mzalendo
10th April 2006, 06:35
a strong defender of the arab savagely visited upon the africans is at it again check out what proffessor ali mazrui had to say:
The history of slavery in Africa, according to press reports, is once again being debated.
One of the tantalising questions is why there is not a major African Diaspora in the Middle East as compared with more than a 100m people of African ancestry in Brazil, the United States, the Caribbean, Spanish America, and elsewhere in the Western world.
The Arab slave trade was much older than the Trans Atlantic slave system. Why then is there not as extensive an African presence in the Middle East as there is in the Americas?
What has happened to the descendants of enslaved Africans in the Middle East?
Some scholars believe in the eunuch explanation. According to this theory, Arab slavers turned their African captives into eunuchs who could not reproduce themselves. But this theory makes no economic sense. Why would a slave system make it impossible for its slaves to procreate the next generation of slaves?
The children of slaves would after all be additional slaves. So why would an Arab slave owner make it impossible for his male slaves to procreate the next generation of slaves? It would have been economically absurd to sabotage the natural increase of slaves.
The eunuch explanation for the absence of an African Diaspora in the Middle East is further weakened by failure to explain female slaves. Since African women slaves were not made infertile, why did they not reproduce an African Diaspora? After all, more than 60 per cent of African-Americans are descended from white males mating with Black females. So why was not an African Diaspora in the Middle East created by Arab males mating with Black females?
The smallness of the African Diaspora in the Arab world is due to the fact that the descendants of African slaves were permitted to become Arabs by the lineage system.
Two of the Presidents of Egypt since the Egyptian revolution of 1952 had Black mothers: Presidents Muhammad Naguib and Anwar Sadat.
President Sadat, especially, was criticised for many things, but almost never because he was half- Black.
More recently, the Prime Minister of Kuwait also had a Black mother, but he was never compromised for being half-Black.
Contrast this with African-Americans like W.E.B. DuBois and Malcolm X who would never have been accepted as white in America although in appearance they were more white than Black. We are still waiting for a Black President of a Western country, or a Black Prime Minister.
The most influential Arab diplomat in Washington DC for several decades has been the Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, whose mother is Black and who looks Black. He seems to be a close friend of the Bush family. Reportedly, he is the only person permitted by the US First Lady, to smoke in her home.
According to the Arab lineage system, any person whose father is Arab is himself, or herself, Arab regardless of the race of the mother. The child is co-opted upwards to a more privileged status.
In contrast, American racial classifications used to prescribe that anybody who was even one-eighth Black was himself, or herself, Black. In the American lineage system, children of racial mixture moved downwards to the status of the less privileged parent.
In Arab culture, as we indicated, a child of mixed parentage became Arab if his or her father was indeed Arabic. There was upward racial mobility in Arab kinship culture.
As for the sub-culture of the eunuch in Muslim societies, it started more than a hundred years after the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 AD. Historians have traced the eunuch tradition in Islam to about the year 750 AD.
Was it a peculiar product of the culture of the harem (secluded Muslim women?) In reality castration was more Mediterranean than Islamic. It was certainly practiced in the Roman and Christian Byzantine empires long before the Muslim Ottoman Empire. And the Italians practiced castration of boys for artistic reasons, in order to train boys as soprano singers (castrati). It was Pope Leo XIII who banned this practice of castration in Italy as recently as 1878.
In Christianity, castration was sometimes self-inflicted as a method of conquering sexual temptation. Christian self-castration goes back to at least the theologian Origen (AD 185-254).
In early Christianity, there were even sects that deliberately practiced self-castration... In the third century of the Christian era, the Valesi Sect not only castrated themselves but also their guests.
In short, the practice of castration — though widely practiced in Muslim slave systems on males entrusted with guarding the harem of women — was in fact a product of Mediterranean traditions long before Islam. Within Muslim culture, as we have indicated, the eunuch did not become a factor until more than a century after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Christian self-castration was practiced long before Islam.
But were enslaved African males castrated under the rule of the Ottoman Empire? The answer is yes, but only those male slaves who were entrusted with guarding the women of the ruling class. Other male slaves were encouraged to get married and procreate new generations of slaves.
Islamic law prohibited castration, but Muslim rulers permitted it selectively. Yet the number of eunuchs was too small to be the explanation for the limited African Diaspora in the Arab world.
Why is the African Diaspora in the Middle East so much smaller than the Diaspora in the Americas?
There were three main reasons. Firstly, the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the capitalist era was much larger in scale, and used much bigger ships, than the Arab slave trade.
Secondly, European racial attitudes in the Americas were more resistant to racial intermarriage and racial integration than were the attitudes of Arabs and Turks.
Thirdly, Arab lineage systems enabled children of Black mothers to be full Arabs if the father was an Arab. The concept of ‘half-caste’ or ‘mulatto’ is still alien to Arab culture if the father is Arab.
