Tea Party Group Demand Textbooks Say Nice Things About Slave Owners

[ClosedCaption]

Slavery, it was good and bad. Some people hated it but some people liked it a bunch. Families were split up and some slaves were happy but others were sad. Some raped but gosh darnet some others wouldnt. Slaves worked for no pay, some of them looved it but others hated it.

-Exceprt from the Tea Party approved textbook

 

[mskafka]

The word "Textbooks" should have been a clue...

This is not an education issue - it's a fucking history issue...

History should be portrayed accurately NOT emotionally...

Well, then encourage the issue in Illinois. We have enough problems in this state with fucking bullying in the school system. Every other week, we have a child who has committed suicide due to bullying in the school system. The last, was a gay 8th grader. Hmmmm....reeks of intolerance to me.

It bothers me that my state seems to be going in the wrong direction, and several of us are working on fixing this. We've started with meetings, and the fiance has a contact with the ACLU. Bullying needs to be made a crime....something that people are held accountable for. This is a public school system that we are talking about. If you want your kid to hate gays, home school them, or send them to a school where they (chuckle) won't be exposed to it.

 

[mskafka]

Slavery, it was good and bad. Some people hated it but some people liked it a bunch. Families were split up and some slaves were happy but others were sad. Some raped but gosh darnet some others wouldnt. Slaves worked for no pay, some of them looved it but others hated it.

-Exceprt from the Tea Party approved textbook

LMMFAO! If you're going to post things like this, please give warning first, so that I don't spit my tea all over the wall.

 

[mskafka]

By Trymaine Lee

A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country's founders being slave owners.

According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

"The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed, to everybody -- not all equally instantly -- and it was their progress that we need to look at," Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal.

During the news conference more than two dozen Tea Party activists handed out material that said, "Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government."

And that further teaching would also include that "the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy."

The group demanded, as they had in January of last year, that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership."

More: Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founder's Slave-Owning History

Supporting Links:

Tennessee Tea Parties demand textbooks contain no mean things about Founding Fathers - Tea Parties - Salon.com

Tea parties issue demands to Tennessee legislators » The Commercial Appeal

Wow. Another thread based on blogs no sane person would bother to read, much less believe. Excuse me while I yawn.

It will probably be on the local news channels in a couple of days, or the Tennessean. When I find it, I will post it for you. Judging from the location (the poorest county in the state of TN, I doubt that it is BS).

 

[Mr.Nick]

Many plantation owners were extremely brutal, and the plantation owners owned upwards of 100+ slaves a pop...

Then there were the "well to do" families that bought slaves to do simple tasks such as being a nanny, house keeping or random yard work - those slaves were usually treated very well...

Also, lets not forget that the majority of families didn't even own slaves...

The "rich" or "well to do" of the period owned slaves...

Oh and the first slaves in the US or "New World" were white and that was common until the mid 18th century...... Funny how people forget that..

Besides, slavery is still common in Africa, not to mention I would call the way Sharia Islamists treat woman "slavery" to boot..

 

[Mr.Nick]

The word "Textbooks" should have been a clue...

This is not an education issue - it's a fucking history issue...

History should be portrayed accurately NOT emotionally...

Well, then encourage the issue in Illinois. We have enough problems in this state with fucking bullying in the school system. Every other week, we have a child who has committed suicide due to bullying in the school system. The last, was a gay 8th grader. Hmmmm....reeks of intolerance to me.

It bothers me that my state seems to be going in the wrong direction, and several of us are working on fixing this. We've started with meetings, and the fiance has a contact with the ACLU. Bullying needs to be made a crime....something that people are held accountable for. This is a public school system that we are talking about. If you want your kid to hate gays, home school them, or send them to a school where they (chuckle) won't be exposed to it.

Yet you and every progressive is a bully....

All you do is bully anyone who disagrees with you.

You personally attack them calling them "idiots" and "stupid fucks."

Yet you progressives have the fucking audacity to sit back and claim to care???

Now, I could care less what the fuck you think, however I find the progressive position on bullying to be extremely hypocritical....

Not to mention if one kills themself because someone doesn't like them then they deserve to die...

Bullying is not nice, however its a part of life...

Adults bully all the time - they just do it in different ways - instead of talking shit they will sabotage....

 

[mskafka]

Many plantation owners were extremely brutal, and the plantation owners owned upwards of 100+ slaves a pop...

Then there were the "well to do" families that bought slaves to do simple tasks such as being a nanny, house keeping or random yard work - those slaves were usually treated very well...

Also, lets not forget that the majority of families didn't even own slaves...

The "rich" or "well to do" of the period owned slaves...

Oh and the first slaves in the US or "New World" were white and that was common until the mid 17th century...... Funny how people forget that..

Besides, slavery is still common in Africa, not to mention I would call the way Sharia Islamists treat woman "slavery" to boot..

How's the String Theory research coming along?

 

[Chris]

Next they will want us to say nice things about smallpox.

 

[Mr.Nick]

Many plantation owners were extremely brutal, and the plantation owners owned upwards of 100+ slaves a pop...

Then there were the "well to do" families that bought slaves to do simple tasks such as being a nanny, house keeping or random yard work - those slaves were usually treated very well...

Also, lets not forget that the majority of families didn't even own slaves...

The "rich" or "well to do" of the period owned slaves...

