Revival: The Muslim Response to the Crusades

[A.P. Richelieu]

Any racist and Arab hater + Islamophobe like you can register a site and make any number of claims.

Atlantic slave trade was purely an European enterprise.

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The transatlantic slave trade was responsible for the forced migration of between 12 - 15 million people from Africa to the Western Hemisphere from the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 19th century. The trafficking of Africans by the major European countries during this period is sometimes referred to by African scholars as the Maafa ('great disaster' in Swahili). It's now considered a crime against humanity.


The slave trade not only led to the violent transportation overseas of millions of Africans but also to the deaths of many millions more. Nobody knows the total number of people who died during slave raiding and wars in Africa, during transportation and imprisonment, or in horrendous conditions during the so-called Middle Passage, the voyage from Africa to the Americas.


The kidnapping of Africans occurred mainly in the region that now stretches from Senegal to Angola. However, in the 19th century some enslaved Africans were also transported across the Atlantic from parts of eastern and south-eastern Africa.


The trade

All the major European powers were involved in this enterprise, but by the early 18th century, Britain became the world's leading slave trading power. It's estimated that British ships were responsible for the forced transportation of at least 2-3 million Africans in that century.


So dominant were British ships and merchants that they carried away African captives not only to British colonies in North America and the Caribbean but even to the colonies of their main economic rivals, the French and Spanish, as well as to others'.


Geographical spread

The majority of kidnapped Africans weren't already slaves in Africa. They were free people who were kidnapped to provide the labour that the European powers required to build their colonies in the Americas. The largest numbers of Africans – almost 5 million – were imported into Brazil, but enslaved Africans were sent to most of the colonies of South and Central America and the Caribbean, as well as to what became the United States.


Some Africans were transported to Europe and lived in such countries as Portugal and France as well as in England.

The Triangular Trade

The transatlantic slave trade is sometimes known as the 'Triangular Trade', since it was three-sided, involving voyages:

• from Europe to Africa
• from Africa to the Americas
• from the Americas back to Europe. (what about Arab lands? )

The African labour purchased with manufactured goods was then used in the Americas to produce luxury items and other things that were valuable and in great demand in Europe, such as sugar, tobacco and cotton. In addition, the slave trade contributed to the growth of banking and insurance in Europe and provided the finance to develop European capitalist economies further.


Africa may have supplied the human labour that was central to these developments in Europe, but it didn't benefit from them itself. Instead, it lost millions of people, many of its societies were ravaged and it placed itself in an enduring unequal relationship with Europe that created the conditions for colonial conquest and its legacy.

Racism

Another legacy of the slave trade is the continued existence of a body of ideas initially formulated to justify it and which now underpins modern anti-African racism in all its forms. These harmful ideas have no basis in fact but were and are designed to suggest that Africa and Africans are inferior to Europe and Europeans in a variety of ways.

These views permeated the centuries of the slave trade and the enslavement of Africans and continued to be expressed during the post-slavery colonial era. They still exist today in the form of racial stereotypes and prejudices and racist violence, as well as Eurocentric views about Africa, its peoples and their cultures.


Source

A long post which says two things, European slave traders purchased slaves in Africa and shipped them in numbers.
Noone is denying that.
What it does not bring up, is how the slaves got enslaved in the first place.
You might want to study the Arab Slave trade which started already before Islam.
Millions where enslaved and shipped to the Middle East, where they died within years of arrival,
If they didnt die in the long journey already.

Arabs raided as far aware as Iceland.
Then ask yourself, how come you sail to Iceland to get slaves, and not go for West Africa,
a much shorter journey and where slaves were in high demand.
Does not make sense, does it!

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

A lot of the Africans slaves going to the US were captured by Arabs.
Becoming a Muslim protected You from the slave traders.

That's modern history ... And we all know who bought them ? And we also know how European colonials committed genocides .. For example how the King Leopold of Belgium killed millions of Congolese .. Etc ...

Perhaps the only European "slaves" were the Irish.. Persecuted and sold by none other than the Christian British... The Irish slaves were "cheaper" even than the Africans !

Millions of European Christians were ensuring , and slavery only ended late 20th century.
Slaves converting to Islam got a much better treatment, which motivates people to switch.

Are you talking about Ottomans ? I doubt they had millions of European slaves .. I also doubt they were slaves in the real sense .. Or the way blacks were treated by Europeans ...

Non-muslims had to pay more tax.
Non Muslims had their sons kidnapped to become Janitschars, up to a Million according tom
Plenty of reasons to convert.

Since I know a thing or two about Islamic taxes .. The only tax imposed on non Muslims was jizya .. Which was pretty small and nothing compared to the taxes on Muslims.. Like zakat,usher and so on..

Jizya also gave non Muslims exemption from military service , and other islamic taxes imposed upon Muslims etc.

You do not need to behead many before the rest get the picture.

"Muslims" are walking the streets today, making unveiled threats vs others that are
either non-Muslims or not the "right" kind of Muslim.
You think it would be differently after Muslims occupied countries in the infancy of Islam?

During the infancy of Islam it was a better system governed by the Prophets companions the Caliphs....

The decline of Islam came much later .. After divisions,invasions etc.

 

[Mamluk]

You might want to study the Arab Slave trade which started already before Islam.
Millions where enslaved and shipped to the Middle East, where they died within years of arrival,
If they didnt die in the long journey already.

No one is denying slave trade always existed, preceding all Abrahamic religions.

Arabs had a long history of interaction with Africans due to proximity, and it was the Africans who sold off their fellow Africans to the Arabs and anyone else that came into contact with these African traders.

Getting back to the topic of "Atlantic Slave Trade", I leave it up to you to read the history from unbiased sources, not random Islamophobic blogs.
Europeans and Africans themselves had complete monopoly over slave trade originating in West and Central Africa. Arab dominance (in North/East Africa) declined long before that.

(By the way, one of the most prominent Apostles of the Prophet (pbuh) was a freed slave, Bilal.)