Enslaved Icelander Describes Horror of Ottoman Slave Market (1627) // Diary of Ólafur Egilsson

Islam and abolition of slavery - Dr. Jonathan Brown

Slavery: A 21st Century Evil - Bridal slaves

The incredible journey of an African Muslim Slave

HOW ENSLAVED MUSLIMS IN THE AMERICAS FASTED IN RAMADHAN

There is no doubt that the strains of living as a slave were many and the conditions brutal. One had their days and nights planned out by their masters from the day they were born until the day they died, albeit the Muslims talked about here were born free and then enslaved. Whether one was born free or born a slave, you were not in control of your daily life. There were certain aspects that West African Muslim slaves did try to control once they came to the Americas. For example, enslaved Muslims found the nakedness they were forced into humiliating and offensive to their religion. They looked to make head wraps and long garments from anything from old blankets or hand-me-downs from their owners.

Where slaves could find autonomy they exercised it; one of these was adhering to the Islamic dietary laws. One of these laws was abstaining from alcohol even though it was widely available and consumption was encouraged.  Ayuba Suleyman Diallo, from modern day Senegal, was enslaved in Maryland for two years before being sent to England. It was in Maryland that Diallo was interrogated about a crime and was offered alcohol to ease his fears about the situation, he flatly refused. Diallo was not alone in his refusal of alcohol; Ibrahima Rahman, also refused alcohol.

Unfortunately, there was less control over the types of meat that was given and available to eat. The cheapest meat of the day was pork and was found in abundance. There were instances such as Nero, a Muslim slave who was the bookkeeper for the William Ball plantation in South Carolina. Nero was allowed to draw his meat rations from beef rather than pork. This may be a privilege of being a bookkeeper (a prestigious job that a slave could have) and less his owner being concerned with Islamic dietary law. Diallo, not only refused alcohol (as mentioned before) but, would only eat halal meat.  The other option would be to forgo the consumption of meat, which is what Salih Bilali and other enslaved Muslims did on the Hopeton Plantation in Georgia.

Enslaved Muslims tried their hardest to observe not only dietary laws, but also fasting during Ramadan. Free and enslaved Muslims in Brazil had less restrictions on their everyday lives than their North American counterparts and were allowed to eat together and even attended school together in some occasions. The non-Muslim Brazilian population watched as Muslims fasted and exchanged gifts that the Brazilians understood as sak

Enslaved Muslims living on Sea Island, Georgia also fasted when they could and the women on the island would fix rice cakes known as saraka to the non-Muslim observers. Saraka was a variation of the word sadaqah in Arabic meaning non-obligatory charity. The son of Salih Bilali was sent to a plantation on Saint Simmons Island, Georgia but, he kept his Islamic faith and not only fasted but made saraka for other slaves, Muslim and non-Muslims. Omar ibn Said, a Muslim slave in North Carolina was said to have been a “staunch Mohammedan and the first month of the year kept his fast of Ramadan with strictness.”

Enslaved Muslims could have chosen not to fast during Ramadan but, there are a few reasons why they may have chosen to. It is important to acknowledge that each plantation had to have their own moon sighting to keep track of the Islamic months. Enslaved Muslims were looking to keep their Islamic identity in enslavement just as they would have if they were slaves in their respective homelands. Enslaved Muslims were fighting this idea of not only being slaves but, being legal property with little to no rights. Muslims could not justify neglecting their religious duties because of the social conditions.  This was not a phenomenon only in the United States but, wherever West African Muslims landed there was an attempt to hold onto their religious duties. Muhammad Kaba for example, a Muslim slave in Jamaica, would pretend to be sick whenever he wished to observe fasting.

In the hostile world that Muslims found themselves in following their religious customs was a way to stay connected to home and worship. The eagerness to follow their religious rituals and laws was seen in the United States, South America, and the Caribbean. Individual Muslims, families on plantations, and entire communities in Brazil, looked to salvage the little autonomy they had by following through with their religious obligations the best they could.

