Slavery didn't end 200 years ago - It evolved

The 25th March 2007, we’ve been led to believe recently, was two hundredth anniversary of the end of the slave trade. The anniversary was celebrated with reminders of how Britain led the way in abolishing the practice through the ‘Abolition of the Slave Trade Act’ passed on 25th March 1807.

But slavery was an institution that Britain fostered and grew for over three hundred years and on the back of which it expanded and maintained its empire. It was a practice it found very difficult to leave, for it was not for another century after the Slave Trade Act that slavery, in real terms, was banned. Legislation and parliamentary acts aside, many of the practices that made slavery what is was continued, often by its original perpetrators, and are still with us today. To believe that Britain’s legal prohibition of slavery somehow ended the practice is naïve if not dangerous.

The act of 1807 outlawed the slave trade but not slavery. Slavery was made illegal in 1834. But it continued in all but name: former slaves were hired by their former owners in slave-like ‘apprenticeships’. The vacuum created by emancipated slaves eventually led to the need to identify a new labour force. The replacement came in the shape of two and half million Indians who were ‘indentured’ – contracted to work on plantations – but who were treated no better than slaves were. Indentured emigration went on until 1917, demonstrating that slavery certainly wasn’t over when we are led to believe it was.

Today, the NGO ‘Free the Slaves’ believes that we have the largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history and are being paid the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labour terms.

But slavery was marked by a number of practices that have continued and still plague the world, often practiced by the same nations that claim to have brought slavery to an end. The slave trade was built on the belief in the inferiority of those it enslaved, through which it justified appalling treatment, abandonment of rights, strict control of behaviours and practices and the consideration of people as property. These practices still exist as do the underlying beliefs and language upon which slavery was built.

For example, the belief amongst many western politicians and commentators is that the west is a civilising force; that its engagement in the world can only be for the betterment of those under the west’s tutelage. The resurgence of cultural imperialism and liberal interventionism - that the west has the right and indeed moral obligation to interfere and dictate matters for other nations - hark back to the day of the empire and are premised on the inferiority or lesser civilisational status of those it seeks to ‘correct’.

It is upon this premise that the west has and continues to engage with the rest of the world. Economically, the world remains under the grip of aggressive capitalism and western policies that dictate domestic economic policy for a large chunk of the world which often better serve the west than they do the countries themselves. The pernicious use of interest bearing loans, IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programmes, and western manipulation of markets through the use of subsidies have turned natural resource-rich countries poor. With the burden of debt, compliance to the terms of repayment, aid packages and imposed domestic programmes and polices, poverty and unemployment are driving poor countries to measures that are even more desperate. This economic situation still drives forced labour and western multinationals continue to employ workers in third world countries for a pittance and in despicable working conditions; human trafficking and sex slavery, an increasing problem in the west, also highlights the human tragedy of pressures born out of economic slavery. The irony is that the docks in east London which sent ships to colonise huge swathes of South Asia and Africa, enlisting hundreds of thousands of slaves, have now been replaced by the shining towers of global financial institutions which unleash a similar economic stranglehold.

Political slavery is the intricate and careful control of proxies through the perpetual threat of sanctions, war or abandonment, maintains a litany of western supported tyrants in the Muslim world who are unable to act independently or break away from the foreign agendas that sacrifice the progress of their own people. These despots in turn ensure their citizenry do not challenge their master-slave relationship with the west through brutal security measures and archaic laws and political systems. Take Hosni Mubarak’s new legislation that bans parties based on religion in a country that is a huge Muslim majority. The political slavery of the Middle East continues to deny the region the ability to independently move forward, prosper and appoint representative leaderships to govern for not despite them.

The victims of slavery have called for apologies and reparations. The British, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese have blocked an EU apology for the slave trade. The litigation that would follow would certainly be colossal, if the pay-outs from Holocaust cases are anything to go by, and may explain the west’s reluctance. Even if it were to apologise for the past, the present is still plagued by a culture born out of colonialism and slavery. While some argue that modern slavery is perpetrated through private, not governmental, bodies, it is for governments to act not remain silent over these crimes. The challenge is not merely to seek apologies, but to redress a global political and economic situation which is likely only to entrench the debilitating situation in the non-west.

Governments have underplayed this crime in a shameful way. It is easy to see how the memories of the Second World War, the holocaust, terrorist bombings are remembered year after year, ‘lest we forget’. Time has not made this crime, of genocidal proportions, any less disgraceful.

An ideological divide – Islam works against slavery

Slavery is a human problem that has existed for millennia. People were enslaved in war, by piracy and as a punitive sanction for crime. Slaves had no rights; societies did not institutionalise the rights of these people to be treated justly.

