by Sean Jobst
26 October 2020
In Part 1, I traced the origins of the racial ideologies used to stigmatize people of European ancestry, as actually stemming from the monotheistic religions of the Middle East. I exposed just how entrenched these ideologies were within medieval Islamic scholarship, contrary to the CAIR and other modern apologists who obscure the reality of Islam's history. Throughout, I highlighted the hypocrisy of those who cast stones without looking within, much like I did previously about privileged rioters now subverting America under a "social justice" guise. These were not marginal scholars expressing these views, but leading figures extolled for their role in the much-touted "Golden Age" of Islam.
Now, I focus more directly on ahadith - narrations from Muhammad, the second authoritative source of Islam after the Qur'an - and the long history of slavery within the Islamic world. What is now being used to inflame racial tensions between White and Black people, and to impose a "guilt/shame" complex upon all people of European ancestry no matter what ethnicity or social backgrounds, should instead be turned back and exposed as the hypocritical projection it really is from these political groups. This is about ideology - a system of political control embedded within religion - involving the actions of real people, not something innate or biological, so criticizing ideas and actions is protected speech contrary to those seeking to police and criminalize thought.
Muhammad associating "Black" with negative traits. Beneath the constant touting of his "Farewell Sermon" and other token examples, is Muhammad expressing the biases of his wealthy, settled Arabian culture of Mecca.(1) He was simply a product of his time and place, but the problem is when an entire religion of over a billion people in the here and now define him as the "perfect example" to emulate, extolling his words and actions (sunnah) as applicable to follow for all time and all places; and when certain apologists among them repeat the slogans of critical race theory to "deconstruct" the "racist" Western societies while glossing over the words of their own "insan al-kamil" (perfect man) - which, if uttered or done (even for much less than that) by someone whose ancestry stems from somewhere in Europe, would be "canceled" by the authoritarian iconoclast mobs.
Abul-Darda' narrated that Muhammad said: "Allah created Adam when He created him and struck his right shoulder and there emitted from it white offspring as if they were small ants. He struck his left shoulder and there emitted from it black offspring as if they were charcoal. Then he said to the party of the right, 'To Paradise and I do not mind.' Then He said to the party of the left, 'To Hell and I do not care.'"(2) Imam Ahmad deduced from this that Allah "created" the white race (dhurriyya bayda) from the right shoulder of Adam, and the black race (dhurriyya sawda) from the left shoulder of Adam.(3) Such linear Abrahamic religions with their "creation" myths have to account for such racial differences, whereas native spiritualities all over the world with their cyclical understanding with no "beginning" or "end" held no such dilemmas.
Narrated Abdullah ibn Umar: The Prophet said, "I saw (in a dream) a black woman with unkempt hair going out of Medina and settling at Mahai'a, namely Al-Juhfa. I interpreted that as the epidemic of Medina being transferred to that place."(4) Why did Muhammad use her black complexion as an ominous allegory for an epidemic?
Ibn Ishaq, whose 8th-century biography (seera) forms the basis of all later biographies of Muhammad, cited a direct chain of narration (isnad) that quoted Muhammad: "'Whoever wants to see Satan should look at Nabtal bin al-Harith!' He was a sturdy black man with long flowing hair, inflamed eyes, and dark ruddy cheeks. He used to come and talk to the Prophet and listen to him. He would then carry what he had said to the hypocrites (munafiqeen). Nabtal said, 'Muhammad is all ears: if anyone tells him something he believes it.' Allah sent down concerning him: 'And of them are those who annoy the Prophet and say that he is all ears. Say, 'Good ears for you. He believes in Allah and trusts the believers and is a mercy for those of you who believe; and those who annoy the Prophet of Allah for them there is a painful punishment' (Quran, 9:61)."(5) Muhammad thus used a black man and not his numerous Arab enemies as the allegory for "satan".
Concerning the race of Muhammad himself, the 12th century Moorish historian and theologian, Qadi Iyad Musa al-Yahsubi, related: "Ahmad ibn Abi Sulayman, the companion of Sahnun said, 'Anyone who says that the Prophet was black should be killed.'"(6) So according to Muslims (hid by the apologists but clearly enshrined in all the classical texts of Islam), not only are those who criticize Muhammad even the slightest to be killed, but even those who say he was black rather than an Arab man from the Quraish tribe.
