by Sean Jobst
16 October 2020
Islamic activist ("civil rights") groups are among the assorted forces riding the ongoing wave of riots, cancel culture and iconoclasm, exploiting what allegedly began as a protest against police brutality but quickly revealed its true agenda. On 25th June, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) unveiled a "Black Lives Matter" banner outside its Capitol Hill headquarters in Washington, D.C. The pandering statement by its co-founder and CEO, Nihad Awad, included talk of "seeking an end to systemic police racism, violence, misconduct, and abuse of authority," asserting "an unprecedented spike in bigotry targeting American Muslims, immigrants and members of other minority groups since the election of Trump as president." That next week, CAIR's Connecticut branch organized protests that tried bringing down the Christopher Columbus statue in Waterbury.
Just as trendy White leftists (mostly from privileged backgrounds) latch upon causes to project their own guilty feelings upon the majority of Whites whilst presuming it takes their own paternalism to move Black people's world for them, and the Antifa subversives (enabled by their fellow BLM movement Marxists) see their opportunity to "burn it down", so too are the softcore Islamists of CAIR - being minority in a non-Islamic country makes them downplay or redefine certain aspects of Islam for public consumption - jumping on a fictitious "PoC" collectivist bandwagon to impose their own agenda over Black Americans. The goal is to get the attention focused upon White people generally rather than them - much like Malcolm X observed in his Autobiography about Jewish "supporters" of civil rights.
Drowned out in this "intersectional" alliance is hypocrisy about the appalling treatment of minorities throughout the Islamic world; or the thriving halal slave markets of Libya, enabled by the same warmongering Democratic elites, Republican Establishment, and rehabilitated Neocons now remedied as the "antidote" to those clouded by Trump Derangement Syndrome. CAIR itself called for a "no-fly zone" against Libya in February 2011, to the delight of Globalist billionaire financier George Soros, leftist "philosopher" and Zionist Bernard-Henri Levy, and their Islamist mercenaries. Perhaps CAIR held a grudge after Qadhafi rebuffed their 2009 request for financial support, after which its leaders became cheerleaders for overthrowing him. It was this "humanitarian interventionism" which led to the slave markets and Libya descending into civil war. Do these "Black Lives Matter" to CAIR? Where are their banners and press releases condemning actions of people who came to power with CAIR support?
Domestically, the CAIR elitists ignore the fact that a sizable majority of American Muslims are more economically privileged (not "systemically oppressed") than most Americans, such as CAIR ally Ilhan Omar's rise from Somali refugee to Minnesota congresswoman. Her campaign was lucrative enough to funnel $586,000 since 2018 to her lobbyist husband's E Street Group political consulting firm. The Federal Election Commission filings on 14 July 2020 increased the total payouts to around $1 million. She belongs to the very Statist class that would profit from any Socialist redistribution of wealth, taken from the middle- and working-classes. Yet she proposes "dismantling" the same system that has allowed her to profit (to eliminate all potential competition), when she said at a Minnesota event on 7 July 2020: "As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate this inequality. We cannot stop at criminal justice system. We must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it." Is this the same "inequality" that kept her from a lucrative political career?
Such Muslim "activists" rewrite a history glossing over the massive Islamic slave trade that enslaved and murdered millions of people, or the fact that the "Religion of Peace" was most often spread by brute force (much like its other Abrahamic counterparts). This includes a hypocritical promotion of the "Black Legend" (leyenda negra) that maligns Spanish history and reputation, in their case sprang from a grudge over the Reconquista that overthrew the Moorish occupation which, much like their allied leftist academics, they rewrite as kumbaya "tolerance" vis a vis "backward" native Spaniards.(1) These anti-Spanish and generally anti-Western talking points are repeated by descendants of people who owe their own faith to what was imposed by Islamic colonialism - an inconvenient truth cast down the memory hole since it blasts the narrative that identifies all colonialism and slavery as products of Western cultures. Among the statues vandalized in San Francisco was one of the great novelist Miguel de Cervantes, himself enslaved for five years by the Islamic Barbary states.
