Islamic slavery then and now

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Mar 16, 2012 at 14:54

Mozere writes :

> Here you go again with your anachronisms. To the shame of the whole world, regardless of colour creed and culture, slavery was the norm up to 19th century,a shockingly recent date.,

Speaking of anachronisms, slavery is a well-established institution in Islam and Mahomet himself was a major slave holder and trader. In such Moslem countries as Mauretania every fifth inhabitant is today (!) a slave and slavery thrives in Sudan too. In Turkey slavery existed until the end of the Ottoman empire and seems now to have resurrected in form of sex slavery in Turkey. So if you're so prone to get shocked, here is your chance to be shocked not by the 19th century but by the 21st century, i.e. 15th century of your Moslem hijra era, and your own country's recurrent barbarism and atavism.

> Outlawed by the British only in 1833 through the efforts of Wilberforce.At least Islam had strict rules for the humane treatment of slaves.<

I agree that the rules are "strict", even though you conveniently forgot to tell us what Islamicly "strict" implies. A quote from Wall Street Journal from 12.12.2001 by Michael Rubin will hopefully help any reader realize it :

" What's Sudanese slavery like? One 11-year-old Christian boy told me about his first days in captivity: "I was told to be a Muslim several times, and I refused, which is why they cut off my finger." Twelve-year-old Alokor Ngor Deng was taken as a slave in 1993. She has not seen her mother since the slave raiders sold the two to different masters. Thirteen-year-old Akon was seized by Sudanese military while in her village five years ago. She was gang-raped by six government soldiers, and witnessed seven executions before being sold to a Sudanese Arab.

Many freed slaves bore signs of beatings, burnings and other tortures. More than three-quarters of formerly enslaved women and girls reported rapes."

Traditional "strict" Islamic rules we know from the Seljuk invasions of Anatolia in the 11th century, from Tatar slave raids in Southern Poland and Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries. And the same "strict" rules we see apply to today's wretched sex slaves in Turkey.

" Turkey — This nation has become one of the largest markets in the trafficking of women from nearby former Soviet states who have been forced into prostitution, with profits from the illicit sex trade in Turkey an estimated $3.6 billion last year and growing ... The prostitution networks make about $150 per customer, with each woman serving up to 15 clients a day..."If they work 340 days a year, it's a multibillion-dollar business just in Turkey alone," said the official, Marielle Lindstrom, country director for the International Organization for Migration. "And the women don't get a penny."

"The minute they set foot in Turkey, their passports are taken away and they are raped and beaten".

( Ibidem )

> Italians routinely enslaved muslims in the Med.for hundreds of years to power their ships and to receive ransom money.<

It's up to you to prove this statement with a contemporary document. What the Italians did was buying slaves not hunting them. They had no resources and manpower enough to engage in this sort of war for slaves. As I know that you don't read sources and expert opinions I provide, I must quote again from "The Crimean Tatars and their Russsian captive slaves" by Eizo Matsuki.

"While the Italians controlled the markets in the Black Sea, they were not slave hunters, but, as a rule, slave buyers from the surrounding lands, such as those of the Tatars, Circassians and the Russians and others. Since the time when the Ottomans and the Crimean Tatars had dominated the area, the latter's military campaigns and raids for captives became a major source of slaves. Although the Crimean Tatars had been acquainted with agriculture and an urban way of life by the 16th century, they retained their traditional nomadic skills and abilities to move quickly and quietly across the steppe, had an open hostility toward the Christian population, and were inherently disdainful of peasants. From the beginning of the 16th century until the end of 17th century the Crimean Tatar raider bands made almost annual forays into agricultural Slavic lands searching for captives to sell as slaves.
As many scholars recognize the slave trade was the most important basis for the for the Crimean Tatar economy" (p.176)

Slavery was never the most important basis of the economy of Venice or Genoa. It was based on more civilized and productive activities than those of the parasitic and inhuman Ottomans and their Tatar vassals.

