Islam - Christianity - This Day in History - Slavery

There Are More Than 9 Million Slaves in Africa Today

Ben Davis

Caldronpool

There are approximately 9 million men, women, and children living in modern slavery throughout Africa, according to a report issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation.

The foundation’s Global Slavery Index revealed there is an estimate of 9,240,000 enslaved across the continent, living as forced labourers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, and as child brides in forced marriages.

According to the report, Africa has the highest rate of prevalence for enslavement, with 7.6 people living in slavery for every 1,000 people in the region. The report also revealed that the rate of forced marriage (4.8 victims per 1,000 people) was higher than the rate of forced labour (2.8 victims per 1,000 people).

The findings also showed worldwide there were 40.3 million people in slavery in 2016, with up to 71% of the enslaved being female due to “discriminatory views of women.”

Governments found to be taking the least action to reduce modern slavery include: North Korea, Libya, Eritrea, Central African Republic, Iran, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Mauritania. 

You might note that many of these are Islamic countries.

The map below shows almost every country in the world coloured according to the share of its population that is enslaved. The darker the colour, the higher the prevalence of slavery.

Source: globalslaveryindex.org

In contrast, governments found to be taking the most action to end slavery include: Netherlands, United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Belgium, Croatia, Spain, Norway, Portugal, and Montenegro.

You might note that these are all Christian countries.

The following map shows the government response to modern slavery. The darker the colour, the higher the government response.

Source: globalslaveryindex.org

What’s worth noting is that these maps reveal the countries which are persistently characterised as “racist” and “oppressive” towards people of colour, and from which reparations are demanded, are exactly those countries which have done the most to end slavery.

Furthermore, in modern times, slavery has been characterised as a unique practice instituted by predominantly white nations. However, according to African-American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell, this is an entirely false view of history.

During a 2018 interview at the Hoover Institution, Sowell pointed out that slavery is one of the oldest institutions among human beings.

Slavery has been a universal institution for thousands of years, as far back as you can trace human history. We’re looking as if slavery was something that happened to one race of people in one country, when in fact, the spread of it was around the world.

In 1776… Adam Smith said that Western Europe is the only place in the world where there is no slavery. Even the Western Europeans had vast numbers of slaves in the Western hemisphere, but not in Western Europe itself. So, if you’re going to have reparations for slavery, it’s going to be the greatest transfer of wealth back and forth and between… because the number of whites who were enslaved in North Africa by the Barbary pirates exceeded the number of Africans enslaved in the United States and in the American colonies before that, put together.

But nobody is going to North Africa to ask for reparations because nobody is going to be foolish enough to give it to them. Here we have intellectuals who can imagine a different history from the rest of the world.

Despite the narrative that continually presents predominantly-white nations as the greatest perpetrators of racism, discrimination, and slavery in human history, the facts demonstrate that these very nations have done the most to combat slavery and racism.

In 2013 a study of 80 countries over a three-decade period revealed that white and Latin countries were least likely to be racist.

Note again that these are mostly Christian countries.

It wasn’t economic forces that brought about the end of slavery,

but a moral revolution rooted in Christianity

The data, which was collected by the World Value Survey and reported on by the Washington Post found people in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and Latin America were the most likely to embrace racially diverse people.

Source: Washington Post

The question is, why? If slavery has been practised universally for thousands of years, what made predominantly white nations rebel against it?

Dr John B Carpenter explains it wasn’t economic forces that brought about the end of slavery, but a moral revolution rooted in Christianity:

Slavery was a universal human institution for all history. Normalcy. It’s impossible to isolate one group as responsible for it because all were. If we go back in anyone’s ancestry far enough, we’re almost certain to find a slave owner. We’re all the sons and daughters of slaves and enslavers.

The question is not who enabled slavery. Everyone did. The question is, who, after millennia of this fallen institution, stopped it.

The answer is Christians.

Carpenter continues: “Slavery had been the norm, business as usual. What is striking is when normalcy is disrupted, the bolt from the blue. Abolition was that bolt, a revolutionary shock breaking into history. Where did it come from? It wasn’t the long arc of history inevitably bending toward progress. It was a transformation from above.”

In his book The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion, historian Rodney Stark similarly noted: “All known societies above the very primitive level have been slave societies–even many of the Northwest American Indian tribes had slaves long before Columbus’ voyage.

“Amid this universal slavery, only one civilization ever rejected

human bondage: Christendom. And it did it twice!”

In both cases, the UK and the USA, it did so at considerable cost in finances and lives lost.

If we truly believe that “Black Lives Matter”, indeed that all lives matter, then we ought to, at the very least consider what transformed the Western world and caused it to do what no other civilisation ever could.