When Islam came to the world, slavery was widespread yet Islam created a profound change by laying down laws defining a way of treating slaves justly as human beings as well as affording them rights that were previously unheard of. There were major encouragements to free people from slavery as well as numerous obligations in this regard. The various means through which people came to be enslaved were ended – including during the course of war. Hence, at a systemic level a series of rules came to weaken the institution of slavery, as well as rules to regulate the treatment of slaves.

For example, regarding the treatment of slaves, the Prophet Mohammed (SAW) said: “Fear Allah in regards of those whom your right hands possess. They are your brothers whom Allah placed under your hands (authority). Feed them with what you eat, clothe them with what you wear and do not impose duties upon them which will overcome them. If you so impose duties, then assist them” and moved to change the language that have previously subjugated slaves saying, “One of you should not say: My slave (abd) and my slave-girl (amati). All of you are the slaves of Allah and all of your women are the slave-girls of Allah. Rather let him say: My (ghulam) boy and my (jariyah) girl and my (fata) young boy and my (fatati) young girl.” Islam gave the slave the right to marry, divorce, study and to be a witness upon others, in a society where they had no rights.

Regarding the encouragement to free slaves, the Prophet (SAW) said: “Whichever man frees a Muslim man, Allah ta’ala will liberate for each of his organ an organ from the Fire”. Islam further obliged the freeing of slaves under certain circumstances and made the freeing of slaves an expiation for a great number of sins, such as breaking oaths, if one had killed accidentally, incorrectly breaking a fast during Ramadhan as well as many others. Furthermore, the state treasury of the Islamic state, the Bait al-Mal, dedicates a section of its funds to the freeing of slaves, from the words of Allah (SWT) in the Qur’an: “Verily the sadaqat is only for the poor, the indigent, those who work upon it, those whose hearts are to be reconciled, for (riqab), debtors, for the way of Allah and the wayfarer, an obligation from Allah and Allah is knower wise”, the statement “and for (riqab)” referring to freeing slaves.

Islam further prohibited the enslaving of free people in a decisive way including captives of war. The Prophet Mohammed (SAW) said: “Allah ‘azza wa jalla said: Three (persons) I will dispute with them on the Day of Judgement: A man who gave in My name then he betrayed, a man who sold a free man and ate his price, and a man who employed an employee who fulfilled for him but he did not give him his wage”.

By contrast, Capitalism embraced slavery and grew the institution. The value of profit was given a higher status than the value of human life and dignity. The slave trade bred a racism that permeates till today. Never before, whether in Asia, China, Africa, the Middle East or indeed Europe, had slavery been solely associated with one race. The slave traders selected black people viewing them as inferior.

Furthermore, the brutal treatment and the industrial levels of enslaving people were characteristic of the Capitalist system, which invented battery farming. Those who called for the end of the slave trade were individuals out of step with that system which had embraced it. By a similar vein those in the Muslim world who participated in the enslaving of people, and were complicit with the slave traders were individuals out of step with the Islamic system – a system which had legally closed routes to enslavement, and effectively worked against it. END

The Roots of Islam in Africa

The history of Islam in Africa is long and rich. The famous historian Ibn Khaldun says that the name Ifriqiya was given after Ifriqos bin Qais bin Saifi, one of the Kings of Yemen. To Al-Bakri, the boundaries of Ifriqiya were Barga on the East and Tangier on the West, which means that in addition to the Africa proper of the Romans, it included Tripolitania, Numidia and Mauritania. Today, by the use of the word Ifiriqiya or Africa, the Arabs as well as non-Arabs mean the entire continent of Africa.

Islam entered Africa in the 7th century AD. After the death of Muhammad (saw), in 632, Khaleefah Abu Bakr as Siddiq (ra) embarked upon spreading Islam outside the Arabian Peninsula. Although he died two years later Khaleefah Umar ibn al-Khattab continued with this mission. In 636, Islam had entered Jerusalem, Damascus, and Antioch; in 651, all of Persia was under the Khilafah. But Islam also moved west into Africa. In 646, the Khilafah expanded to Egypt and quickly spread across northern Africa.

The largest African cities and kingdoms were located in the Sahel, a desert and savannah region south of the Sahara. After 750 AD, these cities and kingdoms arose because they served as hubs for the trade routes across northern Africa. By the 1300's, these large Sahelian kingdoms became Islamic and, more importantly, centers of Islamic learning.

