A curious feature of the popular imagination is the ignorant belief that only whites traded and used Black slaves. Slaving and slavery is largely conceived as a white-only crime, a crime against nature-loving peaceniks and aboriginals, in the quest for gold and riches, or in the case of the USA the use of slaves to build an agro-economy. This sentiment that whites are responsible for slavery is of course a gigantic nonsense and a lie. The greatest slavers of all time have been the Blacks themselves, alongside the Arabs and Muslims. In both Black and Muslim states slave trading and ownership still goes on. Yet no one will discuss it. It does not fit in with the zeitgeist of hating Whitey.

In his fact-filled work on the history of the Muslim Arab slave trade in Africa, entitled appropriately enough, 'Slavery in the Arab World' [1989], Murray Gordon notes that this trade pre-dated the European Christian African slave trade by a thousand years and continued for more than a century after the Europeans had abolished the practice. Gordon estimates the number of slaves “harvested” from Black Africa over the period of the Muslim Arab slave trade at 11 million – roughly equal to the number taken by European Christians for their colonies in the New World. [Other experts put this total at 30 million]. Keep in mind that it was the Blacks and the Arabs who sold the Black slaves to the Western trading states.

As Gordon points out: “Despite the long history of slavery in the Arab World and in other Muslim lands, little has been written about this tragedy. Except for the few abolitionists, mainly in England, who railed against Arab slavery and put pressure upon Western governments to end the traffic in slaves, the issue has all but been ignored in the West.” Indeed.

‘Conspiracy of Silence’ on Arab Slave Trade
Gordon decries a “conspiracy of silence. . .[that] has blocked out all light on this sensitive subject.” Among scholars in the Arab world, the author points out, “No moral opprobrium has clung to slavery since it was sanctioned by the Koran and enjoyed an undisputed place in Arab society.”

The book starts out with a brief outline of the growth of the Islamic attitude toward slavery. There is no evidence that Muhammad sought to abolish slavery, notes Gordon, although he urged slave-owners to treat their slaves well and grant them freedom as a meritorious deed.

“Some Muslim scholars have taken this to mean that his true motive was to bring about a gradual elimination of slavery. Far more persuasive is the argument that by lending the moral authority of Islam to slavery, Muhammad assured its legitimacy. Thus, in lightening the fetter, he riveted it ever more firmly in place.”

High Rate of Black African Casualties
While Gordon acknowledges that at times the Islamic version of slavery could be more “humane” than the European colonial version, he provides many facts which point out that the Muslim variety of slavery could be extremely cruel as well.

One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.

The taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also had a high casualty rate. Gordon notes that the typical practice was to conduct a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the preferred “booty” for the raiders.

Young women were targeted because of their value as concubines or sex slaves in markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes,” writes Gordon. “These women were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected to make themselves available to their owners. . .Islamic law, as already noted, catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed.” Young women and girls were often “inspected” before purchase in private areas of the slave market by the prospective buyer.

Racism Toward Black Africans
Some of Gordon’s research disputes the oft-repeated charge that racism did not play a part in Islamic slave society. While it is true that the Muslims of the Middle East took slaves of all colors and ethnicities, they considered white slaves more valuable than black ones and developed racist attitudes toward the darker skinned people.

Even the famous Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, expressed racist attitudes toward black Africans: “The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and their proximity to the animal stage,” Khaldun wrote. Another Arab writer, of the 14th Century, asked: “Is there anything more vile than black slaves, of less good and more evil than they?”

It is a strange phenomenon than, to view American and African Blacks in huge numbers, converting to Islam, an ideology which has been historically, racist. One needs only view Darfur, where Arabs are slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Muslim and Christian Blacks, to get a sense of the racism embedded in Islam and the Koran. Yet in their anti-white zeal, Blacks are embracing Islam as something that is contra-Whitey. It might be their ruin.

Arab and Muslim slave trading still goes on today of course. Pakistan, West Africa, parts of the Middle East and East Africa, and even within Arab communities in North America, engage in slave trading. In some cases it is the selling of young girls to older men as wives, an exchange based on money and sex. In other cases it is the outright sale of young men and girls into slavery, some of it sexual, some of it for menial work, so that families can pay off debts or accrue some wealth.

It is hard to estimate the current level of Arab and Muslim slave trading and slave holding; but it definitely is in the millions and it must be profitable or the trade would collapse. Unlike Western states who, starting in 1807 with the British and throughout the 19th century abolished first slave trading, and then slave holding, the Islamic-Arab world has never repudiated slave holding or commerce. They can't. It is sanctified in the Koran and was a mainstay of their economies for over a thousand years. Yet as with all pre-modern concepts, slavery and the meagre surplus produced by such a method of production [and rising costs] first stultified society; retarded progress and then lead to inexorable decline. Slave states are in the end untenable when compared to modern forms of eocnomic production.

Slavery has existed in every culture, in every part of the planet. Yet it largely only within the Arab culture and within Islam where it is still protected and practiced today. Instead of blaming Whitey for the world's ills, and dreaming up schemes of socialist redistribution through scams such as Globaloney Warming, why doesn't the world demand an end to this nefarious and evil practice? Where is the outrage against the trading, abuse, torture, and oftentimes death of innocents at the hands of Arab and Muslim actors?

The hypocrisy of the world community over Arab-Islamic slaving is revolting.