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gupsfu
Joined: 06 Jul 2004
Posts: 7919
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 Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 7:23 am Post subject: Re: all wrong accustions |
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| AdnanC wrote: |
| The Crisis in Sudan although tragic, is not classifed as genocide in the UN. The Christians have been exploiting Africa for hundreds of years, they forced them into their religion, forced them into slavery, apartheid, and genocide. Muslims respect all skin colors not just Arabs, we are all equal. I am not an Arab and a practicing Muslim. One of Muhamads loyal apostle was an Ethipoian african named Bilal. Bilal was one of the first to recite the call to prayer and is respected among all Muslims. The crisis in Sudan is political not religious. Darfur contains many resourses that the Sudanese government needs. The Rebel groups are trying to create an independent state that could threten the unity of Darfur. The Rebel groups have commited mass atrocites agains humanity and even killed UN aid workers. The U.S is just tring to divert attention from Iraq into Sudan. It wont work, there will be no UN resolution because the Muslims will solve the proplem peacefully not the US. |
Your arguments are not only utter bullshıt, but are also meaningless at this stage of the debate.
If you like, you may start a new thread to discuss the issue all over again.
Meanwhile, I'd like to advise you to keep up with the current progress, or say nothing.
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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| Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2004 9:23 pm Post subject: |
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Muslim Vs Muslim....Is agood article from Farrukh Saleem on the problems of Africal continent and Arabian Domination..
Muslims Vs Muslim
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Five hundred Muslims are being slaughtered every day. Some two hundred and eleven thousand have already been massacred. A total of three hundred and twenty thousand could die by the end of 2004, irrespective of international intervention (Source: Congressional Research Service; http://fpc.state.gov/c4763.htm).
Arab militias armed by the Central Government of Jumhuriyat as-Sudan are starving, raping and murdering non-Arab residents of Sudan’s Darfur Province. Arabs, one can readily guess, must be Muslim. Who are these Arabs starving, raping and murdering? What is the religion of the victims? Answer: The victims are all Muslim as well; black, non-Arab, ethnic African Muslims. African Muslims of Darfur are not just Muslim but they are "deeply, devoutly, unshakably Muslim." Jumhuriyat as-Sudan has some 30 million Muslims spread over a landmass of 2.3 million sq km (more than 3 times the size of Pakistan). Of the 30 million, close to 17 million are black, non-Arab, African Muslims while the remaining 13 million are Arab Muslims. Jumhuriyat as-Sudan got its independence on 1 January 1956. Since that day, military regimes - espousing an Islamist platform-have ruled Sudan. Over the past two decades, "war and war-and-famine-related effects have led to more than 2 million deaths and over 4 million people displaced."
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The Arab-dominated ruling military junta deployed the Popular Defence Force (PDF) in support of the Janjaweed. The Sudanese Air Force then began an extended bombing campaign targeting non-Arab villages. According to the Human Rights Watch, "Hundreds of villages in Darfur have been totally or partially burned and destroyed by bombing and ground attacks. More than a million people have been forced from their homes and more than 158,000 people have fled Darfur for neighbouring Chad."
Fatimah Yousef Mohamed is black, non-Arab ethnic African Muslim. Fatimah lives in Darfur in the village of Kilek. Arabs of Darfur refer to non-Arab Africans as ‘zurga’ or ‘black’ more a slur than anything else. Exactly five months ago, the Janjaweed, supported by the soldiers of the Popular Defence Force, attacked Kilek. Fatimah was abducted and taken to another village 3 km from Kilek and according to The Scotsman, Scotland’s national newspaper and raped. The baby is due in exactly four months. Fatimah has decided to keep the baby but a "part of her will always think of it as her Janjaweed child. (http://thescotsman.scotsman. com/index.cfm?id=912692004).
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(http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engafr540762004)"
The Government of Sudan claims to be a "fundamentalist Islamist government". The non-Arab African Muslims of Darfur have historically practiced a more quiet rather tolerant interpretation of Islam. African Muslims are now being exterminated. ............Arab Muslims of Darfur have now killed more Muslims than has America. Why are Arab leaders hesitant in speaking out against the terrible humanitarian tragedy in Darfur? Why should Muslims be allowed to kill other Muslims?
