Muslim slave Traders decimated East coast of Africa and its interior
Reader comment on item: Muhammad Ali's "Beautiful Soul"
in response to reader comment: Why African-American's convert to Islam? The Answer

Submitted by David Harrington (United States), Sep 24, 2007 at 13:16

Mr. Shakur,

You should read on your history before commenting... Here are some interesting links to read, cultivate yourself, you will be less angry! You will see that human evil transcends religion, sir, there are is no black and white, only shades of gray... Or do you want to play into some of our leaders manichean view of the world? We good, you evil!! How childish!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Classroom/9912/easterntrade.html

http://www.domini.org/openbook/sud80210.htm

This last one shows even today Islam perpetuates slavery...

Extract

Elikia M'bokolo, April 1998, Le Monde diplomatique. Quote:"The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean"^[28]

Historical accounts and references to slave-owning nobility in Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere are frequent into the early 1920s.^[35] In 1953, sheikhs from Qatar attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II included slaves in their retinues, and they did so again on another visit five years later.^[36] As recently as the 1950s, the Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 450,000 — just 20% of the population.^[37][38] It is estimated that as many as 200,000 black Sudanese children and women had been taken into slavery in Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War.^[39][40] Slavery in Mauritania was legally abolished by laws passed in 1905, 1961, and 1981.^[41] It was finally criminalized in August 2007.^[42] It is estimated that up to 600,000 black Mauritanians, or 20% of the Mauritania's population, are currently enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour.^[43]

According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries.^[13][14] This considerably exceeds the figure of 645,000 Africans who were brought to what is now the United States.^[15] These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages from Italy, Spain, Portugal and also from more distant places like France or England, the Netherlands, Ireland and even Iceland and North America. The impact of these attacks was devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by its inhabitants. Pirate raids discouraged settlement along the coast until the 19th century.^[

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