Those furthering the RW defense and apologia on this and other issues should be called out and their propaganda corrected.

describing the nature of slavery on The Continent ... it wasn't the slavery of the America's.

Most of Africa is tribal, with mores and customs alien to people of the West. They are different, not inferior. And in our blinded, eurocenteic worldview we can't see the difference. In fact there are different tribes and different races which Africans can plainly see and westerners can only see skin color. It is like saying Slavs and Germans are the same peoples, when plainly they are not.

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

And of course it was evil regardless of the religions and ethnicities of those involved.

Some Islamic people also participated, but not all of them were Islamic.

With the presence of Coptic Christians in North Africa . . .

Muslims raided from Ukraine through to sub-Saharan Africa up through Italy, Spain, to the British Isles for slaves. And they did this for over a thousand years--as Islam spread, so did the areas they could harvest slaves from. Kievan Rus' was severely damaged by the Muslim slave trade; we have Arabic explorer narratives that not only talk about trade routes but also populations (because those are also trade). Cervantes 700 years later was held captive pending ransom; the alternative was slavery. The Barbary Wars, a millennium after the Arab accounts from the Don and Volga were fought over the seizure of American ships, with Americans (white, mostly) held for ransom or as slaves, pending ransom.

This was home-grown and very much not European slavery. It's nice to blame the white devil for all the world's evils, but it just ain't so. Humans have enough blame to go around. In fact, probably over a million white Europeans were taken and sold as slaves. Perhaps more, perhaps left--I've seen the claims and that they were based on written documentation, but haven't evaluated the evidence or claim myself. Of course, that dwarfs compared to the Muslim black slave trade, which by most accounts was greater than the trans-Atlantic slave trade (although not by a huge amount, and it spread over centuries).

At the same time, it pays to note that during the time of the European slave trade Islam was still spreading south--the Fula, many of whom are involved in Boko Haram--had decided to declare one of a series of jihad against their neighbors to the south--so some of the dominant areas for black slaves that are now Muslim were not at the time Muslim. They weren't Xian, either. They were whatever form of indigenous religion they were; typically "animist" is the word given for some of them, whatever that meant in practice. In fact, there's a bit of textual evidence that proselytizing was frowned upon in some areas, esp. in the east of Africa because you couldn't take another Muslim as slave. Converting your inventory was a bad move, at times. That makes it not "terrorism," which would have amounted to "convert or be enslaved"; it was purely monetary, and at times they didn't want to produce conversions. Muhammed was a trader (not necessarily of slaves), so trading is a good profession. In the east the European slavers would have run into Muslim blacks that they might have enslaved; in the west, they'd have been jihadis or travellers.

The Portuguese maps and knowledge of Africa, after they started trading slaves, was a carefully guarded secret. It had been a secret from the Portuguese, in fact ... Muslims didn't want to help their competition.

Note also that most of the slaves came not from E. Africa (most of those went to S. America, anyway) but from south Ghana and Cameroun and from the Congo. The Muslim presence in the Congo is mostly S. Asian or immigrants from NE Africa, and recent. Can't blame Xianity or Islam there for how the tribes behaved. They were doing what tribes and clans do: captives, for fun and profit; and genocide, because that's how you stop the never-ending cycle of war in prehistory.

The slaves often sold to white slavers were captured as a part of warfare between tribes. It's very likely that in the absence of a market for the slaves some would have simply been executed. But it's also very, very very likely, but ultimately unprovable, I suspect, that the slave trade itself provoked a intertribal warfare. After all, if you can go to war to capture 100 of your enemy in order to sell them, that's 100 fewer problems to deal with in the future and you get the gold. (Greed is a great motivator for war; but let's not exculpate the greed and put all the blame on the Europeans, because then we're saying that the men involved were children unable to control their actions when confronted with gold. The tribe members could always have just said no to the slavers' gold. It's just that slavery wasn't immoral for the indigenous populations; they had their own slaves already, almost surely, and if not were fine with the idea of selling enemies.)

There's a tendency to (1) romanticize and (2) in the interest of modern racial solidarity revise history to make it so one group is all evil and the other group all innocent victim. Tribal societies are often engaged in warfare--it's population control in good times (with famine and disease being population control in bad times). (2) is particularly noxious, because it's both a blatant political "we're good" claim while at the same time trying to disabuse people of an error.

