Radical Islam: Past, Present, and Future: What Moderate Muslims Will Not Tell You by Boseman Vann & Boseman Anita

Author:Boseman, Vann & Boseman, Anita [Boseman, Vann]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

The Arab root abd, meaning slave, became synonymous to black slaves while the word mamluk referred to a light-skinned slave, with the black slave typically being lower in rank. The contradiction between doctrine in the Koran and social reality has been maintained with the social reality of Arab/black racism generally winning out,[67] even to an extent to the present day.[68]

Many of the hadiths exhibiting the racist views of the inferiority of black people are considered weak in their claims to authenticity, though they have greatly influenced Islamic culture. One example of this sort of hadith, attributed to Mohammed, is “Obey whoever is put in authority over you, even if he be a crop-nosed Ethiopian slave.” One hadith felt to be authentic describes an Ethiopian woman asking Mohammed if she will be with him in Paradise. Mohammed responds, “Yes, and in Paradise the whiteness of the Ethiopian will be seen over a stretch of a thousand years.”[69]

Light-skinned Muslim males had black women as wives, but a tradition quotes Mohammed as saying, “Be careful in choosing mates for your offspring, and beware of marrying the zanji, for he is a distorted creature.”[70] According to another tradition Mohammed said, “Do not bring black into your pedigree.”[71] A black man castigating Muslim Arabs mentioned marriage between Arabs and Africans before Mohammed as reported by al Jahiz. This black man who remembered said, “It is an indication of your ignorance that you thought us fit to marry your women in the days of the jahiliyya (the time before Mohammed), but when the justice of the (egalitarian) system of Islam was established you thought this reprehensible, even though we did not avoid you.”[72] If Arabs and others also remembered the history this man mentioned in Africa, one can imagine the world history of Islam in Africa and the Arab states would have been very different. The racist feelings of an Arab marrying a black person coming all the way up to the present day are traditional.

Regardless of racism, slaves were acquired when the Arabs conquered Egypt between 639 and 642. Azumah reports subsequently, Arab Muslims obtained slaves through “war (jihad), raid, tribute, purchase, and kidnapping.”[73] The Muslim Arabs were the main traffickers during the seventh century taking slaves from east and central Africa and then trading throughout the Arab states and the Ottoman Empire. The trans-African routes were not the only routes to the Islamic hinterlands. Markets were set up in Zanzibar and along the east African coast. Ivory was carried by the slaves on their march to such ports before their ultimate journey to the Islamic hinterland. Slaves not able to keep up on the march, regardless of the reason, would be killed.

One such port was even named Bogamogo, meaning “vomit out your heart.” David Livingston, a witness in this port town, validates the horrors of the slave trade here remarking “to overdraw its evil is simple impossibility.”[74] He felt for every single slave who arrived in Zanzibar, ten people would have had to die.

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