This is not an exhaustive study of Islamic slavery and racism, but an overview with examples from its own religious texts and some basic facts and figures from history. Its not an attack upon individual Muslims (people's spiritual paths are their own - so long as they don't infringe upon others), but meant to expose the blatant hypocrisy of its modern activists and apologists who dare to score political and ideological points by attacking those things within American and European history that is likewise, and in some cases even more, prevalent within Islamic history.
My main goal is exposing the hypocrisy behind certain ideologues rewriting historical narratives, used to shame and guilt all people of European ancestry, while certain other people may benefit from hiding their own sordid history. And expose their attempts to increase racial conflict between White and Black people so that certain agendas may benefit - that's the real cause behind their "racial justice" platitudes. CAIR is an example of apologetics weaponized as political activism, but I don't suggest any deeper agenda beyond opportunism. They certainly have aligned with Leftist movements - the cult of "intersectionality" they see as a perfect opportunity for da'wa. I will start with topics about race and examples of Arab supremacism within Islam, including tracing such racist narratives to the religious-political systems arising in the Middle East and not Europe; followed in Part 2 with a detailed focus on the Islamic slave trade along with certain points about Moorish history.
Much is made of "equality" upheld by Islam, but apologists ignore the fact that in theory its an "equality" within Islam - those of any race or ethnicity outside Islam are regarded as "kuffar" and so "lesser" until such time they convert; if they die upon this "kufr" its believed they will go to an eternal jahannam (hellfire) - which even in practice was often neglected. All sorts of mental gymnastics are attempted for apologia's sake or for individual Muslims whose consciences are admittedly repulsed by this, but its within their sacred texts. The Qur'an itself says "Allah has favored some of you with more gifts of sustenance than others"(16:71), before mentioning a parable of a slave and a free man: "are the two equal?"(16:75). "A slave for the slave"(2:178) in retribution because they're considered property. It justified sex slavery under the phrase "those your right hand possesses"(4:24, 23:5-6, 24:32, 33:50), as openly promoted by radical imams today. Although the Qur'an and Islamic law regulated the practice, the fact remains it still allowed slavery like its fellow Mideastern scripture, the Bible; and its verses indicate that the enslaved is lesser than the free.
Arab supremacism. Just as Judaism upheld the supremacism of a "chosen people" and the rise of Christianity solidified the imperial power of Roman institutions, Islam in practice so often meant Arab supremacism. The prayers and other Islamic acts of worship are only considered valid if done in Arabic (exception made for supplications but those aren't considered on the same level of compulsion). Arab dynasties conquered and ruled over non-Arab peoples, and the latter only rose in prominence within some institutions over centuries although the khalifa (caliph) himself was still to be descended from the Quraysh tribe according to the Sunnis. From the Shi'ite view particularly, those who descended from the bloodlines of Muhammad were more "sacred", forming the Ahlul-Bayt (People of the Household). Common Arabic customs like circumcision, a procession (hajj) to Mecca, and fasting or feasting tied to certain months, were carried over into Islam.
The Qur'an repeatedly calls itself "an Arabic Qur'an" (12:2, 20:113, 39:28, 41:3, 42:7, 43:3) "revealed in a perfect Arabic tongue" (16:103, 26:195). Of course it would have to be in a specific language, but its only natural the language and thus the people and culture associated with it would be elevated within that religion by practice. It elevates Arabic as more "perfect" and "eloquent" than the thousands of other languages. As we see in those passages, the Qur'an uses the word "Arabiyya" but not "Islamiyya". It refers to a "prophet" or "warner" "sent to every nation" (10:47, 16:36, 35:24), but only names 25 - most of them Biblical figures and all stories and figures in the Middle East, with absolutely no mention of other regions of the world. There is a popular hadith narrated by Ibn Hibaan that mentions "124,000 prophets", but this has been declared "da'if jeddan" (very weak).(2) Its a later attempt to make Islam more palatable to the "ajami" (non-Arabs), ruled over by Arab dynasties and in practice Muslim was considered synonymous with adopting Arabic culture and abandoning their own "jahiliyya" cultures.
