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Slavery in Zanzibar. A glass lantern slide Inscribed:
'An Arab master's punishment for a slight offence. The log weighed 32 pounds, and the boy could only move by carrying it on
his head.' Unknown photographer, c. 1890. © National Maritime Museum, London
 
The Forgotten Holocaust:
The Eastern Slave Trade
The Arab Slave Trade is the longest yet least discussed of the two major trades. It begins in the 7th century
AD as Arabs and other Asians poured into Northern and Eastern Africa under the banner of Islam, either converting or subjugating
the African societies they came upon. In the beginning there was some level of mutual respect between the Blacks and the more
Caucasian-Semitic Arabs. Mihdja, a Black man, is said to be the first Muslim killed in battle while another, Bilal, is regarded
as a "third of the faith." Dhu'l-Nun al-Misri, born in Upper Egypt near Sudan, is regarded as the founder of Sufism. Today
Sufism's greatest stronghold is in Southern Egypt and Sudan. Islamic prosperity was based upon Black as well as Arabic genius.
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But as Islamic prosperity grew, so did an air of hostility towards many Blacks, Muslims or otherwise. Some Arabs
complained about having to work next to Blacks in high positions. After the Prophet's death, even the descendants of Bilal
received negative treatment. Arabic writings became laced with anti-Black sentiment. This reaction of Blacks at the time to
this can be seen in the writings of a contemporary 9th Century Black scholar in residence at Baghdad by the name of Abu 'Uthman'
Amr Ibn Bahr Al-Jahiz. Al-Jahiz, to confront a growing tide of anti-black sentiment in the Muslim world, published a highly
controversial work at the time titled, Kitab Fakhr As-Sudan 'Ala Al-Bidan, "The Book of Glory of the Blacks over the
Whites." Al-Jahiz in his work contended that even the Prophet Mohammad's father may have been of African lineage. |
These new attitudes towards Blacks by Arabs marked the beginning of African enslavement. Though not based solely
on race, the Arab Slave Trade did focus heavily upon Africans whom Arabs now saw as inferior to themselves. At first these
Arabs raided African villages themselves seeking humans for sale. This not being always successful, they soon enlisted the
aid of fellow African Muslims or recently converted Blacks. Wrapping themselves within Islam, these converts rationalized
the slavery of their non Muslim brethren as the selling of "unbelievers." At other times the Arabs would demand tribute in
the form of human bodies from Africans weary of the fight against Arabic-Islamic incursions. |
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The Arabs took advantage of regional wars in Africa to buy captives from the victor. They also
used the old divide-and-conquer technique. They worked one group against the other and took or killed the best and strongest.
S.E. Anderson, The Black Holocaust for Beginners
Rescued from slavery by the British Navy,
Samual Crowther became the first African
bishop of the Church of England.
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Slaves in Africa - in the early 20th century.
At least 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. As at least
80% of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is believed
that the death toll from the 14 centuries of Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been over 112 million. When added
to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the Trans Saharan and East African
slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 million people.
  What do they have in their own homelands? - Slavery is rampant in today's black Africa, just as
it is throughout the Muslim world. (A Gabonese child slave girl sells ice)
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African Americans have contended for decades with a rage born of remembrance--a resentment fomented
by poignant images of black Africans captured, bound, and sent into the horrors of slavery. Some have been driven to travel
to the continent of Africa, and stand on the shores of West Africa to view the actual places where the degradation of a race
began. At these places, the grandchildren of ancient slaves--survivors of a holocaust--wrestle with a terrible mixture of
emotions. The passions produced by the realization that the forts before them housed their African ancestors in their last
days of freedom before a long voyage delivered them into the hands of cruel masters. The white hot anger that rises slowly
in African Americans as they recall these events and the epithets that dance in the heads of these observers of the past,
sometimes escapes their lips as curses and bitter mutterings. Occasionally, African Americans simply fulminate. These bitter
expressions of resentment and grief have only been cooled and soothed by a belief that African Americans hold. The comforting
assurance that the buying and selling of black African slaves ended in the distant past.
