The Role of Blacks Under Islam

From here:

Let's take a look at the Muslim Arab record on “white supremacy,” or rather, at what celebrated Arab and Muslim figures have written about black Africans over the centuries.

 These include hair-raisingly contemptuous remarks about blacks by many Islamic worthies, such as Ibn Khaldun, and even statements by Muhammad himself in the hadith. AOC should be asked to learn, too, about about the history of the Arab slave trade in Africa, especially that involving African boys who were castrated on site, with a mortality rate of 90%, a slave trade that began earlier, ended later, and claimed many millions more victims, than did the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Arab slave trade ended only because of pressure from Western Infidels. Saudi Arabia and Yemen officially ended slavery only in 1962, and several other Muslim countries ended it even later. Mauritania officially ended slavery in 2007, the last country to do so, but in fact, the Arabs continue to have black slaves, and the estimate of the anti-slavery groups is that there are now 600,000 black slaves in Mauritania, 200,000 black slaves now in Mali, and as many as 875,000 slaves in Niger. Hundreds of thousands of black Africans were enslaved by the Arabs during the civil war in the Sudan. In Libya, a slave market selling Africans has been operated by Arabs during the last two years; the slaves are black Africans who ran out of money while trying to get to Europe. All this deserves the attention of AOC. She needs to learn, too, that there never was an Islamic William Wilberforce, because Muhammad himself, the Perfect Man and Model of Conduct, bought, owned, and traded slaves. That might give her pause.

In the Hadith, we find remarks about blacks such as these:

“Narrated Anas bin Malik: The Prophet said to Abu-Dar, ‘Listen and obey (your chief) even if he is an Ethiopian with a head like a raisin.’ And this: Ahmad ibn Abi Sulayman, the companion of Sahnun said, ‘Anyone who says that the Prophet was black should be killed.‘” (Ibn Musa al-Yahsubi, Qadi ‘Iyad, p. 375)

And there is this from the celebrated Arab historian Al-Tabari: “Noah prayed that the hair of Ham’s descendants [Africans] would not grow beyond their ears, and that whenever his [Ham’s] descendants met Shem’s, the latter would enslave them.” (Al-Tabari, Vol. 2, p. 21, p. 21)

There is a long history of anti-black remarks among outstanding figures in Islamic history:

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was, among other things, an Islamic jurist, Islamic lawyer, Islamic scholar, Islamic theologian, and hafiz (one who has memorized the entire Qur’an). He is one of the most important figures in Islamic history. Here are two (among many) remarks he makes about black Africans in his Muqaddimah:

Therefore, the Negro nation are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because [Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.

Beyond [known peoples of black West Africa] to the south there is no civilization in the proper sense. There are only humans who are closer to dumb animals than to rational beings. They live in thickets and caves, and eat herbs and unprepared grain. They frequently eat each other. They cannot be considered human beings.

Ibn Sina or Avicenna (980-1037), was another celebrated figure in Islamic history: a hafiz, an Islamic psychologist, scholar, and theologian and, by our lights, a racist: “[Blacks are] people who are by their very nature slaves.”

Ibn Qutaybah (828-889), was a renowned Islamic scholar from Kufa, Iraq: “[Blacks] are ugly and misshapen, because they live in a hot country.”

Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī (1201-1274), was a Shia Muslim Scholar and Grand Ayatollah:

“If (all types of men) are taken, from the first, and one placed after another, like the Negro from Zanzibar, in the Southern-most countries, the Negro does not differ from an animal in anything except the fact that his hands have been lifted from the earth –In no other peculiarity or property – except for what God wished. Many have seen that the ape is more capable of being trained than the Negro, and more intelligent.”

“The Zanj (African) differ from animals only in that] their two hands are lifted above the ground,… Many have observed that the ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanj.”

Al-Muqaddasi (945/946-1000) was a medieval Muslim geographer:

Of the neighbors of the Bujja, Maqdisi had heard that “there is no marriage among them; the child does not know his father, and they eat people — but God knows best. As for the Zanj, they are people of black color, flat noses, kinky hair, and little understanding or intelligence.” [Kitab al-Bad’ wah-tarikh, vol.4]

Al-Masudi (896-956), was a Muslim historian and geographer, known as the “Herodotus of the Arabs”:

“Galen says that merriment dominates the black man because of his defective brain, whence also the weakness of his intelligence.” (Al-Masudi, Muruj al-dhahab)

Ibn al-Faqih was a Muslim historian and geographer:

“A man of discernment said: The people of Iraq … do not come out with something between blonde, buff and blanched coloring, such as the infants dropped from the wombs of the women of the Slavs and others of similar light complexion; nor are they overdone in the womb until they are burned, so that the child comes out something between black, murky, malodorous, stinking, and crinkly-haired, with uneven limbs, deficient minds, and depraved passions, such as the Zanj, the Somali, and other blacks who resemble them. The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two.” (from his Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan, 903 AD)

There is much more in this disturbing vein, but what I’ve quoted here should be enough evidence of the deep racism of Muslim Arabs. These views justified the enslavement of blacks by Arabs that began in the 8th century and continued uninterruptedly until it formally ended, under Western pressure, in the 20th century. But in fact the enslavement of blacks by Arabs has continued, despite its official prohibition, in Mauritania, in Mali, in Niger, where a total of 1.5 million black slaves exist at present. There is also that new slave market, in Libya, where black Africans who became stranded in their attempt to make it to Europe by boat, and could not pay their smugglers, have then been sold into slavery by those to whom they owed money.