God’s gift to Arabs-Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Libya and Qatar — stands at 500 billion barrels of oil (www.opec.org). At $40 a barrel that gift is valued at some $20 trillion. How much of that has gone into saving African Muslims? For the record, over the past 15 years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has put over a billion dollars in
humanitarian assistance into Sudan. |
excerots from Jang
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/index.html |
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Arrythmic Dissonance
Joined: 15 Aug 2004
Posts: 32
Location: italy
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| Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2004 9:32 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks Cyberite for telling the truth and for the links. Just what I was looking for.
Nice one.
_________________
the universe exists because it can
(on the internet no-one knows you're a god)
music, love and laughter from
Arrythmic Dissonance |
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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| Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 3:09 am Post subject: |
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Three African imams to be prosecuted by Norwegian state for promoting FGM
These idiots move all the way from Motherland to Norwegy and do the same thing what they did in Africa.. Female Gential Muyilations:
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afrol.com, 5 October - After a TV documentary on the private Norwegian TV2 yesterday documented the widespread practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) among African immigrants, Norwegian Minister of Children and Family promised to prosecute one Somali and two Gambian imams promoting the prohibited practice. Very few cases of FGM have been prosecuted in Europe so far.
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When she told one of the Gambian imams that the practice was prohibited in Norway, she was told that "as I am sure you'll understand, we Muslims must be careful with what we say here in Norway. It is not necessary to include too many in these matters. I myself, for instance, have two wives. That is also prohibited in Norway. When my wife visits me from The Gambia, I tell the Norwegian government that it is my sister or my aunt. The same discretion should go for what you are bringing up". ... |
well read it all at http://www.afrol.com/Categories/Women/wom005_fgm_norway.htm
yeezevee |
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Kison
Joined: 23 Mar 2005
Posts: 9
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| Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 1:16 am Post subject: |
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| One word: Somalia. If ever you thought you've seen a ****ed up country, check that one out. Kids with guns. People starving on the streets. It was a mistake for the US to try to help them out. |
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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| Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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So BBC writes about Somalia.. A 22 year old Somalian.. Faduma laments her story..let us read bit of of that tragedy..
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Displaced in Somalia: Faduma
Mother-of-two Faduma, 22, has lived in a camp for displaced people in central Mogadishu since she fled south from Baidoa seven years ago. Women and children in Mogadishu are especially vulnerable
I actually returned to Baidoa in April this year when there was heavy fighting here in Mogadishu but I came back recently because my husband was hit in his face by a stray bullet and so I had to look after him.
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There is a lot of rape. One woman in our camp was gang raped. Some men came in from outside, took her baby from her and gave the baby to the father, and then three men raped her.
I even heard of a 70-year-old woman who was bound and raped by a man with a knife when she was walking to the tailor. It is terrible. We don't know of any treatment; we can't go anywhere for help. |
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During the fighting, six months ago, there was an increase in the number of rapes.But since the transitional federal government said no-one could walk around at night the number of cases has decreased. This is because it is not so easy anymore to enter our camp after dark.
We don't go out because of security.
We don't even go to the toilet at night. We now take bedpans into our shelters because if you walk to the latrines at night you will surely be raped after midnight. The main problem with the camp though is that it doesn't have gates and so anyone can just come in and out. In our camp none of the husbands have divorced their wives after being raped because everyone knows it is not the woman's fault... |
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Why this human life has to be so hard? Where is Allah? Why do we have so many criminals in religions?? Aren't te animals in Jungle better than us??
