Slavery Is Ancient. The Racial Slave Caste Was Built, and We Know Who Built It.
Most civilisations had slaves. The Atlantic world built something no one had built at that scale: a legal system where African descent meant you were presumed a slave, and so were your children, forever.
Portugal pioneered the trade in enslaved Africans. Spain, Britain, France, and Holland turned it into one of the largest forced migrations in history. In 1662, English settlers in Virginia made it permanent: a child is slave or free "according to the condition of the mother." Over the next decades Virginia stacked law on law until slave and black meant the same thing.
Two centuries later that logic reached America's highest court. In 1857 Chief Justice Taney wrote that Black people had been regarded as having "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." And when slavery died, the idea didn't. In 1906 the Bronx Zoo put a Congolese man, Ota Benga, in a cage in the Monkey House. He wasn't a slave. He was just black.
The Muslim world had slaves too, on a vast scale. But it enslaved people of every origin: Africans, Europeans, Slavs, Turks, Greeks, Circassians, and Arabs. Slave-soldiers from the Caucasus and the steppes ruled Egypt for centuries. An Ethiopian ex-slave, Malik Ambar, became regent of an Indian kingdom. Prejudice existed, and some Muslim rulers acted on it. But Islam is not its rulers. Islam is the Qur'an and the law built on it, and there, nothing racial can be argued. Nothing. The Qur'an asks what the hard, uphill road to God is, and answers first: freeing a slave (90:13). Put simply, if you want to know what God counts as goodness, start by setting someone free. Al-Sarakhsi and al-Kasani taught that every child of Adam is born free and slavery must be proven. Al-Subki put it in one line: the law is bent on freedom. When Sultan Mawlay Ismail of Morocco tried in the 1690s to enslave free Black Muslims for being black, the scholars condemned him as a lawbreaker.
Wherever race entered, it entered against Islam, and Islam's own scholars said so.
The Bible openly allows slavery for life, passed to your children (Leviticus 25:44-46). Even that drew its line between Israelite and foreigner, not black and white.
So Europe did not invent slavery. It did not invent hereditary slavery. What Europe and America built, with a thoroughness no one had seen, was a caste: African blood as the mark, property as the status, inheritance as the sentence, and law as the lock.
Jazakum Allahu khayran to everyone for the kind comments and support after the latest Piers Morgan episode. I appreciate the criticism too.
I understand the point many have made about being calmer and more measured in debates. Given my disposition, I find that difficult at times, particularly when the person opposite is rowdy, provocative or unserious.
It is something I need to work on, insha’Allah, and I’m confident that with time and effort I can improve in this area.
Just finished another episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored with the IDF spokesperson. Given the reputation, I expected a heavyweight. What turned up was considerably lighter.
Amid rising far-right anti-Muslim propaganda, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is essential reading for Muslims and Laurence Fishburne’s narration is fantastic
Mohammed Hijab
Fantastic video by Deen Responds
https://youtu.be/QDAIt9Dsaj0?si=hTJ3D...
5 days ago | [YT] | 148
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Mohammed Hijab
Slavery Is Ancient. The Racial Slave Caste Was Built, and We Know Who Built It.
Most civilisations had slaves. The Atlantic world built something no one had built at that scale: a legal system where African descent meant you were presumed a slave, and so were your children, forever.
Portugal pioneered the trade in enslaved Africans. Spain, Britain, France, and Holland turned it into one of the largest forced migrations in history. In 1662, English settlers in Virginia made it permanent: a child is slave or free "according to the condition of the mother." Over the next decades Virginia stacked law on law until slave and black meant the same thing.
Two centuries later that logic reached America's highest court. In 1857 Chief Justice Taney wrote that Black people had been regarded as having "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." And when slavery died, the idea didn't. In 1906 the Bronx Zoo put a Congolese man, Ota Benga, in a cage in the Monkey House. He wasn't a slave. He was just black.
The Muslim world had slaves too, on a vast scale. But it enslaved people of every origin: Africans, Europeans, Slavs, Turks, Greeks, Circassians, and Arabs. Slave-soldiers from the Caucasus and the steppes ruled Egypt for centuries. An Ethiopian ex-slave, Malik Ambar, became regent of an Indian kingdom. Prejudice existed, and some Muslim rulers acted on it. But Islam is not its rulers. Islam is the Qur'an and the law built on it, and there, nothing racial can be argued. Nothing. The Qur'an asks what the hard, uphill road to God is, and answers first: freeing a slave (90:13). Put simply, if you want to know what God counts as goodness, start by setting someone free. Al-Sarakhsi and al-Kasani taught that every child of Adam is born free and slavery must be proven. Al-Subki put it in one line: the law is bent on freedom. When Sultan Mawlay Ismail of Morocco tried in the 1690s to enslave free Black Muslims for being black, the scholars condemned him as a lawbreaker.
Wherever race entered, it entered against Islam, and Islam's own scholars said so.
The Bible openly allows slavery for life, passed to your children (Leviticus 25:44-46). Even that drew its line between Israelite and foreigner, not black and white.
So Europe did not invent slavery. It did not invent hereditary slavery. What Europe and America built, with a thoroughness no one had seen, was a caste: African blood as the mark, property as the status, inheritance as the sentence, and law as the lock.
1 week ago | [YT] | 2,023
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Mohammed Hijab
Jazakum Allahu khayran to everyone for the kind comments and support after the latest Piers Morgan episode. I appreciate the criticism too.
I understand the point many have made about being calmer and more measured in debates. Given my disposition, I find that difficult at times, particularly when the person opposite is rowdy, provocative or unserious.
It is something I need to work on, insha’Allah, and I’m confident that with time and effort I can improve in this area.
1 week ago | [YT] | 4,332
View 330 replies
Mohammed Hijab
Arabic translation:
https://youtu.be/Sn9RSiFF6aU?is=c3vER...
1 week ago | [YT] | 79
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Mohammed Hijab
https://youtu.be/1RTJOf6OLdw?si=QmLsV...
1 week ago | [YT] | 87
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Mohammed Hijab
Just finished another episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored with the IDF spokesperson. Given the reputation, I expected a heavyweight. What turned up was considerably lighter.
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 1,340
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Mohammed Hijab
Long ago, people said:
"Angels? Never seen one.
An invisible world? Prove it.
A book recording my life? Impossible."
Today:
AI. A mind without a body, obeying every command. Like the angels who "do not disobey what they are commanded."
WiFi. An invisible world flowing through every room. Like the unseen.
Your phone. Every word saved, nothing forgotten. Like the Book of Deeds.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," said Arthur C. Clarke.
What the past called magic, we call Monday morning.
One day the Book opens. Paradise or Fire.
It has never been easier to believe.
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 3,465
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Mohammed Hijab
Amid rising far-right anti-Muslim propaganda, The Autobiography of Malcolm X is essential reading for Muslims and Laurence Fishburne’s narration is fantastic
4 weeks ago | [YT] | 3,208
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Mohammed Hijab
https://youtu.be/O6e2iJcL-us?is=xCeXu...
4 weeks ago | [YT] | 40
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Mohammed Hijab
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQGZ1...
1 month ago | [YT] | 73
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