Far from egalitarian, Muhammad claimed that he was "chosen" from the "best household" (Banu Hashim) of the "best tribe" (Quraysh), dividing humanity into Arabs and non-Arabs. This is from the rigorously "authenticated" narrations - according to hadith classification - and contrary to the oft-cited "Last Sermon" whose original Arabic and full context are rarely if ever included as it would complicate the narrative. Yet there are elements even there, in dividing humanity between "Arab" and "Ajami". This is similar to the Jewish division of the world between "chosen people" and the majority of humanity who are called "
gentiles" (nations) or "
goyim". The main difference is the latter is expressed in genetic terms such as it was in
Chabad writings, whereas the supremacism within Islamic sources is more cultural. In any case, the relevant statements by Muhammad demonstrate this supremacism more than all dismissals by modern Muslim apologists:
Wathila ibn al-Asqa' reported: "I heard Allah's Messenger saying: 'Verily Allah granted eminence to Kinana from amongst the descendants of Isma'il, and he granted eminence to the Quraish amongst Kinana, and he granted eminence to Banu Hashim amongst the Quraish, and he granted me eminence from the tribe of Banu Hashim.'"(3)
Abdullah ibn al-Abbas narrated that Muhammad heard some of what the people were saying about him, so he ascended the minbar (pulpit) sand asked, "Who am I?" They said, "You are the Messenger of Allah." He responded, "I am Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Abd al-Muttalib. Indeed, Allah created the creation and made me from the best of them, and he then made them two groups (Arabs and non-Arabs) and made me from the best of them (the Arabs), then He made the tribes and made me from the best tribe, then he made houses and made me from the best house. So I am the best house among them, and I am the best person among them."(4)
Ali ibn Abi Talib said: "Verily the Prophet said: 'Allah divided the earth in two halves and placed (me) in the better of the two, then He divided the half in three parts, and I was in the best of them, then He chose the Arabs from among the people, then He chose the Quraysh from among the Arabs, then He chose the children of Abd al-Muttalib from among the Banu Hashim, then he chose me from among the children of Abd al-Muttalib, and from them he chose me.'"(5)
Imam al-Tabari, a leading Sunni scholar and jurist of the 9th century most known for his works on early Islamic history, quotes the sahaba (companion) Thabit bin Qays bin Shammas, who said in the presence of Muhammad: "Arabs are the most noble people in lineage, the most prominent, and the best in deeds. We were the first to respond to the call of the Prophet. We are Allah’s helpers and the viziers of His Messenger. We fight people until they believe in Allah. He who believes in Allah and His Messenger has protected his life and possessions from us. As for one who disbelieves, we will fight him forever in Allah’s Cause. Killing him is a small matter to us."(6)
Amjad Rasheed, a scholar with the Sufi-oriented SunniPath, issued a fatwa
entitled:
"Arabs preferred over other nations": "Therefore the preference of Arabs over other nations, and the preference of some Arabs over other Arabs is affirmed in the Sacred Law....Allah Glorious and Exalted is He, has chosen some men over others, such as the prophets over others and even some prophets over other prophets. Muslims should not have any objection to this, because all of this returns to the wisdom of the Most Wise, Glorious is He, who is not asked about what He does....And among His rulings is that Arabs are preferred over others and that some Arabs are better than other Arabs, as the above hadith clearly explained. So it is not appropriate for anyone to disagree in this when the proof is perfectly valid....As for the preference of an Arab over a non-Arab, and the preference of some Arabs over others, this is not a deed that one can earn. Rather, it is a bounty that Allah gives to whom He wills....It is obligatory on a Muslim to believe that Arabs are preferred over other nations because there is a proof for it."
Ibn Taymiyya, the medieval Islamic scholar especially praised by the Salafis as "Shaykh al-Islam", said: "Indeed it is the belief of the Ahlus-Sunnah wal Jama’ah that the race of Arabs is superior to the race of non-Arabs, the Hebrews (Jews), the Syrians (Arameans), the Romans (Europeans), the Persians, and others. And indeed the Quraysh is the most superior among the Arabs. And indeed the Banu Hashim is the most superior among the Quraysh. And indeed the Prophet, may the Blessings and Peace of Allaah be upon him, is the most superior of the Banu Hashim, for he is the most superior of all creation by his own self, and also the most superior among them because of his lineage."(7)
Rabbinic Roots of the "Curse of Ham". Ancient societies centered around clans and tribes and secure within their own homelands, were free from the elaborate racial theories that were later constructed. There was of course slavery, which was a worldwide institution spanning across all races and peoples, but this was economic and not racial. It was with the rise of universalizing, mono-thinking, centralized structures that such racial ideologies were constructed - certainly not innate to "whiteness" as the Woke intersectional cultists and their Marxist allies presume in their ridiculous dogmas - and this stemmed from the Middle East rather than Europe. This came in the form of how the Biblical and Qur'anic legend of "Ham", one of the sons of "Noah" after the "flood", was interpreted by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scholars throughout the centuries, providing a theological justification for what was an aberration before (elaborate racial theories and the systems built to implement them).