Such a belief is a myth.
It has become clear that the enslavement of black Africans did not stop with the demise of the Atlantic Slave Trade. That
on this very day and hour, as you read this, black Africans are bought and sold in two North African countries. In the Islamic
Republic of Mauritania, black Africans continue to be enslaved by their Arab-Berber masters. Although slavery was declared
abolished three times since Mauritania's independence in 1960, it persists. Slaves are given as wedding gifts, traded for
camels, guns or trucks, and inherited. The children of slaves belong to the master and slaves who displease their masters
or attempt escapes are tortured in the most brutal manner imaginable.
In Sudan, Africa's largest country, the Islamic
Republic of the Sudan, as a result of an Islamic-vs.-Christian civil war, black women and children (mostly Christian) are
captured in raids on their villages and sold as chattel slaves, sometimes, according to the UN in "modern-day slave markets."
Arab Slave traders
Mauritania-A Legacy of Slave Trading
The enslavement of black Africans has existed in Mauritania for many centuries. It is a country that joins the descendants
of Arabs and Berbers from the North, known as beydanes [white men], and the black ethnic communities living in the South.
Blacks, mostly sedentary farmers, consisting of the Tukulor, the Fulani, and the Wolof tribes were brought north after being
captured by raiding Arab/Berber tribes. This activity predates and postdates the Atlantic slave trade. Simply put, the slave
trade that brought black Africans to these shores never stopped in Mauritania. "More than 100,000 descendants of Africans
conquered by Arabs during the 12th century are still thought to be living as old-fashioned chattel slaves in Mauritania" says
Newsweek after conducting a yearlong, four-continent investigation of slavery.
Differing only slightly with this estimate,
the U.S. State Department estimates that 90,000 blacks still live as the property of Berbers, "and that's a conservative estimate,"
said Dr. Jacobs, who puts the actual figure closer to 300,000 when interviewed by The News Tribune. In addition, Newsweek
states that "Aside from the shantytowns and a strip of land along the Senegal River, virtually all blacks are slaves, and
they are more than half the population."
These black African slaves in Mauritania are subjected to mental and emotional torments that have always been concomitant
with slavery. "Routine punishments for the slightest fault include beatings, denial of food and prolonged exposure to the
sun, with hands and feet tied together. "Serious" infringement of the master's rule can mean prolonged tortures, documented
in a report by Africa Watch. These include 1. The "camel treatment," where a human being is wrapped around the belly of a
dehydrated camel and tied there. The camel is then given water and drinks until its belly expands enough to tear apart the
slave. 2. The "insect treatment," where insects are put in his ears. The ears are waxed shut. The arms and legs are bound.
The person goes insane from the bugs running around in his head. 3. The "burning coals" where the victim is seated flat, with
his legs spread out. He is then buried in sand up to his waist, until he cannot move. Coals are placed between his legs and
are burnt slowly. After a while, the legs, thighs and sex of the victim are burnt. There are other gruesome tortures--none
of which is fit to describe in a family newspaper" states Africa Watch. Another report states that some slaves caught fleeing
are often castrated or branded like cattle.
Six years after the institution of slavery was banned in
Zanzibar, the British assault one of the last of the slavers' stockades.
While Christian Reformers spearheaded the anti-slavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America,
and Great Britain mobilised her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the
captives free, there was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world.
Even after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and Europe abolished the slave trade in 1815, Muslim slave
traders enslaved a further 2 million Africans. This despite vigorous British Naval activity and military intervention
to limit the Islamic slave trade. By some calculations the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Islamic slave trade
could exceed 180 million.
Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130
years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and
Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalised slavery from their statute books. And this only after international
pressure was brought to bear. Today numerous international organisations document that slavery still continues in some
Muslim countries.
