Define 'religion', again, for me?

Islam, the Religion of Slavery

By Daniel Greenfield

(Snip) While above the skyscrapers gleam in Dubai’s night sky, below are the armies of foreign workers, some prosperous Western Dhimmis driving luxury cars who come to do all the higher labor that the native Emiratis lack the ability or will to do, and outnumbering them are the labor gangs of Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern workers who erect the edifices designed by Western architects to fool Western investors into believing that the backward totalitarian sheikdom is actually a modern free republic.

As with any fairy tale, behind the glamour lies an ugly truth. A truth that goes back to the dates back to Mohammed. That stretches from slave caravans to slave ships. From England to America and through Turkey to Russia, the roots of slavery can be found in the Muslim slave trade.

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)... 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.—The Impact of the Slave Trade on Africa, Elikia M’bokolo

The silent genocide is little spoken of, because it is an inconvenient interruption of the modern liberal historical narrative in which industrialized European powers exploited the unfortunate peoples of what is now the Third World. But Muslim slavery was indeed a genocide, one that stretched on for a thousand years of horror, misery and cruelty. That helped lead into the European era of slavery as well… but what is often forgotten is that before Europeans were slaveholders, they along with Africans, were slaves of Islam.

While it is European slavery that is best known, it is Muslim slavery that came long before it and lasted long after it into the present day.

Many centuries before European slave ships began raiding African coasts, Muslim slave ships were raiding European coasts and sending their armies deep into the heart of Europe. While it is European slavery that is best known, it is Muslim slavery that came long before it and lasted long after it into the present day. The guest workers who labor on Dubai’s mirage of skyscrapers and luxuries die by the thousands with no civil or human rights, cheated out of wages, imprisoned at a whim and viewed as subhuman by their Emirati masters—are the latest extension of a tradition of Muslim slavery stretching for over a millennium.

Without slavery it is likely that Islam would have never survived long enough to become the worldwide menace that it is today. Mohammed, himself a slaveowner, exploited slavery to gain power in two ways.

First, Mohammed attracted men to join his cause by allowing them to raid caravans and towns, seizing goods and carrying off men, women and children into slavery. The men would be sold to labor, the women would be raped and then perhaps taken as concubines or forcibly married, as Mohammed himself did on more than one occasion. The children would be raised in slavery.

By treating non-Muslims as subhuman property, Mohammed was able to create an important financial incentive for men to join him in his wars to conquer the region—as well as demonstrating to those who refused to convert and join him just what would happen to them and their families if they refused to bow to him. By invalidating the marriages of captured women, Mohammed simultaneously legalizing both rape and adultery under the banner of Islam.

Back when Mohammed was essentially running a biker gang with a religion, his dehumanization of non-Muslims turned anyone who had not become a Muslim into human loot to satisfy their greed and appetites. Had Mohammed not done this, he would have ended up as nothing more than another nomad cultist with delusions of grandeur. But by trading in human chattel, his religion gained “followers” who wanted loot and slaves, more than they wanted “Allah”.

Second, Mohammed promised freedom to slaves who came to join him. This allowed him to expand the ranks of his followers further, while posturing as morally being opposed to slavery. This cynical maneuver in which Mohammed and his followers turned non-Muslims into slavery, yet promised freedom to slaves who agreed to become Muslims is often cited by Muslims who are looking to promote Mohammed as being opposed to slavery.

In fact Mohammed very much favored slavery, he simply understood that turning his army into a magnet for escaped slaves whom he could transform into free men through his omnipotent religious impramptur, would swell his ranks and diminish those of his enemies. Mohammed himself owned slaves, and raped and abused them. And today slavery remains far more widespread in the Muslim world, while it has become extinct in Christian and Jewish countries.

Of all these slave routes, the “slave trade” in its purest form, i.e. the European Atlantic trade, attracts most attention and gives rise to most debate. The Atlantic trade is the least poorly documented to date, but this is not the only reason. More significantly, it was directed at Africans only, whereas the Muslim countries enslaved both Blacks and Whites. —The Impact of the Slave Trade on Africa, Elikia M’bokolo

(Snip) Please read more at:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/42216

(Ribbet!)

And this is the religion so many black people--esp. here in the U.S.--choose to embrace...