yeezevee |
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nestorian
Joined: 17 Jan 2008
Posts: 172
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| Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 3:51 am Post subject: |
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| Awareness begins at the education level, the universities I've studied have this rose-coloured view on Islam, it makes me sick. These leftist academic snobs look down on anyone who thinks otherwise. I'm frustrated, truly frustrated at these lies that being put forth as truth. These same leftist snobs have Muslims friends who enjoy the freedom of the West, these Muslims live a free life practising Islam, or "moderate Islam" as they call it. Why cant they then practise "moderate Islam" in their own country? If they cant practise such Islam in their own country, what kind of Islam is in their own country then? Surely, it must be "fanatical, intolerant Islam" as preached by religious elite in these countries. Most people in Muslims countries are lowly educated, and hence vulnerable to the manipulations of the religious elite. Do you agree? |
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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| Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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| nestorian: Surely, it must be "fanatical, intolerant Islam" as preached by religious elite in these countries. Most people in Muslims countries are lowly educated, and hence vulnerable to the manipulations of the religious elite. Do you agree? |
.. yes I will agree with you on that "Most people in Muslims countries are lowly educated, and hence vulnerable to the manipulations of the religious elite.".. but.. but.. the reason for that LOWLY EDUCATION IN MUSLIM SOCIETIES IS MUHAMMAD's ISLAM ITSELF.This is due to inherent slave mentality that breeds in to Muslims kids since they are born makes Muslim men and women not to question anything in ISLAM including the past and present leaders. Any political structure that comes out of such minds stagnates the society and impedes the human development. This stagnation generates a rigid social structure that makes the GHETTOS out of Islamic society and that is indeed is the reason for that statement of yours.. "Most people in Muslims countries are lowly educated, and hence vulnerable to the manipulations of the religious elite."..
with best regards
yeezevee
Last edited by yeezevee on Sun Oct 19, 2008 4:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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truthbetold1500
Joined: 16 Apr 2008
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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In order to understand what has happened to Africa over the past 14 centuries one must look at our history. I find it disheartening that many people don't know about what Islam and Muslims have done to Africa and African people. Arabs invaded Egypt in 632 AD, and have continued to invade Africa to this very day. I think Ali Sina and other people who want to combat Islam must include Africa in that fight. All the values that Muslims claim to bring virtue to Islam is all bull and can be easily disproven by using the history of Islam in Africa. There is a reason why Arab leaders and Muslim scholars are so keen to protect the secret of Muslim Slavery in Africa, and the trafficking of Africans to the West and the East. A great book that I think many people should read is The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A quest for Inter-religious Dialogue, by John Alembillah Azumah. This book is very informative, and has plenty of sources. After reading it I think many people will be more informed about what has happened in Africa over the past 1400 years. It is time that Africans and non-Africans told the truth about what has happened. Instead people would rather hide their heads in the sand. Our history did not start with slavery and has not ended with slavery so there is no need to hide the atrocities committed by Islam and Muslims. One thing you will learn from the book is that much of what Europeans learned about Slavery and how came from Arab Muslims.
Azumah distinguishes between indigenous African slavery/servitude and compares it to slavery in India, Rome, Greece, Persia, China, and other parts of the world. He then asks why people would assume that the institution of slavery was an indigenous African phenomenon. He then goes on to prove how institutional slavery was not an African phenomenon, and that it was Islam that institutionalized slavery. There are plenty of sources, and I have stared to read some of these sources.
The most devastating thing is that Africans like many other non Arabs have been used as sacrificial lambs in the name of Islam i.e. Arab Supremacy, i.e. Arab Imperialism! The Arab League has been funding many of the wars going on in Africa but very few people know this. Heck the Arab League is and has been funding the war in Sudan. Saudi Arabia and Iran are now trying to fight over who will have more influence in Africa. There are Muslim “recruiters” trying to gain converts by feeding Africans bull sh!t like Islam is free of racism, and that they should leave Christianity cause of slavery, and yet Muslims have selective amnesia and deny the Arab slave trade and the relationship that jihad has to the Trans Atlantic Slave trade.
I came out learning more about African history than I had originally known. I also came out knowing that Islam has and is the root of Arab Slave trade, and racism is deeply rooted in it. It is imperative that Africans be included in the struggle against Islam, being that the history that Africans have with Islam is more bad than good. I have always believed that it is Africa that will give Islam a large blow that it will not be able to recover from. African history is rich with weapons that can be used against Muslims claiming tolerance and that their religion means peace. I think many people should read this book, before Muslims exert their influence and try to get it removed.
