Discussion about "HOW ISLAM CONQUERED AMERICA"

I know all about the Arabic slave trade ! I was refering to the "in the bunker" feeling coming from your story, particularly the headline. 4 percent of europeans "owned" slaves. I dont feel responsible for slavery at all. It was an evil that was abolished long before I was born. As Islam teaches, I am responsible for my sins, and my sins only. The sins of my ancestors have no baring on me whatsoever. The fact that I am descended from abolitionists does make me feel better about the whole thing though !

Arab slave trading is depicted in recent movie Mongol that tells the early life of Genghis Khan.  I would agree Arab slave trading or slave trading in the ancient world has not been the topic of any documentaries I have seen.  But slavery in the ancient world including Greece and Rome was an accepted practice. And the conquered were turned into slaves.  However, Genghis Khan gave the people he conquered a choice.   Either be a citizen of mine or death, which wasnt much of choice but he did offer freedom if they swore allegiance rather than taking slaves.  He was sold into slavery himself as a young man, so perhaps this was the source of his methods. 

This manifesto is obviously the work of zealots, and like any other extremist document, it's purpose is to shock and scare the masses using some truths. But for the most part it is far fetched in my opinion.  The most damaging result of this is to American Muslims who do not not ascribe to the tenets therein, for they will be suspect of these activities by people who read this information and assume all Muslims will act on the declarations. 

At an article I posted here at NowPublic, in Decenber 2008, entitled An African Connection in Iraq, regarding some aspects of the Arab Slave Trade, I wrote:

The word assasin is derived from the fact that Turkish mercinaries smoked Hashish - drugs are forbidden in Islam.     So.... it is hardly Islamic.

 If people of every religion on the planet followed the rules of their religion we would have paradise on earth, many dont. 

 As a result we have a lot of bad things happen. Did the protestants and Catholics killing each other in Ireland do it for Jesus?  No, they did it for prestige and power the same as other hypocrites throughout history and in the present day.

An excellent series produced by PBS, Africans in America.

An excerpt from the series about Elmina Castle, a slave trading post constructed by the Portuguese after the first ships were sent by Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal to Africa:

Slaves were typically captured inland, then brought to the outpost on an arduous journey that often lasted many days -- half of all captives did not even make it to the coast. Once there, the slaves would wait, often for a long period of time, until a ship arrived. They were traded for cowrie shells, iron bars, guns, basins, mirrors, knives, linens, silk, and beads.

Elmina Castle saw several owners during the course of the slave trade, including the Portuguese, Dutch, and English. By the 18th century, 30,000 slaves on their way to the Americas passed through Elmina each year.6 Deportation through outposts like Elmina continued for nearly three hundred years.

It is reported there were up to 70 slave castles along the west coast of Africa.

Travel from Africa to the so called New World of the Caribbean and the 13 British colonies, later to be known as the United States of America, with people chained and crammed below decks, lasted from one to three months, depending upon the sea and the wind. 

One never knows where conversations like this one will go, but I am learning from this.

In today's Washington Post there is an article about the 3000+ Muslims serving in the Army today, and how to the greatest extent, they are assimilated and respected as part of the Army community. That is a good sign that Muslims can be good Americans and vice versa, I think.

The question remains, what is it that is at the core of the belief that causes some to be so radical? The same question can apply to many other beleifs, I think? There must be a common thread of circumstances and attributes.

Excellent Friggin story.  Africans always sold fellow Africans, Slavery was around long before the American slave trade and continues today in many parts of the world. Stating Islam or Muslims were the creators of the slave trade I don't buy it.  It is like saying the directionally challenged Moses (who led his slave people out of Egypt and wondered the desert for 40 friggin years to travel only 500 miles looking for the promised land) was not personally responsible for massacring thousands and thousands of men, women and children and enslaving many of innocents along the way to the promised land, cause God told him to get his soldiers (who finally had enough of Looney Moses orders and butchered him to death)  to carry out the massacres.

Slavery is and will always be around in one form or another, one only has to look at the Middle East and Asia to see it.

Those who publish their extreme views and news about the extreme are what get our attention.

YJ

Thank you for printing this story because we were able to discuss and reveal its contents for what it is.  Unfortunately, extreme views get the attention, but we have to be ever vigilant in our quest for correct information that is not prejudicial in nature. 

From Europeans Come to Western Africa :

When Europeans arrived along the West African coast, slavery already existed on the continent. However, in his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson points out that slavery in Africa and the brutal form of slavery that would develop in the Americas were vastly different. African slavery was more akin to European serfdom --the condition of most Europeans in the 15th century. In the Ashanti Kingdom of West Africa, for example, slaves could marry, own property and even own slaves. And slavery ended after a certain number of years of servitude. Most importantly, African slavery was never passed from one generation to another, and it lacked the racist notion that whites were masters and blacks were slaves.

after the voyages of Columbus, slave traders found another market for slaves: New World plantations. In Spanish Caribbean islands and Portuguese Brazil by the mid 1500s,

Thank you Karen for expanding the conversation about the slave trade and including South America.  In the book Darwin's Sacred Cause, the authors talk extensively about the slave trade in South America, and how Darwin and other British Abolishonists were appalled at the missionary reports of "strange contagious disorders" spread by Europeans to "natives of disant climes," killing off the Aborigines in both Americas, the Cape of Good Hope, Austraila and Polynesia.  Darwin feared and wrote in letters to relatives that the individual deaths of populations could result in the disappearance of whole populations. 

Not only were Europeans taking slaves, but they were also infecting the native populations with diseases resulting in massive deaths.

Sadly, his predictions were almost completely true in Polynesian where the population was almost either completely assimilated, died from foreign diseases or were forced into obscurity in their own land by Europeans.     

What a fine thread and what smart writers.

Best Regards,

YJ