Oh and the first slaves in the US or "New World" were white and that was common until the mid 17th century...... Funny how people forget that..

Besides, slavery is still common in Africa, not to mention I would call the way Sharia Islamists treat woman "slavery" to boot..

How's the String Theory research coming along?

What the fuck does string theory have to do with any of this??

BTW, I don't "research" the theory but I do understand it...

Well to be fair an honest I suppose my understanding took research, but its not like I'm trying to progress the theory...

The idea is crazy to me...

The same people who claim there is no God turn around and come up with shit like String or M Theory???

Anyone who believes they can prove the something such as reality using alleged theorems is off their rocker.

I suppose this idea is a whole topic within its self tho...

 

[Mr.Nick]

Next they will want us to say nice things about smallpox.

Here we go again with the blanket ignorance....

 

[mskafka]

This is not an education issue - it's a fucking history issue...

History should be portrayed accurately NOT emotionally...

Well, then encourage the issue in Illinois. We have enough problems in this state with fucking bullying in the school system. Every other week, we have a child who has committed suicide due to bullying in the school system. The last, was a gay 8th grader. Hmmmm....reeks of intolerance to me.

It bothers me that my state seems to be going in the wrong direction, and several of us are working on fixing this. We've started with meetings, and the fiance has a contact with the ACLU. Bullying needs to be made a crime....something that people are held accountable for. This is a public school system that we are talking about. If you want your kid to hate gays, home school them, or send them to a school where they (chuckle) won't be exposed to it.

Yet you and every progressive is a bully....

All you do is bully anyone who disagrees with you.

You personally attack them calling them "idiots" and "stupid fucks."

Yet you progressives have the fucking audacity to sit back and claim to care???

Now, I could care less what the fuck you think, however I find the progressive position on bullying to be extremely hypocritical....

Not to mention if one kills themself because someone doesn't like them then they deserve to die...

Bullying is not nice, however its a part of life...

Adults bully all the time - they just do it in different ways - instead of talking shit they will sabotage....

No, I seem to recall your dropping the idiot, dumbfuck, and moron bombs more often. If I've called you an idiot more than once, please copy and paste, and SHOW me.

This last kid left a letter to his mother. "Please help me, mom.", it said.
I would venture to say that you're a bully. Maybe you're the bullied in real life; but you are the bully in here.

You have everyone categorized in your mind, as good or bad...everything black or white. That is a very distorted view of the world. It isn't that simple.

Dude, I'm a paramedic. I've been sworn at, spit on, puked on, punched in the forehead by a drunk, kicked by a mentally ill person, had a rifle pointed at me from the woods (fortunately didn't know it at the time), asked by a homeless man if I've "ever had a .45 pointed at my head" (after I'd failed to take his massive duffel bag from him), watched children die, worked a plane crash, have seen decapitations...don't tell me that something is a "part of life". I've seen and been through hell, and lived to tell about it. Tooting my own horn? You're damned right I am. You're not talking to a pussy here. I worked in it for 17 years.

So don't talk to me about the real world, and "how life is". I've witnessed it. And this is something that needs to change. You see, we have something now, that didn't exist when I was in school....I don't know about you. It's called cyberbullying; and it goes a step above oinking when an overweight kid walks by. Get it?

Label me as you wish, as brilliant as you think you are. I'm not impressed

 

[Londoner]

[Tea Party wants tex books to say nice things about slave owners]

Business and concentrated wealth took over the Republican Party starting in the 60s - this is when the GOP switched from a Burkean concern for tradition and broad consensus to Machiavellian opportunism centered upon the narrow accumulation of wealth. Starting in the 60s, big business and the wealthy started transforming the GOP into a machine which would grant them centralized control over American life, mostly through disproportionate control over markets, opinions (media), and policies. They would pour money into elections, lobbying, think tanks, and popular media. They would use profits to gain centralized control over Washington, then they would use the media to convince the world that it was the liberals - a dying movement - which really controlled the country.

Even so - the GOP still needed to win elections - specifically, they needed to get the great bulk of Americans to vote against their economic interests; they needed to change the topic from tax breaks for millionaires to angry populism over the values. So they built coalitions not from hope, but hate, fear, and stupidity.

Southern Strategy, Demonization, Messianic Save-the-World Nationalism, and Religion - Republican Populism and the fall of the New Deal Coalition. Starting with Nixon, and blossoming under Reagan, the GOP would appeal to Southern contempt for the Civil Rights movement. [FYI: Men like Nixon and Chaney were not racists - but they knew that they needed to appeal to racists to flip the solid south] Therefore, the GOP would allow dixie to re-litigate the Civil War through participation in the Republican Party. They whispered to the South "we don't support an intrusive federal government that wants to change your culture and tell you who can eat at your restaurants, attend your schools & hospitals. Vote for us and we will destroy the Fed, and return power to you."

It wasn't just racism, it was much larger. The GOP appealed to white supremacists and infantile nativism - they would agitate fear over Mexicans, gays, liberals, Arabs, Jewish bankers, blacks...all the demons who, they said, were coming to your house to kill grandma, confiscate your earnings, take your gun, and make your children gay. Rather than giving their voters a hopeful platform, they fed them religious opiates and fear. Indeed, the GOP got people to hate their neighbors, who were welfare cheats and soviet spies. Form evil empires to evil doers, the GOP is always fighting a grand biblical war for civilization - and the enemy is always hiding everywhere.