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A Message From Our Ancestors (Britain's Slave Trade Documentary) | Timeline

Omar ibn Said: the Islamic scholar who became a slave

Omar ibn Said was the son of a wealthy father and was born in 1770 in the region of Futa Toro. He would take on Arabic and other Islamic studies and eventually become a teacher of Qur’an in his village. In 1807, he was on a military campaign with a rival tribe and was enslaved. Said, was sent to Charleston, South Carolina; and owned by “Johnson” who, in the words of Said, was “weak, small, and evil”. Said, escaped from Johnson and found himself in the woods of North Carolina where he came upon a house. Omar decided to enter to pray, it can be said Said, had no idea where he was on the social stratification in the United States.

Said would have been familiar with the slave system in Islamic West Africa, which is described by Sylviane Diouf in her book Servants of Allah: African Muslim enslaved in the Americas. According to Diouf, slaves in many African societies lived with the families or in a near by village. This form of slavery resembled European serfdom more so than American chattel slavery. As far as slavery in an Islamic context, Said knew he was a prisoner of war, and never seemed to question his enslavement but only his treatment as a slave.

Returning to Omar ibn Said’s life, after he entered the house he was later arrested and placed in a jail in Fayetteville, North Carolina. In the cell there was a pile of coal. With this coal he would write Qur’an verses on the jailhouse walls. It should be noted that West Africa had no concept of jails, this would be another foreign concept to Omar ibn Said. Said became a local celebrity of sorts and caught the attention of General James Owen of North Carolina. It was under the ownership of James Owen that Said openly converted to Christianity. He was even gifted an Arabic Bible by Francis Scott Key (Key and Said had exchanged letters in 1819. In one of these letters Said wrote Key, Surah Nasr(The Victory). The conversion of Said has been questioned by many historians and scholars such as Ala Alryyes but, this shall be covered later.

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Father stares at the hand and foot of his five-year-old, severed as a punishment for failing to make the daily rubber quota, Belgian Congo, 1904

He hadn’t made his rubber quota for the day so the Belgian-appointed overseers had cut off his daughter’s hand and foot. Her name was Boali. She was five years old. Then they killed her. But they weren’t finished. Then they killed his wife too. And because that didn’t seem quite cruel enough, quite strong enough to make their case, they cannibalized both Boali and her mother. And they presented Nsala with the tokens, the leftovers from the once living body of his darling child whom he so loved. His life was destroyed. They had partially destroyed it anyway by forcing his servitude but this act finished it for him. All of this filth had occurred because one man, one man who lived thousands of miles across the sea, one man who couldn’t get rich enough, had decreed that this land was his and that these people should serve his own greed. Leopold had not given any thought to the idea that these African children, these men and women, were our fully human brothers, created equally by the same Hand that had created his own lineage of European Royalty.

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Slavery: A Past and Present Tragedy with Sheikh Omar Suleiman

Bridal slaves

India has one of the world's fastest growing economies. But the southwest Asian country also has the largest number of slaves in the world

In the midst of widespread poverty, fueled by economic inequality and rampant corruption, a new form of slavery - bridal slavery - has flourished. Women and young girls are sold for as little as $120 to men who often burden them with strenuous labour and abuse them.

In a country where female children are sometimes considered a financial burden, the common practice of infanticide and gender-selective abortion has led to a shortfall in the number of women available for marriage - something made all the more problematic by high dowry costs. Experts say this has encouraged bride trafficking.

Jamila, a former bride slave, says her traffickers kidnapped and drugged her, before selling her to an abusive man. "He would hit me and beat me day and night. I would have to work all day in the heat .... That's no life .... Is it worth living?"

Shafiq Khan, who runs a grassroots organisation dedicated to tracking down bride traffickers and their victims, explains: "The girls do equal amounts of work in two jobs. They are sex slaves, not just to one man but a group of 10 or 12 men. Apart from that there is agriculture - working on the farms with animals from morning until night."

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Madagascar maids: Misery in the Middle East

Forced to work as a "slave maid" for wealthy families in Lebanon for 15 years, Abeline Baholiarisoa - a 59-year-old woman from Madagascar - finally achieved her freedom in March.

Madagascar's government chartered a plane to evacuate her and 85 other women.

The youngest of her four children, whom she left behind when he was six years old, played a key role in her evacuation, tracking her down via a welfare agency that rescues "slave maids", she says.