The mistake in overreaching in an attempt to rebut that error is simple and also self-serving: If black Africans sold their "brothers" (an anachronistic term, to be sure) into slavery, than it's not wrong for "us" to do it. It's easier to fall for the claim that black Africans didn't do it, or they weren't quite the same, rather than deal with a moral issue that slavery is wrong.

Note that I believe it was Mauritania that finally made slavery illegal in 1981 or '82. I remember this only because I was over 21 at that point so strictly speaking I could have gone to Mauritania and, in principle, bought a black slave. Wouldn't make it moral; wouldn't make it right. Would undoubtedly have broken US law. But then and there it would have still been legal.

Thank you!

Rec

While they didn't create it nor make the biggest profits. There were many who found a way to profit from the enslavement of others.
Look at how the trade reshaped the peoples in Quidah

We can certainly draw lessons from them.

seems to be mainly interested in telling about how the Kennedys were liars, Howard Zinn was a liar, and Calvin Coolidge was really an awesome president. I don't agree with him on those three points, and I disagree with him here as well.

And yes, Africans were involved, but not to the same extent as Europeans, and they didn't sell out their own communities. Talking about Africans and the slave trade has no purpose except to try to use that as an excuse to let the Europeans and white Americans who invented and ran the African slave trade off the hook.

Century, hundreds of years before the Europeans followed suit with their own version, even more brutal in some ways but most certainly not the original. 8th Century though the 19th, between 10 and 18 million people were bought and sold in the Arabic slave trade.
I don't think it is right to deny literally hundreds of years of slave trade by the Arabic world. That's just history. Plenty of room to criticize European and American slave trades without absolving those who practiced it first, longest and in huge numbers. Those slaves they kidnapped and sold were also human beings. This went on for hundreds of years.

Institutiones year - 161 the Roman jurist Gaius wrote that:


Slavery is a human invention and not found in nature. Indeed, it was that other human invention, war, which provided the bulk of slaves, but they were also the bounty of piracy ... or the product of breeding.


Very little is known about his personal life - but certainly slavery existed in Ancient Rome. Though - one could earn their freedom and it was managed in a much different way - they did not restrict themselves to African peoples in terms of ownership.

It was significant enough that a major jurist felt it necessary to speak to it in his legal writings. We have no idea the numbers of people - but it wasn't just the Arabic world - it was practiced and imposed in what is now modern Europe in ancient times.

you'll see it says that this particular style of slavery was a European invention.

Sickened that this kind of bullshit was allowed to stand on DU.

I didn't fucking think so.

Almost always manages to into discussions about American slavery.

Thank you.

There were no innocent parties involved when it came to African slavery. The decisions of many centuries ago have caused the problems we face today. That's just the twist of fate we weave in human history.

How about the slaves?

So your only point is that since Europeans weren't the only ones participating in the slave trade that lessens the responsibility of a culture that felt it had the right to purchase human beings? Particularly when we are standing on the back of their legacy? Acknowledging it is the fucking least we can do!

falls on every party involved in the slave trade. It's not about more or less, it's about acknowledging everything that happened in the past to move on to a future where we right the wrongs done back then. Is that not what we should strive for?

Long before Christianity and Islam. The Greeks and Romans had slaves, so did the Egyptians. Pyramids probably built with slave labor. All through recorded history are accounts mentioning slaves.

Are you implying that because they did it that our culture did nothing wrong? What exactly are you trying to say here?

It was making the impression that Muslims "invented" slavery. Perhaps unintentionally, but that's how I read it. Of course slavery existed many thousands of years prior. We read about its existence in records from "advanced" societies, but they were the ones leaving the records. No doubt slavery existed in primitive societies, that didn't leave records.
And by your post, I get the impression you are challenging that I support slavery...which is utterly ridiculous. Pointing out the existence of it is not supporting it.

Was challenging the assertion being made that OUR culture's responsibility for African slavery should be at least partially absolved because Africans allegedly participated in slave trade

Nobody in this thread. I have only heard that assertion being made by KKK extremists. What is the point of engaging them in debate? It only serves to consider their views as legitimate debate topic. There is no debate...slavery is simply wrong.

Partially or otherwise.

TIA

So don't hold your breath for a reply.

Just disregard. I'm waiting for him to alert on me in another thread - and maybe on this one - because I'm not showing proper 'deference'.

It was based solely on white supremacy.

