1九百九十六

The Arab Islamic slave trade enslaved over 17 million Africans for 1,300 years;- Brutally castrating men, raping women, pure evil. Yet no one is talking about it 💔

####

So this Muslim was all up in my feed defending his religion and somewhat Muslim washing the atrocities of slavery. He wrote this:

...." This claim is misleading and emotionally loaded, not honest history. There was never a single, unified “Arab Islamic slave trade” comparable to the transatlantic chattel slavery system. Slavery existed everywhere long before Islam — Africans, Europeans, Asians, Persians, and Arabs all practised it. Islam didn’t invent slavery; it came into a world where slavery already existed and instead restricted it, regulated it, and strongly encouraged freeing slaves as a virtuous act of worship.

The popular figure of “17 million” is highly disputed and often repeated without real academic agreement. Unlike European transatlantic slavery, slavery in Muslim societies was not race-based, not hereditary, and did not reduce people to permanent, subhuman property. Many Africans in Muslim lands became scholars, military leaders, governors, and even rulers — something completely impossible under European chattel slavery.

The constant focus on mass castration and rape is largely propaganda. Castration did occur in some cases, but it was not universal or systematic. If it were, there would be no Afro-Arab populations today, yet millions of people of African descent live across North Africa and the Middle East. That alone exposes how exaggerated these claims are.

It’s also conveniently ignored that African kingdoms and traders were deeply involved in capturing and selling slaves to Europeans and others. Yet no one calls African culture inherently evil. But when Islam is mentioned, suddenly the entire religion is blamed. That double standard says a lot.

If this discussion were really about justice for Africans, the most documented and destructive system in history — European colonialism and transatlantic racial slavery — wouldn’t constantly be downplayed while Islam is singled out. This isn’t about uncovering truth. It’s about using selective history to demonise Muslims and Islam...."

My response to him:

You can hide behind theological nuance and claim “everyone did it,” but that doesn’t wash the blood off Muslim hands in the African slave trade. Yes, slavery predated Islam—and yes, Islam regulated it—but that regulation didn’t end it. For centuries, Muslim traders facilitated one of the largest and most brutal forced migrations of African people. To claim it wasn’t “race-based” ignores how blackness was weaponized for subjugation across the Sahel, the Swahili Coast, and the Arabian Peninsula.

You talk about Africans rising to power in Muslim societies—conveniently skipping over the millions who lived and died in bondage, the eunuchs created for harems, the women taken as concubines. The “disputed” 17 million isn’t a debating point—it’s a shadow that still stretches from Zanzibar to Baghdad.

And while African kingdoms participated—no one denies that—they weren’t writing divine justifications into holy texts. You don’t get to quote the Prophet on manumission while skipping the verses that sanctioned owning human beings. Religious morality isn’t pick-and-choose history.

No one’s denying the uniquely evil machinery of transatlantic chattel slavery. But righteousness isn’t a competition of horrors. If Islam truly “restricted” slavery as you claim, why did it take colonial pressure and Western abolition movements to end it in most Muslim-majority regions?

You want to live a pious Muslim life? Start by reconciling with the whole truth—not the sanitized version. The transatlantic trade was genocide. The Arab-Islamic trade was erasure. Both have left scars that still haven’t been addressed, only defended.