There Are Two Sides To Every Coin: African Enslavement in the Arab World
One of the more fulfilling yet challenging topics to teach to students is on the African slave trade. Certainly, this period in time is not the most triumphant in the history of the African Diaspora. However when taught properly, students of color and White students alike are empowered with truth. This truth can answer critical question relating to the economic and political circumstances of members of the African Diaspora today. However, most of the focus on the European’s role in the African slave trade. The European side is only half of the story.
Somehow, I find myself conversing with the skinfolk on social media on the topic of religion. Whenever Christianity comes up, and it usually does, a common tactic in refuting it is juxtaposing Christianity’s sins with the “righteousness” of Islam — where Black folks are concerned. I am often told that Christianity is the religion that enslaved us, as oppose to Islam. I am also told that Christianity was never the religion of our ancestors; rather Islam was. I get the appeal of Islam within the Black community. One of the major appeals is the faith is a true counter-culture to the West. And while both faiths differ after its shared biblical heritage, there is another similarity between the two faiths: African enslavement.
Referenced in these conversations is how Islam was deeply rooted in West Africa and was practiced by those put on save ships. However Islam was brought to West Africa by foreign traders; the faith is not the original faith of Africans. Social scientists estimate that nor more than 30% of slaves in antebellum America were Muslims. Even more, I find that little is said regarding the role Islam played in the enslaving of Africans, particularly in the East. The only conversation I hear regarding the East of Africa is that Blacks descend from the Egyptians — and they too were enslaved by the Arabs. Do we come from West Africa or Egypt; which is it?
Absent from their commentary on East Africa is Christianity’s presence throughout the Nile as well as the enslavement of East Africans by Arab Muslims — which took place prior to Europeans making Africans their slaves in the New World. For the purposes of this posting, I’ll focus less on the former and more of the latter. However, the former will help inform us of the latter. Do you follow?
In the words of a favorite minister of the gospel of mine, just follow me; I’m going somewhere.
Whenever I speak about Christianity’s African roots, folks love asking me where I am getting my information. When I answer with the Bible, they immediate pull the “a White man wrote it” card. However, would a White man — who assumedly wrote the Bible to subjugate and oppress Africans — record that Africans were some of the people who both received Christ and spread the gospel? Wouldn’t that truth actually empower people to challenge him on his heresy?
So, with that out the way, let’s look to scripture. Not only is the Bible a spiritual text, it is also a historical text. In the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles gives us a recording of the history of the early church. Acts 8:26–40 speaks about Philip preaching the gospel to a Ethiopian[1] eunuch of great authority given to him by the Candace[2] or the queen. Also, Acts 18:24–28 speaks of a Jew named Apollos from Alexandria in Egypt… Alexandria would later become one of the seats of Christian thought and doctrine early in the millennium. The Church at Alexandria would even remain, with the help of Ethiopia, during the influx of Islam after the 7th century. But we’ll get to that later.
The apostle Paul references Apollos in his letter to the church at Corinth. Apparently, members of the church were creating factions according to whose teaching they preferred more; Paul or Apollos… And it wasn’t just East Africa where Christianity has roots. The Church at Antioch was the place where believers were the first to be called Christians. One of the founders was a man name Lucius of Cyrene or modern day Libya. Also with Lucius was Simeon called Niger (another African). And just for good measure, John Mark, author of the gospel of Mark, was also from Cyrene or modern day Libya. According to what Eusebius was told, Mark was the first that was sent to Egypt and that he proclaimed the Gospel which he wrote and that he first established churches in Alexandria.
Muslims who attack Western Colonialism are right to do so. However, the actors in their history weren’t any less colonizing. Apart from slavery in the west at the hands of Europeans, the largest enslavement of Africans in the world involved Arabs. Some historians estimate that between A.D. 650 and 1900, 10 to 20 million people were enslaved by Arab slave traders. Others believe over 20 million enslaved Africans alone had been delivered through the trans-Sahara route alone to the Islamic world.
