THE BLACK SLAVERY HOLOCAUST WITHIN TODAY’S ISLAMOPHOBIA

RONALD SEGAL — ISLAM’S BLACK SLAVES, THE OTHER DIASPORA –

FARRAR, STRAUSS AND GIROUX, NEW YORK, 2001,

A review

Let’s be clear from the very start. This book is essential on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, and it is worth all the time you may spend on it and around it because you will want to check a lot of information it contains. A preliminary remark would be that the author gathered a lot of information from many different sources and some of that information is not necessarily considered standard in the academic world, but Ronald Segal’s point is that the subject has systematically been sidetracked by some organized silence that makes the academic world not necessarily trustworthy on that count.

1- Before Islam

My first remark is that he does not spend time on what was before Islam in the world he is going to speak of, hence in Europe, Africa, and Asia. He starts very clearly with the official date of the founding of Islam 622 CE and considers hardly anything before, apart from some detail on Muhammad before he migrates to Medina. Slavery was a very common fact in the Roman Empire for one example, but also in most civilizations in the Middle East. Slavery is…