Muhammad, the Slave-Owner. The "Noble Messenger" with the "perfect example" (sunna) was such a slave-owner that one of the authoritative works of seera has devoted an entire chapter on his 11 female and 28 male slaves (some bought and sold at different times): "Muhammad had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more slaves than he sold, especially after Allah empowered him by His message, as well as after his immigration from Mecca. He once sold one black slave for two. His name was Jacob al-Mudbir. His purchases of slaves were more than he sold. He was used to renting out and hiring many slaves, but he hired more slaves than he rented out."(11) Elsewhere, the scholar behind these words - Ibn Qayyim - names and details Muhammad's various slaves:
Their stories are mentioned throughout ahadith, showing various aspects of Muhammad's daily life and his interactions with others, for example Sahih al-Bukhari in its book on "Good Manners and Form": Narrated Anas bin Malik: "Allah's Apostle was on a journey and he had a black slave called Anjasha, and he was driving the camels (very fast, and there were women riding on those camels). Allah's Apostle said, 'Waihaka (May Allah be merciful to you), O Anjasha! Drive slowly (the camels) with the glass vessels (women)!'"(13)
Sunan an-Nasa'i mentions another slave named Mid'am: Narrated Abu Huraira: "We were with the Messenger of Allah in the year of Khaibar, and we did not get any spoils of war except for wealth, goods and clothes. Then a man from Banu Ad-Dubaib, who was called Rifa'ah bin Zaid, gave the Messenger of Allah a black slave who was called Mid'am. The Messenger of Allah set out for Wadi Al-Qura. When we were in Wadi Al-Qura, while Mid'am was unloading the luggage of the Messenger of Allah, an arrow came and killed him. The people said: 'Congratulations! You will go to Paradise,' but the Messenger of Allah said: 'No, by the One in Whose hand is my soul! The cloak that he took from the spoils of war on the Day of Khaibar is burning him with fire.' When the people heard that, a man brought one or two shoelaces to the Messenger of Allah and the Messenger of Allah said: 'One or two shoelaces of fire.'"(14)
Abu Dharr narrated a hadith that includes: "Then I came to the Messenger of Allah. He said: 'O Abu Dharr.' I kept silence. He then said: 'May your mother bereave you, Abu Dharr: woe be to your mother.' He then called a black slave-girl for me. She brought a vessel which contained water."(17) Anas narrated: "Allah's Messenger went to his slave tailor, and he was offered (a dish of) gourd of which he started eating."(18) Anas narrated that Muhammad had a female slave with whom he had intercourse, but Aisha and Hafsa would not leave him alone until he said that she was forbidden for him. Then was revealed the verse: "O Prophet! Why do you forbid (for yourself) that which Allah has allowed to you"(Qur'an 66:1).(19)
Muhammad selling two slaves for one slave. Jabir ibn Abdullah narrated: "There came a slave and pledged allegiance to Allah's Apostle on migration; he did not know that he was a slave. Then there came his master and demanded him back, whereupon Allah's Apostle said: 'Sell him to me.' And he bought him for two black slaves, and he did not afterwards take allegiance from anyone until he had asked him whether he was a slave (or a free man)."(20) All that mattered to Muhammad was ensuring the freedom of the one who became Muslim, thinking nothing of selling two others as slaves.
Muhammad intervening against freeing slaves. Jabir ibn Abdullah also narrated: "A man among us manumitted a slave (declared the slave would be freed after his death) and he had no other property than that, so the Prophet canceled the manumission and sold the slave for him. Nu'aim bin Al-Nahham bought the slave from him."(21) Imran bin Husain narrated: "A man had six slaves, and he did not have any other wealth apart from them, and he set them free when he died. The Messenger of Allah divided them into groups, set two free and left four as slaves."(22) A version of this hadith has these words: "News of that reached the Prophet and he was angry about that. He said: 'I was thinking of not offering the funeral prayer for him.' Then he called the slaves and divided them into three groups. He cast lots among them, then freed two and left four as slaves."(23)
On another occasion, Muhammad intervened when one of his wives was about to free a slave-girl, advising her to instead give her away to her uncle as a "reward": "Narrated Kuraib, the freed slave of Ibn Abbas, that Maimuna bint Al-Harith told him that she manumitted a slave-girl without taking the permission of the Prophet. On the day when it was her turn to be with the Prophet, she said, 'Do you know, O Allah's Messenger, that I have manumitted my slave-girl?' He said, 'Have you really?' She replied in the affirmative. He said, 'You would have got more reward if you had given her (i.e. the slave-girl) to one of your maternal uncles.'"(24)
Muhammad killed a runaway slave. "Jarir used to narrate from the Prophet: 'If a slave runs away, no Salah will be accepted from him, and if he dies he will die a disbeliever.' A slave of Jarir's ran away, and he caught him and struck his neck (killing him)."(25)
Muhammad on slaves as economic transactions. "Yahya related to me from Malik from Ibn Shihab from Abu Salama ibn Abd ar-Rahman ibn Awf from Abu Huraira: that a woman from the Hudhayl tribe threw a stone at a woman from the same tribe, and she had a miscarriage. The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, gave a judgment that a slave or slave-girl of fair complexion and excellence should be given to her."(26) Elsewhere, Abu Huraira narrated that Muhammad exempted slaves from the Zakat a Muslim was obligated to pay: "There is no Zakat either on a horse or a slave belonging to a Muslim."(27) The "god" behind the Qur'an considers some from among his "creation" to be the property of others, so they can be freed as compensation (4:92) if they are "believing" and those killed are "believers"; otherwise, there is no manumission.
