This book is highly problematic. As has been noted this book seems to endorse and defend the Islamic slave trade as the author argues it was more 'humane' then the western version while at the same time this book explores the roots of Islams obsession with Slavery.
What's clear from this book is that Islam invented the African slave trade and introduced it to the West. The West had taken slaves in battle but had never penetrated Africa as slave traders for the purposes of money. Islam send thousands of Arabs deep into the hearts of Africa to get as many slaves as possible. This book details how most of the slaves sought were female which would be used for the sexual recreation of Muslim men. The African women that became pregnant were punished and the children were murdered. The male African slaves were frequently used as soldiers or killed and thus there is relatively little African culture in the Arab countries that imported more then 11 million or more African slaves from 500AD onwards up to this day.
The author tries to argue that these slaves were more humanely treated because they were not used to work fields as the slaves in the West were. But its not clear how its more humane to treat young African women as sexual slaves for mere enjoyment, only to murder them at age 25 then it is to keep slaves for most of their natural life working on a farm and procreating. Few if any of Islams African slaves were allowed to mate with eachother and have offspring this is why little African culture is apparent in Islamic countries today throughout the former Ottoman empire.
This book is essential for the west to understand that Islam was a slave loving and slave holding culture, one that in many ways mirrored the western obsession with human trade. It is an interesting book. This is essential reading for understanding the dark side of Islamic societies and the obsession that Arabs had in the slave trade. The slave trade exists to this day in the Sudan and Africa where Arab gangs raid villages, stealing women and children to be sold as slaves to rich Saudis for sexual pleasure and house work. Not much has changed in 1500 years in Saudi Arabia, and this book is a good primer on the basis for slavery in Islamic society, a basis that the author claims comes from the Koran exhorting Muslims to treat slaves well but to import them vigorously.
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SheenaM
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 24, 2018Verified Purchase
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