Re: When did the state of Palestine exist before the Jews took over their country?
THE MYTH OF ARAB SLAVE TRADE FROM THE WEB SITE , AFRICAN HOLOCAUST.NET
COMMON MYTHS CORRECTED
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Arab is not a racial term, to say Arab is almost like saying American: thus, people classified as Arab today, could have been Caucasian (white people), Jewish, Asiatic or even Arabized Africans.
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There is a low African Diaspora in the Arab lands due to the proliferation of miscegenation, the dynamics of being classified as an Arab, and the degree or easy of Arabization.
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Islam did not bring the Arab slave trade. However, it did respond to it with laws of manumission. These laws were later generally ignored and misinterpretation thus protecting the privilege slaving brought.
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Arabs enslaving Africans would not be interested Proselytism as this would grant the enslaved Africans privileges. Thus slaving and the spread of Islam where in direct conflict and slavers played an opposing role in the Islamization of people (Murray Gordon, “Slavery in the Arab World.”)
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Muslim and Arab is not the same thing.
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Turks are not Arabs, Persians are not Arabs. Berbers are not Arabs, hence the Trans-Saharan or the Ottoman trade is not an Arab Slave Trade.
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Arab slaving was not the oldest slave trade in the world (see India and China). It however, was older than the Atlantic Slave trade, but it was scattered and a low priority until the 18th century.
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After the 18th century, the horrors of procuring Africans, was the most inhuman aspect of the trade, with castrations, transportation and violent slave raids being the main sources of mortality.
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The Arab slave trade in the 18th century was economically tied to the European trade. The Portuguese profited directly and were responsible for the boom in the Arab trade.
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Islam is not an Arab cultural invention but a religion born in a multi-racial Arabia; it was actually perceived as “foreign” by most Arab “tribes.” Islam in Africa is just as old as Islam in Arabia. Islam actually flourishes today because of its legal protection of what is today Ethiopia.
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The Arabs did not see all Africans as being of a unified “Black” race.
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Arab enslavement did not only target Africans.
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Arab slavery was primarily domestic, and only in the 18th century was it a mainstay for Arab economies.
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Arab Slavery did not leave the social legacy that the European trade continues to leave: prisons, poor education, mental health, etc.
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The Arab slave trade had a negligible impact on most Africans in the Diaspora today.
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Zanj does not mean all Africans. This is a assumptive linguistic superimposition.
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Muslim Africans (and Christians) were not the main suppliers of captives for the Americas. Dahomeny and the Asante kingdom were the main suppliers.
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Many African Muslims Kingdoms were the main aggressors to European advances on the continent. Umar Taal, Malick Sy, Ahmadou Bamba, Samory Toure, etc.
[FONT=Arial Unicode MS]THE FIRST MISTAKE: ARAB TRADE NOT ONLY AN ARAB TRADE
The first mistake or misnomer in the study of the Arab slave trade is the term “Arab.” The so-called Arab trade is not solely an Arab enterprise. The term for political reasons is used in that context for “saleability.” It is a terrible day for history when convenient packaging labels are employed for ease of academic and political digestion. The majority of people in Iran are not Arabs, the same for Morocco, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Libya. Thus to assign the slaving activities of Berbers to the Arabs is not only historical inaccurate but also immoral. The blurring of racial definitions in historical Africa has always been mishandled in European institutions leading to complete mangling of reality. For example the Sanhaja (considered by some to be “Arabs”) would have been seen as a different race by the Mande, but this is equally true for their perception of the Fulani or a the Turaeg ethnic groups. Popular Eurocentrism has created hard definitions such as black, and Arab based upon their worldview of “other.” Terms such as ”oriental trade” “Islamic Trade” as Patrick Manning are implicitly erroneous. The tradition in Western linguistics of lumping (linguistic lumping) is one of the key aspects of historical distortion, not lost on the study of Africa or Arabia.
WHOSE SOURCES
We must begin our journey of historical exploration by asking what are the academic sources for European, Arab and African systems of enslavement. However, if the agency in history is solely a European enterprise, then we have nothing to balance it with.
After Europeans had taken, all they could possibly take via enslavement, it was appropriate for them to find new ways of exploiting Africa’s resources: in came colonialism. The “moral” interface, which facilitated this exploitation, was Christian missionaries, using religion (again) as a scapegoat for colonial rule.
Having to account for their past in enslavement, they then enterprisingly started pointing fingers in two principle directions, Arab and African. As Muhammad Shareef outlines, European drawings, started to skillfully portray slave raiders as Muslim African or Arab.So today, when we look at our understanding of Africa, we find that the majority of these sources are European bias, and this is the viewpoint that we have subsequently inherited–without question.