Slaves used for amusement. Urwa narrated on the authority of Aisha: "On the days of Mina (11th, 12th, and 13th of Dhul-Hijjah), Abu Bakr came to her while two young girls were beating the tambourine and the Prophet was lying covered with his clothes. Abu Bakr scolded them and the Prophet uncovered his face and said to Abu Bakr, 'Leave them, for these days are the days of 'Id and the days of Mina.' Aisha further said, 'Once the Prophet was screening me and I was watching the display of black slaves in the Mosque and ('Umar) scolded them. The Prophet said, 'Leave them. O Bani Arfida! (carry on), you are safe (protected).'"(28)
Muhammad and enslaved war-captives. Jabir ibn Abdullah narrated: "We used to sell our slave women and the mothers of our children (Umahat Awaldina) when the Prophet was still living among us, and we did not see anything wrong with that."(29) After the Battle of Khaybar, during which Muhammad himself took and married a war-captive as wife, the women and children were enslaved according to Anas ibn Malik: "Allah's Messenger vanquished them by force and their warriors were killed; the children and women were taken as captives."(30) That slave-woman initially was given to Dihya: "We conquered Khaibar, took the captives, and the booty was collected. Dihya came and said, 'O Allah's Prophet! Give me a slave girl from the captives.' The Prophet said, 'Go and take any slave girl.' He took Safiya bint Huyai."(31)
Whether it be the ISIS sex-slavery against Yazidi women, or the grooming gangs against English girls, the precedence was established by the Qur'an's own doctrine of "those whom your right hands possess": "Abu Sa'id al-Khudri reported that at the Battle of Hanain, the Messenger of Allah sent an army to Autas and encountered the enemy and fought with them. Having overcome them and taken them captives, the Companions of Allah's Messenger seemed to refrain from having intercourse with captive women because of their husbands being polytheists. Then Allah, Most High, sent down regarding that: 'And women already married, except those whom your right hands possess (Qur'an 4:24)'."(32) The Qur'an legitimizes such sexual slavery under "those your right hand possesses" in several other verses (23:5-6, 24:32, 33:50), even while presuming to be a "moral" revelation from an all-perfect god.
That the vast majority of Muslims aren't doing such actions, has more to do with the fact that most people are innately "good" by nature when it comes to their social interactions, at least on that level. They use their own actions to ascribe to Islam, emphasizing those parts that conform to their view of the world, whilst in most cases not being too aware of these unsavory aspects (to put it mildly) since it doesn't have immediate relevance for their own lives. But the fact remains that such actions, such jihad and such attitudes we have seen in the above and in the previous post, are sanctioned by the Qur'an, various other religious texts of Islam, and are the sunna of Muhammad. The problem further comes when certain activist groups and apologists will cast aspersions against American and European cultures for their own history, holding to a Marxist narrative that seeks to "deconstruct" those cultures mixed with their own impulse to sanitize Islamic history to score ideological points or for da'wa (whatever the case may be). Its worth examining that history....
Overview of Slavery in Islamic History. Rather than denying the preceding, Muslim apologists portray slavery in the Islamic world as "more humane" than elsewhere. Many gloss over the various verses and ahadith, zeroing in on a few verses that advise ransoming slaves (2:177, 24:33, 90:12-13). But these same hypocrites dismiss the fact that Britain enforcing its own abolition of slavery in the 19th century or America fighting a civil war over slavery (among other causes) would absolve those societies of their "guilt" for slavery, especially now that such Muslims are aligning with Critical Race Theory fanatics. Yet the fact remains that it was still prevalent throughout Islamic history, made halal (permissible) by the Qur'an, sunna, and the fiqh (jurisprudence) schools. Slaves were either born to slave parents, were captured in jihad, bought in a slave market, or were given as tribute.
An Islamic apologia for slavery was given by Sultan Abd al-Rahman of Morocco in 1842, when the British Consul General wrote a letter asking if he had taken any measures to end slavery. "The traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam up to this day," the Sultan replied, saying he was "not aware of its being prohibited by the laws of any sect, and no one need ask this question, the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day."(33) Even now slavery exists in Mauritania and post-Qadhafi Libya. The conditions of foreign laborers in the Arabian Peninsula are akin to slavery. There was a thriving slave market even in the "holy city" of Mecca, where traders on the Hajj pilgrimage would buy and sell slaves; slaves were being sold in Mecca as late as 1962. This was considered the ideal place exactly because Muslims converged from different regions into one central place.
The first international slave trade agreement was written following the conquest of Egypt in 641, when the Islamic general Abdullah ibn Abi Sarh wrote a treaty called the Baqt with Qalidurat, the Nubian King of Makuria. This included an annual levy of 360 "high quality slaves" to the Muslim rulers of Egypt in exchange for no jihad against Nubia; it remained in force until the 12th century, renewed by the Abbasids who succeeded the Umayyad dynasty, until they declared jihad against Nubia and converted that independent African kingdom to Islam. Under the Umayyad dynasty which included the four "rightly-guided caliphs" (khulafa ar-rashidun) of Sunni Muslims and later the Moorish invaders of the Iberian Peninsula, the class hierarchy was Arab Muslims, Non-Arab Muslims, Non-Muslim dhimmis, and slaves. The Umayyads expanded the Islamic slave trade to India and Southern Europeans in coastal raids, as will be discussed later.
