Posted on 02/28/2005 7:09:39 AM PST by veronica
(This article appeared in the February 1-February 7, 1995, issue of The City Sun.)
Prologue
African Americans have contended for decades with a rage born of remembrance--a resentment fomented by poignant images of black Africans captured, bound, and sent into the horrors of slavery. Some have been driven to travel to the continent of Africa, and stand on the shores of West Africa to view the actual places where the degradation of a race began. At these places, the grandchildren of ancient slaves--survivors of a holocaust--wrestle with a terrible mixture of emotions. The passions produced by the realization that the forts before them housed their African ancestors in their last days of freedom before a long voyage delivered them into the hands of cruel masters. The white hot anger that rises slowly in African Americans as they recall these events and the epithets that dance in the heads of these observers of the past, sometimes escapes their lips as curses and bitter mutterings. Occasionally, African Americans simply fulminate. These bitter expressions of resentment and grief have only been cooled and soothed by a belief that African Americans hold. The comforting assurance that the buying and selling of black African slaves ended in the distant past. Such a belief is a myth.
It has become clear that the enslavement of black Africans did not stop with the demise of the Atlantic Slave Trade. That on this very day and hour, as you read this, black Africans are bought and sold in two North African countries. In the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, black Africans continue to be enslaved by their Arab-Berber masters. Although slavery was declared abolished three times since Mauritania's independence in 1960, it persists. Slaves are given as wedding gifts, traded for camels, guns or trucks, and inherited. The children of slaves belong to the master and slaves who displease their masters or attempt escapes are tortured in the most brutal manner imaginable.
In Sudan, Africa's largest country, the Islamic Republic of the Sudan, as a result of an Islamic-vs.-Christian civil war, black women and children (mostly Christian) are captured in raids on their villages and sold as chattel slaves, sometimes, according to the UN in "modern-day slave markets."
The Mauritanian Embassy and the Sudanese Mission were contacted several times for comment-they did not return the calls.
Mauritania-A Legacy of Slave Trading
The enslavement of black Africans has existed in Mauritania for many centuries. It is a country that joins the descendants of Arabs and Berbers from the North, known as beydanes [white men], and the black ethnic communities living in the South. Blacks, mostly sedentary farmers, consisting of the Tukulor, the Fulani, and the Wolof tribes were brought north after being captured by raiding Arab/Berber tribes. This activity predates and postdates the Atlantic slave trade. Simply put, the slave trade that brought black Africans to these shores never stopped in Mauritania. "More than 100,000 descendants of Africans conquered by Arabs during the 12th century are still thought to be living as old-fashioned chattel slaves in Mauritania" says Newsweek after conducting a yearlong, four-continent investigation of slavery.
Differing only slightly with this estimate, the U.S. State Department estimates that 90,000 blacks still live as the property of Berbers, "and that's a conservative estimate," said Dr. Jacobs, who puts the actual figure closer to 300,000 when interviewed by The News Tribune. In addition, Newsweek states that "Aside from the shantytowns and a strip of land along the Senegal River, virtually all blacks are slaves, and they are more than half the population."
"Black Africans in Mauritania were converted to Islam more than 100 years ago," says Mohamed Athie, Executive Director of the American Anti-Slavery Group, [and]. . ."the Koran forbids the enslavement of fellow Muslims, but in this country race outranks religious doctrine. . . Though they are Muslims, these people are chattel: used for labor, sex and breeding."
Africa Watch reported that "Religion has been used by masters as an important instrument to perpetuate slavery. Relying on the fact that Islam recognizes the practice of slavery, they have misinterpreted it to justify current practices. In truth, Islam only permits treating as slaves, non-Islamic captives caught after holy wars, on condition that they are released as soon as they convert to Islam. People living as slaves in Mauritania long before the first abolition in 1905 were all Moslems, but this did not lead to their emancipation. We received numerous complaints about the extent of which qadis (judges in Islamic courts) continue to exercise their judicial functions to protect the institution of slavery, rather than to ensure its eradication."
Successive regimes outlawed slavery in 1905, at independence in 1960, and most recently in 1980. These edicts were only lip service and window dressing. The proof is that since independence all economic and political power have remained firmly in the h ands of beydanes.
