-slave, learned African, and distinguished Civil War Veteran named Nicholas Said.”
These bits of taqiyya, kitman, and tawriyah should fool no one, since the Nicholas Said who fought in the Civil War was a Christian, not a Muslim, by his own admission. He criticized Islam fiercely, and he was never even a slave in the United States, but was in fact originally made a slave by fellow Muslims in Africa. Let’s dissect.
First, Said was no Muslim when he wrote his autobiography.
“Reader, do not misunderstand me,” he wrote, “I was a Mohammedan; I am now, in belief, a Christian and a Swedenborgian…”
If he had been a Muslim, he would not have called himself Nicholas Said, the name he took when he adopted Christianity during his world travels.
“I was baptized in Riga on the 12th of November, 1855, leaving my Mohammedan name of Mohammed Ali Ben Said at the font, and bearing therefrom the Christian name of Nicholas.”
Second, although he was a Muslim by birth, he was no fan of Islam.
“I am unable to give the slightest idea as to the time when Mohammedanism was introduced into Central Africa. But be it as it may, it brought with it desolation and ruin. Anything like enterprise was rendered impossible, fanaticism and bigotry overruled everything, and the Muhammad proselytes at once arrayed themselves against every non-follower of the Prophet as his implacable enemies. Crusade after crusade was made against the pagan tribes, who, if they had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Moslems, were either massacred or reduced into slavery. Cities after cities were razed to the ground…”
Third, Said was enslaved by Muslims in Africa, not Christians in the United States. “I was in the hands of the Kindills, a slave,” he wrote, “and I could not form the slightest idea of what was going to become of me… The religion of the Kindills, like that of most nations in this section of Africa, is Mohammedan. But that does not prevent them from preying upon their brethren.”
By the time he entered the US on January 6, 1860 (a date we know from port-of-entry records), Said was in the paid employ of a man named Rochussen, according to Said’s autobiography. Paid employ, i.e., not a slave.
Or perhaps the SPLC was thinking about The Columbia Sourcebook of Muslims in the United States (2008), in which Edward E Curtis IV reproduces an excerpt of former slave Omar ibn Sayyid’s autobiography. Writing in 1831, Ibn Sayyid began his autobiography with the opening of Surat al-Mulk (Sura 67). I won’t reproduce here what ibn Sayyid wrote, but call it a faithful enough replication working from memory. Curtis breathily wonders if ibn Sayyid’s use of Sura 67 is a noble sentiment on the equality of all humans, by implication asserting equality between Muslims and kuffar: “Perhaps Omar was surreptitiously asserting, in an environment where antislavery sentiments were best expressed privately or in secret, that no human being could rightfully own another.”
All one has to do to refute Curtis’ silly notion is read Robert Spencer’s Blogging the Qur’an post on this sura, or go straight to the Muslim commentaries on the Qur’an themselves. Sura 67 has absolutely nothing to do with slavery. There are many parts of the Qur’an and Muhammad’s (alleged) life that do have something to do with slavery. Ibn Sayyid didn’t open his autobiography with any of those.
It’s high time we fight back against the fallacious “one slavery is kinder and gentler than another slavery” part of The NarrativeTM. This fallacy was used back during the debates between pro-slavery forces and abolitionists in the mid-19th century, as a rhetorical tool. Abolitionists tried to shame their fellow Christians in favor of slavery by claiming that Muslim slavers were kinder and gentler to their slaves than Southerners were to their slaves (see Timothy Marr’s The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism).
Rhetorical tools are all well and good, especially when put to a good use like abolition. But the time for rhetoric is past. It’s time for truth. It’s time that more people learn the truth about enslavement of Africans by Muslims. It’s time for truth about Africans who were castrated “level with the abdomen” so that they would be incapable of coitus (see John Alembillah Azumah’s Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, p. 159). It’s time our children learn that African slaves worked not only the plantations of the US South, but also the fields of their African Muslim masters (Azumah, p. 158). Our children should, of course, learn about our own vile history of slavery, as well as the Judeo-Christian ethics that eventually won out. But they should get a balanced view, and they should learn about present-day slavery in Muslim lands. They should learn that the only reason any Muslim government has ever outlawed enslavement of infidels – many only nominally — is pressure from the Judeo-Christian West. Let’s stop the Straight Path Railroad while it’s still idling in the station.