‘Extraordinary Violence’: Hate, Anti-Government ‘Patriot’ Groups Flourished in 2015 – Report

© splcenter.org

An advocacy group monitoring hate and anti-government groups in the United States released its annual census report showing that such groups flourished around the nation in 2015, growing by 14 percent.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which conducted the survey, called it a year marked by "extraordinary violence from domestic extremists."

The annual report, titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism” and released on Wednesday, attributed the rise of hate and anti-government groups to the exploitation of the anger and fear some Americans felt over the country’s changing culture, whether through immigration, the legalization of same-sex marriage, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, or the atrocities committed by Islamist terrorists. The group also highlighted anger felt by white, working-class Americans and some middle-class white people, especially the less educated, over economic pressures.

"Charleston. Chattanooga. Colorado Springs. In these towns and dozens of other communities around the nation, 2015 was a year marked by extraordinary violence from domestic extremists – a year of living dangerously," wrote Mark Potok, senior fellow at the SPLC.

In its count, the report found hate groups increased from 784 groups in 2014 to 892 in 2015, a 14 percent rise, but the increases where notably not seen in what many may view as hardcore groups.

“The hardest core sectors of the white supremacist movement – white nationalists, neo-Nazis and racist skinheads – actually declined…a reflection, perhaps, that hate in the mainstream had absorbed some of the hate on the fringes,” wrote Potok. “But there were significant increases in the Klan as well as black separatist groups.”

Ku Klux Klan chapters boom
The report said Klan chapters grew from 72 in 2014 to 190 last year, with 364 pro-Confederate flag rallies following South Carolina’s legislative decision to take down the battle flag from its Capitol grounds. That decision followed the massacre of nine black churchgoers by a white supremacist named Dylann Roof. The rallies were not limited to the South, but were held in 26 states and “reflected widespread white anger that the tide in country was turning against them.”

The SPLC said its group count likely underestimates the true size of the American radical right, as many white supremacists operate online on sites such as Stormfront, which has 300,000 members and has added 25,000 new registered users annually for several years.

“The milieu of the web is an ideal one for ‘lone wolves’ - terrorists who operate on their own and are radicalized online. Dylann Roof is the perfect example,” the report stated. “His journey began with absorbing propaganda about black-on-white crime from the website of the Council of Conservative Citizens…and ended with the June massacre in Charleston. Like increasing numbers of white supremacist circles, Roof was convinced…that white people worldwide were the targets of genocide.”

Black Separatists also on the rise
The report found black separatist hate groups grew 59 percent, from 113 chapters in 2014 to 180 last year, fueled by “the explosion of anger fostered by highly publicized incidents of police shootings of black men.” The SPLC found that unlike activists with the Black Lives Matter movement, who called for police reform and an end to structural racism, the black separatist groups demonized all whites, gays and, in particular, Jews.

The report found a correlation between the growth of hate groups and a series of lethal terrorist attacks. In addition to the massacre of nine black people at a church in Charleston, Islamist radicals killed 14 people at work party in San Bernardino, California, just days after an anti-abortion extremist killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“After seeing the bloodshed that defined 2015, our politicians should have worked to defuse this anger and bring us together as a nation,” Potok said. “Unfortunately, the carnage did little to dissuade some political figures from spouting incendiary rhetoric about minorities. In fact, they frequently exploited the anger and polarization across the country for political gain.”

Anti-Muslim groups in the spotlight
The report found the demonization of Muslims, Latinos, immigrants and others become commonplace in 2015. (Muslims are already demonized - Allah is Satan). The Center for Security Policy is one of two anti-Muslim groups listed as a hate group for the first time in this year’s report. The other is ACT! For America. In 2015, the two groups started opposing immigration by refugees from the Syrian civil war, drafting model statutes meant to ban the refugees at the county level. Some 30 state governors also said they would prohibit refugees.

“After the San Bernardino attack in December, Muslim activists and other reported an enormous surge of anti-Muslim hate crimes, including shootings, mosque arsons, Koran desecrations, assaults and the bullying of schoolchildren,” wrote Potok. “As the new year began there was little evidence that the hatred was diminishing.”

Anti-government “Patriot” groups flourish
The other big growth area was in conspiracy-minded, anti-government “Patriot” groups, which rose from 874 in 2014 to 998 last year, a growth of 14 percent.

“The growth was fueled by the euphoria felt in anti-government circles after armed activists forced federal officials to back down at gunpoint from seizing cattle at Cliven Bundy’s ranch to pay his grazing fees,” wrote Potok.

Potok said that event emboldened activists to occupy the wildlife refuge in Oregon in January 2016 as a protest against federal land ownership in the West.

Patriot groups need to be very careful. There is a fine line between criticizing and standing up to your government, and fighting against your country which is not patriotism but treason. America is a democracy; let's not turn it into a 3rd world country where the last man standing gets to be president.