Largely coming to power as a backlash against the second-class treatment of Persian and other non-Arab Muslims by the Umayyad elites, the Abbasids imported large numbers of slaves as military forces or as cheap labor. They especially plundered the "coast of the Zanj", the coast of East Africa extending from modern Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. The Zanj slaves were taken to Yemen and Oman and from there to southern Iraq, where harsh conditions in the salt mines led to the Zanj Rebellion from 869 to 883. It was successful until brutally crushed with an estimated death toll between half-a-million and 2.5 million.(34) In the 11th century, the Arab physician Al-Mukhtar bin Abdun-Yuhanna ibn al-Butlan, although Nestorian Christian his views were adopted by the Abbasid court in Baghdad, gave different racial categories of slaves. He recommended using Indians and Nubians as guards; the Zanj as servants, laborers and eunuchs; and Turks and Slavs as soldiers.(35) It was reported that the Abbasids had 7,000 Black and 4,000 White slaves castrated serving in 10th century Baghdad.
Although former slaves themselves, both the Seljuk Turks and the Mamluks (white slaves from the Caucasus whose name meant "owned") maintained slavery after their own rise to power. The Ottomans used African slaves as domestic servants or eunuch guards over harems, since the labor force was Anatolian peasants, while European and Caucasus slaves were used for administrative positions as I encountered repeatedly in historical sites throughout Istanbul (Constantinople). "As long as slavery maintained a multiracial cast, Arab and Turkish slave owner favored white slaves over blacks in so far as work assignments and what might be called career prospects were concerned. White slave girls were preferred as concubines over black girls; and among the latter, the fairer-complexioned Abyssinians were shown partiality over their darker-skinned African sisters."(36) Between 1438 and 1648, countless thousands of boys from throughout the Balkans were taken as slaves, forcibly converted to Islam, and turned into soldiers in the Ottoman devşirme "child levy" or "blood tax" system. By 1609, no less than 20% of the entire population in the Ottoman Empire were slaves.
As part of his pro-slavery argument in 1858, Thomas R.R. Cobb, an American legal scholar and future Brigadier General for the Confederate States of America, used the Ottoman slave trade to justify slavery in words very similar to those used by Muslim apologists (i.e. it was "kinder" than elsewhere, there was chances for upward mobility): "In Turkey, and wherever Islamism prevails, slavery is a part of the religion of the people. The slave-market at Constantinople is always crowded with both blacks and whites; and in the same stall may be seen the negro from Sennaar or Abbysinia, and the beautiful Circassian girl, sold by her parents to avoid poverty and misery. Except to the Christian slave, the Turk is not in practice a cruel master, though his power is almost absolute. It is said that other Europeans, residing in Turkey, are invariably more cruel masters than the Turks themselves. Young and promising boys are frequently purchased by the sovereign, to be reared and educated for officers of state; and the Circassian beauties usually find a home in the harem of a wealthy proprietor. The right of redemption, too, is strictly enjoined by the Koran."(37)
India. Wherever Muslims conquered, slavery flourished as newly converted peoples were turned against their still non-Muslim neighbors, as jihad included enslaving war captives. This was certainly the case with the Islamic invaders of India, as they converted Hindus who were then turned against their former brethren. Successive Islamic dynasties (primarily foreign) enslaved untold numbers of Hindus. The initial Arab Muslim raid of Muhammad ibn Qasim carried off thousands of Indians as slaves: "The sources insist that now, in dutiful conformity to religious law, 'the one-fifth of the slaves and spoils' were set apart for the caliph's treasury and despatched to Iraq and Syria. The remainder was scattered among the army of Islam. At Rur, a random 60,000 captives reduced to slavery. At Brahamanabad 30,000 slaves were allegedly taken. At Multan 6,000. Slave raids continued to be made throughout the late Umayyad period in Sindh, but also much further into Hind, as far as Ujjain and Malwa. The Abbasid governors raided Punjab, where many prisoners and slaves were taken."(38)
Themselves descended from Turkic slave-guards of a Persian Islamic kingdom, the Ghaznavids who ruled large swathes of northwest India from 977 to 1186, enslaved many Indians as noted by Arab historian Al-Utbi about its founding Sultan, Sabuktigin: "The Sultan returned, marching in the rear of this immense booty, and slaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap; and men of respectability in their native land, were degraded by becoming slaves of common shopkeepers. But this is the goodness of Allah, who bestows honours on his own religion and degrades infidelity."(39) "In the midst of the land of Hindustan," Mahmud of Ghazni enslaved such a large number that their value was reduced to only two to ten dirhams each, so that "merchants came from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Central Asia, Iraq and Khurasan were swelled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, mingled in one common slavery."(40)
