Ask Slashdot: How To Feed Africa?

That's what has always baffled me about slavery. When you look at scale, raw numbers or treatment of slaves, the Arabs were far, far worse than the worst Americans ever were. Well, not arabs, really [gentleislam.com]. Muslims. Slavery was never committed on the scale muslims did it before, and the scrapping of the legal concept of slavery from most (not all) muslim countries' law very nearly totally eradicated slavery, of course only in a superficial sense. In real terms, slavery exists in lots of moder muslim-majority nations (in the form of decades-long "employment" contracts that can't be broken under law by the employee and can be sold between employers. These contracts don't allow the "employee" to choose his/her own housing either, for example). Furthermore, slavery is a fundamental and "holy" part of islam, and those who believe that countries like Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Morocco don't have slavery need to visit them. When it comes to the word "slavery", that has been stricken from their laws (not entirely, as for example it is referenced in the laws about adultery : you are free to rape female slaves, maim them or do whatever you want to them in muslim countries), in practice, what little economy there is essentially runs on slavery*.

* that does not, in all cases, means the "slaves" are unhappy about that, at all. Like in the Roman Empire, the only way to be a tradesman in parts of Saudi Arabia is to be bound by such a contract. If not, you can't be a programmer, or architect. But of course, the people working outside in the hot sun are the same. Not all slaves are unhappy, and in fact even under the very ill treated slaves many appreciate the certainty that being one of a huge number of slaves provides, which is really another way of saying they've got zero alternatives and are aware of this. Yes, really. I know how it sounds, but really, you should talk to a few of these people. Make sure that you don't have any muslims, especially not local muslims, nearby when you do this in a place like Dubai or Abu Dhabi.

(though the question can be made very general indeed. Islam means living according to sharia, and that's pretty much the only thing it means. How can this abomination possibly be allowed ? Are you free to impose slavery ? Free to kill for religious reasons ? Free to have racist purchasing habits for "halal" meat ? Free to advocate religious war, support it financially ? Apparently the modern answer is yes. WTF ?)

There's also the tiny matter that the entirety of Northern Africa has been stolen from it's original inhabitants, just like America (and just like Asia Minor and it's wide surroundings, Indonesia and several other places). There's one difference, I guess, unlike native Americans and imported African slaves, most native peoples who lived in Northern Africa are extinct because of the contest and the constant toll of slavery, and have no descendants.

And of course, when it comes to America's slaves... Americans, nor Dutchmen, ever kidnapped people from native African villages. They bought them off of muslims, and exported them. The great schism of protestantism occured at least partly because the Pope thought this cheating. Although it's not like protestants were ever really in favor of it, but they did tolerate it for a while. The issue is that Catholics never tolerated it, and thorougly made sure of this (by regularly executing ship's captains who had bought slaves of muslims in Northern Africa and didn't spontaneously free them, for example in Nice).

Furthermore, slavery was imposed upon most of Africa for the better part of a millenium by muslims (not necessarily arabs, or perhaps better, not arabs everywhere), far, far longer than anywhere else on the planet.

And lastly, nobody in America seriously considers reintroducing slavery, when there's plenty of muslims bent on doing exactly that. Even if you put aside the people who "just want to live by sharia" and re-introduce slavery that way (plenty of those ev

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/QxriRWPMDxk/ask-slashdot-how-to-feed-africa

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