Here is a link to a site where the book gets a general review, but it does not do the book justice.
http://thefunkyghettohijabi.blogspot.com/2007/02/legacy-of-arab-islam-in-africa.html |
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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dear truthbetold1500.. thank you for that link.., I think that is such a powerful testimony of Funky Ghetto Hijabi in that blog let me add complete thoughts of her in to this folder..I will e-mail her about FFI and whether it is o.k. to put her blog article on to the front page of ffi
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About Me; The Funky Ghetto Hijabi WRITE about her self:
I'm Nigerian Canadian...sort of. My father lives in Lagos. He's Ijaw. My mother is from Quebec and is culturally French-Canadian but she raised me as an Anglophone because her mother was American. She's White...whatever that means. I became a Sunni Muslim when I was 21. I wear hijab. In this blog, I discuss issues related to being a woman who wears hijab, growing up on welfare in subsidized housing in a totally dysfunctional family, coping with clinical depression and being a Muslim by choice in the Post 9-11 world. I also reflect on issues related to my Black identity and Black Existentialism as well as the experiences of the global African diaspora, African Literature and African history. Thanks for visiting my blog. |
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The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa
The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue
By John Alembillah Azumah; OneWorld, 2005 Reveiwed by Khaled Ahmed
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| How was Islam taken to Africa? Was it benign or was it propelled by slavery as Christianity was? Were the Arabs driven by a divine message or money from selling slaves? We know that the Arabs kept slaves before they became Muslim. The Quran talks disparagingly of the practice of keeping slaves. Most of the slaves came from Africa. The habshi (Abyssinian) for slave points to the origin of the slave in ancient Arabia. Did slavery cease after Islam? It should have because the ingress of Islam into Africa should have taken care of that. When an African slave became Christian he remained a slave; a slave embracing Islam could not remain slave, or that is what we assume. The evidence is in stark contrast to our beliefs and the beliefs of some Africans. |
Author Azumah finds that today's scholarly investigation of Africa flags Christianity as a negative force but leaves Islam alone as a colonising and enslaving factor. The "liberation theology" holding sway in North and South Africa indicts the Western Christian church as the origin of white supremacy and "racism" but looks at the African-Islamic dispensation on the basis of an entirely different methodology. Islam is seen as more in tune with the African psyche and being, in fact, a part of African culture. Islam is supposed to have strengthened trends that took the Africans towards their struggle for independence. Some view the Arab-Islamic past of Africa as the Golden Age of Africa as was announced at a 1989 conference at Abuja. Islam is seen as friendly towards African heritage; yet such Muslim leaders as Ibraheem Suleiman of Nigeria condemn ancient African rituals as an obstacle to the observance of Islam.
Slavery and its accompanying racism have been the most outstanding trauma of the African man and it is on this experiential yardstick that Christianity is judged. Yet Islam too enslaved. Why are African Muslim scholars like Ali Mazrui inclined to see Islamic slavery in a different light? Mazrui puts forward the idea, which sounds persuasive, that the criterion of differentiation between Arab and non-Arab was not based on skin colour. And yet slavery did take place under Muslim rulers and it took place in the very region of East Africa where Mazrui hails from. It would be interesting to investigate in our times the conflict in the Darfur region in Sudan where Arab-origin Muslims are killing African-origin Muslims in a movement that can be characterised as genocide.
In the 19th century, during the so-called African jihad, a large scale presence of slave farms in the Sokoto caliphate has been explained away as `agricultural colonies for the war captive.'The trans-Atlantic "Christian" trade of black slaves was viewed as much more serious than the trans-Sahara "Islamic" trade of black slaves.