I don't think the concept existed until white people became the importers of record in the British, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies.

Then countries such as Belgium re-created it in Africa in the early 20th century.

Basically Europeans a few hundred years ago were ten kinds of f*cked up and blacks in the US, Brazil, Caribbean etc etc are still paying the price for the deeds of a bunch of sick twists from a few hundred years ago.

At the end of the day - Europeans needed to feel better about themselves so they made shit up and told themselves it was AOK because "they did it too!"

Now can we talk about sick American twists who made up Jim Crow?

Because . . . Americaaaaaaa!

Knowing just a little on this well mainly many Muslims brought here had their faith suppressed & converting to Christianity. One who came here -- Omar ibn Said is known for the Arabic bible he created.

Omar ibn Said was born in present-day Senegal in Futa Tooro,[1] a region along the Middle Senegal River in West Africa, to a wealthy family.[2] He was an Islamic scholar and a Fula who spent 25 years of his life studying with prominent Muslim scholars, learning subjects ranging from arithmetic to theology in Africa. In 1807, he was captured during a military conflict, enslaved and taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. He escaped from a cruel master in Charleston, South Carolina, and journeyed to Fayetteville, North Carolina. There he was recaptured and later sold to James Owen. Said lived into his mid-nineties and was still a slave at the time of his death in 1864. He was buried in Bladen County, North Carolina. Omar ibn Said was also known as Uncle Moreau and Prince Omeroh.[1]

Although Omar converted to Christianity on December 3, 1820, many modern scholars believe he continued to be a practicing Muslim, based on dedications to Muhammad written in his Bible, and a card dated 1857 on which he wrote Surat An-Nasr, a short sura which refers to the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam 'in multitudes.' The back of this card contains another person's handwriting in English misidentifying the sura as the Lord's Prayer and attesting to Omar's status as a good Christian.[3] Additionally, while others writing on Omar's behalf identified him as a Christian, his own autobiography and other writings offer more of an ambiguous position. In the autobiography, he still offers praise to Muhammad when describing his life in his own country; his references to "Jesus the Messiah" in fact parallel Quranic descriptions of Jesus (who is called المسيح 'the Messiah' a total of 11 times in the Quran), and descriptions of Jesus as 'our lord/master' (سيدنا employ the typical Islamic honorific for prophets and is not to be confused with Lord (ربّ ; and description of Jesus as 'bringing grace and truth' (a reference to John 1:14) is equally appropriate to the conception of Jesus in Islam. Given Omar's circumstances of enslavement "among the Christians" and the possibilities of lobbying for his freedom that only came with confessing Christianity, his conversion can be argued to have been made under duress. In 1991, a masjid in Fayetteville, North Carolina renamed itself Masjid Omar Ibn Said in his honor.[4]

Omar ibn Said is widely known for fourteen manuscripts that he wrote in Arabic. Out of all of his Arabic manuscripts, he is best known for his autobiographical essay written in 1831.[5] It describes some of the events of his life and includes reflections on his steadfast adherence to Islam and his openness towards other 'God fearing' people. On the surface the document may appear to be tolerant towards slavery, however Said begins it with Surat Al-Mulk, a chapter from the Qur'an, which states that only God has sovereignty over human beings.

Most of Said's other work consisted of Islamic manuscripts in Arabic, including a handwritten copy of some short chapters (surat) from the Qur'an that are now part of the North Carolina Collection in the Wilson Library at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His Bible, a translation into Arabic published by a missionary society, which has notations in Arabic by Omar, is part of the rare books collection at Davidson College.[6] Transcribing from memory, ibn Said made some mistakes in his work, notably at the start of Surat An-Nasr. Said was also the author of a letter dated 1819 and addressed to James Owen's brother, Major John Owen, written in Arabic and containing numerous Quranic references (including from the above-mentioned Surat Al-Mulk), which also includes several geometric symbols and shapes which point to its possible esoteric intentions.[7] This letter, currently housed in Andover Theological Seminary, is reprinted in Allen Austin's African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_ibn_Said

I have many intentions of looking into this era more as I know current global events didn't happen overnight and the US "war on terror" if going by the logic alone and assuming good faith at-best they are incompetent because (outside of known facts of doing so at-times, particularly in Iran) they are doing everything that is causing the problem to become worse but I suspect something deeper, much more, typical of the arrogance, power, and greed of the colonization era. The torture, very dehumanizing and they do this often and rendition to some very brutal regimes such as Uzbekistan as they don't care what information they have (they obviously try for false confessions at-times). The internment camps. They are there or the CIA anyway is committing the worst kind of crimes, murder, cover-ups and have the international press overlook that and tell a different story.

