Islam Tells You So, Too.
Islam Does Not Condemn Slavery
Surely, the Islamic faith must offer some spiritual empowerment for the oppressed. However, when it came to oppressing African people, Christianity and Islam were not so different. There is an oft-repeated charge that racism did not play a part in Islamic slave society. However, while it is true that the Muslims of the Middle East took slaves of all colors and ethnicity, they considered white slaves more valuable than Black ones and developed racist attitudes toward the darker skinned people.
For instance, the famous 14th-century Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, expressed racist attitudes toward Black Africans writing: “The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and their proximity to the animal stage.”
In all fairness, the Islamic version of slavery could be seen as more humane than the European colonial version, but in many cases it was just as cruel, especially in the sexual exploitation of Black women. According to the Qur’an (4:24) and Qur’an (33:50), a Muslim man was forbidden to have sex with all married women except those he held as captives and slaves. So sex slaves were permitted, just as in the European colonies, and the African woman’s body was treated as property to be used and abused as her master saw fit. Roughly 100,000 to a half million African women and girls are still used for labor, sex and breeding within Islamic countries in North Africa and the Middle East.
Another point to highlight about the Muslim version of slavery is that Arab slave traders sought to prevent Black men from impregnating any female in Arabia, free or captive. They developed the brutal practice of mutilating the genitals of young African men and boys, sometimes no more than 9 or 10 years old, to create eunuchs. These castrated African males sold for more in Arabia, because they posed no genetic threat to the Arab man. Only 1 in 10 survived the crude surgery.
*Note – This article has been updated The original contained misquoted text which referenced Ibn Ishaq 327 as a Qur’an verse. Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar was an Arabic historian noted for writing the earliest biography of Muhammad. Ibn Ishaq 327 was a verse from his work.