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| Islam came to Africa with traders and the "religious experts"that travelled with them. Its route was trans-Sahara, running through tropical Africa, North Africa and the Mediterranean to Europe, and across the Red Sea into Arabia and the Middle East. As early as the 8th century, Islam had converted a number of nationalities, for instance the Berbers, who became Muslims and became traders like the Arabs. These new Muslims plied their trade down to Niger and Ghana; a similar role was played by Hausa and Yoruba tribes in West Africa. Arab and Persian traders reached East Africa and settled there as local aristocrats, taking local black wives and giving rise to cultures called variously Shirazi, Zeilawi (Arab plus Somali and Afar) and Swahili (Arab andBantu). |
Some thought that Islam was better suited to the African mind because the African mind was not suitable for sophisticated metaphysics; since Islam is sensual and materialistic it is easily accepted by the African mind. Some of us might find that insulting but advocates of Islam in Africa have said it. Be that as it may, Islam didn't stop slavery that had begun in 200 BC and Islam struggled in vain against it. A companion of the Prophet (pbuh) Abdur Rehman bin Awf freed 30,000 slaves at his death-bed. The Prophet (pbuh) himself set an example when he purchased Abyssinian Bilal ibn Rabah and set him free. Sudan, which means `place of the blacks' - and applied to a larger region in those days - became the slave-rich region for Muslim traders after the conquest of Egypt in 639 AD. Modern Kenya and Tanzania were trawled by them, the region being called Zanj, which gave rise to the other name for slave: zangi . African slaves abounded in medieval Baghdad and Damascus and their presence was so widespread that it gave rise to a sexually "defensive" male Arab mentality revealed in AThousand and One Nights .
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The black slave permeated Muslim life to the extent that kings began siring children on black women and giving rise to "slave dynasties" and an entire Mamluke empire was established by them. In1882 a Muslim Arab slaver in Africa admitted that fifty per cent of his"catch" died while travelling in chains from the interior of Africa to the coast. Dr Livingstone in Africa calculated that each slave that went to the Arab-Islamic world was actually ten slaves to start with. Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun noted that all of North Africa then ruled by Muslims was filled with black slaves, captured mostly by fellow-African Berbers who had converted to Islam.
What the entrepôt of Muslim Egypt did to all parts of Africa could be compared in its savagery to what the Belgians did to Congo later on. Egypt exported them to all parts of the world, including Europe. Mecca itself became a market, and if you went for hajj in those days, you brought back a slave or two. |
In his book Arabia of the Bedouins , Marcel Kurpershoek has already told us that slavery is alive in Saudi Arabia, but today the status of the slave is higher than that of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi farmers who till the land for the sheikhs while the slaves look on. A slave is someone you have to respect since his honour is linked to the honour of the tribe that owns him. This doesn't apply to the imported Pakistani/Bangladeshi workers in the Saudi farmland. The whites of America took African slaves to get work out of them; the Arab slavers got much more out of them than that. Ibn Battuta, the famous Muslim traveller, noted during his trip to Mali that the trading sheikhs there had countless black men and women slaves who looked to all theirphysical needs (p.147). Muslim divines travelling to Africa were gifted these slaves free as a mark of respect.
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| Author Azumah sets the record straight in our day when Muslims in Africa are under the influence of hard Islam and insist on imposing tough shariah on non-Muslims living in their pluralist societies. In Nigeria, for instance, the Muslim provinces of the north have imposed shariah, causing Christians and other non-Muslims to flee to avoid hand-cutting and stoning on dubious evidence. In non-Muslim majority states like South Africa, the Muslims are living as very useful citizens, contributing meaningfully to their societies. Their minority status prevents them from thinking of shariah, but where they have numerical dominance, they forget that they were once only black just like the others on the continent who have remained non-Muslim. This is a very well researched book with insights that a discerning reader will no doubt appreciate. |
Azumah's book is a great resource but this review contains some points that I must take issue with. There is one very profound difference between the Muslim practice of slavery and that which developped in the United States plantation societies. If Muslim slave owners sired a child on a black slave that child would become free and belong to the father. This was not the case in the U.S. There seems to be a variety of reasons for this, including the strange idea that blacks were a different species which led to the development of the term "mulatto", Portugese for mule, meaning that a mix between black and white was a cross between species. Also the sexual mores of Christian America would not permit a slave owner to admit that he was having sex with his slave women. But that didn't stop American slave owners from purchasing black slave women simply for the purpose of sexual gratification. So, Ahmed can't say that slaves in North America were only used for their labour.