The origins of these theories seem to be in the rabbinical writings of Judaism, particularly the Talmud and Midrash, as noted by many Jewish(8) and Black(9) scholars alike. In its explanation of the Biblical narrative (Genesis 9:18-27), the Midrash states: "Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rabbi Yosef, '[Noah said] You prevented me from doing something in the dark [intercourse]; therefore, that man [Ham] will be ugly and dark"(Genesis Rabbah 36:7). Although this idea of blackness as a "curse" "had its genesis in the Old Testament, its forcing bed was the Babylonian Talmud."(10) Ham is placed alongside dogs and ravens(11) in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 108b; Jerusalem Talmud, Ta'anit, 1.6, 64d). Joel Augustus Rogers, a Jamaican-American historian active in the Harlem Renaissance, said that this "curse of blackness" "originates in the Talmud, Midrash, and other rabbinical writings."(12) Such legends "endowed [Blacks] with both certain physiognomical attributes and an undesirable character."(13)
Organizations such as the ADL and SPLC that revel in screaming "racism" as a smokescreen to stifle any opinion it opposes, do not disavow such rabbinical writings, and indeed accuse anyone who merely mentions them of "anti-Semitism" (similar to the likes of CAIR who love to scream "Islamophobia"). The authoritative
Jewish Encyclopedia in its 1904 edition
admits the origins of this legend. The famous Jewish scholar Maimonides, much esteemed within Judaism, provided another theological justification: "Some of the Turks [i.e. the Mongol race] and the nomads in the North [i.e. Eurasians], and the Blacks and the nomads in the South, and those who resemble them in our climates. And their nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings, and their level among existing things is below that of a man and above that of a monkey, because they have the image and the resemblance of a man more than a monkey does."(14)
Islam and the "Curse of Ham". Whereas Islam rejected the part of the legend where Ham was reacting to the nakedness of Noah (since Islam regards the "prophets" as perfect and without "sin"), the racial implications were accepted by medieval Islamic scholars whose works are even today accepted as authoritative by Muslims who simply ignore the embarrassing aspects. Al-Kisa'i, the 8th-century scholar of Kufa whose recitation of the Qur'an is accepted as one of the seven authoritative qira'at, recounted: "When Noah awoke he said, 'What was that laughter?' Shem told him what had happened, and Noah grew angry with Ham. 'Do you laugh at your father's genitals?' he said. 'May Allah change your complexion and may your face turn black!' And that very instant his face did turn black. Turning to Shem, he said, 'You covered your father: may Allah shield you from harm in this world and have mercy upon you in the next! May He make prophets and nobles of your progeny! May He make bondswomen and slaves of Ham's progeny until the Day of Resurrection! May He make tyrants, kings and emperors of Japheth's progeny!' And Allah knows best."(15)
This passage speaks for itself, that numerous Islamic scholars explained Blackness as something "cursed" and fit for enslavement, and Semites as "prophetic" and more "noble" than the rest of humanity. Yet Muslim apologists pontificate ad nauseum on the supposed racial utopianism of Islam vis a vis "racist" Western countries with their systemic "white privilege". According to Imam al-Tabari: "Shem, the son of Noah was the father of the Arabs, the Persians, and the Greeks; Ham was the father of the Black Africans; and Japheth was the father of the Turks and of Gog and Magog who were cousins of the Turks. Noah prayed that the prophets and apostles would be descended from Shem and kings would be from Japheth. He prayed that the African's color would change so that their descendants would be slaves to the Arabs and Turks....Shem begat everyone who is handsome of face with beautiful hair. Noah prayed that the hair of Ham's descendants would not grow beyond their ears, and that wherever his descendants met the children of Shem, the latter would enslave them."(16)
One of the figures praised as part of an "Islamic Golden Age" is the 9th century scholar Ibn Qutaybah, who had written on "
the excellence of the Arabs" and wrote in his work on history: "When Noah awoke from his stupor and knew what his youngest son [Ham] had done to him, he said: 'Cursed be the father of Canaan, a slave of slaves to his brothers' (