The Sudanese government never passed any laws providing punishment for enslaving black Africans and they never bothered to tell many of the slaves about emancipation. In 1980, the government sought to have its ruling ratified by a body of religious jurist, the ulema. The jurists said that slavery is not wrong on religious grounds, but that outlawing it would be within the government's competence--provided that owners were compensated for the manumission of slaves. Nobody has ever applied for compensation."
These black African slaves in Mauritania are subjected to mental and emotional torments that have always been concomitant with slavery. "Routine punishments for the slightest fault include beatings, denial of food and prolonged exposure to the sun, with hands and feet tied together. "Serious" infringement of the master's rule can mean prolonged tortures, documented in a report by Africa Watch. These include 1. The "camel treatment," where a human being is wrapped around the belly of a dehydrated camel and tied there. The camel is then given water and drinks until its belly expands enough to tear apart the slave. 2. The "insect treatment," where insects are put in his ears. The ears are waxed shut. The arms and legs are bound. The person goes insane from the bugs running around in his head. 3. The "burning coals" where the victim is seated flat, with his legs spread out. He is then buried in sand up to his waist, until he cannot move. Coals are placed between his legs and are burnt slowly. After a while, the legs, thighs and sex of the victim are burnt. There are other gruesome tortures--none of which is fit to describe in a family newspaper" states Africa Watch. Another report states that some slaves caught fleeing are often castrated or branded like cattle.
Bump!
read later. Is this a legitimate site?
It appears to be legit. Try www.raceandhistory.com
Bump for later
Silly Veronica. Everybody knows Arabs can't be slavemasters.
Ping
Daniel Pipes reviews Cotton's book.
I thought the same thing when I saw the URL, but a cursory glance would indicate that this is an Afrocentric site, if anything. It lends more credibility, not less, to the accusations.
New York: Harlem River Press, 1998. 170 pp. $15.95 (paper)
Middle East Quarterly - December 1999 - Reviewed by Daniel Pipes
"Slavery - the crude ownership of a person and his exploitation like a beast of burden - has two major venues in the contemporary world, Sudan and Mauritania. The Sudanese practice results in large part from a war conducted by Muslims against Christians; when the former conquer the latter, they frequently enslave them (and often convert them to Islam). Mauritania has no war and no religion other than Islam - it close to being a purely Muslim country - but it does have a racial divide of (light-skinned) Arabs and (dark-skinned) "Negro-Africans," as they are known. Out of a total population of some 2 million, some tens of thousands of Mauritanians are enslaved.
When Cotton, a graduate student at Columbia University and part-time journalist, learned about this situation, it horrified and absorbed him. His short but intense trip to Mauritania in early 1996 showed him first-hand of the existence of this foul institution; and as a black American, he felt the servitude of the black Mauritanians with special poignancy. Cotton began his researches as a reporter, thinking that the mere exposure of facts would affect other African-Americans much as they did himself, as they startled at the racism and servitude in Mauritania, somewhat akin to the experience of their own ancestors. But they did not. He found that black leaders (Louis Farrakhan, mainstream black American Muslims, former congressman Mervyn Dymally, and academics at Howard University) not only pooh-pooh the issue but in many cases actively apologize for the slave system. So he became an activist. Thus far, he has found, even his seeming successes, such as passing a NAACP resolution condemning slavery, turned out to have no operational significance.
Cotton's account of the Mauritanian scene is harrowing, his personal story moving, and his report on African-American reactions depressing. Some two centuries after the great American abolitionist effort, a new iteration is needed, this time focusing on the Muslim world."
"read later. Is this a legitimate site?"
Well, you decide.
"The earliest people in the Americas were people of the Negritic African race, who entered the Americas perhaps as early as 100,000 years ago, by way of the bering straight and about thirty thousand years ago in a worldwide maritime undertaking that included journeys from the then wet and lake filled Sahara towards the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, and from West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean towards the Americas."
http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/ancientamerica.htm
From a link on the main page:
http://www.uscrusade.com/Iraq/
I'm gonna pass on this site...
The fact that the site contains black racism, though, only lend credibility to Cotton's claims. Even black bigots believe muslims are enslaving blacks.
