by John Galt
July 13, 2012 05:00 ET
Despite popular belief that modern Islamic society has “evolved” away from its practices of the past, stories persist about modern Muslim nations tolerating the importation of and of course associated abuse which occurs of non-Islamic peoples being used as slaves. In fact the United States State Department for years has decried the abuses of Islamic nations using women, children, and non-Muslims as slaves in their modern societies. Historically, this has been an approved practice for minority or infidel religions to be adopted as slaves within the Islamic faith as an article from the BBC outlined in 2009:
Islam’s approach to slavery added the idea that freedom was the natural state of affairs for human beings and in line with this it limited the opportunities to enslave people, commended the freeing of slaves and regulated the way slaves were treated:
- Islam greatly limited those who could be enslaved and under what circumstances (although these restrictions were often evaded)
- Islam treated slaves as human beings as well as property
- Islam banned the mistreatment of slaves – indeed the tradition repeatedly stresses the importance of treating slaves with kindness and compassion
- Islam allowed slaves to achieve their freedom and made freeing slaves a virtuous act
- Islam barred Muslims from enslaving other Muslims
But the essential nature of slavery remained the same under Islam, as elsewhere. It involved serious breaches of human rights and however well they were treated, the slaves still had restricted freedom; and, when the law was not obeyed, their lives could be very unpleasant.
Thus this begs a question as the student of Islam, Barack Hussein Obama returned to Muslim Indonesia in October of 1967:
Did the Obama family, his stepfather or mother, engage in the practice of owning Christian slaves while living in Jakarta, Indonesia?
The prompting for this question occurs due to centuries of tradition in the Islamic nations of owning non-Muslim slaves to serve the believers as the infidels had no rights unless they agreed to accept Allah and assimilate within the Islamic faith. As late as 2009, articles about the subject circulated from groups like Human Rights Watch (via SOSChildren.org.uk):
Child slavery in Indonesia
<quote from the article linked above>
Many Indonesians have live-in maids who cook and clean, but a new report by Human Rights Watch said hundreds of thousands of them are underage girls, some as young as 11.
“There’s a wilful blindness on behalf of some government officials who choose to ignore or deny that child domestic workers are exploited and abused,” said Bede Sheppard of Human Rights Watch.
The 78 child maids interviewed in the report told of 18-hour workdays, sexual abuse by their employers, and conditions tantamount to slavery as they were forced to work for free.
Fifteen-year-old Ratu was one of the child maids researchers spoke to. She said: “Every day my employer was angry and she would kick me and pinch me. Almost every day. When I mopped the floor, I did not use a mop for mopping, just my hands and a rag, and then my employer kicked me to go deeper under the bed. She would pinch me on my shoulders.”
This shocking story begs for an accounting by the President and his family. If indeed his family adopted the traditional Islamic lifestyle while residing in Indonesia, how many slaves did they own? There are scant records indicating that his family did not adopt the lifestyle and own a slave or two thus the question becomes more pertinent as this administration paints a face of upholding human rights internationally but quite possibly deceiving the American public and the world about the conditions of children within his family’s own household. The accounting for the problem is solely that of the White House as the practice of human slavery is indeed a valid use of hapless children as the Quran provides several Suras to justify the activity:
Slavery
- 4:36 “(Show) kindness unto parents, and unto near kindred, and orphans, and the needy, and unto the neighbour who is of kin (unto you) and the neighbour who is not of kin, and the fellow-traveller and the wayfarer and (the slaves) whom your right hands possess.”
- 4:92 “It is not for a believer to kill a believer unless (it be) by mistake. He who hath killed a believer by mistake must set free a believing slave, and pay the blood- money to the family of the slain, unless they remit it as a charity. If he (the victim) be of a people hostile unto you, and he is a believer, then (the penance is) to set free a believing slave.”
- 23:5-6 “And who guard their modesty – Save from their wives or the (slaves) that their right hands possess.”
- 24:31 “And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands or fathers or husbands’ fathers, or their sons or their husbands’ sons, or their brothers or their brothers’ sons or sisters’ sons, or their women, or their slaves.”
- 24:58 “O ye who believe! Let your slaves, and those of you who have not come to puberty, ask leave of you at three times (before they come into your presence).”
- 33:25-26 “Allah repulsed the disbelievers in their wrath; they gained no good. Allah averted their attack from the believers. Allah is ever Strong, Mighty. And He brought those of the People of the Scripture who supported them down from their strongholds, and cast panic into their hearts. Some ye slew, and ye made captive some.
- 33:50 “O Prophet! Lo! We have made lawful unto thee thy wives unto whom thou hast paid their dowries, and those whom thy right hand possesseth of those whom Allah hath given thee as spoils of war.”
- 33:55 “It is no sin for them (thy wives) to converse freely) with their fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or the sons of their sisters or of their own women, or their slaves.”
(From The Skeptics Annotated Quran)
Indeed his education in the Madras of Jakarta would support Obama’s learning and accepting the quotes above as part of the culture and belief system of the nation he inhabited as a child, yet as of the publication of this article, President Obama has yet to refute nor renounce the ownership of slaves, especially Christian children, by Islamic masters. The silence about the tragedy of Christian children in Darfur being captured and sold into sexual servitude for Muslim masters illustrates his insensitivity to the issue.
I think it is quite polite of his opponent, Mitt Romney to not bring this issue up as his concerns should be about justifying his prior concerns on outsourcing with Bain Capital, even if he was only an investor and not a corporate officer at that moment. In my opinion, owning Christian slaves is far more egregious than possibly participating in the outsourcing of several hundred jobs, but the silence of the Obama administration on the question above seems to indicate that slavery is an acceptable lifestyle choice for the “Religion of Peace” of which he was educated under in the late 1960′s.
h/t MSNBC,NBC,CBS,ABC,CNN,HUFFPO,SLATE,DAILYBEAST,NEWYORKTIMES, etc. for providing a Journalistic model for asking these important questions before the election…
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