Abd/ Black Slave:-
In Muhammadan Islam, all human beings are the SLAVES/ ABEED of Allah.
The relationship between Allah and Humanity is like that of a Master and his Slaves. It is based on FEAR of Allah and NOT on LOVE.
In the Arabic language even before Muhammad, the word Slave/ Abd was - and still is - associated with BLACK AFRICANS.
The Arabs looked upon the Black people as inferior beings. Muhammadan Islam
and the exegetes of the faith propagated the same image.
Sura Al-i-Imran, 3:106-107 "On the day when some faces will be whitened and some faces will be blackened, say to those whose faces will be blackened, 'Did ye reject faith after accepting it? Taste then the penalty for rejecting faith.' But those whose faces will be whitened, they will be in Allah's mercy: therein to dwell."
#432 The "face" (wajh) expresses our Personality, our inmost being. White is the colour of Light; to become white is to be illumined with Light, which stands for felicity, the rays of the glorious light of Allah. Black is the colour of darkness, sin, rebellion, misery; removal from the grace and light of Allah. These are the Signs of heaven and hell. The standard of decision in all questions is the justice of Allah#
The question to be asked is why is white equated with goodness and black equated with evil?
As a researcher, I am very puzzled at the lack of balanced historical reports by Muslims concerning the African people.
And consider this: Africa produced great thinkers like Augustine of Hippo (Algeria), Clement and Athanasius of Egypt, and Tertullian of Carthage (Tunis), while Ethiopia had the first African church totally independent of Europe (Acts 8).
In fact, I find it most interesting that an African church was planted first before there was ever a church in Britain, Canada, the USA or Spain, or any other European state. So why do we not hear of this African church, and why do we not continue to see any remnants of it today?
Perhaps we need to go to the Quran again to find the clue. Consider this verse -
Sura Tauba, 9:5: "Fight and slay [those who associate another with Allah (Shirk)], and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war."
It fits the pattern of Muhammadan Islam which fights against all those who choose to follow their own beliefs, that is beliefs not compatible with those of the followers of Muhammad; an idea we find well expressed in the following verse -
Sura Imran, 3:28 "Let not the believers take disbelievers [Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc] for their friends in preference to believers. Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allah unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, taking (as it were) security. Allah biddeth you beware (only) of Himself.
In North Africa we know that the whole Saharan region of Morocco, Libya, Algeria and Egypt to the Sudan and Ethiopia used to be Christian, before Islam came and destroyed the local churches. Why do we not hear about it in Muslim literature?
We can examine the history of the Sudan as a case in point. Before the Muslim invasion of 1275 A.D. by the Islamic Mamluks of Egypt, the Sudan had three mini-Christian states called:
NOBATIA in the north, the capital of Qustul
MAKURIA, the capital of old Dongola, and
ALODIA or ALWA, the capital of Soba.
These three African Christian states, from 300 A.D. to 1500 A.D. had their own written language, great centers of learning, international commerce with Egypt, Ethiopia and other Middle East states, and sent out missionaries to other African states.
(Read K. Milhalowski,Faras, vol.2, Poland, 1965 for extensive archaeological and historical documentation on these states).
Even the Arab, ibn Selim al-Assuani, was impressed when he saw Soba, describing it as having, ...fine buildings, roomy houses, churches, and the land is more fruitful than Makuria...[and it has] much meat, and good horses.
All this was wantonly destroyed by Muslim invaders in 1275 A.D., not by European Imperialism.
The historical records show that the same type of massive destruction,slsughter, subjugation, forced conversion and enslavememt happened all over Africa, yet we never hear anyone holding the Muhammadan Muslims - both Arab and African Muslims - in any way responsible.
No Arab or Muslim country has ever admitted fault or offered any kind of apology while the Europeans and Americans have.
Why have Christian counntries who traded in slavery offered apologies and not a SINGLE Muslim one?
Arab Muslim RACISM is just as evil and obnoxious as that of the Europeans, so why is it allowed to continue unchallenged?
Muhammadan Muslim racism continues unabated and unchallenged in Africa.
In the 1990's, the Sudan in north-east Africa has been suffering a Muslim jihad-war, whereby thousands of Christians and unbelievers have died, many by crucifixion, or have suffered by having their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off. Is it only coincidental that we find in the Quran, the sanction for this very practice?
Sura (the Table Spread) 5: 33 "The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and his Messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off..."
While this is going on, Muslim states have never once told off the Islamic government of Khartoum.
The silence is DEAFENING. Why?
Yet there has always been an enormous amount of noise about the apartheid of the old South Africa. Why the double standard?
That then brings me to the question of slavery. Muslims - the best people on earth at the BLAME GAME - say it is only a Christian phenomenon.
Let us now examine some facts. Because most of the Black people, in Africa were animists in general, the Muhammadan Muslims labelled them KUFFAR/ UNBELIEVERS from which is the derived the white South African derogatry term for the individual Black as 'KAFIR'.