Slavery went hand-in-hand with jihad against Hindus: "Slavery and empire-formation tied in particularly well with iqta and it is within this context of Islamic expansion that elite slavery was later commonly found. It became the predominant system in North India in the thirteenth century and retained considerable importance in the fourteenth century. Slavery was still vigorous in fifteenth-century Bengal, while after that date it shifted to the Deccan where it persisted until the seventeenth century. It remained present to a minor extent in the Mughal provinces throughout the seventeenth century and had a notable revival under the Afghans in North India again in the eighteenth century."(41) Among the Delhi Sultanate and Mughals, slaves were both war-captives and those unable to pay tax. The "Movement of considerable numbers of Hindus to the Central Asian slave markets was largely a product of the state building efforts of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire in South Asia."(42)
Ruling over the Delhi Sultanate between 1351 and 1388, Firoz Shah Tughlaq had 180,000 slaves, including 40,000 palace guards, and had bureaucrats and a special minister to dealing with these massive numbers of slaves: "The Sultan was very diligent in providing slaves, and he carried his care so far as to command his great fief-holders and officers to capture slaves whenever they were at war, and to pick out and send the best for the services of the court."(43) Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, who reigned from 1658 to 1701, was especially known for his harshness against Hindus. He codified Mughal laws by sponsoring a 30-volume Hanafi fiqh work called Fatawa-e-Alamgiri or Fatawa-i-Hindiyya. Among its prescriptions about slaves were fully giving Muslims the right to purchase and own slaves; a Muslim man's right to have sex with a captive slave girl; preventing any inheritance rights for slaves; requiring their master's permission before marrying; and making the testimony of slaves to be inadmissible in court.(44)
Africa. Even today in many Arab countries, Blacks are often called "abeed" which comes directly from abd "slave". Within Islam, people generally are considered "abd Allah" or "slaves/servants of Allah", Islam meaning "submission", but "abeed" more specifically refers to attitudes that saw them as slaves of other people who were regarded as more "superior" due to their Semitic ancestry or Islamic culture. Even African Muslims were often enslaved, as attested in a letter from Abu Amir Uthman, the ruler of Bornu in modern Chad and Nigeria, to the Sultan of Egypt: "These Arabs have devastated all our country, the whole of al-Barnu, up to this day. They have seized our free men and our relatives, who are Muslims, and sold them to the slave dealers (jullab) of Egypt and Syria and others; some they have kept for their own service....restrain the Arabs from their debauchery."(45)
The slave trade of Africans to the Islamic world was very immense.(46) Tidiane N'Diaye, the Senegalese anthropologist known for his esteemed work in this subject, even argued that the history of the Islamic slave trade of Africans was longer and had far more victims than the Transatlantic slave trade; that more numbers died during the hardships of the transportation; and the widespread practice of castration was meant to reduce their numbers.(47) Just as we will see with the Iberian experience, the Islamic enslavement of Black Africans is sanitized by leftist academics and apologists such as Qantara who idolize it in contrast to their "deconstruction" of American and European history. "Hence in the study of Islam in the West, the dominant convention is that a critical approach is reserved for the Christian past but forbidden for the Muslim past," writes Ghanaian writer and theologian John Alembillah Azumah. "The net result is a romantic picture of the history of Islam avoiding and sometimes denying such issues as the jihadists' slaughter and massive enslavement of traditional African believers."(48) He continues elsewhere in a lengthy passage:
"The main areas from which slaves were drawn and exported to Egypt and other North African Muslim locations and then to the wider Islamic world, were the central and western Sudan. The traffic started mainly from Nubia, from where people living to the south and east of Dongola were taken to Egypt. Slaves were exported also from Kanem-Borno via Fezzan to Cairo, Tripoli and Qayrawan. People groups living around the Lake Chad area were later exported along this route, while in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bagirmi slaves (especially eunuchs) formed an important part of the slave traffic along this route. Some were sent later from Tripoli to ports in modern Turkey, Greece, Albania and southern Yugoslavia which were all at the time under the Ottoman Empire.
"Slaves from the Middle Niger and the Atlantic coast were also drawn from Gao via Warghla to Tahert (in modern Algeria) and Qayrawan and later from Timbuktu through Tuwat to Tlemcen, Sijilmasa, Fez and other centres of the western Maghrib from where some passed into Muslim Spain and Sicily when it was under Muslim domination between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Ibn Khaldun testifies to the presence of a large slave population in fourteenth-century North Africa when he wrote that blacks constituted 'the ordinary mass of slaves'. Muslim Berber groups of North Africa like the Tuareg and Moors became the chief agents in the raiding, and in the traffic black slaves to North Africa, Spain, Turkey and the Mediterranean world, some of whom were taken as far as India. As early as the eighth century, the Berber Ibadi community of North Africa virtually controlled the trade routes, and thus the traffic in black slaves."
