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

Islamic SlaveryEUROPEAN SLAVE-TRADE & ISLAMIC COMPLICITYThe trans-Atlantic slave-trade, conducted by European slave-traders, in which millions of African slaves wereshipped to the New World, has received intense condemnations from Muslims and non-Muslims alike fromeverywhere, the West included. The issue of the Islamic slave-trade, however, remains largely untouched,unspoken and somewhat forgotten.The European supply of slaves to the New World started when the Holy Roman Emperor Charles Vfirst authorized the involvement of Europe in slave-trade in 1519. The Portuguese and Spaniards, notoriousamongst Europeans as slavers, first jumped into this lucrative venture followed by the Dutch, and then, theFrench. Britain’s King Charles I first authorized slave-trade in 1631 and his son Charles II reintroduced it by aRoyal Charter in 1672.It is estimated that about eleven million African slaves were transported to the New World. Of these,approximately 4.0 million (35.4 percent) went to Portuguese controlled Brazil, 2.5 million (22.1 percent) tothe Spanish colonies of South and Central America, 2.0 million (17.7 percent) to the British West Indies—mostly Jamaica, 1.6 million (14.1 percent) to the French West Indies, 0.5 million (4.4 percent) to the DutchWest Indies, and another 0.5 million to North America. 883Abolition: The French revolution was organized for wrestling the "rights of man", although withoutgiving any serious thought to the rights of slaves. It, nonetheless, later on prompted the legal emancipation ofslaves of the French Empire in 1794. In the 1790s, Denmark and Netherlands took measures to abolish theirown slave-trade. Meanwhile in Britain, parliamentarian William Wilberforce started a campaign in 1787 forthe suppression of slave-trade, which soon transformed into a vigorous movement for the abolition of slaveryin the British Empire. Twenty years later in 1807, the British House of Commons passed a bill for abolishingslave-trade by an overwhelming majority of 283 to sixteen votes, a decisive blow to slavery. Later in 1809,the British government took further steps to stop slave-trading by mobilizing its Navy to search ships,including foreign vessels, suspected of carrying slaves. It also used diplomatic cards with Muslimgovernments—in Persia, Turkey, Egypt, and so on—for the abolition of slavery in the Muslim world.In 1810, the British Parliament made engagement in slave-trade punishable by fourteen years of hardlabor. In 1814, Britain started lobbying for the inclusion of the abolition of slave-trade in the InternationalTreaty of Europe, which led to the signing of such a Treaty by all the European powers on 9 June 1815. In1825, Britain made complicity in slave-trade punishable by death. The greatest moment for the anti-slaverymovement came in 1833: the British Parliament abolished the institution of slavery altogether and freed allslaves, about 700,000, of the British Empire. France followed the British example of emancipating slaves in1848, prompting the same in Dutch colonies. The United States emancipated its slaves in 1865.Islamic complicity: The European slave-trade must be condemned for the very dehumanizing andcruel nature of this grotesque crime against humanity. Muslims are very forthcoming in doing this laudableexercise in holier than thou pious tones as though their history is clean of slavery. In truth, even in theEuropean slave-trade, Muslims played—both directly and indirectly—an essential and financially rewardingrole. But there exists a peculiar silence about it amongst Muslims. Even non-Muslim scholars, including thoseof the West, are largely silent about Islam’s contributory roles in the trans-Atlantic slave-trade.The "indirect" role of Islam in the trans-Atlantic slave-trade lies in the fact that Muslims had createdan example of sustained and vibrant slave-trade across the vast Muslim world many centuries before theEuropeans embarked on it. More importantly, the Europeans were a sustained and brutal victim of the Islamicenslavement and slave-trade: it started with the Muslim attack on Spain in 711 and continued until the earlynineteenth century. The Vikings also were Muslims’ proxy-partners in raiding and abducting the whitewomen and children to meet the Islamic world’s demand for white slaves, particularly concubines. The last883. Hammond P (2004) The Scourge of Slavery, in Christian Action Magazine, Vol. 4248