"Take your country back!"

(from all the demons....)

(they are everywhere)

Evangelicalism makes for good populism. but.... Ronald Reagan never set foot in a church. His wife Nancy was a notorious anti-religious astrology kook. But Reagan understood that the best way to win elections was to use racism, fear, and religion to scare stupid white people into the voting booth. The result is the modern Republican Party. The wealthy get all the money, while the great silent majority gets a home for their hate and a scapegoat for their anger and fear.

 

[Mr.Nick]

Well, then encourage the issue in Illinois. We have enough problems in this state with fucking bullying in the school system. Every other week, we have a child who has committed suicide due to bullying in the school system. The last, was a gay 8th grader. Hmmmm....reeks of intolerance to me.

It bothers me that my state seems to be going in the wrong direction, and several of us are working on fixing this. We've started with meetings, and the fiance has a contact with the ACLU. Bullying needs to be made a crime....something that people are held accountable for. This is a public school system that we are talking about. If you want your kid to hate gays, home school them, or send them to a school where they (chuckle) won't be exposed to it.

Yet you and every progressive is a bully....

All you do is bully anyone who disagrees with you.

You personally attack them calling them "idiots" and "stupid fucks."

Yet you progressives have the fucking audacity to sit back and claim to care???

Now, I could care less what the fuck you think, however I find the progressive position on bullying to be extremely hypocritical....

Not to mention if one kills themself because someone doesn't like them then they deserve to die...

Bullying is not nice, however its a part of life...

Adults bully all the time - they just do it in different ways - instead of talking shit they will sabotage....

No, I seem to recall your dropping the idiot, dumbfuck, and moron bombs more often. If I've called you an idiot more than once, please copy and paste, and SHOW me.

This last kid left a letter to his mother. "Please help me, mom.", it said.
I would venture to say that you're a bully. Maybe you're the bullied in real life; but you are the bully in here.

You have everyone categorized in your mind, as good or bad...everything black or white. That is a very distorted view of the world. It isn't that simple.

Dude, I'm a paramedic. I've been sworn at, spit on, puked on, punched in the forehead by a drunk, kicked by a mentally ill person, had a rifle pointed at me from the woods (fortunately didn't know it at the time), asked by a homeless man if I've "ever had a .45 pointed at my head" (after I'd failed to take his massive duffel bag from him), watched children die, worked a plane crash, have seen decapitations...don't tell me that something is a "part of life". I've seen and been through hell, and lived to tell about it. Tooting my own horn? You're damned right I am. You're not talking to a pussy here. I worked in it for 17 years.

So don't talk to me about the real world, and "how life is". I've witnessed it. And this is something that needs to change. You see, we have something now, that didn't exist when I was in school....I don't know about you. It's called cyberbullying; and it goes a step above oinking when an overweight kid walks by. Get it?

Label me as you wish, as brilliant as you think you are. I'm not impressed

Of course I talk shit, but at least I add substance to the topic at hand.

Dropping one-liners is a different story...

If someone wants to refute what I posted that is fine but posting "you're an idiot" is not only lazy but ignorant...

If an individual feels I'm stupid that is fine but at least tell us all why that may be and refute my argument...

Is that too much to ask???

 

[mskafka]

Yet you and every progressive is a bully....

All you do is bully anyone who disagrees with you.

You personally attack them calling them "idiots" and "stupid fucks."

Yet you progressives have the fucking audacity to sit back and claim to care???

Now, I could care less what the fuck you think, however I find the progressive position on bullying to be extremely hypocritical....

Not to mention if one kills themself because someone doesn't like them then they deserve to die...

Bullying is not nice, however its a part of life...

Adults bully all the time - they just do it in different ways - instead of talking shit they will sabotage....

No, I seem to recall your dropping the idiot, dumbfuck, and moron bombs more often. If I've called you an idiot more than once, please copy and paste, and SHOW me.

This last kid left a letter to his mother. "Please help me, mom.", it said.
I would venture to say that you're a bully. Maybe you're the bullied in real life; but you are the bully in here.

You have everyone categorized in your mind, as good or bad...everything black or white. That is a very distorted view of the world. It isn't that simple.

Dude, I'm a paramedic. I've been sworn at, spit on, puked on, punched in the forehead by a drunk, kicked by a mentally ill person, had a rifle pointed at me from the woods (fortunately didn't know it at the time), asked by a homeless man if I've "ever had a .45 pointed at my head" (after I'd failed to take his massive duffel bag from him), watched children die, worked a plane crash, have seen decapitations...don't tell me that something is a "part of life". I've seen and been through hell, and lived to tell about it. Tooting my own horn? You're damned right I am. You're not talking to a pussy here. I worked in it for 17 years.

So don't talk to me about the real world, and "how life is". I've witnessed it. And this is something that needs to change. You see, we have something now, that didn't exist when I was in school....I don't know about you. It's called cyberbullying; and it goes a step above oinking when an overweight kid walks by. Get it?

Label me as you wish, as brilliant as you think you are. I'm not impressed

Of course I talk shit, but at least I add substance to the topic at hand.

Dropping one-liners is a different story...

If someone wants to refute what I posted that is fine but posting "you're an idiot" is not only lazy but ignorant...

If an individual feels I'm stupid that is fine but at least tell us all why that may be and refute my argument...

Is that too much to ask???

