A new book, Islam’s Black Slaves, details how black Africans were bought and sold by adherents of the Muslim faith
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Khadija Magardie
For some time now the Islamic world has been a silent member of the fraternity of the historically sinless a world in which one points fingers, despite similarly bloodied hands.
The run-up to the World Conference against Racism, and the releaseof a new book on the subject, has generated questions around the role of Muslims in the slave trade.
But instead of reasoned, well thought-out responses, or even acknowledgment, the issue has been met with howls ofmoral outrage, outright denial or, most disturbingly,silence.
It is not difficult to understand why, when dealing with members of a faith so maligned and subject to character assassination, activists engaged in issues of slavery and reparations would be reluctant to speak out for fear of appearing to be seen as anti-Islamic and racist.Considerations of political correctness have greatlyinfluenced the extent to which the historicalaccountability of certain groups is publicised and that of others ignored.
The impact of remaining silent about atrocitiesperpetuated by co-religionists, or a denying that theyever happened, will come at a heavy cost. Islam, afaith that espouses a universal brotherhood andrejects all notions of racial or ethnic superiority,will come to be associated with co-conspirators who consider keeping a lid on atrocities committed by one’s forefathers a religious virtue.
Moreover, doggedly refusing to accept that the message of a sacred text is subject to time and place will also confirmstereotypes that Islam is medieval, rendering itirrelevant to contemporary society.
When it comes to the sensitive issue of racial oppression, often those who do not speak out against it areautomatically assumed to be in support of it, or to condoneit. It is one of Primo Levi’s grey zones, “withill-defined outlines which both separate and join thetwo camps of masters and servants. [A grey zone] possesses anincredibly complicated internal structure andcontains within itself enough to confuse our need tojudge.” So long as Muslims remain in this grey zone, they run therisk of being identified as apologists for injustices.
But the annals of history are being increasingly laid bare. A new book, Islam’s Black Slaves by SouthAfrican historian Ronald Segal, details how blackAfricans were bought and sold by adherents ofthe Muslim faith; how the slave trade continued in someMuslim-majority countries well into the late 1980s and how it still thrives in certain partsof the same Muslim-majority world.
Saudi Arabia, for instance, kept slaves up to the 1980s and Segal devotes two chapters to detailing allegations of slave practices in 21st-century Sudan and Mauritania.
The book paints a fascinating picture of thousands of men, women and children captured from sub-Saharan Africa and sold into slavery in various markets in the Middle East and North Africa as far back as the eighth century. Among the significant distinctions between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the “Islamic” slave trade was the high proportion of women sold in markets in the Muslim world twice the ratio of those in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. These women were employed as housekeepers and domestics, as cooks and, significantly, as concubines.
There was a need for slaves, Segal writes, because “in imperial Islam, enormous numbers of free workers, skilled and unskilled, contract and casual, did not enjoy much respect for the dignity of labour”. That kind of mentality still exists in many societies that have been accused of continuing slavery up to the present.
One cannot be expected to agree with every conclusion the book reaches. For instance, serious questions may beraised around the title itself why the blanketterm of Islam, a heterogenous concept andideology, was used, instead of specific reference to its adherents for example, “Slaves of Muslims” instead of “Islam’s Black Slaves”.
Nor does Segal sufficiently address the point that the sources of Islamic jurisprudence, the Qur’an, and thetraditions of the Prophet Muhammad hold equal value.
That the Qur’an appears to condone the practice by its lack of a clear prohibition on slavery is offsetby the placing of certain restrictions on the treatment of slaves. For instance, it is regarded as a religiously meritorious act, actively encouraged in several places, to emancipate slaves.
Segal is correct, however, in saying that regardless of how humanely it may have been practised, keeping slaves could never be compatible with the spirit of humanism.
One chapter of the book deals with the journey undertaken by slaves across deserts to reach their newowners. The fact that the diaspora from the Muslim slave tradeis smaller than that of the trans-Atlantic slavetrade is explained in the book by the fact that thousands perished from thirst and hunger on their journey to the Middle East. The book also details horrendous accounts ofslave traders who procured eunuchs for rich buyers to use to guard their harems. In one region, male slaves were castrated with a blunt knife and hot butter poured on the wound to ease it.
The Prophet of Islam, who once said that no man should enslave another because “everyone is born free”,himself set several slaves free, and encouragedbelievers to do so. This is regarded by Islamicscholars as an indication that the practice was not allowed. The book does not lend sufficient weight tothese traditions, or to the opinions of progressive Islamic scholars that several injunctions in the holy book, such as those related tothe status of women, polygamy and slavery, weresubject to the prevailing climate in seventh century Arabia and have become redundant today. Instead, theperception is created that slave raiders did so withregard to divine will.
Responses to the book, judging from calls to a local radio talk-show, have been, with few exceptions, typical of Muslims at least. When the Taliban in Afghanistan stone women for flashing their ankles and this is publicised, it is perceived as anattack on Islam, or, of course, denied. Or whenterrorists masquerading as mujahideen (soldiers of Islam) blow innocentAfricans sky-high in Dar-es-Salaam and people worldwide become wary of bearded men carrying heavy parcels, this attitude is considered by Muslims to be anti-Arab, or anti-Middle East.Bizarrely, some Muslims can detect Islamophobia with radar precision, but are deaf,dumb and blind apostles of their brand of”Islamophilia” unswerving support for theirbrethren, no matter what.
The truth is that Muslims not just Arabs, but a motley crew of Arabs, Turks, Persians, Chinese andeven black African Muslims sold people into slavery.
And though the book acknowledges that, in many respects, the Muslim slave raiders and traders were “markedly enlightened for the times” in their treatment of their captives, itdoes not serve as an apologist account.
It ishistorically accurate and, though lacking the weightof similar accounts of the slave trade that made useof primary sources instead of other historical texts,it’s a detailed account of how Muslims, spurred on bynotions that religion permitted it, traded in humanbeings for centuries.
That it may be a bad reflectionof a Muslim world that has remained silent on issues like reparations for victims of slavery isunfortunate, but unavoidable. It does not help mattersto measure degrees of suffering and use comparisonswith other slave-owning societies to show one’s own was”not as bad”.
Nor can one deflect criticism of serious shortcomings of Muslims by vilifying as anti-Islamic anyone whoraises these. Segal engages with that response: “I am not anti-Muslim for saying all this, but it does Islam no credit to conceal its past.”
What might be a better response would be to own up to the past, proving a commitment to bettering the futureof those who were hurt by it, and, as the clich goes,ensuring that it does not happen again.
Islam’s Black Slaves (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) will be available in South Africa next February