That said that doesn't mean racism didn't develop in the Arab Muslim world. To this day, if a man is dark skinned but Arab his friends might joke that "he's the son of my slave" and darker skinned Arabs and Africans can face discrimination and harassment based on their skin colour. Arab and Somali children still get into fights in my neighborhood in an Arab child dares to call a Somali child and "'abd" which means slave.
Slavery wasn't abolished willingly in the Arab Muslim world or in the African Muslim world. This is important to understand because some Islamic revivalists, such as Pakistan's Mawdudi, argued that Muslims should return to the use of slavery as it's abolition was just imposed by the Big Bad West. In Nigeria, slavery persisted until around 1936. Slavery of Bantu peoples still existed in Somalia during the time of the civil war.
This is reality and we Muslims have to come to terms with it. Christians have and it didn't make them renounce Christianity so there is nothing to be lost for us Muslims if we condemn the injustices done in our name. I think it's important because although there may be many Blacks who convert to Islam as a way of reclaiming their African heritage there are also many Blacks, particularly in Nigeria, who are leaving Islam as a way of reclaiming their African heritage. I've encountered many in Ottawa's Nigerian communities. They are often quick to lecture me on the atrocities that have been committed in Nigeria in the name of Islam and convince me that I should renounce Islam.
Many non-Muslims fear the impostion of sharia law because it legalizes the enslavement of non-Muslims, a reality that might still exist in the living memory of many Africans. But Ahmed is wrong that many non-Muslims living in Northern Nigeria are fleeing just because of Sharia Law. They are fleeing because of communal violence. The non-Muslim communites of cities like Kano are always in danger from their fellow Nigerians who are Muslims in the North. During the Danish cartoon controversy and the uproar over the Pope Benedict's speech non-Muslims and their churches in the North were attacked, leading to several deaths.
Also, Ahmed is wrong to state that the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt was created by Black Africans. The Mamluks were Turks, Circassians and Georgians. It wasn't only Black Africans who were enslaved by Muslims. It was non-Muslims in general. However, it does appear that Blacks were given more hard labour and had more difficulty getting out of their slave status.
Black African slaves were exported as far as Indonesia. Descendents of Black slaves still live in Pakistan and India. |
yeezevee |
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Chewchy
Joined: 02 Feb 2008
Posts: 1774
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 1:18 am Post subject: |
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How does watching tv even give any kind of realistic glimpse about how most people live in the US? There is not one show on that I can identify with except maybe some of those home makeover shows on HGTV 
Most of it is to show something outlandish (particularly "reality" tv) and get people's attention.
I remember someone on this forum mentioned all the commercials we have for personal type products and that only goes to show that companies want to sell their product, it's just advertising.
If you see a viagra commercial 5 times during a 1-hour program it does not mean that a large number of men have disfunction, it just means that Pfizer wants to make a boatload of money. |
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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| Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 4:42 pm Post subject: |
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Islam in Zanzibar
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| Zanzibar (pronounced /ˈzænzɨbɑr/) is part of the East African republic of Tanzania. It consists of the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25–50 km (15–30 mi) off the coast off the mainland. In 1698, Zanzibar fell under the control of the Sultanate of Oman. major trade good was ivory, the tusks of elephants killed in mainland Africa. The third pillar of the economy was slaves, giving Zanzibar an important place in the Arab slave trade, the Indian Ocean equivalent of the better-known Triangular Trade. Zanzibar City was the main trading port of the East African slave trade, with about 50,000 slaves a year passing through the city. The Sultan of Zanzibar controlled a substantial portion of the East African coast, known as Zanj, which included Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, and trading routes which extended much further inland, such as to Kindu on the Congo River. |
Zanzibar is a conservative, Sunni Muslim society. Its history was influenced by the Arabs, Persians, Indians, Portuguese, British and the African mainland. Zanzibar criminalised gay and lesbian sex in 2004 [1] [2]. In September 2006, a radical Islamic group on the archipelago, Uamsho, forced organizers to abandon plans to mark the 60th birthday of the late Freddie Mercury (born Farouk Bulsara into the Parsi community of Stone Town, who reached fame as the lead singer of the rock group Queen), saying he violated Islam with his openly bisexual lifestyle...