Once again...please remind me when I've called you an idiot. I don't use that word lightly. I'm not one of these people who think that I'm the only person in the world with a clue. If you can't get past more than one "debate" without calling someone an idiot, moron, dumbass, dumbfuck, etc..then you yourself (not you personally, but whomever) clearly need to perhaps read a little more.

I think that you have me mixed up with someone else. I will gladly debate anyone in a civil manner. Last night, I was called a "200-proof moron" for saying that tax fraud is a criminal offense. Uhm....okay.

 

[Mr.Nick]

No, I seem to recall your dropping the idiot, dumbfuck, and moron bombs more often. If I've called you an idiot more than once, please copy and paste, and SHOW me.

This last kid left a letter to his mother. "Please help me, mom.", it said.
I would venture to say that you're a bully. Maybe you're the bullied in real life; but you are the bully in here.

You have everyone categorized in your mind, as good or bad...everything black or white. That is a very distorted view of the world. It isn't that simple.

Dude, I'm a paramedic. I've been sworn at, spit on, puked on, punched in the forehead by a drunk, kicked by a mentally ill person, had a rifle pointed at me from the woods (fortunately didn't know it at the time), asked by a homeless man if I've "ever had a .45 pointed at my head" (after I'd failed to take his massive duffel bag from him), watched children die, worked a plane crash, have seen decapitations...don't tell me that something is a "part of life". I've seen and been through hell, and lived to tell about it. Tooting my own horn? You're damned right I am. You're not talking to a pussy here. I worked in it for 17 years.

So don't talk to me about the real world, and "how life is". I've witnessed it. And this is something that needs to change. You see, we have something now, that didn't exist when I was in school....I don't know about you. It's called cyberbullying; and it goes a step above oinking when an overweight kid walks by. Get it?

Label me as you wish, as brilliant as you think you are. I'm not impressed

Of course I talk shit, but at least I add substance to the topic at hand.

Dropping one-liners is a different story...

If someone wants to refute what I posted that is fine but posting "you're an idiot" is not only lazy but ignorant...

If an individual feels I'm stupid that is fine but at least tell us all why that may be and refute my argument...

Is that too much to ask???

Once again...please remind me when I've called you an idiot. I don't use that word lightly. I'm not one of these people who think that I'm the only person in the world with a clue. If you can't get past more than one "debate" without calling someone an idiot, moron, dumbass, dumbfuck, etc..then you yourself (not you personally, but whomever) clearly need to perhaps read a little more.

I think that you have me mixed up with someone else. I will gladly debate anyone in a civil manner. Last night, I was called a "200-proof moron" for saying that tax fraud is a criminal offense. Uhm....okay.

Well I'm sorry if you have ever felt offended by me.

I will say many progressives make a big deal out of collectivism and in some cases demand it. As an individualist I treat the group like a group, if you don't want to be part of the group then don't be.

At the same time you have to understand where you stand...

One cannot claim they're part of a collectivist group then claim individualism..

So that is why I use the language I use...

 

[tinydancer]

I actually make some good out there. I got involved in muslim women rights way back in the 90's. I really do truly rock. And I really care. They are my girls and I love them so. Been a bit side tracked with this honor killing trial we've got going on up here, but we sojourn on.

I figure Tinydancer to be some middle aged or older white woman.

Who thinks she has the god given right to show the brown and darker skinned people the error of their ways.

She has the same mind set as the people who declared Native American culture and values null and void over the last couple of centuries. And basically almost eliminated them by physical and cultural genocide.

Most of Africa was decimated by people with her colonialism and imperialist, "we know what's best for you" mindset.

Women like her are globalist busy bodies who just need to mind their own business and leave other people alone.

Actually I've been working with First Nations for over three decades now. Grassy Narrows and a stint cleaning bear claws at a place called the Beaverhead.inspired me. I may be one of those weird aberations of a human on the planet called a compassionate conservative and get ready for it....holy toledo....a conservationist as well.

And I am still fighting the good fight. We have a horrid amount of boil water advisories on reserves. It's appalling. I am known as little sister. These people are my friends. I take it as a very serious insult that you could even dream from my posts that I'm a colonialist.

My most beautiful on the planet granddaughter is Island. Bi racial. Her father is the most handsome. From Trinidad. Her name is Trinity.

So let's get racist out of the way. I've attended more carnivals than most will ever have a chance to. JUMP UP!!!!!!!!!! Irie man. I'm from Toronto. I can do jerk. I can make rotie.

I can do east and west curry while screaming the lyrics to Panama. Don't hand me racist Sunni man.

Not when every Calliph from here to kingdom come owned thousands of slaves. Don't hand me shit man.

