[Agastya]

(09-02-2014 09:15 PM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

@Berzerk:

I intend to come to Mikado's defense here.

The fact that this Pakistani gang were scum should not cause us to re-hash the same tired old stereotypes on Islam, however tempting that may be.

I disagree mightily with the overall impression left by your last post, which purports to describe the relation between slavery and Islam, and then to compare it with slavery in the West.

The historians tell us (and here I am relying on C. Hurgronje's study Mohammedanism (1916)) that in medieval Islam, slaves were at the bottom of the economic structure. It is true that they were probably more numerous in Islam in proportion to the population than in Christendom, where serfdom was replacing slavery. In practice, however, there was little functional difference between the medieval serf in the West and the Islamic slave.

The Koran sanctioned the capture of non-Muslims in war, and the birth of children to slave parents, as the only legitimate sources of slavery. In theory, no Moslem was supposed to be enslaved, just as in the Christian West, no Christian was supposed to be enslaved. But this did not stop slave traders from doing a profitable trade in slaves: blacks from Africa, Turks or Chinese from Turkestan, whites from Russia, Italy, and Spain. All this is true. Money voids religious dogma.

A Moslem had the power of life and death over his slaves, but he normally handled them with liberality and humanity. In fact, according to Hurgronje, the lot of the slave in the Islamic East was better than with the medieval serf in Europe or the industrial proletariat in 19th century Europe.

Slaves were allowed to marry; if their children were talented, they could even receive an education. Compare this with the bloodthirsty brutality of the slavery practiced in the Spanish colonies, or in the American south in the 18th and 19th centuries. The great Persian poet Sa'adi was for a time a slave.

Furthermore--and this is of critical importance--it is astonishing how many slaves in Islam rose to high levels of prominence in government and the military (for example, Mahmud and the early Mamluks). This "upward mobility" of slavery in Islam is something that historians have frequently commented on. This never happened in the West, where slavery took on the character of permanent racial bondage. Blacks and Indians were trapped in slavery forever.

Nevertheless, there were slave revolts periodically in Islam. Such revolts usually took on a religious character, since the state and church were one in Islam. Some groups, like the Khurramiyya and the Muhayyida, adopted the socialistic views of the Persian rebel Mazdak. There was a huge slave revolt in 772 under Hashim al-Muqanna. Revolts were repeated in 838 under Babik al-Khurrani, and were suppressed with violence.

We even note that in 871, a black African general named Mohallabi seized the Iraqi city of Basra. There were many black slaves near Basra, who were employed in digging saltpeter. Revolt flared brightly for a time, over ten years, and armies were eventually sent to suppress the rebellious slaves.

All in all, slavery in Islam was less bloody, and less murderous, than slavery as practiced for many hundreds of years by Portugal, Spain, and England. If we consider the millions of Indians who died in the New World from having been worked to death by the Spanish and Portuguese, and the many more millions who died in the Middle Passage of slaves from Africa to the New World, it is easy to see that Europe can claim no moral high ground here.

.