A Sad but Funny Irony - American Blacks, the Arabs and the Slave Trade
In the early to mid 20th century, American Jews were the main allies of American blacks in the black struggle to gain equal civil rights. Then, when American blacks did gain equal rights, said blacks promptly decided to ally with the Arabs and hate Jews. Despite the fact that the Arabs were the group that had ENSLAVED THE BLACKS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
That's right. Within the first few centuries of the foundation of Islam, the Arabs had established a pattern of buying (or kidnapping by raid) immense quantiies of black slaves, mostly from East Africa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade). This was ok with the Arabs, because the slaves were originally non-Muslim, hence morally enslavable in their book. (Literally in their Book, namely the Quran).
Soon, so many slaves were black that the Arabs developed a social attitude that blacks were "natural" slaves -- that there was something inherent about having dark skin which made a human somehow subhuman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade#Arabic_views_on_African_people). And yes, this is as far as I know the first major manifestation of that prejudice in history: while the Greco-Romans, Persians and Ancient Egyptians were all racially-prejudiced, theirs was a diffuse prejudice against anyone not having the good fortune to be born of their own peoples: they had nothing against Negroes on the basis of skin color.
Indeed, eventually there were so many slaves that in 869 the Abbasid Caliphate, centered in Baghdad, suffered the great Zanj Rebellion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanj_Rebellion). This was centered on Basra, lasted until 883, and at its greatest involved half a million black slaves. Stop for a moment to consider just what that implies, given that most black slaves probably didn't revolt, and that populations were much smaller in pre-industrial times.
In part because of this revolt, the Arabs turned to castrating most blacks they enslaved. This is why the Arab world, proper, does not today have a large black minority. Ah, the superior enlightenment and humanity of Islam!
It gets funnier. Lest you imagine that this identification of blacks with slavery was purely an event of ancient or early Medieval times, the Arabs expanded south into Africa (particularly coastal East Africa and the parts of sub-Saharan Africa at the southern margin of the Sahara Desert), more or less smashed or conquered the black kingdoms they found there, and set up trading organizations whose main purpose was to extract gold, ivory and slaves from black Africa and export them all over the Muslim world.
From coastal East Africa, they transported the slaves by ship, as would the later European slavers transport them from West Africa. In the case of the Sahara slavers, of course, this was impossible. So they chained them in coffles and had them walk across the Sahara Desert. This worked about as well as you might imagine. They didn't suffer no piddling one-third death rate, like the later European slave ships. No, the slave caravans routinely lost half or more of their slaves to "attrition" -- a nice way of describing what happens when you force humans to walk across one of the most hostile deserts on Earth with only marginal supplies of food and water.
The slavers also made it down the coast of West Africa, where in the 16th century they developed a major new slave trade. The European slave trade.
"Wait, wait!" I hear some products of the modern school system already saying. "Didn't the Europeans raid African villages from ships and take slaves that way?"
Sometimes. Very rarely. The reason they very rarely did so is that the European ships had very small crews, the African villages were part of organized tribal kingdoms, and the warriors of said kingdoms had perfectly good metal weapons, and were not at all afraid to use them. Besides, they didn't have to do any such thing.
If you were a European slaver, you went to a regular trading port in West Africa. There, you met an Arab slaver, who sold you the slaves?
Where did he get the slaves? Occasionally, by raiding (the Arab slavers, being land-based, could sometimes assemble small armies if necessary). More often, by buying them from the African kings and chiefs, who by definition had small (and sometimes not-so-small) armies on call.
Said kings and chiefs would make war on their enemies, and when victorious enslave said enemies. After such a war, they'd have a lot of surplus slaves, whom the Arab slave traders were all too happy to take off their hands.
Of course, that was centuries ago. Things are different now, right?
Well, the large-scale organized Arab slave trade was ended, largely by the British Royal Navy (http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/history/battles/royal-navy-and-the-slave-trade/fighting-on-the-moral-ground/) in the 1840's. This required a naval patrol to intercept slave ships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa) and not occasionally involved actual pitched battles against the fortified bases of the Arab slave traders.
But the Arabs never really abandoned slavery. It was specifically allowed in the Quran, and the notion of blacks in particular as "natural slaves" was one of which they neither desired nor were able to rid themselves. As long as the European Great Powers dominated the Mideast, the trade was forced underground, but with the recession of colonialism, it returned.