Oh and btw just fyi


CHAPTER II
THE ORIGINS OF MUSLIM SLAVE SYSTEM

From the day India became a target of Muslim invaders its people began to be enslaved in droves to be sold in foreign lands or employed in various capacities on menial and not-so-menial jobs within the country. To understand this phenomenon it is necessary to go into the origins and development of the Islamic system of slavery. For, wherever the Muslims went, mostly as conquerors but also as traders, there developed a system of slavery peculiar to the clime, terrain and populace of the place. For example, simultaneously with Muhammad bin Qasim’s invasion of Sindh in early 8th century, the expansion of Arab Islam had gone apace as far as Egypt, North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula in the West, as well as in Syria, Asia Minor, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Khurasan, Sistan and Transoxiana. In all these countries Muslim slave system grew and developed in its own way. There was constant contact between India and most of these countries in the medieval times. For example, as early as during the reigns of the slave sultans Iltutmish and Balban (1210-86), there arrived at their courts in Delhi a large number of princes with their followers from Iraq, Khurasan and Mawar-un-Nahr because of the Mongol upheaval.1 Many localities in Delhi and its environs were settled by these elites and their slaves, soldiers and scholars. In Balban’s royal procession 500 Sistani, Ghauri and Samarqandi slave-troops with drawn swords used to march by his side pointing to the fact that a large number of foreign slaves from these lands had come to India in 13th-14th centuries.2 When the Mughals launched their conquest of India, there was the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey which at its height included present-day Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania and several other contiguous countries. Then there was the Safavid empire in Iran. The Ottoman Empire traded with Europe and imported “there indispensable stock of slaves. (Slav, as the word indicates), supplied by merchants, sometimes Jewish, from Verdun, Venice or elsewhere in Italy. Other slaves were brought from black Africa, eastern Europe and Turkish Central Asia.”3 The Mughals of India had very close contacts with the Turkish Ottoman and Iranian Safavid empires. This contact certainly included exchange of slaves and ideas on slavery. But any attempt in this area of study, which is so vast and labyrinthine, is bound to deflect us from our main theme which is restricted to India. We shall therefore confine ourselves to the barest particulars of the beginnings of the institution outside India which will suffice for understanding the Muslim slave system in India in the medieval period.

Prophet Muhammad found slavery existing in Arabia, and recognised it in the Quran. The origins of Muslim slave system can thus be traced to Arabia, the original Muslim homeland, and the regions into which Islam spread. Quranic injunctions, Islamic conquests and Muslim administrative institutions gave it a continuity and legitimacy. According to T.P. Hughes, “Slavery is in complete harmony with the spirit of Islam… That Muhammad ameliorated the condition of the slave, as it existed under the heathen law of Arabia, we cannot doubt; but it is equally certain that the Arabian legislator intended it to be a permanent institution.”4 D.S. Margoliouth elaborates on the theme adding that “On the whole… the Prophet did something to alleviate the existence of the captives… manumission was declared by him to be an act of piety… and murder or maiming of slaves was to be punished by retaliation.”5 In one of his last sermons, Muhammad exhorted his followers thus: “And your Slaves! See that ye feed them with such food as ye eat yourselves; and clothe them with the stuff ye wear. And if they commit a fault which ye are not inclined to forgive, then sell them, for they are the servants of the Lord, and are not to be tormented.”6 His first orthodox biographer, Ibn Ishaq, however mentions a transaction which set a precedent for Islamic slave trade at a later, stage: “Then the apostle sent Sa‘d b. Zayd Al-Ansari… with some of the captive women of B Qurayza to Najd and he sold them for horses and weapons.”7 The women had been made captive after their menfolk had been slaughtered en masse in the market place at Medina.

Status of Slaves in Islam

The appeal of Muhammad contained some fundamental perceptions about the status of slaves in Islam. It recognised the slave as the property of the master. A slave could be sold but, being a Muslim or servant of the Lord, was not to be treated harshly. Here it needs to be observed that in the early days of Islam it was the scum of the society the flocked to the standard of Muhammad and became his fighting force. “Koran acknowledges so distinctly that the followers of the Prophet were the lowest of the people.”8 Arabian aristocracy “requested him to send away this scum before they would argue with him”,9 (as did the Turkish ruling classes treat the early Muslim converts in India). But the mission of Muhammad was to spread his creed and any non-humane regulations would have presented a very unfavourable picture of Islam to the captives. This would have discouraged proselytization. On conversion also Muslim slaves could not be treated badly for that again would have been damaging to the reputation of the new creed and galling to the lives of the new converts. How these injunctions were later on followed or flouted by Muslim invaders and rulers in other countries is a different matter. In the original land of Islam, in Arabia, it was enjoined not to treat the slaves harshly; instead the masters were encouraged to utilize to the best the services of men slaves and enjoy the intimate company of women slaves.10

This tolerant treatment was not without conditions. A slave was the property of his master. His tenor of life was determined by the latter. For example, he could not marry without the master’s permission. Although he was free to move from place to place, he could not hold pleasure parties nor pay visits to friends. A slave could not bestow aims or grant a loan or make a pilgrimage.11 If he managed to accumulate any property, it was inherited not by his sons but by the master.12 In theory a slave could purchase his freedom, but bond of freedom was granted to a slave in return for money paid, and until full money was paid there was no total redemption.13 A slave should not seek his emancipation by running away, “The slave who fled from his master committed an act of infidelity”, says Muhammad.14

The emancipation of slaves was not unknown in pre-Islamic Arabia. It was an old custom among the Arabs of more pious disposition to will that their slaves would be freed at their death. To Muhammad, the freeing of a slave was an act of charity on the part of the master, not a matter of justice, and only a believing slave deserved freedom.