One other thing, the colonization ties of the Sykes-Picot era are relatively in place with British good friends with Jordan & Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. Afghanistan seemed to be a turf war with the Russians as they had as much to do with it as France or Britain. Mostly I mean the mentality, the prejudices, etc.

Anyways, thanks a lot for giving me a great place to begin.

----------

One thing I almost forgot. Slavery is alive and well in Saudi-coalition areas.

Blood, Sweat & Tears:
Asia’s Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq




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Blood, Sweat & Tears:
Asia’s Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq
by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch
October 3rd, 2005

cartoon by Khalil Bendib

Jing Soliman left his family half way around the world in the Philippines for what sounded like a sure thing – a job as a warehouse worker at Camp Anaconda in Iraq. He would be working for Prime Projects International of Dubai, a major, but low-profile, subcontractor to Halliburton’s multi-billion-dollar deal with the Pentagon to provide support services to U.S. forces.

But Soliman wouldn’t be making anything near the salaries starting at $80,000 a year and often topping more than $100,000 paid to truck drivers, construction workers, office workers and other laborers recruited in the United States by Halliburton’s subsidiary, KBR. Instead, the 35-year-old father of two looked forward to earning $615 a month – including overtime. For a 40-hour work week, that’s just over $3 an hour, but Soliman made even less. He says the standard work week was 12-hour days, seven days a week, so he was actually earning $1.56 an hour.

For a year’s work, Soliman would receive $7,380. He planned to send most of his paychecks home to his family, where the combined unemployment rate tops 28 percent and the average annual income in Manila is $4,384. Nearly half of the nation's 84 million people live on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank.

<snip>

Largely hailing from impoverished south Asian countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan, these laborers earn monthly salaries between $200 and $1,000. They work as truck drivers, construction workers, carpenters, warehousemen, laundry workers, cooks, accountants, beauticians and similar blue-collar jobs for the U.S. military.

Invisible and Indispensable Army of Low-Paid Workers

This mostly invisible, but indispensable army of low-paid workers has helped set new records for the largest civilian workforce ever hired in support of a U.S. war. They may be the most significant factor to the Pentagon’s argument that privatizing military support services is far more cost-efficient for the U.S. taxpayer than using its own troops to maintain camps and feed its ranks.

But American contractors returning home frequently share horrible tales of the working and living conditions that these TCNs endure on a daily basis.

TCNs frequently sleep in crowded trailers, wait outside in line in 100 degree heat to eat “slop,” lack adequate medical care and work almost every waking hour seven days a week for little or no overtime pay. Frequently, the workers lack proper safety equipment for hard labor

And when insurgents fire incoming mortars and rockets at the sprawling military camps, American contractors slip on helmets and bulletproof vests, but TCNs are frequently shielded by only the shirts on their backs and the flimsy trailers they sleep in.

Adding to these hardships, some TCNs complain publicly about not being paid according to their contracts and they also accuse their employers of “bait-and-switch” recruitment tactics where they are falsely recruited for jobs in the Middle East and then pressured to work in Iraq. Once in Iraq, their passports are held to prevent them from escaping. All of these problems have resulted in labor disputes, including labor strikes and work stoppages at US military camps.

http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12675

You don't hear the press mention this except when Qatar does it only in the case of the World Cup and wonder why sponsors haven't yet pulled (their hands are dirty too with names like Chevron).


On edit -- Should have read the inside part more but the who "infidels" thing is pointless on whatever "colorism" argument they seem to be making but you noted the colonizers showing up slapping labels, dividing and conquering.

You're talking about roughly 18th century correct? This was during the decline but the Ottoman was a very multicultural economic powerhouse that shaped the modern world as we see it today. Particularly in mathematics, science, education, and health care.