While slavery was around prior to Islam, the prophet Muhammad maintained the practice; owning slaves himself. In fact, Arab slavers would not teach Islam to Africans and if an African did convert, it did not guarantee his or her freedom. In contrast to the West, the Arab trade market had a preference on young women and girls; used as servants and concubines. The men were often castrated.
Like the Europeans, Arabs promoted the stereotype that Africans were creatures of immense sexual appetites and powers.[3] Arabs always considered Africans as especially suited to be their servants.[4] Before the European enslavers, Arabs cited the curse of Ham as justification for African enslavement; even if the Africans were fellow Muslims.[5] Arab texts often reported Africans to be stupid, dishonest, unclean and stinky and sometimes call African women ugly[6] and people of either gender distorted or monstrous.[7]
At the time of the Arabs arrival in Egypt in the 7th century, the Egyptians identified themselves as Copt. Copt is derived from a shortened form of the ancient Greek name for Egypt, “Aiguptos.” Christianity was their faith and spread throughout Egypt so widely that the country remained majority Christian into the tenth century.[8] According to Afrocentric scholar Molefi Kete Asante, the Arabs who controlled Egypt from 641 on had little respect or appreciation for the classical civilization they found in the Nile Valley.[9]
Due to the disorganization of the Church in Northern Africa, Islam made immediate progress in Egypt. Due to infighting and repression from the empire (Rome and Byzantium) as well as from distorters of the faith (Arians), the Copts didn’t have a fight chance to prevent its collapse. South of Egypt however, Christianity flourished. While conquering Egypt, Arabs made an attempt to conquer Christian Nubia — the same place that Ethiopian Eunuch came from. But they failed. When the patriarch of the Alexandria church was imprisoned and churches were either destroyed or converted into mosques, the Nubian kingdom of Makuria came to their defense.[10] It wasn’t until the 15th century that the Nubian civilization came to an end at the hand of the Arabs.
In Abyssinia or ancient Axum (modern day Ethiopia) Christianity too flourished. Christianity became the official religion of the land at the same time as it did in Rome.[11] Ancient Axum, after the rise of Islam, became the primary defender of oppressed Christian minorities in Muslim lands. In contrast to Nubia, Axum withstood Arab pressure. Yet the golden age of Ethiopia came to a close due to Arab opposition. Arab Egypt blocked attempts of Axum to communicate with Christian Europe during the golden age of Ethiopia, for fear of a coalition with Europe against them.[12] However, Ethiopia remained strong and independent well into the 20th century.
It is not my intention to denigrate Islam with this post. My purpose was to show that Europeans were not the only people to enslave Africans. Also, Europeans did not have the monopoly on establishing racist stereotypes against Africans. In fact, Europeans and Arabs worked together to benefit from the trade of African flesh. The question then becomes, if the Arab enslavement of Africans shouldn’t stop one from being Muslim, why should European enslavement of Africans stop me from being a Christian?
[1] While Ethiopian is the ethnic distinction given to the eunuch, historians have proven that the eunuch comes from the empire of Kush whose borders fall between Egypt and Sudan.
[2] Candace is the Latin for the Greek Κανδάκη , or Kandake, Kadake, or Kentake meaning queen or royal woman in Kushite language
[3] Craig Keener & Glenn Usry, Defending Black Faith: Answers to Tough Questions About African-American Christianity (1997). P25.
[4] Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World (1989). P104.
[5] Craig Keener & Glenn Usry, Defending Black Faith: Answers to Tough Questions About African-American Christianity (1997). P25.
[6] Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World (1989). P102–103.
[7] Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (1990). P92.
[8] Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity: From Antiquity to the Present (1995). P43.
[9] Craig Keener & Glenn Usry, Defending Black Faith: Answers to Tough Questions About African-American Christianity (1997). P21.
[10] Ibid. P16.
[11] Ibid. P17.
[12] Lamin Sanneh, West African Christianity: The Religious Impact (1983). P16.