In short, slavery in Islam is a permanent and perennial institution. As Margoliouth points out, “the abolition of slavery was not a notion that ever entered the Prophet’s mind.”15 “The fact remains,” writes Ram Swarup “that Muhammad, by introducing the concept of religious war and by denying human rights to non-Muslims, sanctioned slavery on an unprecedented scale… (and on) such massive proportions. Zubair, a close companion of the Prophet, owned one thousand slaves when he died. The Prophet himself possessed at least fifty-nine slaves at one stage or another, besides thirty-eight servants, both male and female. Mirkhond, the Prophet’s fifteenth century biographer, names them all in his Rauzat-us-Safa. The fact is that slavery, tribute, and booty became the main props of the new Arab aristocracy…..” 16 “The Slavery of Islam is interwoven with the Law of marriage, the Law of sale, and the Law of inheritance, of the system, and its abolition would strike at the very foundations of the code of Muhaminadanism.”17

Extension of Islamic Slavery

Islamic slave system spread and developed wherever Muslim rule was established. Ghulam or quallar (‘slave’) was the creation of the Safavid state. Mamluks were found in Egypt. In the Ottoman empire they were called kapi-kulus. “Kapi-kulu were recruited originally from the Sultan's share of prisoners of war, and subsequently from a periodical levy (depshrime) of Christian boys. Most of the youths entered the Janissary corps.”18 Christian slaves were drawn from the ranks of the Georgian, Armenian and Circassian prisoners or their descendants.”19 Black slaves, natives of East Africa, were called Zanj.20 Majority of slaves who penetrated and flourished in India were Turks.

Immediately after its birth, Muhammadanism entered upon a career of aggressive and expansionist conquest. Its Caliphs conquered extensively and set up autocratic governments based on the tenets of Islam rather than democratic governments based on the will of the people. Conquests required large armies; despotic governments could not be run without a train of bureaucrats. From the ninth to the thirteenth century in particular it was a period of feverish activity in Muslim Asia; empires were established and pulled down; cities were founded and destroyed. In other words, the whole of Central Asia, Transoxiana and Turkistan was a very disturbed region in the medieval period. Armies and bureaucrats were needed in large numbers to administer the ever expanding dominions of Islam. The Turks came handy for such services.

Turkish Slaves

The Abbasids had built up a very large empire with capital at Baghdad, 21 and its provinces were administered by their Turkish slave officers and Turk mercenary troops. Caliph al-Mutasim (833-842 C.E.) introduced the Turkish element into the army, and he was the first Caliph to have Turkish slaves under his employment. 22 For it was soon discovered that the young slaves acquired from Turkistan and Mawar-un-Nahr formed an excellent material for such a corps.

Turks is a generic term comprehending peoples of sundry denominations and tribes. The Turkistan of the medieval historians was an extensive country. It was bounded on the east by China, on the west by Rum or Turkey, on the north by the walls of Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) and on the south by the mountains of Hindustan.23 The Turks as a people were both civilised town-dwellers and the migratory tribes trekking across the desert or wilderness. With the extension of the Muslim frontier to the north and west of Persia one tribe after another, like Turks, Tartars, Turkomen and even Mongols and Afghans came under subjection. They attracted the attention of their conquerors by their bravery and spirit of adventure. They were acquired in groups and droves as slaves. The Caliphs of Islam also purchased Turkish slaves to manage their far-flung empire. The Turkish slaves helped the cause of Islam through their fighting spirit.

But as their numbers grew, they became unmanageable. For example, Caliph al-Mutasim’s own guard was of 4000 Turks; the number later rose to 70,000 slave mercenaries.24 With time the tyranny, lawlessness and power of the Turks went on increasing.25 The unscrupulous policy of religious persecution followed by the Caliph Mutawakkil was responsible for the alienation of the subject races. His own son entered into a conspiracy with the Turks, which ended in the Caliph’s murder in 861. The Caliph Mutadid (892-902) was unable to suppress the power of the Turks. The final decline of the Caliphate set in just after the murder of Muqtadir in 932 C.E. “The Turkish soldiers made and murdered Caliphs at their pleasure.”26 As the Caliphal empire disintegrated, in the third century of Islam, its provincial governors became independent.27

But technically these Turkish governors were only slaves and their tenure of power rested on military force and chance-victory and not on any moral foundations. On the other hand, the Caliphs were objects of respect. The first four Caliphs were directly related to Muhammad. Muawiyah, the founder of the Ummayad Caliphate, was a cousin of Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet. Abbas himself was founder of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Turkish slaves, therefore, considered it politic to keep a sort of special relationship with the Caliph: they went on paying him tribute and seeking from him recognition of their ‘sovereignty’. That is how, in course of time, their political power was firmly established.

 

[Ravi]

Perhaps you should do some research and stop believing what Liberal Class warfare Artists are telling you they want. They do not want, and are not asking, that Kids be taught slavery was "good"

Why the hell am I wasting my time with you clear Hyper Partisan Left wing Loons. The truth could smack you across the face and you would deny anything happened so you could twist it into proof anyone who is not a liberal is a Racists Pig.

So, what's the truth? That those Africans VOLUNTEERED to become slaves? That the Native Americans WANTED to Move to Oklahoma? Gimme a fucking break.

for the most part, those africans were sold into slavery by those other africans.

go figure, huh?

they were prolly republicans.

