Arab Slave Drivers and Their Black African Slaves – Modern Day Discrimination and a Brief History Lesson – Def-Con News

The University of Michigan Black Student Union (BSU) has withdrawn from the anti-Zionist student group on campus—the Tahrir Coalition—referring to what it described as “pervasive” anti-black discrimination fueled by its Arab leadership.

This of frontpagemag.com.

Rather than delve into the mistreatment of blacks by Arabs today at the University of Michigan, let’s go back to a brief history of the Arab trade in black African slaves. This part of world history is probably not taught to many of us and was far more extensive – in time, in space, and in the number of victims – than the transatlantic slave trade that receives almost all of the world’s attention.

More than 28 million Africans have been enslaved in the Muslim world over the past fourteen centuries. Yes, much has been written about the transatlantic slave trade, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the Islamic slave trade in the Sahara, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

The Arab slave trade in East and Central Africa began in the late seventh century. We know this because there are records of the earliest slave revolts by Africans in what is now southern Iraq, dating from 689–90 and 694, both quickly suppressed.

The Zanj Rebellion of 869-883—“Zanj” was the Arab word for black Africans—in southern Iraq was a much larger uprising. It lasted fourteen years and the Arabs struggled to suppress it. The slaves who revolted had been used for backbreaking agricultural labor, forced to remove nitrous topsoil to create arable land, and brutally treated by their Arab masters. The Zanj Rebellion, the circumstances that brought it about, and the murderous methods used by the Arabs to suppress the revolt of the black slaves, deserve to be known far and wide.

The Arab trade in African slaves began much earlier than the Atlantic trade—the seventh rather than the fifteenth century—and lasted longer. There were no Arab abolitionists. Muhammad himself bought, sold, and owned slaves, and Muhammad remains “the Perfect Man” and “Model of Behavior.”

Only Western pressure put an end to Arab slavery. It was the Royal Navy that patrolled the coasts of Arabia and intercepted dhows carrying slaves. However, slavery continued to exist in several Muslim Arab countries well into the twentieth century.

Although officially banned in Mauritania in 1961 and again in 1981, it still exists, with 600,000 black slaves held by Arabs. In Saudi Arabia, as many as 500,000 black Africans, or 20% of the Saudi population, were still held as slaves in the 1950s. Slavery was not officially abolished in Saudi Arabia and Yemen until 1962, and in Oman as late as 1970, and only under immense Western pressure. In Sudan (prior to the creation of South Sudan in 2005), northern Arabs continued to enslave southern blacks during the Second Sudanese Civil War, enslaving as many as 200,000 black Africans.

And today, despite the formal abolition of slavery, Arabs still enslave blacks in three states in northwest Africa: 200,000 in Mali, 600,000 in Mauritania, according to a 2017 BBC estimate, and 43,000 in Niger. Yet the West remains indifferent to this ongoing horror; the UN says nothing about it; black Americans simply know nothing about it.

Historians have estimated how many blacks were captured by Arab slave traders in Africa, and how many of them—women, children, and castrated boys—made it out alive to the Islamic slave markets during those 1,300 years. It turns out that about 28 million black Africans—a consensus estimate—were either taken in slave trunks across the Sahara to the slave markets of North Africa and Egypt, or by dhow across the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean—to the slave markets of Arabia and the Gulf.

The Arab slave trade was particularly gruesome, as it consisted largely of castrating black boys in the bushes, with the most primitive implements, to provide eunuchs for the Muslim harems.

Many boys died during the operation; many others died in the days that followed from infections or during the long journey over land or sea to the Islamic slave markets.

The historian Jan Hogedoorn, in his study of what he called The horrible trade, estimated:

The mortality rate among the castrated slaves was 80-90%, meaning that only 10-20% of the originally captured African boys reached the slave market alive.

While the consensus estimate of 28 million black Africans reaching the Islamic slave markets may seem high at first glance, a study conducted over the course of 1,300 years (650-1950 (AD) this amounts to an average of just over 20,000 black slaves brought to the slave markets from Central and East Africa each year, which is entirely plausible.

Ten facts on the Arab slave trade:

1. The number of enslaved people

Although it is a subject of fierce debate, there are historians who believe that over 20 million enslaved Africans alone were brought to the Islamic world via the trans-Saharan route.

Dr. John Alembellah Azumah estimates in his 2001 book The Legacy of Arab-Islamic Culture in Africa:

More than 80 million black people died along this route.

2. Arab slave owners practiced genetic warfare

The Arab slave trade typically involved the sale of castrated male slaves. Black boys between the ages of 8 and 12 had their scrotums and penises completely amputated to prevent them from reproducing. According to some sources, about six out of ten boys bled to death during the procedure, but the high price that eunuchs brought to the market made the practice profitable.

