Posted by Illuminati on 4/14/2009, 12:52 am
97.123.10.58
Because the messages were becoming difficult to follow below, I'm putting my response on top to begin a new thread. I will address the slavery issue first. Because of his religious beliefs, Amri has spent considerable time justifying slavery. Amir’s posts demonstrate the moral blindness which is prevalent among many Muslims.
Anyone, who loves other people, knows that there is no moral justification for slavery. The magazine Scientific American discussed modern slavery extensively in its magazine on April 2002. The truth about slavery is that it is always associated with violence. Here is how they describe slavery.
Human suffering comes in various guises, yet slavery has a distinctive horror that is evident to those of us who have seen it in the flesh. Even when it does not involve beating or other physical torture, it brings about a psychological degradation that often renders victims unable to function in the outside world. “I’ve worked in prisons and with cases of domestic violence,” says Sydney Lytton, an American psychiatrist who has counseled freed slaves. “This is worse.”
Here is how the author of the article in Scientific American, Kevin Bales, defines slavery.
...Throughout history, slavery has meant a loss of free will and choice backed up by violence, sometimes exercised by the slaveholder, sometimes by elements of the state. That is exactly what other researchers and I have observed...
In other words, anyone who practices or supports slavery, is by definition a violent person. A religion which supports slavery, is a religion which glorifies violence.
I tried to find a relatively neutral sources which describe the treatment of slaves in Muslim countries today. Probably Daniel Pipes and his Middle East Forum is as neutral as possible. For anyone who wishes to know the truth about Islam and slavery, I invite them to look over his forum. http://www.meforum.org/. Here is one discussion about Muslim slavery at their forum.
One finds slavery and quasi-slavery practices around the world, yet what makes slavery unique in Sudan is that there has been was a revival of the practice in the mid-1980s. The institution was virtually extinct in the 1970s and slave raids were unknown, except in a few remote places. The revival began in 1983, when then-president Ja'far Numayri placed himself at the vanguard of the Islamic revolution in Africa. Casting aside his socialist baggage, he became the great imam and arbitrarily imposed Shari'a law on the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious Sudanese society. In the process, Numayri abolished the autonomy of southern Sudan that had produced ending over ten years of peace in the country and imposed a policy of radical Islamization and Arabization.
These policies generated small-scale armed resistance among southern Sudanese, including black Africans, Christians and other groups who adhered to their traditional religious beliefs. The government in Khartoum then began to use slave raids and slavery as an instrument of counter-insurgency to break the resistance against its policies.
In 1983, the Numayri government began arming Arab militiamen, sent them southwards, and allowed them to keep whatever booty they could seize, including women and children as slaves. As we know from testimonies of former slaves, Arab raiders even today burn the villages they overpower and usually shoot the men. Forming old-fashioned slave caravans, the remaining women and children are tied to a long rope and dragged by horses. Those unable to keep up are beaten, often to death, while crying children or babies are thrown into the bush to die.
Once enslaved, the women and children are forced to adopt Islamic religious practices (most slaves are Christians or animists) and must take different names and speak Arabic, thus changing their cultural identities to Arabic. They are often, and are subjected to beatings and sexual abuse, including female genital mutilation.
Slavery in the Sudan today takes place in the context of declared jihad, a concept of holy war which permits that considers the taking of slaves as perfectly legal. We at Christian Solidarity International went to villages that had been raided a few days prior. We found horses wearing necklaces with little leather pouches containing Qur'anic texts about jihad. Other pouches featured obscure magicians' symbols worn by the raiders to protect themselves from bullets. http://www.meforum.org/182/slavery-in-the-sudan
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