Watch the tube Islam in action in Zanzibar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG_hPGnQZ7o
yeezevee |
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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| Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:08 am Post subject: |
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Race and Slavery in the Middle East .. Bernard Lewis.
Excerpts-1 from Chpt. 1 Slavery
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In 1842 the British Consul General in Morocco, as part of his government's worldwide endeavor to bring about the abolition of slavery or at least the curtailment of the slave trade, made representations to the sultan of that country asking him what measures, if any, he had taken to accomplish this desirable objective. The sultan replied, in a letter expressing evident astonishment, that
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| "the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam . . . up to this day." The sultan continued that he was "not aware of its being prohibited by the laws of any sect, and no one need ask this question, the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.'' |
The sultan was only slightly out of date concerning the enactment of laws to abolish or limit the slave trade, and he was sadly right in his general historic perspective. The institution of slavery had indeed been practiced from time immemorial. It existed in all the ancient civilizations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and pre-Columbian America. It had been accepted and even endorsed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as other religions of the world.
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In the ancient Middle East, as elsewhere, slavery is attested from the very earliest written records, among the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and other ancient peoples. The earliest slaves, it would seem, were captives taken in warfare. Their numbers were augmented from other sources of supply. In pre-classical antiquity, most slaves appear to have been the property of kings, priests, and temples, and only a relatively small proportion were in private possession. They were employed to till the fields and tend the flocks of their royal and priestly masters but otherwise seem to have played little role in economic production, which was mostly left to small farmers, tenants, and sharccroppers and to artisans and journeymen.
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| The slave population was also recruited by the sale, abandonment, or kidnapping of small children. Free persons could sell themselves or, more frequently, their offspring into slavery. They could be enslaved for insolvency, as could be the persons offered by them as pledges. |
Both the Old and New Testaments recognize and accept the institution of slavery. Both from time to time insist on the basic humanity of the slave, and the consequent need to treat him humanely. The Jews are frequently reminded, in both Bible and Talmud, that they too were slaves in Egypt and should therefore treat their slaves decently.
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Psalm 123, which compares the worshipper's appeal to God for mercy with the slave's appeal to his master, is cited to enjoin slaveowners to treat their slaves with compassion. A verse in the book of Job has even been interpreted as an argument against slavery as such: "Did not He that made me in the womb make him [the slave]? And did not One fashion us both?" (Job 31:15). This probably means no more, however, than that the slave is a fellow human being and not a mere chattel.
The same is true of the much-quoted passage in the New Testament, that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." These and similar verses were not understood to mean that ethnic, social, and gender differences were unimportant or should be abolished, only that they conferred no religious privilege. From many allusions, it is clear that slavery is accepted in the New Testament as a fact of life. Some passages in the Pauline Epistles even endorse it.
Thus in the Epistle to Philemon, a runaway slave is returned to his master; in Ephesians 6, the duty owed by a slave to his master is compared with the duty owed by a child to his parent, and the slave is enjoined "to be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, in fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ." Parents and masters are likewise enjoined to show consideration for their children and slaves. All humans, of the true faith, were equal in the eyes of God and in the afterlife but not necessarily in the laws of man and in this world. Those not of the true faith -- whichever it was -- were in another, and in most respects an inferior, category. In this respect, the Greek perception of the barbarian and the Judeo-Christian-lslamic perception of the unbeliever coincide. |
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There appear indeed to have been some who opposed slavery, usually as it was practiced but sometimes even as such. In the Greco-Roman world, both the Cynics and the Stoics are said to have rejected slavery as contrary to justice, some basing their opposition on the unity of the human race, and the Roman jurists even held that slavery was contrary to nature and maintained only by "human" law.