It's about the research done by Cotton, which Daniel Pipes, an unimpeachable source, reviews in a positive manner.
There are some ancient statues in So America of what appear to be negros, FWTW. I agree with Blam that the Indians were likely not the first to arrive in America. Still haven't read the article, though.
Do not find these facts at all unusual for "turd world countries"
Islam is, and has been front and center in the slave trade.
I don't doubt the content of the posted article but someone asked if it was a legit site.
Admittedly, I have no way of knowing who got to America first but on that site, they were saying the Ouichita (northern Louisiana) Indians were essentially blacks, as were other tribes. Having lived and studied in Ouichita Parish, LA, I find this to be a real stretch.
Not to mention the links from the site to anti-American sites just turned me off.
Jimminey, I misspelled Ouachita every time.
I'm agreeing with you. The site is racist, but when racists admit that Islam (and specifically Black muslims in some cases) are enslaving blacks, that lends credibility to the claims of Cotton, if not to the site on which they are posted.
"The site is racist, but when racists admit that Islam (and specifically Black muslims in some cases) are enslaving blacks, that lends credibility to the claims of Cotton"
Agreed. :)
One of the networks had a special the other night about how easy it was to buy a European slave for the sex trade. Nick Kristoff of the NYT wrote a series about how he bought a couple of Asian girls and freed them.
Why should we think it isn't happening in darkest Africa? Except in this case, it's given some ligitimacy by Muslim religious leaders.
This theory may be mixing up the sequence of events. I have read that a number of Indian tribes welcomed and intermarried with fleeing black ex-slaves. This also happened quite a bit in Mexico. But it seems undeniable that the vast majority of American Indian ancestry is attributable to people who looked like the Chinese walking across the Bering Strait.
It has always been a marvel to me to see blacks abandon the "White Man's religion" of Christianity and embrace Islam, which spawned some of the worst slave traders in history and whose believers played a major part in getting said blacks to America.
Wanna get these blacks agitated/non-plussed? Ask them if they'd be better off today if they were born in Africa.
first of all interesting article, I didn't realize that in Islam, technically, once you convert you are not supposed to be a slave and yet slavery continues, fascinating
I love throwing it in the faces of the black Nation of Islam types, that Arabs were the first black slave traders, they beat the Europeans by centuries, and that it is Arabs that continue slavery still in some countries, centuries after the Western world abolished it.....it seems to me blacks embracing Islam is like blacks embracing the KKK
someone made the observation that at least black slaves in the US survived, where are the black communities in Arab countries
I thought good point and did some research, apparently, in the earlier Arab slave trade, they would only take the women back as sex slaves and the only males they would take back would have to be castrated first, and become eunuchs, and only about 1 in 10 survived the castration......
makes sense because in Sudan even today, the bigotry continues, as long as the father's blood is Arab a child is Arab so it doesn't matter if the women isn't Arab but if the father is black, uh oh, and after all, old Ahmed doesn't want his black male slaves sleeping with his harem and contaminating the blood line,
which explains why you have no black communities in Arab countries
whereas the Americans and Europeans prized the stronger male slaves......
in fact one can argue that the Arabs were the originators of the African slave trade
the Romans were equal opportunity enslavers, they tended to take slaves from all different parts of their empires not just one area, even Brits, and if you got a good master, esp for men, you had a shot at becoming a freed man....there was a process for becoming a freed slave, way back when......
as well the same sources that said that the Arabs took mostly the women for slaves also noted that the Arabs would often massacre the men on their raids......makes sense that the men wouldn't be giving up their women easily........
I think that puts the white man a couple of steps up on that front as well
speaking of slavery trivia, did you know that the Celts used to raid England and use Brits as slaves? before the tide turned of course.......and the Brits were calling the shots in Ireland
You make the mistake of assuming that people are interested and/or swayed by facts. Forget it; Logic. reason, and facts are the first to go when ideology and demagoguery show up.
Another good read is prophetofdoom.com ,many good articles and free books.
Every Muslim woman or girl is the absolute property of her father or husband and so are slaves. It is not surprising that Muslims should also hold black slaves as well.
The only way to eliminate slavery in the world is to eliminate Islam. When the last Muslim dies or is converted, that is when slavery will die as well.
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