• Why Jihad Watch?
  • About Robert Spencer and Staff Writers
  • FAQ
  • Books
  • Muhammad
  • Islam 101
  • Privacy

Jihad Watch

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

Hugh Fitzgerald: Snapshots From A Muslim Photographer: Islam Rejects Racism? (Part 2)

Oct 9, 2017 7:06 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

When last we looked at the plans of a convert to Islam, Carlos Khalil Guzman, to publish a book of photographs of young American Muslims, with each being asked to choose a single favorite verse from the Qur’an, or a single saying of the Prophet, and explain why he/she chose it, we were left with his remarkable assertion that “Islam is against all types of oppression…It’s against racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism.”

Sounds good. But is it true? Let’s take those claims one by one. Islam is against ‘“racism”? But what of the many Hadith that tell us otherwise, such as this: “Narrated Anas bin Malik: The Prophet said to Abu-Dhar, “Listen and obey (your chief) even if he is an Ethiopian with a head like a raisin.” And this: Ahmad ibn Abi Sulayman, the companion of Sahnun said, “Anyone who says that the Prophet was black should be killed.” (Ibn Musa al-Yahsubi, Qadi ‘Iyad, p. 375)

And there is this from the celebrated historian Al-Tabari: “Noah prayed that the hair of Ham’s descendants [Africans] would not grow beyond their ears, and that whenever his [Ham’s] descendants met Shem’s, the latter would enslave them.” (Al-Tabari, Vol. 2, p. 21, p. 21)

Why was it so terrible for the Prophet to be called “black”? Because for the Arabs, blacks were unquestionably inferior. And therefore Prophet Muhammad could not possibly have been black. Such misidentification, according to Ahmad ibn Abi Sulayman, was an insult to the Prophet, and deserved death. And blacks, as descendants of Ham, are fit to be slaves (Shem’s descendants “would enslave them”).

Many of the most famous Arab writers and Islamic scholars were certainly “racists” in the full meaning of that word.

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was, among other things, an Islamic jurist, Islamic lawyer, Islamic scholar, Islamic theologian, and hafiz (one who has memorized the entire Qur’an). He is one of the most important figures in Islamic history. Here are two (among many) remarks he makes about black Africans in his Muqaddimah:

“Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.”

“Beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.”

Ibn Sina or Avicenna (980-1037), was another celebrated figure in Islamic history: a Hafiz, an Islamic psychologist, scholar, and theologian and, by our lights, a racist: “[Blacks are] people who are by their very nature slaves.”

Ibn Qutaybah (828-889), was a renowned Islamic scholar from Kufa, Iraq: “[Blacks] are ugly and misshapen, because they live in a hot country.”

Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī (1201-1274), was a Shia Muslim Scholar and Grand Ayatollah:

“If (all types of men) are taken, from the first, and one placed after another, like the Negro from Zanzibar, in the Southern-most countries, the Negro does not differ from an animal in anything except the fact that his hands have been lifted from the earth –In no other peculiarity or property – except for what God wished. Many have seen that the ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro, and more intelligent.”

“[The Zanj (African) differ from animals only in that] their two hands are lifted above the ground,… Many have observed that the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanj.”

Al-Muqaddasi (945/946-1000) was a medieval Muslim geographer:

Of the neighbors of the Bujja, Maqdisi had heard that “there is no marriage among them; the child does not know his father, and they eat people — but God knows best. As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence.” [Kitab al-Bad’ wah-tarikh, vol.4]

Al-Masudi (896-956), was a Muslim historian and geographer, known as the “Herodotus of the Arabs”:

“Galen says that merriment dominates the black man because of his defective brain, whence also the weakness of his intelligence.” (Al-Masudi, Muruj al-dhahab)

Ibn al-Faqih was a Muslim historian and geographer:

“A man of discernment said: The people of Iraq … do not come out with something between blonde, buff and blanched coloring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the women of the Slavs and others of similar light complexion; nor are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Somali, and other blacks who resemble them. The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two.” (from his Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan, 903 AD)

These are just a small sample of the racist remarks made by outstanding figures in Islamic intellectual history. All of them have apparently escaped the notice of Carlos Khalil Guzman. And I have the feeling that even if he were made aware of them, he would prefer not to bring them to the notice of Unbelievers, lest they think ill of his beloved Islam. Perhaps I underestimate him. Perhaps — should we allow ourselves to believe? — that if he became aware of the racism that all the most important figures in Muslim Arab culture exhibited, he might even begin to question Islam.

