I don’t understand what you mean to be arguing here.

It’s also fallacious. Most black slaves were captured or birthed by white slavers; you are conflating “some were sold by rival tribes” with “all slaves were sold by rival tribes.” Why conflate these? What is your purpose? Likewise, there is no evidence “black slavers were worse.” That’s just something you (or some pundit you gullibly believed) made up. What made the American system the worst in history was the system (its established legal and moral standards and practices), which was most definitely created and sustained by white people (even after it was abolished, hence the KKK and Jim Crowe laws, which were not created or passed by black people).

So you don’t even have sound premises. But even if they were sound, I don’t see any relevant conclusion from them here. So it is not clear what you are even trying to say, much less why anyone should believe it.

Speaking of slavery, it was Africans who sold other Africans into slavery. Also, “More White European slaves were sold to N Africa than there were black slaves in Amerika, after the abolishment of slavery in Amerika, still more White European slaves being sold to the Ottoman Empire” that’s from a well respected black College Professor and Historian Thomas Sowell. Also to add, not every black person was a slave in Amerika during the time of slavery, there were actually free black people during that time who actually owned black slaves and plantations, and were more cruel than white slave owners, but no one wants to talk about that, no one wants to talk a to out the Irish slaves who were bought for cheaper, worked to death, starved to death, beaten to death, hung on poles and burned alive, then their heads cut off and hung on those poles.

Note that slavery under the Romans also had more laws and rights governing it. Hence people also forget that American/Western slavery was the most brutal and lawless form of slavery in human history. Any other culture’s slavery looks better by comparison. Islamic slavery derives from the Roman (pagan) tradition, not the brutal and inhuman (Christian) tradition.

Which also affects how we interpret passages like this. Because Islamic slavery didn’t look twice at skin color as determining slave status, whereas Western slavery was built on literally inventing the black/white distinction to signal who should be a (chattel) slave and who not. Which is what not only makes it racist, but literally caused the entire legacy of color-racism still haunting the West (you can draw a direct line from it to Jim Crowe and the KKK and Aryan Nation, and the Willie Horton and Welfare Queen dogwhistles of today).

The Quran is not using color as a designation of suitability for slavery. Color is incidental. It only relates to region of origin (African or Eurasian). However, there is abundant evidence of racism in early Islam (study, study, study). But that is, really, Arab racism, which just overlapped Islamic culture when Arabs adopted it.

So we are actually talking about Arab attitudes here, not Islamic (the Quran is more explicitly anti-racist than the Bible), just as Western racism is really a European thing not specifically a Christian thing (racism in the Bible is more about Hebrew vs. Gentile and not color-based), it’s just that Christianity, like Islam, became the institutional pillar of their respective empires and each thus had to defend the attitudes of the society it served. Which is ironically the opposite of what those religions originally preached they should—which is what makes them, as movements, social failures, as they simply became the thing they were invented to oppose, and thus were never able to change the world as promised (which is why they should be abandoned; they don’t work).

So in this case, there would be no reason to mention the color of the slaves unless it mattered somehow, and here the only way it would matter is in the perceived value of slaves (no other reason is given). Though it could be due to the racism of the slaveholder, the text does not say that (it does not say he demanded two black for one white, or explain that black slaves were all Mohammed had to sell, etc.). So it probably preserves just baseline Arab racism (the notion that white slaves were worth more, possibly on the assumption that they were more often educated and thus had more financial value, a holdover from Roman-Persian times). And the text is not promoting it. It is simply describing it. The writer is thus thinking “well of course that’s how it would be” and thus telling the story as they imagine it would go. As such, they are not even commenting on whether it is right or wrong.

When one looks to the Hadith, there is a mix of racist and anti-racist Hadiths, and has been a battle since they even began and still to this day, over which are to be declared authentic or not. Notably, the racist wing picked up the Jewish racism of the Ham legend very early on (so did the Christians; so that one Biblical legend cursed all three societies). While the anti-racist wing could cite abundant anti-racist passages in the Quran—something a Christian can’t do with the Bible, as there really are no verses directly on that point; e.g. the closest one can get is Paul’s universalism in Gal. 3:28–29, but even that doesn’t address black people but just white people getting along, Greeks and Jews; partly because color racism didn’t exist that much yet in Western society, that was a Jewish/Arab thing.

