Exposed: Islam’s Role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Article author: 
Raymond Ibrahim
Article publisher: 
PJ Media
Article date: 
11 February 2020
Article category: 
National News
Medium
Article Body: 
Muslim slave traders transporting Black African slaves across the Sahara
19th-century engraving depicting a Muslim slave-trading caravan
transporting black African slaves across the Sahara. (Public Domain) 
 
 
Islam’s history with the West has been one of unwavering antagonism and seismic clashes, often initiated by the former. By the standards of history, nothing between the two civilizations is as well documented as this long war. Accordingly, for more than a millennium, both educated and not so educated Europeans knew—the latter perhaps instinctively—that Islam was a militant creed that for centuries attacked and committed atrocities in their homelands, all in the name of “holy war,” or jihad.
 
These facts have been radically “updated” in recent times. According to the dominant narrative—as upheld by mainstream media and Hollywood, pundits and politicians, academics and “experts” of all stripes—Islam was historically progressive and peaceful...
 
Take Islam’s role in facilitating the transatlantic slave trade—which otherwise is almost always presented as an exclusively European enterprise.
 
Slavery is, of course, as old as humanity. Centuries before the coming of Islam, Europeans—Athenians, Spartans, Romans—were fully engaged in the slave trade. With the coming of Christianity, and as it spread all throughout the Roman and post-Roman empire (circa. fourth-seventh centuries), the institution of slavery was on its way to becoming extinct.
 
Then Islam came. While hardly the first to exploit human flesh, it was the best at perfecting and thriving on it in the post-classical, medieval, premodern, and even modern eras—with untold millions of non-Muslims enslaved throughout the centuries (one source indicates that 15 million Europeans were alone enslaved)....
 
Islamic slave raids into Africa began in the mid to late seventh century; then, according to Muslim records, astronomical numbers of Africans—in the millions—were enslaved in the name of jihad. By the time seafaring Europeans reached the coasts of West Africa, the Islamic slave trade was bustling.
 
While most Western historians are aware that it was African “tribesmen” who captured and sold enemy tribesmen to Europeans, left unmentioned is that the “tribal” differences often revolved around who was and was not Muslim....
 
As such, here is a general rule of thumb to help cut through all fake, pro-Islamic histories: to know what Islam did in the past, simply look to what it is doing in the present, which includes a thriving underground—and of course aboveground—slave market.
 
Meanwhile, Europeans/Christians—who were actually the ones to outlaw slavery internationally—will continue to be the blame all for this tragic episode of history....