In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981),[149] it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved with many used as bonded labour.[150][151] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[152] In Niger, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerian study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population.[153][154][155] Pygmies, the people of Central Africa's rain forest,[156] live in servitude to the Bantus.[157] Some tribal sheiks in Iraq still keep blacks, called Abd, which means servant or slave in Arabic, as slaves.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Present_day)
Yes, that's 1981 for the date of slavery's formal abolition in Mauritania, and in fact 20% of the population still consists of slaves. This shold not be surprising, given that up until 2007 there was no actual criminalization of slaveholding! Note also the prevalence of slavery in Muslim parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.
The enslavement of the Dinkas in southern Sudan may be the most horrific and well-known example of contemporary slavery. According to 1993 U.S. State Department estimates, up to 90,000 blacks are owned by North African Arabs, and often sold as property in a thriving slave trade for as little as $15 per human being.
"There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims."
-from an ASI report on Sudanese slavery
Animist tribes in southern Sudan are frequently invaded by Arab militias from the North, who kill the men and enslave the women and children. The Arabs consider it a traditional right to enslave southerners, and to own chattel slaves (slaves owned as personal property).
Physical mutilation is practiced upon these slaves not only to prevent escape, but to enforce the owners' ideologies. According to an ASI report: "Kon, a thirteen-year-old Dinka boy, was abducted by Arab nomads and taken to a merchant's house. There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims. Threatened with the same treatment the boy converted."
In a detailed article by Charles Jacobs for the American Anti-Slavery Group (ASI), Jacobs recounts how a 10-year-old child was taken in a raid on her village in southern Sudan, and branded by her master with a hot iron pot.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/slavery1.html
This is classic Arab enslavement of black Africans, and note the Muslim excuse.
So, given all this, why have American blacks turned against Jews in favor of Arabs? Well, in part, it's because much of this isn't known in the West. In part, it's because the most radical (and most ineffectual and pointless) part of the black civil rights movement began in the (mid-) 1960's and was part of a global radical movement which included the Arab nationalists (Ba'athists, basically Arab Nazis) and which turned anti-Semitic for this reason.
In consequence, the political class in black America has turned against the Jews -- their long-time allies and one of the most successful American minority groups, who have gone on to wide acceptance by the majority -- in favor of the Arabs, who have gone from defeat to defeat in the last part of the 20th and in the early 21st century, and who have over the past decade managed to make themselves hated by the American majority.
Good going, American black leadership!
That's right. Within the first few centuries of the foundation of Islam, the Arabs had established a pattern of buying (or kidnapping by raid) immense quantiies of black slaves, mostly from East Africa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade). This was ok with the Arabs, because the slaves were originally non-Muslim, hence morally enslavable in their book. (Literally in their Book, namely the Quran).
Soon, so many slaves were black that the Arabs developed a social attitude that blacks were "natural" slaves -- that there was something inherent about having dark skin which made a human somehow subhuman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade#Arabic_views_on_African_people). And yes, this is as far as I know the first major manifestation of that prejudice in history: while the Greco-Romans, Persians and Ancient Egyptians were all racially-prejudiced, theirs was a diffuse prejudice against anyone not having the good fortune to be born of their own peoples: they had nothing against Negroes on the basis of skin color.
Indeed, eventually there were so many slaves that in 869 the Abbasid Caliphate, centered in Baghdad, suffered the great Zanj Rebellion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanj_Rebellion). This was centered on Basra, lasted until 883, and at its greatest involved half a million black slaves. Stop for a moment to consider just what that implies, given that most black slaves probably didn't revolt, and that populations were much smaller in pre-industrial times.
In part because of this revolt, the Arabs turned to castrating most blacks they enslaved. This is why the Arab world, proper, does not today have a large black minority. Ah, the superior enlightenment and humanity of Islam!
It gets funnier. Lest you imagine that this identification of blacks with slavery was purely an event of ancient or early Medieval times, the Arabs expanded south into Africa (particularly coastal East Africa and the parts of sub-Saharan Africa at the southern margin of the Sahara Desert), more or less smashed or conquered the black kingdoms they found there, and set up trading organizations whose main purpose was to extract gold, ivory and slaves from black Africa and export them all over the Muslim world.
From coastal East Africa, they transported the slaves by ship, as would the later European slavers transport them from West Africa. In the case of the Sahara slavers, of course, this was impossible. So they chained them in coffles and had them walk across the Sahara Desert. This worked about as well as you might imagine. They didn't suffer no piddling one-third death rate, like the later European slave ships. No, the slave caravans routinely lost half or more of their slaves to "attrition" -- a nice way of describing what happens when you force humans to walk across one of the most hostile deserts on Earth with only marginal supplies of food and water.
