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

Islamic Jihadstudy at the time of passing the bill found that individual proprietors owned bodies of 2,000 slaves in Bengal,Madras and Bombay. 912In Afghanistan, which remained outside European control, violent enslavement of non-Muslimscontinued. Alexander Gardner, who extensively traveled across Central Asia between 1819 and 1823, left aneyewitness account of slave-hunting and slave-trade still ongoing in Kafiristan, a province in Afghanistaninhabited by non-Muslims. He observed that the sultan of Kunduz had reduced Kafiristan to ‘‘the lowest stateof poverty and wretchedness’’ through regular raids for plunder and catching slaves for supplying to themarkets in Balkh and Buhkara. Gardner added: ‘‘All this misery was caused by the oppression of the Kunduzchief, who, not content with plundering his wretched subjects, made an annual raid into the country south ofOxus; and by chappaos (night attacks), carried off all the inhabitants on whom his troops could lay hands.These, after the best had been chosen by the chief and his courtiers, were publicly sold in the bazaars ofTurkestan.’’ 913In the nineteenth century, there were hardly any families in the Islamic heartland of Mecca that didnot possess slaves, including concubines. It is already noted that slaves constituted 6 percent to two-thirds ofthe population in the 1870–80s in the Muslim-controlled regions of Indonesia and Malaysia.EUROPEAN STRUGGLE AGAINST ISLAMIC SLAVERY IN NORTH AFRICAStarting in the 1530s, Muslim pirates in Barbary North Africa continued catching white slaves until the 1830sfrom onboard European ships, and from the islands and coastal villages of Europe. The worst-hit were Spain,Italy, France and the United Kingdom. Following independence from Britain in 1776, the U.S. ships and theircrews also became victims of Barbary piracy and enslavement. This section will highlight the British and USstruggle against enslavement of their citizens in North Africa.The British struggleIn the 1620s, the wives of enslaved British mariners—some 2,000 of them—joined hands to raise a campaignto force the government to act on releasing their enslaved husbands, who ‘‘for a long time continued in mostwoeful, miserable and lamentable captivity and slavery…’’ in North Africa. They further added that themisery they have suffered, caused by the absence of their husbands, to the extent that their poor children andinfants were almost ready to perish from starvation for the lack of means and food. 914Having suffered depredations of their trade-ships and coastal villages and ports for nearly a century,British King Charles I, after assuming power in 1625, was already acting on the issue. He sent youngadventurer John Harrison to North Africa for securing the release of British captives and for signing a treatyagainst attacks on British ships. The King wrote a letter addressing the hard-headed Sultan Moulay Zidan,while suggesting Harrison that he might have a better prospect of success in direct negotiations with thecorsairs of Salé, who often acted in defiance of the sultan.John Harrison, deciding for a direct negotiation with the pirates of Salé, set off on a hazardous andarduous journey in the summer of 1625 in the guise of a Muslim penitent—bare-legged and in a pilgrim-likegarb. After arriving at Salé, he tried to contact Sidi Mohammed el-Ayyachi, the spiritual leader of the slavehuntersof the city. Sidi Mohammed was a wily holy man (marabout or Sufi master), who boasted of causing912. Moreland, p. 90913. Lal (1994), p. 8914. Milton, p17257