Iberia. The Islamic trade enslavement of whites was not far behind that of blacks in numbers and scope. From the 1530s to 1780s, in various Islamic lands between 1 million and 1.25 million white slaves were captured and traded from throughout Southern Europe, Greece, the Balkans, Armenia, Persia, and the Slavic lands.(49) From its very beginning, slavery was an essential part of the Moorish invasion and occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. In the Kitab al-Bayan al-Mughrib (Book of the Amazing Story), a chronicle written around 1312 about the Moorish kings of Andalus and North Africa, the Moroccan historian Ibn Idhari mentioned that upon his return to Africa, Musa ibn Nusayr, the Umayyad conqueror of Iberia, rewarded each of his victorious soldiers with one black male and one black female slave.(50) The enslavement of both races were justified by both their being "kuffar" (disbelievers) and the Semitic supremacist theories of several medieval Islamic scholars I highlighted in Part 1, that looked down upon the peoples of both Europe and Africa.
Islamic apologists denigrate the pre-Moorish Iberian Peninsula as "backward" compared to "Al-Andalus" which, alongside Leftist academics, they extol as the paragon of "civilization" and "convivencia" (convergence), a "paradise" that exported high culture. The truth is that, in the words of the 10th-century historian and geographer Ibn Hawqal: "A well-known article of exportation consists of slaves: boys and girls taken from France and Galicia, as well as Slav eunuchs. All the Slav eunuchs that one finds on the face of the earth come from Spain. One forces them to undergo castration in this country: the surgery is done by Jewish merchants."(51) (Incidentally, another example of the Jewish-Moorish collusion against Iberia that I documented in 2016.) The term "saqaliba" - "Slav" - was used by the Moors to refer to all white slaves, whether from northern and eastern Europe, Galicia and northern Spain, Lombardy, the "land of the Franks", and Calabria, who populated the palaces, harems and armies of the Andalusian rulers.(52)
Just as with the various Ottoman Sultans with their little Turkish ancestry (actually looking down upon the Turks of Anatolia), the Moorish rulers were progressively less ethnically Arab or Berber and more native Iberian in blood, due to the widespread enslavement and harems. Ibn Hazm's much-touted "treatise on love" (El collar de la paloma), often held up by the more apologetic elements as an example of the Moors' "liberal" views, was actually a "love" of women held in sexual slavery that made them more "exotic".(54) The women who worked in various positions and thus held up to portray "Al-Andalus" as a paragon of women's rights, were actually slave girls since such things were forbidden for Muslim women.(55) Much more can be said about the reality of the Moorish "paradise", but this can be left for future articles as I want to explore more about various suppressed aspects of history.
As the crusades were synonymous with jihad, both stemming from their common Abrahamic roots, so too can the elaborate racial hierarchies of Colonial Latin America be attributed to those established in Iberia by the Moorish occupiers. Not only were indigenous Iberians reduced to lesser status under Islamic occupation, but Berber Muslims were regarded as lesser than those stemming from "pure" Arab stock and there were frequent rebellions by both Berbers and the native Iberian "muladis", a word that originated within Arabia: "Initially it meant anyone who was a 'neo-convert' to Islam since in principle non-Arabs could only enter Islam as 'clients' of an Arab. Thus mawla came to be synonymous with 'non-Arab Muslim.' Also freed slaves would become, as well as their descendants, 'clients' of the former owner....Though in theory they were not to be considered socially inferior, in practice the mawali were early on considered lowly people, and the life of a client was worth less than that of an Arab."(56)
"[Muwallad was an Arabic] word belonging to the vocabulary of stock-breeders and designating the product of a crossing (tawlid) of two different animal breeds, thus a hybrid, of mixed blood. It is hardly surprising that it was extended to humans from the time when the feeling arose that the purity of the Arab race had been altered following the conquests, the influx of elements of other stocks and mixed marriages. In a more limited sense, muwallad designates a cross-breed, half-caste or even, as Dozy states (suppl., s.v.) 'one who, without being of Arab origin, has been born among the Arabs and received an Arabic education'....In al-Andalus, the muwalladun constituted a particular category of the population....Muwallad has given rise to Spanish muladi and, according to Eguilaz (an opinion rejected by Dozy), to mulato. The mediaeval Latin transcription was mollites....[Muwalladun] designated the descendants of non-Arab neo-Muslims, brought up in the Islamic religion by their recently-converted parents. Thus they are the members of the second generation (the sons) and, by extension, those of the third generation (the grandsons). A convert or neo-Muslim was called musalima or asalima. More precisely still, aslami was used to designate the ex-Christian convert, whereas the term islami was reserved for the former Jew."(57)
Conclusion. The preceding evidence speaks for itself beyond distorted narratives seeking to rewrite history. Its a straight-forward look at history contrary to Critical Race Theory dogmas that demonize whites generally as "perpetrators", ignoring the complex history of slavery that both slavers and slaves included various races and ethnicities, across all parts of the world. Among the suppressed facts they ignore is the vast enslavement of various peoples to the Islamic world, or the disproportionate role of Jewish merchants in the Transatlantic slave-trade. Both complicate the agenda that identifies slavery, racism, and colonialism solely with white European and American societies. History is never that simplistic, that black and white (pardon the pun), but is filled with complexities.