The slavers also made it down the coast of West Africa, where in the 16th century they developed a major new slave trade. The European slave trade.
"Wait, wait!" I hear some products of the modern school system already saying. "Didn't the Europeans raid African villages from ships and take slaves that way?"
Sometimes. Very rarely. The reason they very rarely did so is that the European ships had very small crews, the African villages were part of organized tribal kingdoms, and the warriors of said kingdoms had perfectly good metal weapons, and were not at all afraid to use them. Besides, they didn't have to do any such thing.
If you were a European slaver, you went to a regular trading port in West Africa. There, you met an Arab slaver, who sold you the slaves?
Where did he get the slaves? Occasionally, by raiding (the Arab slavers, being land-based, could sometimes assemble small armies if necessary). More often, by buying them from the African kings and chiefs, who by definition had small (and sometimes not-so-small) armies on call.
Said kings and chiefs would make war on their enemies, and when victorious enslave said enemies. After such a war, they'd have a lot of surplus slaves, whom the Arab slave traders were all too happy to take off their hands.
Of course, that was centuries ago. Things are different now, right?
Well, the large-scale organized Arab slave trade was ended, largely by the British Royal Navy (http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/history/battles/royal-navy-and-the-slave-trade/fighting-on-the-moral-ground/) in the 1840's. This required a naval patrol to intercept slave ships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa) and not occasionally involved actual pitched battles against the fortified bases of the Arab slave traders.
But the Arabs never really abandoned slavery. It was specifically allowed in the Quran, and the notion of blacks in particular as "natural slaves" was one of which they neither desired nor were able to rid themselves. As long as the European Great Powers dominated the Mideast, the trade was forced underground, but with the recession of colonialism, it returned.
In Mauritania, the last country to abolish slavery (in 1981),[149] it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved with many used as bonded labour.[150][151] Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007.[152] In Niger, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerian study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population.[153][154][155] Pygmies, the people of Central Africa's rain forest,[156] live in servitude to the Bantus.[157] Some tribal sheiks in Iraq still keep blacks, called Abd, which means servant or slave in Arabic, as slaves.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Present_day)
Yes, that's 1981 for the date of slavery's formal abolition in Mauritania, and in fact 20% of the population still consists of slaves. This shold not be surprising, given that up until 2007 there was no actual criminalization of slaveholding! Note also the prevalence of slavery in Muslim parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.
The enslavement of the Dinkas in southern Sudan may be the most horrific and well-known example of contemporary slavery. According to 1993 U.S. State Department estimates, up to 90,000 blacks are owned by North African Arabs, and often sold as property in a thriving slave trade for as little as $15 per human being.
"There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims."
-from an ASI report on Sudanese slavery
Animist tribes in southern Sudan are frequently invaded by Arab militias from the North, who kill the men and enslave the women and children. The Arabs consider it a traditional right to enslave southerners, and to own chattel slaves (slaves owned as personal property).
Physical mutilation is practiced upon these slaves not only to prevent escape, but to enforce the owners' ideologies. According to an ASI report: "Kon, a thirteen-year-old Dinka boy, was abducted by Arab nomads and taken to a merchant's house. There he found several Dinka men hobbling, their Achilles tendons cut because they refused to become Muslims. Threatened with the same treatment the boy converted."
In a detailed article by Charles Jacobs for the American Anti-Slavery Group (ASI), Jacobs recounts how a 10-year-old child was taken in a raid on her village in southern Sudan, and branded by her master with a hot iron pot.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/slavery1.html
This is classic Arab enslavement of black Africans, and note the Muslim excuse.
So, given all this, why have American blacks turned against Jews in favor of Arabs? Well, in part, it's because much of this isn't known in the West. In part, it's because the most radical (and most ineffectual and pointless) part of the black civil rights movement began in the (mid-) 1960's and was part of a global radical movement which included the Arab nationalists (Ba'athists, basically Arab Nazis) and which turned anti-Semitic for this reason.
In consequence, the political class in black America has turned against the Jews -- their long-time allies and one of the most successful American minority groups, who have gone on to wide acceptance by the majority -- in favor of the Arabs, who have gone from defeat to defeat in the last part of the 20th and in the early 21st century, and who have over the past decade managed to make themselves hated by the American majority.
Good going, American black leadership!