> We all know Western Europe enriched itself by slave trade,foremost being Spain,Portugal and England.<

When the Russians first throttled and then forcibly closed down the slave markets of the Crimea, the Tatar economy literally collapsed overnight as it was based on slave raiding and slave trade. I invite you to elaborate on your queer thesis on how the end of slavery caused the economic collapse of England in the 19th century ?

> Bristol outdid Kaffa many times over<

In his Notes upon Russia Sigismond von Herberstein writes that Mehmet Ghirey in a single slave-hunting expedition of 1521 "... took with him from Muscovy so great a multitude of captives as would scarcely be considered credible; they say the number exceeded eight hundred thousand, part of whom he sold in Kaffa to theTurks, and part he slew. The old and infirmed men, who will not fetch much at a sale, are given up to the Tatar youths, either to be stoned, or to be thrown into the sea, or to be killed by any sort of death they might please."

As to Bristol now

"Between 1698 to 1807 about 2,108 slaving ships were fitted out in Bristol - an average of 20 a year.

On average each ship would hold 250 Africans.

The total number of Africans taken as slaves by Bristol fitted ships was approximately a half a million people."

So we have a single slave hunting "party" providing 800 000 slaves and we have 500 000 black slaves shipped across the Atlantic over a period of 109 years. And from those numbers the Turk draws the conclusion that "Bristol outdid Kaffa many times over' ! ;)

Frankly, you Turks have got a really big mouth. But sometimes its sheer bigness and ignorance stuns even me who on the whole is accustomed to hearing Turkish lies and baseless claims as a matter of course.

> Ottomans were a medieval empire,a reincarnation of Byzantines,and should be judged as such.<

Ottomans were not a reincarnation of Byzantines, but their exterminators and oppressors. If they were a reincarnation of anything or anybody, then of their Arab masters whose jihad they brought to a second stage successfully destroying the Christian Eastern Roman Empire and enslaving other independent Christian states like Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and mortally threatening others like Poland, Austria, Russia, Germany.

> When they saw the Polish and Hungarian patriots and Swedish king Charles with remnants of his army escaping their Russian tormentors they did not see them through the eyes of a modern day Jihadist,<

What was the army of Charles XII doing near Poltava in the first place? It looks so very far from the Swedish Baltic provinces, let alone Sweden proper, doesn't it? Let's not mix up causes and effects.

And let's not forget that today's jihadists, whether Turkish or Saudi, willingly make alliances with kafirs to get modern weapons, military training and financial and political support to fight other kafirs. E.g. you Turkish jihadists have been all trained, equipped and financed by the US and in part by Israel.You used the US weapons and training to exterminate and expel the Greeks in Northern Cyprus in 1974.Now Northern Cyprus has so many mosques and Koranic schools and so few churches and non-Moslems as never before. And it is what jihad is all about, isn't it?

On the other hand that the Turkish dog is barking at his US master and is biting his Jewish benefactor's hand now is as logical and necessary as his not barking and biting when tasteful bones were being thrown to him from Israel's side.

> they gave them help and declared war on Russia. Catholic Poles,despite being brother Slavs,were persecuted by the Czar,a nasty case of politics mixing with religion.<

We had enough renegades in our ranks but most of these traitors were duly punished for betraying Christianity to join hands with Christianity's worst and implacable enemy - Islam. Out greatest national poet e.g. Adam Mickiewicz died of cholera in Turkey. Turkey has always had problems not just with slaves but with hygiene as well. A religious person must see his ignominious death as a sign from heaven - God's wrath .

And as to the czar he was much better than our local arrogant and corrupt aristocrats and noblemen that treated their serfs with contempt. It was the czar and not them that abolished serfdom and gave some 90% of people living here freedom and some land to possess. Note that we Poles built monuments to Czar Alexander II and large contingents of Poles fought in the Russian army in 1877-1878 to liberate the Balkans from the nasty barbarian Ottoman yoke.These people were our heroes and not those few renegades that did their best to prolong the sufferings and oppression of their Slav brothers by "a mentally sterile Asiatic horde" - to use Treitschke's immortal phrase.

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