There are several important cultural practices that Islam gave to Africa. The first is literacy. Egypt and the Nilotic kingdoms of the Kushites and the Nubians had long traditions of writing, and the Ethiopians had acquired it through their ties to the Semitic peoples of southern Arabia. But these writing systems did not spread throughout Africa. Islam, however, as a religion of the book, spread writing and literacy everywhere it went. Many Africans dealt with two languages: their native language and Arabic, which was the language of texts. However, this gradually changed as Africans began using the Arabic alphabet to write their own languages. To this date, Arabic script is one of the most common scripts for writing African languages.

With literacy, the Islam brought formal educational systems. In North Africa and the Sahel, these systems and institutions would produce a great flowering of African thought and science. In fact, the city of Timbuktu had perhaps the greatest university in the world. Thus Islam’s influence on Northern and Eastern Africa continued only to be challenged and eventually ended at the hands of European colonialism and the collapse of the Uthmani Khilafah in 1924. However, the disease of war and poverty which grips Africa today started before the collapse of the Uthmani Khilafah, as its power was on waning long before 1924.

The first "scramble for Africa" began when Henry Stanley claimed the Congo River Valley for Belgium. France then invaded Algeria and built the Suez Canal. Britain invaded Egypt in order to have control of the canal, which was crucial to their shipping routes. Britain and Egypt then took control of Sudan. France began to colonize Tunisia and Morocco. Italy took Libya. Britain fought a war with and defeated the Boers in order to gain control of the resource rich Southern Africa. Cecil Rhodes became rich from the Kimberly diamond fields, which produced 90% of the world's diamonds at the time. By the early 1900's most of Africa was taken by European colonialists. Today, political power has been reordered, America is now the leading world power replacing the European nations influence, but while the control over the world’s resources has passed into different hands the objectives have not changed.

As long as Capitalism is the dominant ideology in the world, the relationship between nations will continue to be based on the ruthless pursuit of wealth. This has been the story of the world ever since the world power of the Islamic Khilafah state declined and disappeared from the international arena, leaving the world to be reshaped in the image of Capitalism.
While the western Capitalist nations traditional interest in Africa has been ‘cash crops’, diamonds and other minerals, it has gained significant attention in recent times due to oil discoveries and increased oil production in existing fields. This has happened as the realization has dawned of the instability of the Middle East oil supply in the future, due to the rise of political Islam. This has caused the continued supply of resources, most significantly oil lying in the balance of political Islam. A military subcommand for the Gulf of Guinea has already been recommended, including the recently authorised creation of Africa Command (AfriCom) by the US military. These important events have not gone unnoticed. The Times of London acknowledged these developments in a July 29, 2002, story headlined, "U.S. Presses Africa to turn on the tap of crude oil." Quoting Walter Kansteiner, U.S. Under Secretary of State for African Affairs, the Times reported, "African oil is of national strategic interest to us, and it will increase and become more important as we go forward."

35 years of petroleum exports in Nigeria have not helped raise living standards; despite its oil wealth, per capita income in Nigeria is less than $1 a day and living standards are below the average in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria is perhaps the most prominent example of where countries rich in natural resources suffer from lower living standards, slower growth rates and higher incidence of conflict than their resource-poor counterparts.

The inverse relationship between growth and oil and mineral abundance has come to be known as the “resource curse”. From 1970-1993, resource-poor countries (without petroleum) grew four times more rapidly than resource-rich countries (with petroleum) – despite the fact that they had half of the savings. The greater the dependence on oil and mineral resources the worse the growth performance appears to be.

Africa represents a highly significant portion of the world’s oil resources. Capitalist nations are preparing the grounds in Africa through explorations on land and under the sea, oil companies issuing significant bribes to African government officials, increased military expenditure for US ‘Peace Keeping’ forces in Africa and several presidential visits to secure political allegiance to oil exports. Western oil companies and African governments come from the same style of Capitalism and therefore the wealth generated from oil exports tends to circulate amongst themselves, leaving the average man to become even poorer, a fact documented by several organizations. Therefore, whatever the resource finds in Africa, poverty will continue to be the lot of the African continent.

In contrast, the Islamic Khilafah system fully integrated the peoples and lands it governed over with statesmen from the Khilafah marrying from and intermingling with the indigenous people. The spread of Islam to Africa was not driven by material gains rather the aim was the furthering of the message of Islam and its noble values. The Islamic economic system facilitated the well being of Africa via the distribution of wealth. The strong injunctions to ensure that wealth does not remain in the hands of the wealthy led to wealth flowing throughout society. The current international competition between the US, EU and China on Africa’s immense oil and mineral resources highlights the need for the return of the rightly guided Khilafah Rashidah. END.