Christian societies were responsible for an engagement to slavery in its most hideous, dehumanizing form. ...

Islam has been, by specific spiritual precept and in common practice, relatively humane in its treatment of slaves and its readiness to free them... -Ronald Segal, Author's Preface to Islam's Blac !laves "his truly odd boo details the horrors of the enslavement of blac Africans in the Islamic world##a traffic in human beings which e$ualed in volume that of the better nown Atlantic slave trade %totaling some && million blac s in each case', and which continues to this day, particularly in places li e the !udan##but at the same time see s to differentiate Islam's treatment of slaves, which is portrayed as relatively enlightened and beneficent, from the harsher treatment of blac s, both slave and free, in the (est. "hough I had trouble finding much biographical information on !egal, his motivation in this e)ercise appears to be twofold. *irst, there's the simple necessity to e)plain, not merely the absence of racial tension in the modern Islamic world, but also the absence of blac s + where, after all, did the && million go , (hy is there no conspicuous blac culture in the -iddle .ast , !econd, based on the admittedly s etchy evidence I could find + that !egal, a white !outh African, was a significant player in the A/C in the late 01s 2 early 31s and that his prior boo s include a biography of "rots y and 4ace (ar, which apparently predicted such a war in America, it seems safe to assume that, if not a -ar)ist, he is at least a 5eftist, which would tend to suggest that his e)oneration of Islam may be intended to indict the (est. In presenting the history of the African slave trade, !egal perforce has to concede the thorough involvement of Arabs in the capture, sale and transport of blac Africans. 5i ewise, he ac nowledges that the Islamic world did ma e 6ust as e)tensive use of blac slaves as did the (est. But he differentiates the treatment of blac s by -uslim captors, suggesting several religious bases for it + 7 Islam's uni$ue blend of the religious and the political into a unitary system mitigated against the development of capitalist economies, so that blac s tended to be used in households rather than in heavy manual labor. 7 "he 8oran specifically commands -uslims to treat slaves well and offers inducements in the ne)t world to those who free their slaves. 7 (hile the gender ratio of slaves imported to the (est was 9#& male to female, the e)act opposite was true in the Islamic world. "his high ratio of household female slaves and a tradition of polygamy and concubinage, led to the use of blac s as se) ob6ects, and in the absence of systemic racism and theories of racial superiority, mi)ed race offspring tended to be accepted into the household and the subse$uent freeing of the children's mothers. "hese factors account for the milder treatment of blac s and, in part, for their assimilation into Islamic society. !everal other factors help to account for the disappearance of a distinct blac populace + 7 -ales slaves were fre$uently turned into eunuchs##so obviously they had no offspring. 7 -any of the rest were used as soldiers, with resulting low survival rates. 7 *or une)plained reasons, African slave women imported to the Islamic states had e)traordinarily low fertility rates. 7 -ortality rates among Islam's blac slaves were e)tremely high, from adverse treatment, disease, and other causes. In the end, !egal suggests, a combination of death, infertility %naturally occurring and man made' and miscegenation must account for the disappearance of blac s and blac ness from the Islamic -iddle .ast. "his brings us to an intriguing $uestion + does the absence of racial tension in the Islamic world necessarily indicate that the e)perience of blac Africans was in fact less horrific than in the (est , !egal ind of glides past the rather important fact that using blac s for se) %heterose)ual and homose)ual, which he says was prevalent' and ma ing them eunuchs constituted physical assault on a rather massive scale. /owhere does he refer to the se)ual practices as what they really were + rape. /or is it possible to figure out why he considers the systematic neutering of blac males to be less ob6ectionable than the forced physical labor of the American !outh. "he ey sentence in the boo may be the following + (hile slavery in the (est was directed to the productive economy, in the :ttoman .mpire it was a form of consumption. I recognize that to some people the worst fate possible is to be treated as a mere cog in the means of production, but I'm uncertain that most of us would agree with !egal that it is better to be an ob6ect for consumption. At the point where you have to debate whether cotton pic ing or se)ual degradation was more dehumanizing, I thin it's safest to admit that both Islam and the (est were responsible for monstrous treatment of innocent peoples and leave it at that. "he secondary issue which arises is + given a choice, and it is admittedly an awful choice, would people choose the suffering they underwent in the (est, but emergence with the vibrant and vital blac culture we see in America

today; or the complete %forced' assimilation that too place in the Islamic world with the resulting annihilation of the race as a race , I'd suggest the answer to this is very much a sub6ect for debate. (e pay fre$uent lip service to the idea of creating a color blind society, but we all cling pretty fiercely to our respective ethnic heritages. And it's not li e you hear Arabs celebrating the fact that they are the product of e)tensive racial intermingling. "he modern Islamic world may very well be to a significant degree the product of those && million blac slaves, but if it is, they are awfully $uiet about that fact, which does not suggest such an enlightened attitude. It is also difficult to reconcile the continuing Islamic slave trade with the idea of enlightenment. !egal discusses the ongoing traffic in human beings that is occurring even today in places li e the !udan##A. -. 4osenthal wrote a piece for the /< "imes several years ago in which he said that there are still tens of thousands of slaves in the !udan. (e have to ac nowledge that racial violence continues in the =nited !tates, but such incidents are isolated and are met with society wide outrage, .ven if, for the sa e of argument, we concede that plantation#style slavery was more oppressive for blac s than Islamic slavery, the Christian world would certainly seem to be winning the comparison now, and for the last few decades, at least. As to !egal's motivation, I can only point to a couple of cryptic remar s as evidence of my theory that he is driven by a disli e of the (est. At one point he characterizes the (estern economic system as >an ultimate totalitarianism of money> and he elsewhere spea s of capitalism as >the effective sub6ugation of people to the priority of profit.> "hese assessments, and several similar, and the general tone of the boo , betray a general hostility to the organizing principles of (estern society. "his ma es his conclusions about the mild nature of Islamic slavery at least somewhat suspect. *inally, the boo concludes with an epilogue which borders on being a non se$uitir, but which actually relates bac to several problems with the boo ; in it he discusses America's /ation of Islam movement. As a threshold matter, it's amusing that this distinctive blac Islamic culture resides here, in the evil (est, and not in the munificent .ast. But the real gist of this section of the boo is a bizarre har ening bac to !egal's prediction of coming race war. ?e e)cuses the racism of Blac -uslim's as 6ustified by white racism and the anti#!emitism as a mere learned behavior, ta en from anti#!emitic whites + (hat rage, resentment, and revenge have developed in the Blac -uslim movement is a racism to confront racism. !egal also uses some statistics about the =. !. 6ustice system to conclude that America remains a deeply divided and racist society, one which needs to listen to 5ouis *arra han's message about >the reality of racism.> In a few short pages, he manages to wildly overestimate both the problem of race in America and the importance of the /ation of Islam to such a degree that it calls into $uestion his authority on the other topics he's discussed. In the final analysis, though he has an important and unfairly ignored story to tell, !egal is 6ust too unreliable a narrator to be ta en seriously. ?aving gotten so many of the big issues wrong, how can the reader trust him on the smaller one , "here's probably a good boo to be made out of these raw materials + this is not it.

(Reviewed:23-Feb-01)

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