mal'un abu Kan'an 'abd 'abid li-akhwayhi). He said: 'Blessed is Shem. May Allah enlarge Japheth and he be free in the dwellings of Shem. May the father of Canaan be a slave to both of them.'"(17) Not only did he justify slavery with a "curse" involving fictitious characters, but in the vein of all the religions stemming from Judaism maligned the Canaanites who dared be indigenous to the land that Hebrew nomads coveted for themselves in the name of their tribal god. He further identifies not only Canaan but all Africans and even Indians with Ham:
"Wahb ibn Munabbih said that Ham ibn Noah was light-skinned and handsome. Then Allah Most High changed his complexion and that of his progeny because of the curse [invoked by] his father. Ham went off, followed by his children. They settled on the shore of the sea, and Allah increased them. They are the Sudan. Their food was fish, which used to stick to their teeth. So they sharpened their teeth until these became like needles. Some of Ham's descendants settled in the Maghreb [North Africa]. Ham begot Kush, Canaan, and Put. Put traveled and settled in the land of Hind and Sind [India and Pakistan], and the people there are his descendants. The descendants of Kush and Canaan are the races of the Sudan: the Nubians, the Zanj, the Qazan[?], the Zaghawa [Chad and Darfur], the Ethiopians, the Copts, and the Berbers."(18)
This Wahb ibn Muhabbih, described as a Yemeni convert from an unspecified religion, was also quoted by Ibn Hisham, most known for his work editing the seera (biography of Muhammad) of Ibn Ishaq: "Noah said to his sons: ....and keep away from the women. Noah made a place of seclusion for the women and placed ashes [ramaa] outside. Ham came to his wife at night and had sexual relations with her. In the morning, Noah saw the tracks in the ashes and said: 'Who came to the women?' They answered: 'We don't know who came.' Ham hid [the deed] from [his father]. So Noah said: 'O Allah! (fa-qala Nuh Allahumma!) Blacken the face and the face of the descendants of whoever disobeyed and had sexual relations with his wife!' Ham's wife gave birth to a black boy. He named him Kush and knew that the curse had reached Him."(19)
Slavery on deterministic grounds. Like their rabbinical predecessors, these Islamic scholars formed complex racial theories to explain diverse skin colors, identify certain races as more "beautiful" than others, and justifying slavery by "innate" qualities - long before certain Social Darwinist theories were used for the same purposes. One of these was an environmental determinism that the sun "baked" certain races more, accounting for their alleged negative qualities as we also see in the earlier quote by Maimonides. In Kitab 'Uyun al-Akhbar (Book of Useful Knowledge), Ibn Qutaybah calls Blacks "ugly and misshapen, because they live in a hot country. The heat overcooks them in the womb, and curls their hair." He failed to explain how the hot, arid deserts of Arabia maintained the Arabs' "excellence". In 1068, Moorish qadi (jurist) Said al-Andalusi wrote a book classifying the world's races. He categorized inhabitants of the extreme North and South as "barbarians", labeling Northern Europeans "mentally deficient" due to their "undercooking" by the sun; and Blacks as "fickle, foolish, violent, and stupid" due to their "overcooking" by the sun, whereas Arabs were "done just right." He also claimed that Blacks were "more like animals than men," because "the rule of virtue and stability in judgment" is lacking among them, replaced by the "foolishness and ignorance general among them." For they "have never made use of their minds in seeking after wisdom (hikmah) nor exercised themselves in the study of philosophy (falsafa)."(20)
The 10th century Persian geographer and historian, Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadani, wrote his sole surviving work, Mukhtasar Kibat al-Buldan (Concise Book of Countries) in 903: "A man of discernment said: 'The people of Iraq....do not come out with something between blonde, buff and blanched coloring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the women of the Slavs(21) and others of similar light complexion; nor are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Ethiopians, and other blacks who resemble them. The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two.'"(22) A similar view was expressed by the unknown author of Hudud al-'Alam (Limits of the World), dedicated in 982 to Abul-Harith Muhammad ibn Ahmad, ruler of the Persian Farighunid dynasty: "As regards southern countries, all their inhabitants are black on account of the heat of their climate. Most of them go naked. They are people distant from the standards of humanity."(23)
