Obama's Kenyan ancestors sold slaves

A conservative lesbian.com ^ | July 13, 2009 | Cynthia Ayockey

[plain talk]

... on both his mother’s AND his father’s side of the family, Obama is descended from people who owned and/or sold black African slaves. How ironic that Obama received almost universal support from blacks who are here because their ancestors were grabbed up and sold into slavery by other black Africans, including Obama’s father’s tribe.

Not surprisingly, when this issue first came up from a story published in the Baltimore Sun on March 2, 2007, quoted here by Sweetness and Light, which only looked into Obama’s mother’s family, the media demonized Obama’s mother’s side of the family for apparently owning slaves. Frankly, I think the more important story is finding out what role Obama’s tribe and family had in grabbing up whoever was handy and selling them into slavery in the first place.

In the 18th century, Muslim slavers moved into the interior of Kenya for the purpose of exploiting blood rivalries between local tribes. Muslims encouraged warring tribes, Obama Jr’s Luo ancestors included, to capture “prisoners of war” and sell them into slavery.

Kenya tribe leaders, also exported slaves and ivory that had been exchanged by Africans from the interior for salt, cloth, beads, and metal goods. The slaves were then marched to the coast and shipped to Muslim Zanzibar (an island South of Kenya), to be traded again.

The abolition of slavery itself would hardly have been possible. From a Muslim point of view, to forbid what God permits is almost as great an offense as to permit what God forbids — and slavery was authorized and regulated by the holy law.

[Brown Deer]