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| There is no evidence that either jurists or philosophers sought its abolition, and even their theoretical opposition has been questioned. Much of it was concerned with moral and spiritual themes -- the true freedom of the good man, even when enslaved, and the enslavement of the evil freeman to his passions. These ideas, which recur in Jewish and Christian writings, were of little help to those who suffered the reality of slavery. |
Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, claims that a Jewish sect actually renounced slavery in practice. In a somewhat idealized account of the Essenes, he observes that they practiced a form of primitive communism, sharing homes and property and pooling their earnings. Furthermore, "not a single slave is to be found among them, but all are free, exchanging services with each other, and they denounce the owners of slaves.......". |
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to be continued..
yeezevee
Last edited by yeezevee on Mon Oct 27, 2008 6:58 am; edited 2 times in total |
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yeezevee
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 17109
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| Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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Race and Slavery in the Middle East .. Bernard Lewis.
Excerpts-2 from Chpt. 1 Slavery
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| The Qur'an, like the Old and the New Testaments, assumes the existence of slavery. It regulates the practice of the institution and thus implicitly accepts it. The Prophet Muhammad and those of his Companions who could afford it themselves owned slaves; some of them acquired more by conquest. But Qur'anic legislation, subsequently confirmed and elaborated in the Holy Law, brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far-reaching effects. One of these was the presumption of freedom; the other, the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances . |
.......The Qur'an recognizes the basic inequality between master and slave and the rights of the former over the latter (XVI: 71; XXX: 28 ). It also recognizes concubinage (IV: 3; XXIII: 6; XXXIII:50-52; LXX: 30). It urges, without actually commanding, kindness to the slave (IV:36; IX:60; XXIV: 58 ) and recommends, without requiring, his liberation by purchase or manumission. The freeing of slaves is recommended both for the expiation of sins (IV:92; V:92; LVIII:3) and as an act of simple benevolence (II:177; XXIV:33; XC:13). It exhorts masters to allow slaves to earn or purchase their own freedom.
An important change from pagan, though not from Jewish or Christian, practices is that in the strictly religious sense,the believing slave is now the brother of the freeman in Islam and before God, and the superior of the free pagan or idolator (II:221). This point is emphasized and elaborated in innumerable hadlths (traditions), in which the Prophet is quoted as urging considerate and sometimes even equal treatment for slaves, denouncing cruelty, harshness, or even discourtesy, recommending the liberation of slaves, and reminding the Muslims that his apostolate was to free and slave alike. |
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Though slavery was maintained, the Islamic dispensation enormously improved the position of the Arabian slave, who was now no longer merely a chattel but was also a human being with a certain religious and hence a social status and with certain quasi-legal rights. The early caliphs who ruled the Islamic community after the death of the Prophet also introduced some further reforms of a humanitarian tendency. The enslavement of free Muslims was soon discouraged and eventually prohibited.
It was made unlawful for a freeman to sell himself or his children into slavery, and it was no longer permitted for freemen to be enslaved for either debt or crime, as was usual in the Roman world and, despite attempts at reform, in parts of Christian Europe until at least the sixteenth century. It became a fundamental principle of Islamic jurisprudence that the natural condition, and therefore the presumed status, of mankind was freedom, just as the basic rule concerning actions is permittedness: what is not expressly forbidden is permitted; whoever is not known to be a slave is free. This rule was not always strictly observed. Rebels and heretics were sometimes denounced as infidels or, worse, apostates, and reduced to slavery, as were the victims of some Muslim rulers in Africa, who proclaimed jihad against their neighbors, without looking closely at their religious beliefs, so as to provide legal cover for their enslavement. But by and large, and certainly in the central lands of Islam, under regimes of high civilization, the rule was honored, and free subjects of the state, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, were protected from unlawful enslavement. |
Since all human beings were naturally free, slavery could only arise from two circumstances: (1) being born to slave parents or (2) being captured in war. The latter was soon restricted to infidels captured in a jihad. |
to be continued..
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