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On the Origins of Slavery in the West
An African Asks Some Disturbing Questions of Islam |
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Ex-Muslims FORUM- Dialogue with Muslims
Modern Slavery
Human bondage in Africa, Asia, and the Dominican Republic
| by Ricco Villanueva Siasoco |
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When a ship carrying hundreds of people was recently turned away from Benin, Africa, officials suspected that the children on board were human slaves. The incident once again brought attention to the
problem of slavery. At this moment, millions of men, women, and children—roughly twice the population of Rhode Island—are being
held against their will as modern-day slaves.
Sudanese slaves await redemption in Madhol,
Sudan, in December 1997. An Arab trader sold 132 former slaves, women and children, for $13,200 (in Sudanese money) to a member
of Christian Solidarity International. (AP Photo)
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Sometimes referred to as bonded laborers (because of the debts owed their masters), public perception of modern slavery
is often confused with reports of workers in low-wage jobs or inhumane working conditions. However, modern-day slaves differ from these workers because they are actually held in physical
bondage (they are shackled, held at gunpoint, etc.).
Modern-day slaves can be found laboring as servants or concubines in Sudan, as child "carpet slaves" in India, or as cane-cutters in Haiti and southern Pakistan, to name but a few instances. According to Anti-Slavery International, the world's oldest human rights organization, there are currently over 200 million people in bondage.
Where does this slavery take place? Who are the faces behind these atrocities?
Islam among the Yao
 Around 1800, Arabs started slave trading in the Yao region. The Yao captured people from neighboring tribes and sold them
to the Arabs. Through the slave trade, the Yao started to practice Islam; currently, about 95% of the Yao of Tanzania are
Muslims. Islam has become a central part of Yao culture; when a Yao turns his back on Islam, he cuts himself off from his
tribe and clan. He is completely abandoned, will not be given any help, and will be threatened in many ways to make him return
to his original Islamic faith.
Slave Trading on Africa's West
Coast
The slave trade in Africa was officially banned in the early 1880s, but forced labor continues to be practiced in West
and Central Africa today. UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children from this region are sold into slavery each year. Many of
these children are from Benin and Togo, and are sold into the domestic, agricultural, and sex industries of wealthier, neighboring countries such as Nigeria and Gabon.
UNICEF estimates that 200,000
children from West and Central Africa are sold into slavery each year.
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The most recent incident involved the MV Etireno, which was refused from ports in Gabon and Cameroon. When the ship
reached Cotonou, Benin, in April, 2001, police began an investigation of the captain and crew. More adults than children were
believed to be aboard. Chattel slavery in Sudan
The enslavement of the Dinkas in southern Sudan may be the most horrific and well-known example of contemporary
slavery. According to 1993 U.S. State Department estimates, up to 90,000 blacks are owned by North African Arabs, and often
sold as property in a thriving slave trade for as little as $15 per human being.
"There he found several
Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims."
—from an ASI report on
Sudanese slavery
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Animist tribes in southern Sudan are frequently invaded by Arab militias from the North, who kill the men and enslave the women and children. The Arabs consider it a traditional right to
enslave southerners, and to own chattel slaves (slaves owned as personal property).
Physical mutilation is practiced upon these slaves not only to prevent escape, but to enforce the owners' ideologies.
According to an ASI report: "Kon, a thirteen-year-old Dinka boy, was abducted by Arab nomads and taken to a merchant's house.
There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims. Threatened with
the same treatment the boy converted."
In a detailed article by Charles Jacobs for the American Anti-Slavery Group (ASI), Jacobs recounts how a 10-year-old child was taken in a raid on her village in southern Sudan, and branded by her master
with a hot iron pot. Child "carpet slaves" in India
Kidnapped from their villages when they are as young as five years old, between 200,000 and 300,000 children are
held captive in locked rooms and forced to weave on looms for food. In India—as well in other countries—the issue
of slavery is exacerbated by a rigid caste system.