If you are seeing a battle between what the Quran says and what some disputed Hadiths say, generally the Quran is going to win out as representing the correct intended spirit of the religion. Which is a point mirrored in Martin Luther’s analog: if the conflict is between what religious leaders today say, e.g. the Pope, and what the Bible says, the Bible wins, thereby creating Protestantism, a development quickly abandoned, as Christian sects simply re-elevated what modern interpreters and leaders said over anything original to the Bible, although the Bible is so awful that actually was a good thing.

Since this article is pretty relevant nowadays, I will just say that aside from Bill’s whataboutism here, he is, as usual, clueless about Islam, its canon/literature and its history/tradition.

Muhammad was a horrible human being in a lot of ways and that includes confirming slavery and legalizing it (albeit a generally more humane form with some rights etc) along with concubines as well. However, for all his faults, he was definitely not racist. Indeed, he was actively anti-racist in a vocal way. For example:

https://quran.com/en/al-hujurat/13

https://quran.com/en/ar-rum/22

https://www.prophetmuhammad.com/ahmad/23489

https://sunnah.com/abudawud:5121

https://surahquran.com/Hadith-109519.html

And one of his closest companions/disciples who Muhammad promised heaven by name and chose him to call for prayers was Bilal, a black freed Ethiopian slave who was freed by Muhammad’s closest companion and first Caliph Abu Bakr who paid a lot of money to free him in the early years of Muhammad’s ministry, an act highly praised by Muhammad.

As for the hadith Bill referenced, it doesn’t mean that a white/Arab slave is worth two black slaves. The color is a totally incidental point here; the problem was that the slave wanted to embrace Islam and acknowledge Muhammad as a political leader and prophet. His master was a non-Muslim, so he objected. Consequently, Muhammad solved this by offering to buy him. They master clearly had bargaining power in this situation, so Muhammad had to pay what he wanted (This is a barbric story about slave trade and silly religious doctrines, but is not about race).

Crazily enough, I’m not afraid of whatever your version of the antichrist is cause I was raised by the antichrist, Married the antichrist, and now work for the antichrist.

Your a very confused person..

Jonathan: Having made these points before, you will find that Christians will very often tune them out too.

First of all, you’re a filthy atheist, so they can just put you into the “ignorant” box in their head and ignore you. You’re speaking lies to them. Even the Devil uses scripture for his purpose, right?

Second, many have heard this point before. They hear it from liberal Christians. This is viewed as an internecine Church squabble. And Christians are actually often pretty good at those. That’s where they very often are quite informed. It is very often shocking to see someone who is just utterly ignorant on history, archaeology, biology, etc. very suddenly go off on a very long tangent about their Church’s specific interpretation of “good works” or dispensations or what not with great erudition and Biblical references.

See, these viewpoints they have aren’t really from their Christianity . Logically, we know that ahead of time: many Christians don’t share that viewpoint, so it’s not Christianity in isolation that makes them have these viewpoints.

Rather, it’s a culture of power and domination. That’s why black evangelicals are overwhelmingly more likely to vote Democrat even if they share many of the same retrograde social beliefs and why their messaging so often focuses on the real ungodliness as being poverty, callousness, etc.

Christianity is paired with conservative and American “patriotic” (read: dangerously jingoistic) culture among many of the people Richard is referring to. Each one buttresses the other. They hold onto these beliefs because they have a need to maintain a worldview that not only lets them think they’ll meet their family when they die and lets them feel the awe of worshiping an amazing entity but also allows them to continue to not worry about their masculinity, their heterosexuality, their whiteness, or their affluence. They get a divine sanction to be “tough on crime”, to feel like their own backyard is safe, to beat back those evil socialists. And because the specific incarnation of the religion evolved in part to be a defense mechanism for other beliefs they want to hold for other reasons, it will resist inoculation into a more liberal form.

Frans: I was somewhat aware of that but definitely would need to study it in more depth. Thanks for the point!

As regards dictatorships: First of all, who cares what dictatorships the US supported in the 1980s? Doesn’t that single-handedly make it silly as hell to talk about Muslim hypocrisy?

But, second, I reject your framing. The Latin American death squads may have been nominally secular, but all of those societies were heavily influenced by right-wing Catholicism, and the few people like Archbishop Romero who opposed this were at risk of censure or murder. And you know that whole “Iran-contra” thing? You know, the sale of weapons to radical Islamists to kill Nicaraguan Christians? We backed the Shah who was definitely not strictly secular.