Even in this 21st century, in the ordinary language of the Arabs, Black people are still called 'ABEED/ SLAVES'.
This is why according to the Quran, SLAVERY was not PROHIBITED but in fact ENCOURAGED especially the enslavement of UNBELIEVERS.
It was the British Empire after all, who in the 1850's who initiated the moves to abolish and stop African Slavery in the first place under pressure from British Christians like David Livingstone and William Wilberforce, and hunted the Arab Muslim slave ships in the Indian ocean and around the African coasts who were continuimg their hellish business till recently.
Have you not read about the islands of Zanzibar and Pembe in East Africa, during the nineteenth century?
Have you not asked the question as to why Muslim countries have never been involved in the movements for the abolition of slavery?
Let's set the record straight. While Europeans were involved with the slave trade for a few hundred years, the existence of the traffic of African slaves had been well established among the Arabs one-thousand years earlier.
The Muslim position which places the entire blame for the invention and practice of black slavery at the door of Christian Europe, is OBSCENELY HYPOCRITICAL and simply not historically tenable.
Both the Grecian and Roman societies were slave states, yet most of their slaves were Caucasian. In fact, the word slave meant a person who was of Slavic origin.
Robert Hughes, in his essay on The Fraying of America in the February 3, 1992 issue of Time magazine corrects this false impression when he says:
"The African slave trade as such, the black traffic, was an Arab invention, developed by traders with the enthusiastic collaboration of black African ones, institutionalized with the most unrelenting brutality, centuries before the white man appeared on the African continent, and continuing long after the slave market in North America was finally crushed.
.... Nothing in the writings of the Prophet [Muhammad] forbids slavery, which is why it became such an Arab-dominated business. And the slave traffic could not have existed without the wholehearted cooperation of African tribal states, built on the supply of captives generated by their relentless wars.
The image promulgated by pop-history fictions like Roots - of white slavers bursting with cutlass and musket into the settled lives of peaceful African villages - is very far from the historical truth. A marketing system had been in place for centuries, and its supply was controlled by Africans. Nor did it simply vanish with Abolition.
Slave markets, supplying the Arab Emirates, were still operating in Djibouti in the 1950's; and since 1960, the slave trade has flourished in Mauritania and the Sudan. There are still reports of chattel slavery in northern Nigeria, Rwanda and Niger."
The argument by some Muslims that slavery was Allah's way of converting Africans to Islam, is much the same argument suggested by certain misguided Christians in the 19th century who said that, bringing Africans to America gave them the opportunity to hear the Gospel; an argument which holds no credibility in the Bible, and dishonours the character of God.
Unfortunately Islam still hasn't learned, as today the slavery of foreign nationals still exists in the heartland of Islam: Saudi Arabia.
(UN Report on Slavery, 1994)
Continuing the BLAME GAME, Muhammadan Muslims claim that the Christian West wishes to control Africa. Yet why is it that Africans must not like the Coca Cola culture of the West, but are obliged to start wearing seventh century Arab dress once Islam is taken on?
What's wrong with the native beautiful African cultural dress?
Is it not CULTURAL IMPERIALISM ?
Is it also not RELIGIOUS IMPERIALISM that Black African Muslims are obliged to pray facing a Saudi Arabian city: Mecca?
Why not face any number of African holy towns instead?
Why should Africans be forced to believe in an Arabian prophet, Muhammad and in a previously Arabian Pagan god, Allah?
Who wants to dominate whom?
Is not Allah supposed to be everywhere, and that prayers should be directed to Him who is the whole Universe?
Furthermore, why are people who convert to Muhammadan Islam required to read Allah's word and speak to Him only in Arabic? Does Allah only speak Arabic? Is He not capable of understanding Swahili, Tutsi, Amazigh, and other African languages?
Based upon the historical records of Slavery in Africa, it was not the WHITE MAN who went into Africa to gather the Black people and take them unto their ships and into slavery.
In reality, the White Slavers awaited their cargoe on the Western and or Eastern coasts of Africa while it was ARAB and BLACK MUSLIMS who raided African communities, massacred, pillaged, raped and rounded the reamaining unfortunate humanity and walked them to the shores of Africa for transport to the Americas and elsewhere.
It is estimated that for every slave that arrived ALIVE to be sold, TEN others perished in the most inhuman and horrible manner possible. The figures are mindboggling and ranging from 140 million to 180 million human beings.
Even as you are reading this TODAY, in Darfour, Sudan (meaning land of the Blacks), the Arabized Sudanese are massacring, raping and pillaging other Muslims of the Sudan just because they are of the darker African skin.
This is a purely ETHNIC/ RACIAL war and is just a continuation of 1450 years of the most obscene oppression of Blacks at the hands of the Arabs and Islam.
References:
1 Segal, Ronald: Islam's Black Slaves; Atlantic Books, London 2002.
2 Azumah, John Alembillah: The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa; Oneworld, Oxford,2001.