Many of our images of human slavery, like the one above, date from
the American Civil War. However, there are an estimated 200 million people in bondage today. |
The International Labor Rights and Education Fund is one organization that has rescued many of these child slaves.
The group recalls this scene: "Children work in damp pits near the loom. Potable water is often unavailable and food consists
of a few chapatis [bread balls], onions and salt...The children often are made to sleep on the ground next to their looms,
or in nearby sheds. After working from ten to fourteen hours, they are expected to clean out their sheds and set up work for
the next day." Shackled laborers in Pakistan
Many of the bonded laborers are shackled in leg-irons in Pakistan. Though much of the debt these cane-harvesters
have incurred is real, the practice of exchanging human labor for landowners' loans is illegal.
In a 1992 law passed by the Pakistani government, landlords are barred from offering loans in exchange for work or to hold
workers hostage to their debts. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has freed approximately 7,500 bonded laborers
since 1995.
By the commission's estimates, there are still roughly 50,000 bonded laborers in southern Singh. Many of those freed now
reside in the city of Hyderabad in makeshift camps. Most are afraid to return to their homeland, however, for fear they will be recaptured and enslaved again.
Accounts of human beings as modern slaves extend beyond those described here, and include young girls sold into prostitution
in Thailand and slave chattels in Mauritania. Though most Americans believe slavery was abolished with the Emancipation Proclamation more than a century ago, the horrors of human beings held in bondage flourishes today.
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Qur’an 9:5 "Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive,
harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war." |
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Qur’an 8:39 "So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims])
and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world)."
the Koran
sura (Chapter) Tauba 9 verse 29
"Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allāh,
(2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allāh and
His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islām)
among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay
the Jizyah [tax]
with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. "
“Until they pay the Jizya” means that this is done if they don’t convert to Islam. “With
submission” means that they forced to pay and should be downcast. “With humiliation” means they are reviled, disgraced and
debased that is why it is unacceptable to honor the People of Treaty (Jews and
Christians) and we can’t raise their status above that of a Muslim. The People
of the Book are despicable, lowly and rebellious, as it was stated in Sahih Muslim:
Abu Huraira said that the prophet said “Do not initiate the greeting to Jews and Christians
and if you find any of them walking along the way, then force them to walk on
the narrow section”
Bukhari:V4B52N220
"Allah’s Apostle said, ‘I have been made victorious with terror.’
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The Scourge of Slavery
THE REST OF THE STORY
Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries,
and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day.
CONTRASTS IN CAPTIVITY
A comparison of the Islamic slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts.
While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic slave
trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.
While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves
dying in transit in the Trans Sahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!
While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the
Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.
While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the
USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.
While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined
for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.
It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of
which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only
5% of the slaves went to the United States). Remember 28 million Africans were enslaved
in the Muslim Middle East.
It was noted that black slaves were castrated "based on the assumption that the blacks had an ungovernable sexual appetite."
When the Fatimids came to power they slaughtered all the tens of thousands of black military slaves and raised an entirely
new slave army. Some of these slaves were conscripted into the army at age ten. From Persia to Egypt to Morocco,
slave armies from 30000 to up to 250000 became common-place.
Even Ronald Segal, who is most sympathetic to Islam and clearly prejudiced against Christianity, admits that well over
30 million black Africans would have died at the hands of Muslim slave traders or ended up in Islamic slavery.
A dhow, the favourite slave carrying vessel of Arab slave traders.  Arab traders beat their cargo into submission on the run from the African coast to Zanzibar. The Islamic slave trade took place across the Sahara Desert, from the coast of the Red Sea, and from East
Africa across the Indian Ocean. The Trans Sahara trade was conducted along six major slave routes. Just in the
19th Century, for which we have more accurate records, 1.2 million slaves were brought across the Sahara into the
Middle East, 450000 down the Red Sea and 442000 from East African coastal ports. That is a total of 2 million black
slaves - just in the 1800's. At least 8 million more were calculated to have died before reaching the Muslim slave markets.