To be clear this were the rules

The Ottoman Empire was governed by different sets of laws during its existence. The Kanun a secular legal system, co-existed with religious law or Sharia.[1] Legal administration in the Ottoman Empire was part of a larger scheme of balancing central and local authority.[2] Ottoman power revolved crucially around the administration of the rights to land, which gave a space for the local authority develop the needs of the local millet.[2] The jurisdictional complexity of the Ottoman Empire was aimed to permit the integration of culturally and religiously different groups.[2]

The Ottoman system had three court systems: one for Muslims, one for non-Muslims, involving appointed Jews and Christians ruling over their respective religious communities, and the "trade court". The entire system was regulated from above by means of the administrative Kanun, i.e. laws, a system based upon the Turkic Yassa and Töre, which were developed in the pre-Islamic era.[citation needed]

These court categories were not, however, wholly exclusive: for instance, the Islamic courts—which were the Empire's primary courts—could also be used to settle a trade conflict or disputes between litigants of differing religions, and Jews and Christians often went to them to obtain a more forceful ruling on an issue. The Ottoman state tended not to interfere with non-Muslim religious law systems, despite legally having a voice to do so through local governors.

The Islamic Sharia law system had been developed from a combination of the Qur'an; the Hadīth, or words of the prophet Muhammad; ijmā', or consensus of the members of the Muslim community; qiyas, a system of analogical reasoning from earlier precedents; and local customs. Both systems were taught at the Empire's law schools, which were in Istanbul and Bursa.

The Ottoman Islamic legal system was set up differently from traditional European courts. Presiding over Islamic courts would be a Qadi, or judge. Since the closing of the itjihad, or Gate of Interpretation, Qadis throughout the Ottoman Empire focused less on legal precedent, and more with local customs and traditions in the areas that they administered.[3][page needed] However, the Ottoman court system lacked an appellate structure, leading to jurisdictional case strategies where plaintiffs could take their disputes from one court system to another until they achieved a ruling that was in their favor.

Throughout the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire adhered to the use of three different codes of criminal law. The first was introduced in 1840, directly following the Edict of Gülhane, an event which started the period of the Tanzimat reforms. In 1851, a second code was introduced. In this one, the laws were nearly the same as the ones in the first code of laws, but included the rulings of the previous eleven years. In 1859, the Ottoman Empire promulgated a last code of law inspired by the 1810 Napoleonic criminal code. Each of these variations of code and legislations represented a new phase in Ottoman legal ideology.[4]

<snip>

In the late 19th century, the Ottoman legal system saw substantial reform. This process of legal modernization began with the Edict of Gülhane of 1839.[5] These reforms included the “fair and public trial[s] of all accused regardless of religion,” the creation of a system of “separate competences, religious and civil,” and the validation of testimony on non-Muslims.[6] Specific land codes (1858), civil codes (1869-1876), and a code of civil procedure also were enacted.[6]

These reforms were based heavily on French models, as indicated by the adoption of a three-tiered court system. Referred to as Nizamiye, this system was extended to the local magistrate level with the final promulgation of the Mecelle, a civil code that regulated marriage, divorce, alimony, will, and other matters of personal status.[6] In an attempt to clarify the division of judicial competences, an administrative council laid down that religious matters were to be handled by religious courts, and statute matters were to be handled by the Nizamiye courts.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_law

I thought this was about something else regarding the suppression of the faith of slaves who came here that were Muslim but seems to say the faith had something to do with owning slaves or the followers themselves which didn't fit with the whole colorism aspect which doesn't make a lot of sense except discrimination & identity politics weren't an issue until the colonizers showed up.

Discrimination

Following its conquest of Ottoman controlled Algeria in 1830, for well over a century France maintained colonial rule in the territory which has been described as "quasi-apartheid".[23] The colonial law of 1865 allowed Arab and Berber Algerians to apply for French citizenship only if they abandoned their Muslim identity; Azzedine Haddour argues that this established "the formal structures of a political apartheid".[24] Camille Bonora-Waisman writes that, "n contrast with the Moroccan and Tunisian protectorates", this "colonial apartheid society" was unique to Algeria.[25]

Under the French Fourth Republic, although Muslim Algerians were accorded the rights of citizenship, this system of discrimination was maintained in more informal ways. Frederick Cooper writes that Muslim Algerians "were still marginalized in their own territory, notably the separate voter roles of "French" civil status and of "Muslim" civil status, to keep their hands on power."[26]

This "internal system of apartheid" met with considerable resistance from the Muslims affected by it, and is cited as one of the causes of the 1954 insurrection.[27]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Algeria#Under_the_Fifth_Republic_.281958.E2.80.9362.29