The viewpoint that “Africans” enslaved “Africans” is obfuscating if not troubling. The deployment of “African” in African history tends to coalesce into obscurantist constructions of identities that allow scholars, for instance, to subtly call into question the humanity of “all” Africans. Whenever Asante rulers sold non-Asantes into slavery, they did not construct it in terms of Africans selling fellow Africans. They saw the victims for what they were, for instance, as Akuapems, without categorizing them as fellow Africans. Equally, when Christian Scandinavians and Russians sold war captives to the Islamic people of the Abbasid Empire, they didn’t think that they were placing fellow Europeans into slavery. This lazy categorizing homogenizes Africans and has become a part of the methodology of African history; not surprisingly, the Western media’s cottage industry on Africa has tapped into it to frame Africans in inchoate generalities allowing the media to describe local crisis in one African state as “African” problem.[3]

wikipedia

 

[editec]

Tea Party Group Demand Textbooks Say Nice Things About Slave Owners

Just more CSA apologists' revisionism.

These folks and their lying decendants have been trying to rehabilitate their place in history since the 19th century.

Their technique was called the BIG LIE by the NAZI propagandists.

 

[tinydancer]

So, what's the truth? That those Africans VOLUNTEERED to become slaves? That the Native Americans WANTED to Move to Oklahoma? Gimme a fucking break.

for the most part, those africans were sold into slavery by those other africans.

go figure, huh?

they were prolly republicans.

The viewpoint that “Africans” enslaved “Africans” is obfuscating if not troubling. The deployment of “African” in African history tends to coalesce into obscurantist constructions of identities that allow scholars, for instance, to subtly call into question the humanity of “all” Africans. Whenever Asante rulers sold non-Asantes into slavery, they did not construct it in terms of Africans selling fellow Africans. They saw the victims for what they were, for instance, as Akuapems, without categorizing them as fellow Africans. Equally, when Christian Scandinavians and Russians sold war captives to the Islamic people of the Abbasid Empire, they didn’t think that they were placing fellow Europeans into slavery. This lazy categorizing homogenizes Africans and has become a part of the methodology of African history; not surprisingly, the Western media’s cottage industry on Africa has tapped into it to frame Africans in inchoate generalities allowing the media to describe local crisis in one African state as “African” problem.[3]

wikipedia

Check the date. Slavery continues. Stop with bullshitting. You contribute to the problem when you can't face facts. ETA; BBC is left wing.

BBC News Online
You are in: World: Africa Friday, 6 August, 1999, 09:48 GMT 10:48 UK
West Africa's child slave trade
children work as domestic
Children are sold by parents and taken to neighbouring countries (Photo: Unicef)
Ticky Monekosso in Benin describes the trafficking and selling of children within West Africa.

There are growing signs that economic pressures and persistent poverty in Africa are leading to a resurgence of the traffic in child slaves.

These children are for sale in West African countries as both domestic and commercial labour and also for sexual exploitation.


Until recently this trade has been largely seen as a phenomenon of war-ravaged societies such as Angola, Sudan, Somalia or Chad - where even 10-year-old girls are servants and concubines at rebel military bases.

But now, even in relatively peaceful areas the traffic is growing.

Countries in the front line of this trade include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Gabon, Nigeria and Togo.

Obtaining the children

The responsibility of educating children has traditionally been given to the extended family system. In Benin it is known as "videmegon" - an expression of community solidarity.

In many cases middle-aged "sugar daddies" provide girls with money for school fees, books or clothes in return for domestic help.

However, the increasing need for paid work in modern West Africa is eroding the traditional values of communities that once placed limits on the abuse of children.


Estimates in Africa say two in five children under 15 are working
Estimates in Africa say two in five children under 15 are working
Brokers scout for children among poor families in rural areas in Benin and Togo. They see their work as a cross-border operation.

Some of these brokers say they kidnap children simply playing outside or who have wandered into urban areas.

Others say they persuade parents that their children will receive a professional training or a good education with a wealthy family.

Most of the parents are then corrupted by receiving a little cash.

Dangerous journeys

The journey is always dangerous and many children die in transit.

It is estimated that up to 250 million children work worldwide
Traffickers have to pay the fares, including food for the children during the journey as well as bribes to ensure the collaboration of border guards.

They have to recoup this money from the child's labour in their future host country.

Once in their host family the children receive no money. They are bonded to the traffickers or to the person to whom they are sold.

They work very hard from early morning to late at night to pay off money owed.

They face very harsh living conditions and are unable to see their families.

A significant number run away from their employers. Unable to return home and unable to find alternative employment many of them resort to prostitution, washing cars or collecting fares on mini-buses.

Supply and demand

Traders say girls from Benin and Togo are particularly in demand in wealthy families in Lagos in Nigeria and in Libreville in Gabon.

Other children are taken as far away as Bangui in the Central Africa Republic, which itself is a poor country. Children from there are said to be in high demand in Cameroon.

In one instance the Benin authorities found 400 children aboard a boat anchored in Cotonou harbour, itself an historic slaving market.

In July 1997 Benin police arrested five West Africans preparing to ship them to Gabon.

Police said the children, some aged only eight, were bought from families for the equivalent of about $30.

This time, the child slaves were intended for other West African capitals and not America.

Facts are difficult to come by. In Togo diplomatic sources stress that hundreds of girls are transported across the country's borders each year and 1,000 Togolese girls are estimated to be employed in Gabon.

A Togolese diplomat based in Libreville has urged his own government to take action to stem the flow of children being trafficked out of Togo.

According to investigators, more than 30 children are crossing the Benin-Nigeria border every two months. Of them 95% are girls intended for domestic work, half are under 15 years old. Some of these girls have attended primary school but very few have attended junior or secondary school and 45% have never been to school.