Along with other recent articles, I exposed the inherent racism lurking underneath ideologies pretending to be "anti-racism" (a loaded word invested with Orwellian connotations). Its not about rejecting something, but feeling oneself to be on an authoritarian mission to impose a specific worldview upon others. Its likewise an indictment of certain forces in the West who utter such platitudes. For example, Fifa's "Say No To Racism" campaign and various football club owners' links to pro-migrant NGOs, even while tied to political elites who make the war and economic policies breeding such migrations in the first place. These hypocrites similarly ignore the massive involvement of slave laborers building the stadiums and infrastructure for World Cup 2022 in Qatar.(58)
Ironically, the most vocal behind such narratives tend to be descendants of slave-owners who transfer their "guilt" away from themselves, projecting it upon others so they can be assuaged of what they regard as their "sin" - their collectivist worldview has its own dogmas like a new religion, so its natural they would have "sin" and "penance". Within the Islamic context, CAIR and other activist groups suppress the sordid history of the Muslim world - even ongoing slavery in places such as Libya and Mauritania - for its embarrassing to their "da'wa" efforts and "anti-racist" platitudes. Insisting on such an absolute, universal "truth" means one will naturally distort history to fit whatever makes the adherents of that "truth" look flawless. They support "cancelling" others and eradicating historical monuments, but still hold up as the "perfect example" such a man who did as bad and, in many cases, worse than many of these other historical figures.
Footnotes and References:
(1) Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said: "The testimony of an Arab nomad (Bedouin) against a townsman is not allowable."(Sunan Abu Dawud, 25:32 https://sunnah.com/abudawud/25/32; Sunan Ibn Majah, 13:60 https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah/13/60)
(2) Sunan al-Tirmidhi, No. 38; Mishkat al-Masabih, trans. Abdul-Hameed Siddiqi, Kitab-ul-Qadr (Book of Destiny), New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1990, No. 119, pp. 76-77; and Mishkat al-Masabih, trans. Dr. James Robson, Vol. I, Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf Publishers, 1990, Book I, Chapter IV, pp. 31-32.
(3) Cited in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Zad al-Ma'ad (Provisions for the Hereafter), Vol. 1, p. 160. I was unable to verify the exact reference, but its merely supportive of the previous hadith.
(4) Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 87, Nos. 161 (https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-9/Book-87/Hadith-161/), 162 (https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-9/Book-87/Hadith-162/), and 163 (https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-9/Book-87/Hadith-163/).
(5) The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, trans. Alfred Guillaume, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1955, p. 243.
(6) Muhammad Messenger of Allah (Ash-Shifa of Qadi 'Iyad), trans. Aisha Abdarrahman Bewley, Inverness, Scotland/Cape Town: Madinah Press, 2008, p. 375.
(7) The Risala of 'Abdullah ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani - A Treatise on Maliki Fiqh (Including commentary from ath-Thamr ad-Dani by al-Azhari)(310/922 - 386/996), Chapter 43.16 Trading abroad; available online (http://bewley.virtualave.net/RisSpeech.html).
(8) Quoted in Adam Misbah al-Haqq, "Blasphemy Before God: The Darkness of Racism In Muslim Culture," <http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/blasphemy_before_god_the_darkness_of_racism_in_muslim_culture>.
(9) Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, Princeton, NJ/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1967, p. 117.
(10) Quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, New York: Harper & Row, 1971, p. 38.
(11) Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Provisions for the Hereafter (Zad al-Ma‘ad Haydi Khairi-l ‘Ibad), trans. Jalal Abualrub, vol. 1, Orlando, Florida: Madinah Publishers and Distributors, 2003, p. 279.
(12) ibid., pp. 199-200.
(13) Sahih al-Bukhari, No. 6161; Vol. 8, Book 78, No. 187, <https://sunnah.com/bukhari/78/187>.
(14) Sunan an-Nasa'i, Vol. 4, Book 35, No. 3858, <https://muflihun.com/nasai/35/3858>. It has been classified as "sahih" or authentic. A similar hadith was also related in Imam Malik's Muwatta, Book 21: Jihad, No. 21.13.25 <https://ahadith.co.uk/chapter.php?page=3&cid=60&rows=10>.
(15) Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 9, Book 91, No. 368 <https://www.iium.edu.my/deed/hadith/bukhari/091_sbt.html>.
(16) Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 6, Book 60, No. 281 <https://www.quranexplorer.com/hadithebook/english/hadith/bukhari/006.060.281.html>.
(17) Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 1, No. 332 <https://sunnah.com/abudawud/1/332>. Classified as "Sahih" by Al-Albani.
(18) Sahih al-Bukhari, No. 5433; Book 70, No. 61 <https://sunnah.com/bukhari/70/61>.
(19) Sunan an-Nasa'i, No. 3959, Book 36, No. 21 <https://sunnah.com/nasai/36/21>. Classified "sahih" by the Darussalam version.
(20) Sahih Muslim, No. 1602, Book 22, No. 152 <https://sunnah.com/muslim/22/152>. Available elsewhere online <https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-10/Hadith-3901/>.
(21) Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 2415, Book 44, No. 6 <https://sunnah.com/bukhari/44/6>; No. 2534, Book 49, No. 19, <https://sunnah.com/bukhari/49/19>.