Ms Baholiarisoa says she was trapped in "a living hell" after being duped into going to Lebanon.

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A recruiting agency had promised her a nursing job for three years, with a salary of $800 (£486) a month.

Ms Baholiarisoa says she thought it would give her a chance to save money, which she could send to her children.

But her dream was shattered the minute she touched down in Beirut.

"It was a trap, because as soon as I got there they took away my papers and said my contract didn't mean anything," Ms Baholiarisoa says.

"They said, 'Abeline, this is null and void.' For the next 15 years they shattered my life and the lives of my children."

Ms Baholiarisoa says she was put to work as a maid with another Malagasy woman in the house of a rich couple with newborn triplets.

"We didn't have time to eat or sleep - night and day. We didn't even have time to clean ourselves.

"I worked 24 hours a day and received $160 a month. From this, I had to pay the lady of the house money for my food because they only gave us a quarter of a loaf of bread and some bits of fruit each day."

'Women crippled'

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Ms Baholiarisoa says she ran away from her first job after seven months and her second job after two years.

But with no papers and no way to return home she was forced to accept maid jobs for 12 more years.

Fabienne Marie Ange - a social worker with Madagascar's Union of Qualified Domestic Workers (SPDTS), which specialises in helping "slave maids" - says many of them are so traumatised that they do not even know where they are.

"Sometimes in Lebanon the boss gives them drugs to keep them strong. They have to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and they don't eat properly. It has an effect on their mental [health]," Ms Ange says.

Ms Baholiarisoa says she refused her employer's attempts to give her pills for "stress", but she knew of people who ended up with an "empty brain" after taking them.

"You become like a beast, like an animal made for work," she says.

Some women are forced to work in Lebanon's clubs and streets as prostitutes, while some maids sell their bodies on the side just to pay for food, Ms Ange says.

According to SPDTS President Noro Randimbiarison, some of the women have died in mysterious circumstances in Lebanon.

When their bodies were eventually returned to Madagascar, it was discovered that several of them had missing organs.

"Some families decided to open the coffin and found that the girl didn't have eyes, her eyes had been replaced by doll's eyes, or they didn't have a tongue or intestines or the heart. This really happens. It's real," says Ms Randimbiarison.

Medical reports on the cause of death are vague - and some families have been told that the women committed suicide by jumping off tall buildings, she says.

Ms Baholiarisoa claims women were pushed from windows, sometimes to cripple them just enough so they could not run away; others disappear, fuelling suspicion that they were killed.

'Trafficking rackets'

"We have no idea how many women have died out there or have gone mad because if you ask a boss where is his maid they say she ran off with someone and it's over," she says.

"Where is the proof that she's run off and they haven't buried her in the courtyard? We don't have any proof."

Madagascar's Minister of Population Nadine Ramaroson, the only government minister tackling the issue, says "a very organised network" involving senior government officials and businessmen emerged in the 1990s to engage in human trafficking.

Government officials provide fraudulent work permits, travel and identity document for around $5,000 per trafficked woman, social workers say.

Ms Ramaroson says the government is trying to break the criminal networks, but it is not easy.

While one job agency flew 300 women to Jordan last month with the government's approval, 43 women bound for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were stopped from boarding planes.

Ms Ramaroson said all were recruited from remote rural areas with high illiteracy and poverty levels. Some 16-year-old girls were given forged identity papers showing their age as 21.

She said their contracts stated they would work in top institutions "when these girls don't even know what electricity is".

Ms Baholiarisoa considers herself lucky. Given up for dead by her older children, her youngest child - now an adult - contacted SPDTS to help trace his mother.

They picked up one of her many calls for repatriation at the consulate in Beirut, she says.

Ms Baholiarisoa now helps SPDTS track down other women trying to escape Lebanon and to prevent other women from being duped into taking jobs in the Middle East.

"If the madam at SPDTS hadn't taken me in with open arms I don't know what I would have done," she says.

"It pains me that these girls are leaving because I know what awaits them, especially the beautiful ones."

From the plane load of women rescued in March, Ms Baholiarisoa is the only one with a job.

Some of the women have returned to discover husbands remarried and children adopted.

Others, like Ms Baholiarisoa, have to rebuild relationships after much hurt and loss.

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