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Through pure ignorance and lack of historical evidence, many of the “African” scholars embrace myths about Africa fed to them from strictly European sources. Most heavily relying on the interpretation of Eurocentric scribblings about a continent they did not understand. The same prejudice that washes the notion of Africans enslaving Africans is the same mythology, which plagues the study of Arab enslavement of African people. The above statements are not meant to exonerate nor apologize for inter-African brutality or Arab enslavement. But are intended to set a new tone towards the study of what actually happened in Africa. It is the establishment of a new bases of perception that is critical, not the validity or denial of any slaving system; true or false, African or Arab. The same “sin” the so-called Arabized African is guilty of, in defending the brutality of Arab enslavement, is the same sin the “Afrocentric” is guilty of, when defending African-to-African enslavement. The crime is the distortion of truth. And if truth is distorted for personal agendas then the ultimate fruit that should come from studying our human history is lost to the wind. This is why Rwanda happened; this is why Sudan is happening. Denial does not change the facts it just perverts our reality and inhibits our ability to learn from history.
SEEKING TRUTH IN A SEA OF LIES
Once again, this article is not to verify or deny the existence or the extent of the Arab slave trade or to deny or confirm the dynamics of “slavery” among African people. The aim is to highlight, as a disclaimer, a point where history has become distorted. The case being argued is that we should become sensitive to this in our pursuit of the truth. There is no doubt the Arab slave trade scarred Africa, but the true dynamics of this as expressed in contemporary academics circles is vulgarly malicious, with the sole intention of vindicating the actions of Europeans by setting up a new “devil.” Streamlining their anti-Islamic sentiment with the uprooting of Africa’s Islamic past. We must be socially sensitive to the politics of our time.
In the hands of man, religion continues to be a tool, for good and bad. But the major world religions make easier targets for casting accusations than obscure faiths in the belly of the Congo. However, the systems in indigenous Africa were also perverted. Punishment for minor crimes became immediately punishable by enslavement. The de facto system became enslavement for every foreseeable crime and sin. We cannot for personal reasons excuse one flaw and highlight another because it suits our argument. Slavery was a crisis for the world. It is testimony to the ugliest side of humanity. Where systems in the Qur’an and the Bible were defiled and used to justify the unjustifiable. A system so evil it presented a mother with the dilemma of which child she could sell to protect the others. A system that deadened all sense of humanity and righteousness from those professing to be subjects of God.
HIDDEN HISTORY
Knowledge concerning the Arab trade is not traditionally popular for many reasons when compared to the Transatlantic trade. The biggest reason is that Africans of the Americas (including the Caribbean and Brazil) were not affected directly by this trade. So naturally, people discuss slavery that is most relevant to them. Another reason for the obscurity is that there is also limited factual information on the subject. The period of the Arab trade predates the European system and was far more complex, the racial boundaries we accept today didn’t exist in those times. Egypt’s former president Anwar Sedat is considered Arab but he is half-African.His African ancestry does not reduce or violate his Arab identity, and vice-versa. When an enslaved woman became pregnant with her Arab captors child she became “umm walad” or “Mother of a Child”, a status which granted her privileged rights, the child however would have prospered from the wealth of the father and given rights of inheritance. Again this system allowed for greater racial assimilation, hence the reality of a physical African Diaspora in Arab lands is very different from the African Diasporas in the Americas.
The Arab slave trade was not a trade limited to specific racial groups, although at times (later times) it appeared that way. By contrast, the odalisque (concubines) of the Othman Empire was majority European. The soldiers of the Othman armies were the European Mamluks stolen from Georgians, Circassians and Turkics. Africans were not the majority of enslaved people in these Turkish lands.
The hajj has demonstrated since ancient times that neither Africans nor Arabs considered physical barriers or long distances as insurmountable obstacles. Large numbers of African pilgrims never returned to their native lands as far away as Senegal. Instead, they settled throughout the Middle East, including present-day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, the Persian Gulf countries and Turkey. Eve Troutman adds:
“In the United States, of course, and the Caribbean, you had agricultural slavery. You had plantation slavery. In the Middle East, this was very rare. You did not see this certainly in the 18th and 19th century. So African slaves in Egypt would work in people’s households, would be part of people’s families, would live in the household, would not have a huge community of other slaves around them, but really would be surrounded by the family of their owners.”
CRISIS POINT
The primary crisis point the Arab trade poses for Muslim people is the illegal marriage between Islam and Arabism. Separation of these two topics is necessary for the sake of understanding history from an honest point-of-view. Unfortunately, among many Muslim communities the issue of slavery is a topic rather avoided or apologized for (in that order). The dilemma of “religion verses reality” expressed by the devout Christian is revisited here, where the less than divine aspects of religion cast hideous shadows. The Arab-African relationship is far older and more intertwined than the European-African one. The idea of religion over race has also presented a problem, as any Muslim Africans who would have sold other Africans to Arabs would have seen religious kinship, over racial kinship. Once again, we find African’s devotions to faith being an aspect of their downfall, both with Christianity and Islam. The argument is not to finger religion but to expose a terrible conflict, in the human condition, where the ultimate purpose of religion, righteousness and truth, are arrested and supplanted with misplaced loyalties.