This simplistic materialistic view was also expressed by the 14th century Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun, touted as the "father of sociology" for works such as
Al-Muqaddima. He held the same theory as Maimonides, Said al-Andalusi, and Ibn al-Faqih - a Semitic supremacism towards peoples of the "non-temperate zones", the cold North (Northern Europeans) and the hot South (Sub-Saharan Africans): "Their qualities of character, moreover, are close to those of dumb animals. It has even been reported that most of the Negroes of the first zone dwell in caves and thickets, eat herbs, live in savage isolation and do not congregate, and eat each other. The same applies to the Slavs. The reason for this is that their remoteness from being temperate produces in them a disposition and character similar to those of the dumb animals, and they become correspondingly remote from humanity."(24) "We have seen that Negroes are in general characterized by levity, excitability, and great emotionalism. They are found eager to dance whenever they hear a melody. They are everywhere described as stupid. The real reason for these opinions is that, as has been shown by philosophers in the proper place, joy and gladness are due to expansion and diffusion of the animal spirit."(25)
In Kitab Rujar, 12th century geographer Al-Idrisi ascribed "lack of knowledge and defective minds" to Black people, among whom "their kings only acquire what they know about government and justice from the instruction of learned visitors from farther north."(26) In his 12th century work on proverbs, Al-Maydani wrote: "The African black, when hungry, steals; and when sated, he fornicates."(27) In Tasawwurat (Rawdat al-Taslim), the 13th century Shi'ite theologian Nasir al-Din al-Tusi wrote: "If (various kinds of men) are taken....and one placed after another, like the Negro from Zanzibar, in the South-most countries, the Negro does not differ from an animal in anything except the fact that his hands have been lifted from the earth, except for what Allah wishes. Many have seen that the ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro, and more intelligent."(28)
Case example against the 'Zanj'. Special ire was focused upon the "Zanj", people of the East African coast whose name has survived in Zanzibar; most known for their slave rebellion against the Abbasids in southern Iraq from 869 to 883. Their Basra contemporary, Al-Jahiz, initially held positive views about the Zanj but turned against them: "Like the crow among mankind are the Zanj for they are the worst of men and the most vicious of creatures in character and temperament."(29) "We know that the Zanj are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind, and the least capable of understanding the consequences of actions."(30) For Al-Muqaddasi: "As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence."(31) In the opinion of Hudud al-'Alam: "Their nature is that of wild animals (dadhagdn va bahd'im). They are extremely black."(32)
[To be continued in Part 2....]
References and Footnotes:
(1) A well-documented work I would highly recommend is Darío Fernández-Morera's The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2016).
(3) Sahih Muslim, Book 43, No. 2276, <
https://sunnah.com/muslim/43/1>; Book 30, No. 5653, <
https://www.iium.edu.my/deed/hadith/muslim/030_smt.html>; and Jami at-Tirmidhi, Vol. 1, Book 46, No. 3605, <
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Tirmidhi/DarusSalam/Volume-6/Book-46/Hadith-3605/>. Various hadith collections vary in their reference numbers, so I will provide online links to the variations for easy verification.
(5) Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat, Vol. 1, trans. S. Moinul-Haq, New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1972, p. 12.
(6) The History of al-Tabari, Volume IX: The Last Years of the Prophet, trans. Ismail K. Poonawala. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990, p. 69.
(7) Ibn Taymiyya, Iqtida' Sirat al-Mustaqeem, Vol. 1, p. 419.