Islam's Black Slaves records: "In the 1570's, a Frenchman visiting Egypt found many thousands
of blacks on sale in Cairo on market days. In 1665 Father Antonios Gonzalis, a Spanish/Belgian traveller, reported 800
- 1000 slaves on sale in the Cairo market on a single day. In 1796, a British traveller reported a caravan of 5000 slaves
departing from Darfur. In 1838, it was estimated that 10000 to 12000 slaves were arriving in Cairo each year." Just
in the Arabic plantations off the East Coast of Africa, on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, there were 769000 black slaves.
 The slave market in Zanzibar sold an average of 300 slaves every day. In the 19th Century, the East African black slave trade included 347 000 slaves shipped to Arabia,
Persia and India; 95 000 slaves were shipped to the Arab plantations in the Mascareme Islands.
Segal notes "The high death rate and low birth rate among black slaves in the Middle East and the astonishingly low
birth rate amongst black slave women" in North Africa and the Middle East. "Islamic civilisation.lagged increasingly
behind the West in protecting public health. The arithmetic of the Islamic black slave trade must also not ignore the
lives of those men, women and children taken or lost during the procurement, storage and transport.the sale of a single captive
for slavery might represent a loss of ten in the population from defenders killed in attacks on villages, the deaths
of women and children from related famine and the loss of children, the old and the sick, unable to keep up with their captors
or killed along the way in hostile encounters, or dying of sheer misery."
One British explorer encountered over 100 human skeletons from a slave caravan en route for Tripoli.
The explorer, Heinrich Barth, recorded that a slave caravan lost 40 slaves in the course of a single night at Benghazi.
The British explorer, Richard Lander, came across a group of 30 slaves in West Africa, all of them stricken with smallpox,
all bound neck to neck with twisted strips of bullock hide.
One caravan with 3000 proceeding from the coast in East Africa, lost two thirds of its number from starvation, disease
and murder.
In the Nubian desert, one slave caravan of 2000 slaves literally vanished as every slave died.
AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT
In 1818, Captain Lyon of the Royal Navy reported that the Al-Mukani in Tripoli "waged war on all its defenceless neighbours
and annually carried off 4000 to 5000 slaves.a piteous spectacle! These poor oppressed beings were, many of them, so
exhausted as to be scarcely able to walk, their legs and feet were much swelled, and by their enormous size formed a striking
contrast with their emaciated bodies. They were all borne down with loads of firewood, and even poor little children,
worn to skeletons by fatigue and hardships, were obliged to bear their burden, while many of their inhuman masters with dreadful
whip suspended from their waist.all the traders speak of slaves as farmers do of cattle.the defenceless state of the Negro
kingdoms to the southward are temptations too strong to be resisted, a force is therefore annually sent.to pillage these defenceless
people, to carry them off as slaves, burn their towns, kill the aged and infants, destroy their crops and inflict on them
every possible misery.all slavery is for an unlimited time.none of their owners ever moved without their whips - which were
in constant use.drinking too much water, bringing too little wood or falling asleep before the cooking was finished, were
considered nearly capital crimes, and it was in vain for these poor creatures to plead the excuse of being tired. Nothing
could withhold the application of the whip. No slaves dared to be ill or unable to walk, but when the poor sufferer
dies, the master suspects that there must have been something 'wrong inside' and regrets not having liberally applied their
usual remedy of burning the belly with a red-hot iron."
 Arab slave traders along the Ruvuma River, East Africa, 1866, axe a straggler. Records for Morocco in 1876 show that market prices for slaves varied from £10 ($48) to £30 ($140).
Female slaves comprised the vast majority of sales with "attractive virgins" fetching between £40 to £80 ($192 - $386).
It was reported that "a considerable majority of the slaves crossing the Sahara were destined to become concubines in North
Africa, the Middle East and occasionally even further afield."