Carlos Khalil Guzman takes no notice of the Arab Slave Trade, where Arab cruelty toward black Africans was so obviously in evidence. What does he know about this traffic that involved, over 1300 years, 100 million black Africans? That trade began earlier, and ended later (and only under Western pressure), and claimed many more victims, than the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Arab trade consisted mainly of capturing black boys in the bush and castrating them on site, then herding them to the slave markets of Islam. Only about 10% survived both the castration and the difficult journey, according to Jan Hogedoorn in his study “The Hideous Trade.” Estimates of the numbers involved are that 17 million Africans made it alive to be sold as slaves; if we take the estimate of Jan Hogedoorn that that represented 10% of those originally seized, that would mean, if only black boys were taken, 170 million black Africans were captured by African slavers. But while the boys made up the greatest number of slaves, some women and girls were also among those seized. They would not have undergone castration, and thus a greater percentage of them would have survived. It is likely, then, that fewer Africans — say 100-120 million — might have been involved in the Arab slave trade. The latest estimate of the number of slaves who died en route to the Islamic slave markets was made by John Alembellah Azumah in his 2001 book, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa; he estimates that over 80 million black people died en route to the Islamic slave markets, with about 20 million surviving, for a total of 100 million. In the Atlantic Slave Trade, the scholarly consensus is that about 12.5 million slaves were taken, and of those, 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage. In other words, the Arab Slave Trade involved at least eight times as many slaves as did the Atlantic Slave Trade. Are we to conclude that this largest and cruelest of slave trades had nothing to do with how the Arabs thought of blacks (see the many quotes above)? Nothing to do with “race”? Don’t you think that Guzman is most likely unaware of the dimensions of that Arab Slave Trade, and with the rampant anti-black racism among Muslim Arabs that both justified and promoted it?

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Follow me on Facebook

Filed Under: Hugh Fitzgerald, slavery, Taqiyya Tagged With: Carlos Khalil Guzman


Learn more about RevenueStripe...

Comments

  1. Yoda Dunbar says

    Oct 9, 2017 at 7:16 am

    Looks like all those numbnuts converts never read the ohhhh so harsh toilet paper called the quran

    • Anti jihad says

      Oct 9, 2017 at 10:10 am

      Koran = terrorism material

      • MARCO D says

        Oct 11, 2017 at 4:02 am

        OH!!!!! YOU ARE SO RIGHT- THIS GUZMAN CHUMP IS REALLY BRAIN WASHED HE NEEDS TO STICK HIS NOSE WHERE HIS MA MA MA USE TO SPANK HIM AND SMELL REALITY- HES PROBABLY SMOKING CRACK. AFTER THESE EDITORIALS HE AIN’T GONNA SELL SH T!!!!!

  2. PaulM says

    Oct 9, 2017 at 8:08 am

    This type of revelation typifies the mind set of all of the followers of this sick, evil, twisted perverse, fascist religion. They do not investigate the tenets of their “faith” nor the origin of its belief system. As long as, at first glance, it suits their immature, childish, cruel malicious mindsets, as long as it caters to their inferiority complexes, which are many, then: They take to it like flies to a pile of dung.
    I mentioned this to a couple of islamists that i know. They said, “…well, that was then, this is now, we aren’t like that any more, it just shows that we are adapting to societal norms.” Oh…really? OK, I said, “I will give you that.” So, I said, if they can change the fact (as far as you are concerned) that they all of a sudden are no longer racist, why do they not change their perverse behaviour when it involves treating women like filth, sexual molesting of babies and little girls, maiming, torturing and killing of gays and literally any human being who will not conform to their perverse fascist ideology? They responded, “Because there is nothing wrong with that.” Immediately the admonishing about casting pearls to swine came to mind.

    • Jack Diamond says

      Oct 9, 2017 at 3:11 pm

      “that was then, this is now”—

      Muhammad, the model of conduct and arbiter of what is moral, took slaves, financed his army selling slaves, allowed his followers permission to use them as sex slaves–right hand possessions, and Allah sanctifies slavery in the Qur’an. Hence, it is immutable and unarguable. The permanent existence of slavery and the rules of slavery are institutionalized in mainstream schools of shari’a. If Muslims have outlawed slavery and “adapted to societal norms” it is because they were forced to by the West, which (finally) abolished slavery. Saudi Arabia only officially ended slavery in 1962 (it continues on, of course, a rose is a rose by any other name, under different guises).

      Has jihad also been consigned to “that was then, this is now”? Because taking captives and enslaving them is a core component of jihad doctrine. Can captives of war no longer be sold into slavery? If not can they still be put to death, or made dhimmis if they don’t convert, or are those choices given to Islamic authorities all part of “that was then this is now”?

      Has “that was then, this is now” been explained to all the jihadis and shari’a-first regimes in dar al-Islam, so they understand the importance of this new revelation? Especially in Africa, where imposing shari’a laws is somehow confused with practicing slavery. Just as if slavery had divine sanction. And all that stuff (Muhammad’s stuff) about the kaffir blood and treasure being halal for Muslims to help themselves to, absent a dhimmi contract or (temporary) peace treaty, is that also “that was then” and “we are not like that anymore”?

      On what basis in Islam are you not like that anymore? And why are so many of your co-religionists still like that? These are rhetorical questions.

      • Keys says

        Oct 9, 2017 at 3:42 pm

        Well said, JD.

        I would like to add a few more rhetorical questions to your point.

        Who among you Muslims will be changing the immutable, perfect words of Allah in the Koran from what it was then and is now ?

        Who among you muslims will publically refuse to emulate Muhammad, the perfect man, the final and greatest prophet of Allah ? Who among you will criticize his past deeds and say they are now no longer to be followed ?