The history of slavery in Africa, according to press reports, is once again being debated.
One of the tantalising questions is why there is not a major African Diaspora in the Middle East as compared with more than a 100m people of African ancestry in Brazil, the United States, the Caribbean, Spanish America, and elsewhere in the Western world.
The Arab slave trade was much older than the Trans Atlantic slave system. Why then is there not as extensive an African presence in the Middle East as there is in the Americas?
What has happened to the descendants of enslaved Africans in the Middle East?
Some scholars believe in the eunuch explanation. According to this theory, Arab slavers turned their African captives into eunuchs who could not reproduce themselves. But this theory makes no economic sense. Why would a slave system make it impossible for its slaves to procreate the next generation of slaves?
The children of slaves would after all be additional slaves. So why would an Arab slave owner make it impossible for his male slaves to procreate the next generation of slaves? It would have been economically absurd to sabotage the natural increase of slaves.
The eunuch explanation for the absence of an African Diaspora in the Middle East is further weakened by failure to explain female slaves. Since African women slaves were not made infertile, why did they not reproduce an African Diaspora? After all, more than 60 per cent of African-Americans are descended from white males mating with Black females. So why was not an African Diaspora in the Middle East created by Arab males mating with Black females?
The smallness of the African Diaspora in the Arab world is due to the fact that the descendants of African slaves were permitted to become Arabs by the lineage system.
Two of the Presidents of Egypt since the Egyptian revolution of 1952 had Black mothers: Presidents Muhammad Naguib and Anwar Sadat.
President Sadat, especially, was criticised for many things, but almost never because he was half- Black.
More recently, the Prime Minister of Kuwait also had a Black mother, but he was never compromised for being half-Black.
Contrast this with African-Americans like W.E.B. DuBois and Malcolm X who would never have been accepted as white in America although in appearance they were more white than Black. We are still waiting for a Black President of a Western country, or a Black Prime Minister.
The most influential Arab diplomat in Washington DC for several decades has been the Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, whose mother is Black and who looks Black. He seems to be a close friend of the Bush family. Reportedly, he is the only person permitted by the US First Lady, to smoke in her home.
According to the Arab lineage system, any person whose father is Arab is himself, or herself, Arab regardless of the race of the mother. The child is co-opted upwards to a more privileged status.
In contrast, American racial classifications used to prescribe that anybody who was even one-eighth Black was himself, or herself, Black. In the American lineage system, children of racial mixture moved downwards to the status of the less privileged parent.
In Arab culture, as we indicated, a child of mixed parentage became Arab if his or her father was indeed Arabic. There was upward racial mobility in Arab kinship culture.
As for the sub-culture of the eunuch in Muslim societies, it started more than a hundred years after the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 AD. Historians have traced the eunuch tradition in Islam to about the year 750 AD.
Was it a peculiar product of the culture of the harem (secluded Muslim women?) In reality castration was more Mediterranean than Islamic. It was certainly practiced in the Roman and Christian Byzantine empires long before the Muslim Ottoman Empire. And the Italians practiced castration of boys for artistic reasons, in order to train boys as soprano singers (castrati). It was Pope Leo XIII who banned this practice of castration in Italy as recently as 1878.
In Christianity, castration was sometimes self-inflicted as a method of conquering sexual temptation. Christian self-castration goes back to at least the theologian Origen (AD 185-254).
In early Christianity, there were even sects that deliberately practiced self-castration... In the third century of the Christian era, the Valesi Sect not only castrated themselves but also their guests.
In short, the practice of castration — though widely practiced in Muslim slave systems on males entrusted with guarding the harem of women — was in fact a product of Mediterranean traditions long before Islam. Within Muslim culture, as we have indicated, the eunuch did not become a factor until more than a century after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Christian self-castration was practiced long before Islam.
But were enslaved African males castrated under the rule of the Ottoman Empire? The answer is yes, but only those male slaves who were entrusted with guarding the women of the ruling class. Other male slaves were encouraged to get married and procreate new generations of slaves.
Islamic law prohibited castration, but Muslim rulers permitted it selectively. Yet the number of eunuchs was too small to be the explanation for the limited African Diaspora in the Arab world.
Why is the African Diaspora in the Middle East so much smaller than the Diaspora in the Americas?
There were three main reasons. Firstly, the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the capitalist era was much larger in scale, and used much bigger ships, than the Arab slave trade.
Secondly, European racial attitudes in the Americas were more resistant to racial intermarriage and racial integration than were the attitudes of Arabs and Turks.
Thirdly, Arab lineage systems enabled children of Black mothers to be full Arabs if the father was an Arab. The concept of ‘half-caste’ or ‘mulatto’ is still alien to Arab culture if the father is Arab.