ISLAM AND MUSLIMS
Mauritanian scholar Mohamed Diakho, who has a book in French called L’Esclavage en Islam, which says that the Qur’an actually does everything it can to get rid of slavery, and that it is later interpretations of the Qur’an which, sort of ceding to the powers (the slave-owners), were complicit and complacent about slavery.So the tragedy with Islam; the revealed religion and Islam the practiced religion, highlights the same flaws that Muslims accuse Christians of having. For this reason the religion of Islam and the actions of Muslims are at times two completely different studies. The social conditions of the time are a black hole for truth. Islamic theocracy is still in the hands of man, and if those hands chose to highlight the legality of Slavery before the Qur’anic legality of manumission, then we have the current legacy to which no apologies can be offered. Even today, the continuation of this barbaric trade still gets little response from Muslim communities. The quote by Halie Selassie is most appropriate:
Again, the human condition is the error and all the efforts of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Candomble, Anago et al, seem weak in curbing the perverse selfish ungodly actions of man. And let us not limit our analysis to religion because in all systems the ruling race-class seek to protect their interest and are always reluctant/unwilling to surrender that which grants them advantage over others.
RACISM
The accusations against Eurocentricity are not lost on Arabized “Islamic” history. The tradition of subverting African history and making it a footnote or as Maulana Karenga said “a forgotten casualty” is not an exclusive European enterprise. From the legacy of the Arab Slave trade, it is clear that the social status of the African in Arabian societies has been obscured and belittled. The magnificent contributions of Africans to the formation of the religion of Islam and Islamic science are at best undermined at worst written out of history. For example, the first Hijirah (or flight) is recorded as the 622 Hijirah from Mecca to Medina; however, the most critical Hijirah from Arabia to Ethiopia was made in 612 (it is not even given the respectful title of Hijirah). There is no point in blaming a religion for this, for it was not the Qur’an or the prophet of Islam that institutionalized this racism. Guilt sits with those who inherited control of Islamic history: The same ones who interpreted a Sharia that favoured enslavement over manumission. Still today African people are written out of Islamic history from every corner: by non-African Muslims, Eurocentric’s and Afrocentrics alike.. Volumes of books are written on Islamic empires and no reference is made to Sokoto, Mali, or Songhai (the largest African empire). The problem is the general lack of African agency in all aspects of history.
Despite all the brother and sisterhood promised in the canon of Islam, it rarely manifest itself in Muslim societies, there is an unimaginable degree of racial segregation. This is not a historical occurrence for in more ancient times inter-racial marriage was far more “tolerated.” In the West, Muslim communities are just as racist towards African minorities as the Europeans. In Islam, leadership are based on merit but in these communities it is based on a lingering caste system.
CULTURAL DOMINATION
Practiced Islam, like practiced Christianity, became the context for the cultural prevalence of Arab culture: Arab names became Islamic names and those who adopted Islam automatically adopted Arab culture in an attempt to become “Islamic.” Today we see the uniformed African entering into Islam, and as opposed to taking on African Muslim names and wearing African Islamic attire they wear the cultural dress of Saudi Arabian Arabs, they adopt the mannerisms and cultural mindset of an Arabized people, which is not much better than being Europeanized. Looking at Islam in Turkey, West Africa, Indonesia and China we see a strong de-emphasis on this Arabized Islamic version. This is testimony to the agency at work within these places. The standard or Orthodox Islam is thus one cultural dimension on a much broader faith. And just like the Roman church, this cultural interpretation is a symbol of racial and cultural dominance. There is no more validity in Sufi Islam in Mali than the Wahabi fundamentalism of Saudi Arabia. People resisting globalization must be aware of cultural religious globalization as well and also recognize it is a violation of the Qur’anic verse.
“O people! Behold, we have created you from a male and a female and have made you into nations and ethnicities so that you might come to know one another…” [Qur’an 49:13]
LEGACY
The legacy of Islam, as an agent of African liberation and resistance to both slavery and colonialism is now being disingenuously denied, because of the parallel existence of an African-Arab slave trade. The downplaying of Africa’s Islamic history ultimately serves the desires of Eurocentrism’s attempt to remove all agency from African people. The failure to see this design has some African historians vilifying or neglecting Islamic African history; they speak of Africa and deliberately avoid Timbuktu, Futa Tora, Sokoto, Ancient Ghana et al from nobility, thus thinning the African historical reality. They reduce greats like Uthman Dan Fodiwa, Muhammad Bello, Umar Taal from the pages of glory. We end up with African history “restored” back to obscurity and ignobility: to the applaud of the Eurocentrics.
SIDE NOTE TO ABOVE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION OR DARWINISM.
As for concept of evolution. Animals, insects have evolved. As they are living and breathing species so are humans living and breathing. One is not exempt from the other in matters of survival and adaptability to environment. It is all carbon. Adam and Eve? no. Ape yes. science is absolute , and continuous searching for answers. All else is conjecture for hope and belief but not a proven tautology. From raptor to crane . From lizard skin to feathers. Evolution is a tautology. Religion gives spiritual peace and guidance , while science gives absolute answers. Do you believe in Dinosaurs? Do you believe in their existence? Velociraptor, T-rex, bronchiasaurus (sp). If so, then you automatically do not believe in Adam and Eve . Refresh your theocratic knowledge and studies and realise this is the dividing line between absolute faith and discounting of evolution. You either believe in dinosaurs or you don’t . THe later belief of non existence reaffirms the lineage as prescribed by Abraham’s faith of an adam and eve and discounts Darwinism.