        Who among your scholars will go to Al-Azhar University in Cairo and teach a new reformed Islam ?

        Which one of you dare draw a likeness of Mohammad ?

    • Dacritic says

      Oct 10, 2017 at 6:44 am

      “That was then, this is now.”

      Quran 33:36 – “It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should [thereafter] have any choice about their affair. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has certainly strayed into clear error.”

  3. Anti jihad says

    Oct 9, 2017 at 8:16 am

    Today an imam tweeted mongoloid races are equal to pig like sub human called ‘Jin’

  4. Guest says

    Oct 9, 2017 at 11:41 am

    The brochure “Der Untermensch” which means “The Subhuman” was edited by Himmler and, analysts say, the blueprint that made it easier to justify mass killings of so many Jews. Same for native Americans who were regarded as “savages.” To islamists, ALL infidels are subhumans and will be worthy of slaughter when the time is ripe.

  5. eduardo odraude says

    Oct 9, 2017 at 8:12 pm

    Also, is it the case that the Arab word for “slave” — abd — is also the Arab word for “black”? That certainly is racism deeply entrenched.

  6. gravenimage says

    Oct 9, 2017 at 10:14 pm

    Hugh Fitzgerald: Snapshots From A Muslim Photographer: Islam Rejects Racism? (Part 2)
    ………………….

    This is only true insofar as Muslims are happy to slaughter people of every ethnicity…

  7. Ed says

    Oct 10, 2017 at 6:07 am

    Hugh could have also included the example of Abu Bakr’s freeing of the slave Bilal, recorded in Ibn Ishaq’s early biography of Muhammad, as an example of racism. The account reads as follows:

    One day Abu Bakr passed by as Bilal’s owner was mistreating him. Abu Bakr said to the owner, “Have you no fear of God that you treat this poor fellow like this?”

    The owner replied, “You are the one who corrupted him, so you save him.”

    “I will do so,” said Abu Bakr, “I have got a black slave who is tougher and stronger than he, who is a heathen. I will exchange him for Bilal.” The transaction was carried out, and Abu Bakr took Bilal and freed him.

    Rather than Abu Bakr setting slaves free as an example of Muhammad’s emphasis on human rights, as Tariq Ramadan would have us believe in “Footsteps of the Prophet”, I read this story as revealing that Abu Bakr was himself a slave holder and a slave trader, and that blacks and non-Muslims were of less value than Arab Muslims.

    • J D S says

      Oct 10, 2017 at 5:26 pm

      “Footsteps of the prophet”………leads to hell!!!

  8. unbeliever 1 says

    Oct 10, 2017 at 11:28 am

    Perhaps Mr.Guzman needs to be made aware that Jihad Watch readers know what he doesn’t or is trying to conceal.

FacebookYoutubeTwitterLog in

Subscribe to the Jihad Watch Daily Digest

You will receive a daily mailing containing links to the stories posted at Jihad Watch in the last 24 hours.
Enter your email address to subscribe.

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!
If you are forwarding to a friend, please remove the unsubscribe buttons first, as they my accidentally click it.

Subscribe to all Jihad Watch posts

You will receive immediate notification.
Enter your email address to subscribe.
Note: This may be up to 15 emails a day.

Donate to JihadWatch
FrontPage Mag

Search Site

Translate

The Team

Robert Spencer in FrontPageMag
Robert Spencer in PJ Media

Articles at Jihad Watch by
Robert Spencer
Hugh Fitzgerald
Christine Douglass-Williams
Andrew Harrod
Jamie Glazov
Daniel Greenfield

Contact Us

Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Archives

  • 2020
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2019
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2018
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2017
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2016
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2015
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2014
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2013
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2012
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2011
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2010
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2009
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2008
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2007
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2006
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2005
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2004
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2003
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • March

All Categories

You Might Like

Learn more about RevenueStripe...

Recent Comments

  • Westman on New study reveals that Muslim religiosity strongly linked to hatred towards the West
  • gravenimage on Erdogan: ‘Turks must defend the rights of Jerusalem, even with their lives’ for ‘the honor of the Islamic nation’
  • gravenimage on Erdogan: ‘Turks must defend the rights of Jerusalem, even with their lives’ for ‘the honor of the Islamic nation’
  • gravenimage on Erdogan: ‘Turks must defend the rights of Jerusalem, even with their lives’ for ‘the honor of the Islamic nation’
  • Walter Sieruk on Iranian Kurdistan: Muslim brothers behead their sister in honor killing over her romantic relationship

Popular Categories

dhimmitude Sharia Jihad in the U.S ISIS / Islamic State / ISIL Iran Free Speech

Robert Spencer FaceBook Page

Robert Spencer Twitter

Robert Spencer twitter

Robert Spencer YouTube Channel

Books by Robert Spencer

Jihad Watch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer in the United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free Speech Defense

Content copyright Jihad Watch, Jihad Watch claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to their respective owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

Our mailing address is: David Horowitz Freedom Center, P.O. Box 55089, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.