(22) Sunan Ibn Majah, no. 2345, Book 13, No. 38, <https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah/13/38>. Classified "sahih" by the Darussalam version.
(23) Sunan an-Nasa'i, no. 1958, Book 21, No. 142, <https://sunnah.com/nasai/21/142>. Classified "sahih" by Al-Albani. This hadith is hard to reconcile with the majority Islamic belief that regards casting lots as "shirk" or "associating partners with Allah".
(24) Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 2592, Book 51, No. 26 <https://sunnah.com/bukhari/51/26>.
(25) Sunan an-Nasa'i, no. 4050, Book 37, No. 85, <https://sunnah.com/nasai/37/85>. Classified "sahih" by the Darussalam version.
(26) Imam Malik, Muwatta, Book 43, No. 5 <https://ahadith.co.uk/chapter.php?cid=93>.
(27) Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 1463, Book 24, No. 66 <https://sunnah.com/bukhari/24/66>.
(28) Sahih al-Bukhari, nos. 987-988, Vol. 2, Book 15, No. 103 <https://ahadith.co.uk/hadithbynarrator.php?n=Urwa&bid=1&let=U>.
(29) Sunan Ibn Majah, Vol. 3, Book 19, No. 2517 <https://sunnah.com/urn/1268350>. Graded "Sahih" in the Darussalam version.
(30) Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 947, Book 12, No. 6 <https://sunnah.com/bukhari/12/6>.
(31) Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 371, Book 8, No. 23 <https://sunnah.com/bukhari/8/23>.
(32) Sahih Muslim, no. 1456a, Book 17, No. 41 <https://sunnah.com/muslim/17/41>.
(33) Quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 3.
(34) The History of al-Tabari: The Revolt of the Zanj, trans. David Waines, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992, Vol. 36.
(35) Risala fi shira' ar-raqiq wa-taqlib al-'abid (About Slaves from Different Nations), ed. Abdel Salam Harun, Nawadir al-Makhtutat, Vol. 5, No. 15, Cairo: 1954.
(36) Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World, Lanham, MD: New Amsterdam Books, 1989, p. 98.
(37) Thomas R.R. Cobb, Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America, Philadelphia: T. & J.W. Johnson & Co./Savannah: W. Thorne Williams, 1858, p. cxviii.
(38) André Wink, Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World: Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam 7Th-11th Centuries, Vol. 1, Leiden/New Delhi: E.J. Brill, 1990, pp. 172-173.
(39) Al-'Utbi, Tarikh Yamini; cited in H.M. Elliot and John Dowson, eds., The History of India: As Told by Its Own Historians, Vol. 2, Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2001, p. 39.
(40) Tarikh Yamini; quoted in André Wink, Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. 2, The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th–13th Centuries, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997.
(41) Wink, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 14-15.
(42) Scott C. Levi, "Hindus Beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Cambridge University Press), 2002, Vol. 12, No. 3, p. 284.
(43) Shams-i Siraj ‘Afif, Tarikh-i Fioz Shahi; cited in Elliot and Dowson, op. cit., p. 341.
(44) Sheikh Nizam, al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya, 6 vols, Beirut: Dar Ihya' al-Turath al-'Arabi, 1980.
(45) Quoted in Nehemia Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 247-248; and Augustin F.C. Holl, Ethnoarchaeology of Shuwa-Arab Settlements, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003, p. 13.
(46) L.O. Sanneh, "Slavery, Islam, and the Jakhanke People of West Africa," Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (Cambridge University Press), Vol. 46, No. 1, 1976, pp. 80-97.
(47) Tidiane N'Diaye, Le génocide voilé: Enquête historique (The Veiled Genocide: A Historical Inquiry), Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2008.
(48) John Alembillah Azumah, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue, London: Oneworld Publications, 2001, pp. xiv-xv.
(49) Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy 1500-1800, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004; and Darío Fernández-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain, Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2016, p. 166.
(50) Ibn Idhari, Kitab al-Bayan al-Mughrib, 1:38; cited in Fernandez-Morera, op. cit., p. 164.
(51) Ibn Hawqal, Configuration de la terre (Kitab surat al-Ard), trans. J.H. Kramers and G. Wiet, Paris: Maisonneuve, 1964, 1:109.
(52) Évariste Lévi-Provençal, "Sakaliba," Brill's First Encyclopedia of Islam (1913-1936), p. 77.
(53) Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., p. 116.
(54) Michelle Hamilton, Representing Others in Medieval Iberian Literature, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 28-29.
(55) Joaquín Vallvé Bermejo, Al-Andalus: Sociedad a instituciones, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1999, p. 52; Manuela Marín, Mujeres en Al-Ándalus, Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000, p. 310; and María Luisa Ávila, "Women in Andalusi Biographical Sources," in Writing the Feminine: Women in Arab Sources, eds. Manuel Marín and Randi Deguilhem, London: I.B. Tauris, 2002, pp. 149-163.
(56) Felipe Maíllo Salgado, Diccionario de Derecho Islámico, Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2005, pp. 225-226.
(57) Fernández-Morera, op. cit., p. 327fn7.
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