(8) Harold Brackman,
The Ebb and Flow of Conflict: A History of Black-Jewish Relations Through 1900, Los Angeles: UCLA, 1977; David H. Aaron, "Early Rabbinic Exegesis on Noah's Son Ham and the So-Called ‘Hamitic Myth’,"
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. LXIII, No. 4, Winter 1995, pp. 721-760, <
https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article-abstract/LXIII/4/721/669867?redirectedFrom=PDF>; and David M. Goldenberg, "The Curse of Ham: A Case of Rabbinic Racism?," in
Struggles in the Promised Land, eds. Jack Salzman and Cornel West, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 21-51, <
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dmg2/comsalz3%20as%20publ.%20with%20additions.pdf>.
(9) Charles B. Copher, "Blacks and Jews in Historical Interaction: The Biblical/African Experience," The Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center, no. 3, 1975; St. Clair Drake, Black Folks Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology, Vol. 2, Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1987; and Tony Martin, The Jewish Onslaught: Despatches from the Wellesley Battlefront, Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 1993.
(10) John Ralph Willis, ed., Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, Vol. 1: Islam and the Ideology of Enslavement, New York: Routledge, 2013, p. 8.
(11) There is the traditional Islamic disdain for dogs, encoded within various
ahadith and engrained in most Muslim cultures considering them "unclean" and calling the black dog "a devil" (<
https://sunnah.com/muslim/22/59>). When Europe was Christianized, the raven became associated with "evil" and bad omens whereas it had previously been a sacred animal among European Pagan mythologies. Could there thus be a Talmudic basis behind these two qualities of these two Abrahamic offshoots of Judaism?
(12) J.A. Rogers, Nature Knows No Color-Line: Research into the Negro Ancestry in the White Race, New York: 1952, pp. 9-10.
(13) Edith Sanders, "Hamitic Hypothesis," Journal of African History, no. 10, 1969, pp. 521-532.
(14) Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed, Book III, Chapter 51; quoted in Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, London: Pluto Press, 1994, pp. 24-25.
(15) Muhammad al-Kisa'i, Qisas al-'Anbiya (Stories of the Prophets), Chapter on Nuh.
(16) The History of al-Tabari, Vol. II: Prophets and Patriarchs, trans. William M. Brinner, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, pp. 11, 21. Aside from this legend having no historical or archaeological basis, is his absurd lumping together the Indo-European-speaking Greeks and Persians with the Semitic Arabs. Nor does this "table of nations" account for the diverse peoples worldwide beyond their knowledge, yet somehow descend from three sons in the Middle East.
(17) Ibn Qutaybah, Kitab al-ma'arif, Beirut: Dar al-kutub al-'ilmiyya, 1407/1987, pp. 15-16.
(18) Quoted in Nehemia Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 15.
(19) Ibn Hisham, Kitab al-tijan fi muluk Himyar, San'a: Center for Yemenite Study and Research, 1979, p. 32.
(20) Quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, New York: Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 35-36; and John Alembillah Azumah, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue, London: Oneworld Publications, 2001.
(21) The Arabic word he uses, صقالبة - saqaliba - refers not only to the peoples we commonly know as "Slavic" today but all central and eastern Europe, and more broadly all European slaves such as it was during the Moorish occupation of Spain. He was writing a time when there was a lucrative trade in European slaves to the Islamic world, with the crucial role of the Radhanite Jewish merchants as middle-men along the trade routes.
(24) Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 59.
(25) ibid., p. 63.
(26) Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 46-52.
(27) Arabum proverbia viclibus intruxit, latine vertit, commentario illustravit et sumtibus suit: Amtal al-Arab, ed. Georg Wilhelm Freytag, Bonn: 1839, Vol. 2, p. 404.
(28) Quoted in Azumah, op. cit.
(29) Al-Jahiz, Kitab al-Hawayan (Book of Animals), Vol. 2, Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 2015.
(30) Al-Jahiz, Kitab al-Bukhala (Book of Misers), ed. Taha al-Hajiri, Cairo: Dar al-Ma'arif, 1958.
(31) Al-Muqaddasi, Kitab al-Bad' wah-Tarikh, Vol. 4, "On the neighbors of the Bujja"; quoted in Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Chapter 7.
(32) Hudud al-'Alam, § 55. Discourse on the Country of Zangistan and its Towns, p. 163.
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