Yemen slave market
This is all well and good, as it is necessary, but what’s noticeably lacking is any acknowledgement of the major role Islam (and still is) played in the creation and sustaining of the African slave trade, that the Europeans tapped into during the mid 1500’s when they brought slaves from the African continent to the Americas.
There is only a slight nod and a wink in the article to the 1400 year existence of the Islamic slave trade, which pillaged and raped the African continent in search for slaves to bring back to the Arab Muslim kingdoms of the Levant and the Maghreb. Until Islam’s role is noted in a meaningful way, this shameful chapter in history will never be closed. KGS
NOTE: The article below mentions “slaves being shipped across the Sahara”, please take note of it, for in the comments to the BBC article, Suleiman – Isa, Adamu, from Abuja, Nigeria, can only bear to mention the Islamic slave trade in the exact same way.
“This is certainly, YES in capital letters. African traditional leaders “rulers” should all stand before their very common poor affected African people to confess and religiously apologise for the cruel act of trans-Sahara slave trade which led to the traumatic and bad leadership portrait on their ruled masses which brought about a present day fail African Nation“
Link:
African slavery apology ‘needed’
Traditional African rulers should apologise for the role they played in the slave trade, a Nigerian rights group has said in a letter to chiefs.
“We cannot continue to blame the white men, as Africans particularly the traditional rulers, are not blameless,” said the Civil Rights Congress.
The letter said some collaborated or actively sold off their subjects.
The group said it was time for African leaders to copy the US and the UK who have already said they were sorry.
It urged Nigeria’s traditional rulers to apologise on behalf of their forefathers and “put a final seal to the history of slave trade”, AFP news agency reports.
Civil Rights Congress president Shehu Sani says they are calling for this apology because traditional rulers are seeking inclusion in the forthcoming constitutional amendment in Nigeria.
“We felt that for them to have the moral standing to be part of our constitutional arrangement there are some historical issues for them to address,” he told the BBC World Service.
“One part of which is the involvement of their institutions in the slave trade.”
He said that on behalf of the buyers of slaves, the ancestors of these traditional rulers “raided communities and kidnapped people, shipping them away across the Sahara or across the Atlantic”.
