islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery

Islamic Jihadslavery… Slaves were shipped to the markets of Southern Arabia and Persia as domestic retainers andconcubines.’ 753Ronald Segal, who is sympathetic to Islam, 754 informs that African children of the age-group of tento eleven years were captured in large numbers for military training to serve in the Muslim army. From Persiato Egypt to Morocco, slave armies consisting of 50,000 to 250,000 soldiers became commonplace. 755 Similarto the rearing of the Ottoman Janissary soldiers (discussed below), Sultan Moulay Ismail used to pick up tenyear-oldsfrom the black slave-breeding farms and nurseries, castrate them and train them into loyal and fiercefighters, called bukhari, because, they pledged allegiance to the sultan swearing by Sahih Bukhari. The best ofthese bukharis served as the sultan’s personal and palace guards; the rest served in maintaining orders in theprovinces. He had 25,000 bukharis guarding his capital at Meknes, while 75,000 were stationed in thegarrison town of Mahalla. 756According to estimates of Paul Lovejoy (Transformations in Slavery, 1983), about two million slaveswere transported from Africa and the Red Sea coast to the Islamic world in the nineteenth century alone, withat least eight million (estimated mortality rate 80–90 percent) likely perished in process. In the eighteenthcentury, estimated 1,300,000 black Africans were enslaved. Lovejoy estimates that a total of some 11,512,000slaves were dispatched from Africa to the Islamic world by the nineteenth century, while the estimate ofRaymond Mauvy (cited in The African Slave Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century, UNESCO,1979) puts the total number at fourteen million, which also include some 300,000 enslaved in the first half oftwentieth century. 757 Murray Gordon’s Slavery in the Arab World put the total number of black slavesharvested by Muslim slave-raiders at eleven million—roughly equal to the number taken by European tradersto their colonies of the New World. At the end of the eighteenth century, caravans from Darfur used totransport 18,000–20,000 slaves in a single trip to Cairo. Even after Europe banned slavery in 1815 andpressured Muslim governments to stop the practice, ‘In 1830, the Sultan of Zanzibar claimed dues on 37,000slaves a year; in 1872, 10,000 to 20,000 slaves a year left Suakin (Africa) for Arabia.’ 758THE OTTOMAN DEWSHIRMEOne severely condemned practice of Islamic slavery is the institution of Dewshirme, introduced by OttomanSultan Orkhan in 1330. This scheme consisted of collecting a part of the boys of the age-group of seven totwenty years from Christian and other non-Muslim families of the Ottoman Empire. About the introduction ofthis policy, Bernard Lewis quotes sixteenth-century Ottoman historian Sadeddin (aka Hoca Efendi) as thus:753. Gann L (1972) In Ibid, p. 182754. Segal emphasizes that anti-Semitism is in complete conflict with the amicable relationship Prophet Muhammadhad established with Judaism and Christianity. He asserts that there is no historical conflict between Jews andMuslims, although some conflict arose only after the crusades. Such assertionsl go directly against Prophet’sexterminating or exiling the Jews of Medina and Khaybar and his final instruction, while in death-bed, to cleanseArabia of the Jews and Christians. He also urged his followers to kill the Jews to the last one [Sahih Muslim, 41:6985]755. Segal R (2002) Islam’s Black Slaves, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, p. 55756. Milton, p. 147–150757. Segal, p. 56–57758. Braudel, p. 131219