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

Islamic JihadThe Vikings have been severely condemned for their vocation of savage raids on innocent andpeaceful families and communities along the coasts of Europe, killing the adults and capturing the childrenand young women for selling into slavery. The major reasons for the rise and spread of the Vikings, thinkhistorians, were overpopulation, technological innovations, and climate change, plus the interruption of tradeand flow of goods from Central Europe to Scandinavia after the destruction of the Frisian fleet by RomanEmperor Charlemagne in 785.Little attention is, however, given to the positive influence that Islam played in their engagement inslave-trade. The defeat of the Muslim army in the Battle of Tours in 732 dramatically subdued Islamicconquest on the European front. They even had to withdraw from some of the territories they had alreadycaptured. Thereafter, the enslavement of the prized white women from Europe for keeping as concubines inMuslim harems of the Islamic world had greatly reduced.As capturing of white sex-slaves through wars and raids reduced, purchasing them became thealternative for meeting their unceasing and obsessive demand in the Muslim world. At the rise of the berserkViking raiders, the Scandinavian fur-traders reached the Europe-Arab trading center of Bulgar Volga (inRussia), where they met traders from the Muslim world with huge demand of white women for Islamicharems. The savage Vikings, thereafter, embarked on capturing young white women for selling to tradersfrom the Muslim world. This first opened the Eastern European route of slave-trade with the Muslim world.The supply route of white slaves via Spain also soon opened. With the spread of Christianity to NorthernEurope, Viking slave-trade tapered down and eventually ceased.Viking slave-trade has been thoroughly condemned, but little has been said of the role, Islam played,in seducing the Vikings into this abhorrent profession. There is no excuse for the crime the Vikings hadcommitted. It is also impossible to disconnect Islam from the Viking slave-trade, because the supply wasabsolutely meant for meeting Islamic world’s unceasing demand for the prized white slaves.The supply of white slaves to the Islamic world did not cease with the end of the Viking Age. OnceViking slave-trade ended, Muslim slave-hunters themselves slowly expanded the capture of white slaves inEurope to meet the Muslim world’s demand for them, thus replacing the Viking suppliers. In 1353, theOttoman Turks, having crossed over to Europe bypassing Constantinople, launched a new wave of ragingJihad expeditions against Europe overrunning Bulgaria and Serbia. This marked a new beginning for thecapture of white slaves by Muslims in great multitudes. The Turks enslaved 7,000 whites in the attack ofThessaloniko (Greece) in 1430; while, in the sacked of Methone (Greece) in 1499, Ottoman Sultan Bayezid IIslaughtered all those (males) aged over ten years and "seized women and children". 881 Persian rulers ShahTahmasp (d. 1576) attacked Georgia in 1553, enslaving more than 30,000 women and children. In hisexpedition to Georgia in 1551, the Ghazis ‘slew the men and took captive their wives and children.’ Thesultan had earlier made another two successful expeditions against Georgia in 1540 and 1546, but thenumbers enslaved are not available. 882 The Ottomans and Safavids made numerous raids into Europeanterritories until the late seventeenth century. Despite suffering defeat and heavy loss in the siege of Vienna in1683, the Ottoman Turks returned with 80,000 captives. This clearly suggests that slaves were captured inlarge numbers in all their campaigns.Meanwhile the Tatar Khans embarked on numerous holy war expeditions (Razzia) into EasternEurope and Russia in the mid-fifteenth century, capturing white slaves in tens to hundreds of thousands asnoted above. The North African Barbary pirates also continued raiding and capturing white slaves along theEuropean coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall and from ships in the sea, enslaving more than one millionwhite men and women between 1530 and 1780. The hunting of white slaves by Barbary pirates continueduntil the 1820s.881. Bostom, p. 613,619882. Ibid, p. 620–21247