Posted on 03/29/2007 7:13:12 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Islamic and Christian historians have called for a number of Muslim states to apologise for their part in the slave trade during a live radio debate.
The programme, broadcast on Premier Christian Radio, featured Islamic expert and lecturer, Anthony McRoy and ex-Christian and Islamic convert, the author Abdul-Haq al-Ashanti.
The debate began with McRoy explaining how North African Islamic states raided European countries for slaves, and have yet to apologise for these actions.
"It's essential that all states that ever engaged in this nefarious activity [slavery] should themselves apologise. I think there is a special case for the North African states and the Ottoman Empire to apologise," he said.
"Between 1480 and 1830 one and a quarter million white Europeans and North Americans were raided into slavery in north Africa by the north African states. The only reason this stopped is because the British and French made them stop, using the military."
When asked about the effect an apology would have on the public's view of Islam and Islamic countries, McRoy said, "I'm advocating this as a way of undermining anti-Muslim feeling, of attacking Islamophobia."
"People are scared of Islam. Rightly or wrongly, they are scared. They are scared that one day Muslims are going to conquer the west again. To obviate that fear, the North African states and Turkey should issue a formal apology so that people in the west can breathe and we can silence the rantings of Islamophobes."
The lengthy debate also featured US-based lecturer on Muslim-Christian relations, the Rev Keith Small, al-Ashanti, who said: "I think it's a very important subject that needs to be discussed not only by Muslims but also non-Muslims as well."
"It's difficult to apologise for the sins of another." He added. "In those cases where there were clear, gross abuses of the Islamic text, those people [of Islamic states] have to make some kind of apology, we utterly condemn that [slavery]."
Abdul-Haq al-Ashanti, the Muslim representative at the debate, said: "Obviously those states that were complicit in abusing and contradicting, maybe even in some cases rejecting the statements of Islam with regards of slavery, they have to make some kind of apology and make amends for what they've done."
Al-Ashanti, a historical specialist, wrote his first book, Before Nicea, on the early followers of Jesus Christ through the eyes of the Islamic faith.
Sounds like a sure-fire winning plan to me. Switch the debate to apologies over wrongs committed hundreds of years ago, but ignore the Islamists ambitions to create a 21st century global caliphate. Smart move.
Sudan hasn't released their slaves YET.
Oooooh, that'll happen. /s
Can anyone say "Fat Chance".
Their Koran book of propaganda for the mindless states that slavery is OK.
Hey, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Put them on the defensive. Make them apologize for the past while criticizing their plans for the present and the future.
HRW Documents on Sudan FREE Join the HRW Mailing List
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Slavery and Slave Redemption in the Sudan
Human Rights Watch Backgrounder
Updated March 2002 (earlier backgrounder dated March 1999)
Human Rights Watch has long denounced slavery in Sudan in the context of the nineteen-year civil war. In this contemporary form of slavery government-backed and armed militia of the Baggara tribes raid to capture children and women who are then held in conditions of slavery in western Sudan and elsewhere. They are forced to work for free in homes and in fields, punished when they refuse, and abused physically and sometimes sexually. Raids are directed mostly at the civilian Dinka population of the southern region of Bahr El Ghazal. The government arms and sanctions the practice of slavery by this tribal militia, known as muraheleen, as a low cost part of its counterinsurgency war against the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), which is identified with the Dinka tribe of southern Sudan.
More here:
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/sudanupdate.htm
The problem with any kind of apology is that it makes it sound as if the crime happened in the past. That's not true. It is happening as we speak (type).
If a person is born in a country and not issued a birth certificate....
Is not free to travel
Is not free to leave the house
Is confined to wearing certain clothing
Can't testify in court
Has no standing to bring any sort of law suit in court
Can't summon the police to help
Has no control over any money for personal use
Has no passport
Has no say over sexual activities
Has no say over marriage
Has no say over divorce
Has no parental rights
Can be forced into marriage by age 9
Can be sold into a "marriage" by a father, brother, uncle
Can't enter into a contract
Is not allowed to drive
Is not allowed to vote
Who's life is totally controlled by others
Can be killed without a trial and for any reason
Can be starved to death
Stoned
Drowned
Locked away in a dark room until death
Wouldn't you say that such a person is a slave?
I would.
That's the status of half the population in many of the Islamic countries.
The female half.
They can apologize for that in the next few hundred years. Don't be so hard on them. /s
Heck, it's going on right here in the good old USA. Want to find a slave in America? Just visit any of the hundreds and hundreds of privately owned arab mansions around the country.
But, but,but, they're not done yet!
The Ottoman Empire and Crimean Tatars were major slave raiders for centuries in the Balkans, Poland, Ukraine and Russia. Probably took a good many more slaves from these areas than the north African states did from the Mediterranean and western Europe. The Barbary states also brought black slaves across the Sahara, at a much higher death rate than the trans-Atlantic trade.
Powerful stuff.
...Birds chirping...
At last, someone has remarked upon the obvious fact that there's an elephant in the room.
Uh, no it wasn't. islamism clearly approves of slavery.
L
I'll win the Lottery and the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes before the apology happens.
...and don't even mention Timbuktu and the infamous salt mines...
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