Ronald Segal in his 2002 book The Black Slaves of Islam: The Other Black Diasporawrote:

The Caliphate in Baghdad had 7,000 black eunuchs and 4,000 white eunuchs in its palace at the beginning of the 10th century.

3. Arab slave trade inspired Arab racism against blacks

Arab is not a racial classification; an Arab is almost like an American in that people who are classified as Arab today can be white, Asian, or even Arabized African. In the beginning, there was a certain amount of mutual respect between the blacks and the lighter-skinned Arabs. However, as Islam and the demand for enslaved blacks grew, so did racism toward Africans.

As the colloquial association with black skin and slave began to emerge, racist attitudes toward blacks began to manifest themselves in Arabic language and literature. The word for slave—to stay-became a colloquial language for Afrikaans. Other words, such as haratineexpress the social inferiority of Africans.

4. Arab slave traders were targeted for the rape of women

The Eastern Arab slave trade dealt primarily in African women, with a ratio of two women for every man. These women and young girls were used by Arabs and other Asians as concubines and servants.

A Muslim slave owner had the legal right to the sexual pleasure of his female slaves. African women filled the harems of wealthy Arabs and bore them many children.

This abuse of African women continued for almost 1,200 years.

5. Arab slave trade heralded the European slave trade

The Arab slave trade in the 19th century was economically linked to the European trade in Africans. New opportunities for exploitation were provided by the transatlantic slave trade and this sent Arab slave traders into overdrive.

The Portuguese (on the Swahili coast) profited directly from this and were responsible for a flourishing of Arab trade. Meanwhile, on the West African coast, the Portuguese found (Muslim) traders who had entrenched themselves along the African coast.

6. The Arab slave trade led to one of the largest slave revolts in history

The Zanj Rebellion (see above).

(M)ore thousands of East African Zanj people were brought to southern Iraq to drain the salt marshes in the east. (Hard) slave labor, minimal subsistence, and brutal treatment led to a revolt that grew into an uprising involving over 500,000 enslaved and free men imported from across the (Muslim) empire.

7. Arab slave owners avoided teaching Islam to blacks to justify their slavery

According to some historians, Islam forbade the enslavement of free-born (Muslim) people. It was therefore not in the interest of Arab slave traders to convert enslaved Africans to the faith.

However, if an African converted to Islam, he was not guaranteed freedom, nor did it grant freedom to their children. Only children of slaves or non-(Muslim) prisoners of war could become slaves, never a freeborn (Muslim).

8. The time period

The Arab slave trade was the longer but less discussed of the two great slave trades. It began in the seventh century when Arabs and other Asians poured into North and East Africa under the banner of Islam. The Arab trade in blacks in Southeast Africa predates the European transatlantic slave trade by 700 years.

9. The Arab slave trade provided more upward mobility than the European slave trade

Upward mobility within the ranks of Arab slaves was not uncommon. Tariq ibn Ziyad, who conquered Spain and after whom Gibraltar is named, was a slave of the Emir of Ifriqiya, Musa bin Nusayr, who granted him his freedom and appointed him a general in his army.

Son of an enslaved Ethiopian mother, Antarah ibn Shaddād, also known as Antar, was an Afro-Arab man who was originally born into slavery. He eventually became a renowned poet and warrior. Extremely brave in battle, historians have called him the “father of knighthood… (and) chivalry” and “the king of heroes.”

This form of upward mobility did not occur in the European slavery system.

10. Arab Slave Trade Not Limited to Africa or Skin Color

One of the major differences between the Arab slave trade and the European slave trade was that the Arabs attracted slaves from all racial groups. During the eighth and ninth centuries of the Fatimid Caliphate, most slaves were Europeans (called Saqaliba), captured along the European coasts and in wars.

In addition to people of African descent, people from a variety of regions were forced into Arab slavery, including people from the Mediterranean, Persians, people from the mountainous regions of the Caucasus (such as Georgia, Armenia and Circassia) and parts of Central Asia and Scandinavia, English, Dutch and Irish, and Berbers from North Africa.

Final thoughts: History lesson aside, a black student union and a anti-Zionist student group—the Tahrir coalition—on campus at the University of Michigan is not surprising, but nevertheless unpleasant to say the least.

The U of M has long been known as a place of great learning – call me old-fashioned – but a Black Student Union and an Arab-led anti-Zionist coalition cannot be tolerated.

The reclamation of our schools must go hand in hand with the reclamation of our constitutional republic.