Child markets

A children's market was tracked down in a five storey building in Lagos, where residents used to go to choose the children they wanted for domestic work.

In 1996 this illegal market was discovered full of malnourished children, aged between seven and 17 years old, waiting for buyers.

A special child slave stock market has long been common in the Marche du Plateau- a popular market in Abidjan in Cote D'ivoire where relatively wealthy local women come to buy their 'helpers'.

Groups have also been taken to Europe under the pretext of participation in sports tournaments or in one case a public audience with the Pope.

Officials from a Western embassy in Nigeria were arrested on charges of involvement in this trade. In Abidjan, child trafficking is said to be largely in the hands of the Lebanese.

Parents may be paid as little as $15 to 'lease' their offspring to Arab Gulf states, Lebanon and Europe.

 

[tinydancer]

Oh looky!!! Anyone want to argue that Africans and others sell their children? Check the date. Oh and it's the LA Times left wingers. I find it truly appalling that liberals cannot admit truth and try to do something about it.



Africa's bitter cycle of child slavery
About 200,000 children in West and Central Africa are slaves, sold by their parents or duped. The children are starved, abused and beaten. But some get their own slaves when they grow up.
July 12, 2009|Robyn Dixon

KPONE, GHANA — Rebecca Agwu told her 5-year-old son, John, not to cry when she sent him away to live with relatives four years ago. Mary Mootey sent away her 4-year-old son, Evans, telling him he was going off to school. The two boys, now 9, from the same town in Ghana, ended up being forced to work 14 hours a day fishing on Lake Volta and being beaten for the smallest lapse.

Rewind about two decades: Rebecca Agwu was a child herself when her mother sent her away to live with an aunt.

"I cried," Agwu, 30, recalls. "I didn't want to go, but my mother deceived me that when I went, my aunt would teach me a trade." Instead she was forced to be a domestic worker.

"I never trusted her again. I felt very betrayed."

Evans' mother, when she was 8, was sent by her father to her uncle, a fisherman on Lake Volta, where she was forced to work from 3 a.m. until dark -- cleaning, carting water, cooking and gutting fish.

"My father never loved me when I was young," says Mootey, 35. "I hate him, because he caused all the pain and suffering I went through. I hate him."

For generations, Ghana and other West African nations have served as a hub for child trafficking and slavery. An estimated 200,000 children in West and Central Africa perform unpaid labor. They are given minimal food and clothing, are deprived of schooling and medical care and are often subjected to physical abuse. Recent laws outlawing slavery in many African countries have had limited effect.

Slavery has a long history in these parts. The Elmina Castle on Ghana's Cape Coast, one of the departure points for the 18th and 19th century slave trade to the Americas, each year draws thousands of African American visitors seeking their roots.

Elmina's dank, black dungeons lead to the "room of no return," with its moldy green walls and oppressive atmosphere. "May humanity never again perpetrate such inhumanity against humanity," reads a plaque at the fortress.

'I was afraid they would kill me'

But today, thousands of Ghanaian children are in unpaid servitude, having been sold for $30 to $50, nongovernmental groups say. Girls are often forced to work as domestic laborers, carting water, fetching wood, sweeping, cleaning, farming, washing, cooking, and in fishing families, cutting up fish and smoking it. They are often sexually abused.

Boys are mostly sent to fish on Lake Volta, where they are taught to swim by being repeatedly thrown off a boat with a rope tied around their waist.

The stories of two mothers and two sons, forced into servitude two decades apart, are equally painful. Agwu's memories of 13 years of domestic labor and beatings are as bitter and sharp as if they had happened yesterday.

"I was afraid all the time. I felt I was nobody. I used to cry myself to sleep."

Her son's words evoke similar pain. Sent to work for a fisherman, he had to bail out his boat, pull in heavy nets and dive to free snagged ones.

"I always thought I would die in the water, because I was afraid," the mother said. "My master used to beat me and his wife did too. I cried morning and night. I was afraid they would kill me."

Mary Mootey's hands are scarred from the spines of the fish she gutted.

"I always used to cry when I was forced to do something and I was tired and I couldn't do it quickly so they'd beat me. I used to cry a lot."

She worked nine years and was raped several times before she managed to escape, she said. Thinking about the past still hurts.

When her brother, a Lake Volta fisherman who also had been a child slave, offered to send Evans to school, she says, she trusted him.

"I was not working and I had a lot of children. I had no option," said Mootey, who is unemployed. "I never thought he'd use him on the lake."

Evans felt betrayed when he was forced to go with his uncle.

"My mother told me I was going to attend school but when I got there, there was no school, so I thought she'd deceived me."

He survived terrifying storms on the lake. He saw three boys drown, he says.

Evenings, they had to empty the nets of fish and load them back into the canoe. "But sometimes when we were tired and hungry we'd lie in the canoe and our master would come and beat us."

He can't understand why his "master" -- his own uncle, who had suffered the same torment -- put him through it too.

"He wasn't educated, so he didn't want me to be educated. I can't understand the reason he did that."

Winning freedom through persuasion

On market day, the town of Dambai on the Oti River near Lake Volta is packed with vendors selling smoked fish.

Ragged children sit in small wooden boats, or carry baskets. George Achibra, slave rescuer, points them out.