CHRISTIAN SLAVES - MUSLIM MASTERS
Segal also observed that: "White slaves from Christian Spain, Central and Eastern Europe"
were also shipped into the Middle East and served in the "palaces of rulers and the establishments of the rich."
He records that: "All slavic eunuchs.are castrated in that region and the operation is performed by Jewish merchants."
 Muslim slave raiders kidnapped women from Europe for harems in the Middle East. Historian Robert Davis in his book "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters - White Slavery In the Mediterranean,
the Barbary Coast and Italy", estimates that North African Muslim pirates abducted and enslaved
more than 1 million Europeans between 1530 and 1780. These white Christians were seized in a series of raids
which depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall. Thousands of white Christians in coastal areas were seized
every year to work as galley slaves, labourers and concubines for Muslim slave masters in what is today Morocco, Tunisia,
Algeria and Libya. Villages and towns on the coast of Italy, Spain, Portugal and France were the hardest hit, but the
Muslim slave raiders also seized people as far afield as Britain, Ireland and Iceland. They even captured 130 American
seamen from ships they boarded in the Atlantic between 1785 and 1793.
According to one report, 7000 English people were abducted between 1622 to 1644, many of them ship crews and passengers.
But the Corsairs also landed on unguarded beaches, often at night, to snatch the unwary. Almost all the inhabitants
of the village of Baltimore, in Ireland, were captured in 1631, and there were other raids in Devon and Cornwall. Many of these white, Christian slaves were put to work in quarries, building sites and galleys and endured
malnutrition, disease and mistreatment at the hands of their Muslim slave masters. Many of them were used for
public works such as building harbours.
Female captives were sexually abused in palace harems and others were held as hostages and bargained for ransom.
"The most unlucky ended up stuck and forgotten out in the desert, in some sleepy town such as Suez, or in Turkish Sultanate
galleys, where some slaves rowed for decades without ever setting foot on shore." Professor Davis estimates that up to 1.25 million Europeans were enslaved by Muslim slave raiders between 1500 to 1800.
THE EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADE
While Islam dominated the slave trade
from the 7th to the 15th Century, between 1519 and 1815 Europe also joined in this trade in human
flesh. And it was those European nations which had suffered the most at the hands of Muslim slave raiders, and under
centuries of Muslim military occupation, Spain and Portugal, who dominated the European slave trade.
It was the enemies of the Reformation who brought Europe into this disgraceful trade. Emperor Charles V (whom Martin
Luther defied with his historic "My conscience is captive to the Word of God.here I stand I can do no other." speech)
of the Holy Roman Empire who first authorised Europe's involvement in the slave trade in 1519. Because of Pope Alexander
VI's Line of Demarcation Bill of 1493 which barred Spain from Africa, Spain issued Asientos (a monopoly) to other nations
to supply slaves for her South American colonies. First Portugal had this lucrative franchise, then the Dutch, then
the French. Finally, by the treaty of Utrecht 1713, the Asientos was transferred from France to Britain.
Britain's involvement in slavery was first authorised in 1631 by King Charles I (who was later executed by Parliament).
His son, Charles II, reintroduced it by Royal Charter in 1672.
According to "The Slave Trade" by Hugh Thomas, approximately 4 million (35.4%) went to Portuguese controlled Brazil;
2,5 million (22.1%) to the Spanish nations of South and Central America; 2 million (17.7%) to the British West Indies (mostly
Jamaica); 1,6 million (14.1%) to French West Indies; half a million (4.4%) to Dutch West Indies and half a million (4.4%)
to North America.
THE ABSENCE OF ARABIC ABOLITIONISTS
 William Wilberforce led the campaign against slavery for 59 years. While Christian Reformers spearheaded the anti-slavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America,
and Great Britain mobilised her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the
captives free, there was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world.
Even after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and Europe abolished the slave trade in 1815, Muslim slave traders
enslaved a further 2 million Africans. This despite vigorous British Naval activity and military intervention to limit
the Islamic slave trade. By some calculations the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Islamic slave trade could
exceed 180 million.