More importantly, the US has never stopped supporting dictatorships, ever. Including religious ones. So why did you decide to just stop the clock at the 1980s? Did you do that because it was convenient to your argument?

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/americas-most-awkward-allies-103889

Pakistan. Uzbekistan. Egypt before the revolution. Bahrain. Azerbaijan. Tajikistan. Qatar. The UAE. Please, tell me again, Bill, that all of these are secular governments.
Trying to pretend the US will not back Islamist militants as it needs to is just historical revisionism, Bill. It’s beneath you. Why do you want to die on this hill?

Notice, of course, how this is relevant to our conversation about critical legal studies and critical race theory. Nominally, the US stands for democracy… while overthrowing democracies and backing dictatorships. Similarly, the US nominally stands for Christian hegemony (at least across a large part of the political spectrum)… but they are actually perfectly willing to back Muslims and kill Christians. And that fact, the US’ backing of dictatorships, is exactly the kind of thing that the people you are stanning for would want to eliminate from the textbooks. Even though it actually tells us a lot about this country. Precisely because it tells us a lot about this country. It tells us that so many of the public commitments that the US government makes are never honestly believed, and that policy has to do with crass power and wealth calculations. The only thing CRT adds to that is to point out the additional element of race in that power structure.

As for Suharto: https://www.grin.com/document/110780 . There’s no reason to even address you even weakly trying to defend the brutal Suharto regime. Suharto did not just murder Islamists. He murdered trade unionists, Communists, and any dissidents ( https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/suharto-one-of-the-greatest-mass-murderers-of-the-20th-century-777103.html ). This is fucking noxious. But what is interesting is, as that GRIN article discusses, that Islam actually was a key part of the pro-democracy movement there. But hey, keep talking about how uniformly awful they are while you are defending the backing of murderous dictatorships.

This is what denying things like CRT gets you, Bill. You have to end up stanning for death squads.

Even you know that the US backs Saudi Arabia, the most dangerous source of Wahhabism in the world. All you have to offer is some mealy-mouthed shit about how dictatorships usually arrive through a coup so therefore… I guess… brutal Islamist monarchs are fine? Hey, remember when you pretended to care about slavery in Islam? But now I guess because Saudi Arabia is a US ally and isn’t a dictatorship it’s okay that they are deeply involved in the slave trade? Yeah, I guess the Saudis don’t suspend elections. No need to suspend things that you never have , right?! I guess the real concern is that an election is suspended rather than the concern being that an election needs to be conducted ever ?! Democracy is just another thing you’ll toss onto the altar of defending your implicit racism, Bill. Your fee-fees matter more than freedom.

Bill. Stop. Seriously. Stop. Look at how you’re squirming. Look at how you’re having to make excuses for your belief system. Why? Why are you bothering? How is this pitiful behavior easier for you to go through than just saying “Hey, actually, you may have a point, I guess I should do some research on CRT?”

So, like I did last time, I’m going to go back to educating you whenever you try to squirm out of it.

What do critical race theorists believe? Probably not every member would subscribe to every tenet set out in this book, but many would agree on the following propositions. First, that racism is ordinary, not aberrational—”normal science,” the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country. Second, most would agree that our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material. The first feature, ordinariness, means that racism is difficult to cure or address. Color-blind, or “formal,” conceptions of equality, expressed in rules that insist only on treatment that is the same across the board, can thus remedy only the most blatant forms of discrimination, such as mortgage redlining or the refusal to hire a black Ph.D. rather than a white high school dropout, that do stand out and attract our attention. The second feature, sometimes called “interest convergence” or material determinism, adds a further dimension. Because racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class people (psychically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it. Consider, for example, Derrick Bell’s shocking proposal (discussed in a later chapter) that Brown v. Board of Education—considered a great triumph of civil rights litigation—may have resulted more from the self-interest of elite whites than a desire to help blacks.

https://jordaninstituteforfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Delgado_and_Stefancic_on_Critical_Race_Theory.pdf

This article goes on to discuss what CRT advocates tend to think about how much racism there is in the world. They do not say that America is no different from Jim Crow. They do mention that racism continues and discuss specifics.

So, please, Bill, tell me again that this is indistinguishable from the Nation of Islam because you disagree with it.