THE AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE
 Slaves freed by the British Navy. It is extraordinary that, considering that less than 5% of all the Trans Atlantic slaves ended up in North
America, the vast majority of films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrate only on the American involvement
in the slave trade, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration. However, the vastly greater involvement of
Portugal, Spain and France seem to be largely ignored. Even more so the far greater and longer running Islamic slave
trade into the Middle East has been so ignored as to make it one of history's best-kept secrets.
We tend to focus on what happened in North America because the United States would eventually fight a war, in part over
slavery, and because of the enormous and vocal American opposition to slavery. This was in sharp contrast to the indifference
that Muslims, Africans and many Europeans evidenced towards it.
THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
 A steam pinnache of HMS London puts a warning shot across the bow of a slaving dhow in 1881. The legends of European slave raiders venturing into the jungles of Africa to capture free peoples are generally
just that: myths.
The embarrassing fact of history, is that the Europeans did not have to use any force to obtain these slaves. The
slaves were "sold" by their black owners. There was no need for the slave raiders to risk their lives or venture
into the jungles of Africa, they simply purchased the people from African chiefs and Muslim slave traders at the coast.
However, while the slave trade and slavery itself was always criticised vigorously in Britain and America, no comparable
criticism was evident in the Muslim Middle East or amongst the African tribes which sold their own people, and neighbouring
tribes, into slavery. Almost all of the African slaves transported across the Atlantic were captured and sold by African
rulers and merchants.
Many chiefs found it more profitable to sell their enemies, criminals and debtors than to kill or imprison them.
Many were weaker neighbouring tribes conquered for the express purpose of selling their people into slavery. The disgraceful
fact is that there were three equally guilty partners in the crime of the Trans Atlantic slave trade: pagan African
chiefs, Muslim Arabs and Christian Europeans.
The Trade, as it became known, involved a triangular voyage. Slave ships sailed from Bristol or Liverpool loaded
with cloths, beads, muskets, iron bars and brandy. This merchandise was then traded in West Africa in exchange for slaves.
Mostly African chiefs sold their own people, or engaged in wars and slave raids against neighbouring tribes to capture victims
for this trade. Often professional Arab slave traders provided the victims.
The middle passage transported the slaves to the West Indies. Here the slaves were sold and the ships loaded with
spices, rum, molasses and sugar. The third leg of the journey was the return to England. The average Englishman
on the street was kept in the dark as to what was actually happening on the middle passage, until, in 1785, Thomas Clarkson's
landmark study "Slavery and Commerce In the Human Species" was first published at Cambridge. According to Clarkson's
research, 10% of the slaves would normally die during the middle passage. Strong men would fetch as much as £40 while
the women and children were sold in cheap batches with the sick and weak men. In England 18 000 people were employed
simply on making the goods to trade for slaves in Africa. This trade constituted 4.4% of British exports
THE PAGAN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY
Slavery long predated Christianity and many of the early Christians were slaves in the Roman Empire. Without exception,
the pre-Christian world accepted slavery as normal and desirable. The Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed: "From
the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule." The great civilisations of Mesopotamia,
Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and all the civilisations in Central America and Africa were built upon slave labour.
People became slaves by being an insolvent debtor, or sold into slavery by their parents, or by being born to slave parents,
or by being captured in war, or through kidnapping by slave raiders and pirates. Slave dealing was an accepted way of
life, fully established in all societies. Most of these slaves were white people, or Europeans. In fact the very
word "slave", comes from the people of Eastern Europe, the Slavs.
St. Patrick, the English missionary to the Irish, was once a slave himself, kidnapped from his home and taken to
Ireland against his will. Patrick spoke out strongly against slavery. He wrote: "But it is the women kept in
slavery who suffer the most."
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The children of a stinking Nubian black---God put no light in their complexion!
