OVO

Hitchens reflects the popular view, which is that the onus for slavery is squarely on the West. [...] Some of the evidence that Islamic slavery still goes on consists of a spate of slavery cases involving Muslims in the United States. A Saudi named Homaidan Al-Turki was sentenced in September 2006 to 27 years to life in prison, for keeping a woman as a slave in his home in Colorado. For his part, Al-Turki claimed that he was a victim of anti-Muslim bias. He told the judge: “Your honor, I am not here to apologize, for I cannot apologize for things I did not do and for crimes I did not commit. The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution.” The following month, an Egyptian couple living in Southern California received a fine and prison terms, to be followed by deportation, after pleading guilty to holding a ten-year-old girl as a slave. And in January 2007, an attache of the Kuwaiti embassy in Washington and his wife were charged with keeping three Christian domestic workers from India in slave-like conditions in al-Saleh’s Virginia home. One of the women remarked: “I believed that I had no choice but to continue working for them even though they beat me and treated me worse than a slave.” Slavery is still practiced openly today in two Muslim countries, Sudan and Mauritania.

[Article continues at link. It was the secularization of Christianity, and not Christianity, that ended the open slave trade in the West. It is the restistance of Islam to secularization that keeps the open slave trade alive in the Muslim world. - Trevor Blake]

There is evidence that slavery continues in some majority-Muslim countries – Saudi Arabia, which abolished slavery in 1962, Yemen and Oman in 1970, and Niger in 2004. [2004!!!]

Jihad Watch: “Hitchens simply cannot be this stupid”

This site was originally created in support of the PBS series SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA, produced by Thirteen/WNET New York and sponsored by New York Life Insurance Company. The series premiered in February 2004.

Slavery in America

Question 11.4.1: Practices Towards Others: Does Judaism permit slavery?

Police in the Netherlands say they have cracked a crime ring which allegedly trafficked Nigerian children into the West to work as sex slaves.

Dutch smash voodoo child trade

All Muslim countries.

Slavery’s thriving hot spots | FP Passport

The police on Friday stormed a new church for born-again Christians in Gulu district and rescued over 200 children who were under illegal custody.

Uganda: 200 children rescued from church

slaves helped cast the bronze on the “Statue of Freedom” atop the Arkansas Capitol Dome, and devised a method to lift the statue to its present perch.

Lincoln Effort to Study Slave Labor at U.S. Capitol Becomes Reality

From the “Christ@Work” Web page: “Christ@Work is the organizational brand name for FCCI used in the United States. FCCI (Fellowship of Companies for Christ) is an international organization of Christian business leaders whose members believe in the sovereignty of God and the validity of His Word. As such, we understand that God is the owner of the company we seek to lead, and that we are stewards of His business. Together we seek His will for the operations of these companies through study, mutual encouragement and accountability, and prayer. [...] Mixing religion and business DOES work.” FCCI believes that “the Bible is God’s written and inspired revelation to man and is the primary authority for man’s life.” They cite Leviticus 19:35, wherein the Lord commands us to not cheat others by using dishonest weights and measurements in commerce. That sounds good. I wonder what they have to say about Leviticus 19:19, wherein the Lord commands us to not wear clothes of both linen and wool? How about Leviticus 19:20-22, wherein the Lord commands us to beat slave women who have sex with men other than their slave-fiance (the Lord missed His chance, again, to say that slavery was wrong)? And does FCCI have anything to say about Leviticus 19:27, wherein the Lord commands men to refrain from rounding the corners of their hair or beards? The Lord commanded us to do all those things, and said them all at the same time – shouldn’t we do all of them?

The Bible does contain some fine moral advice in it. It also contains some inhumanly evil moral advice. It also contains some foolish nonsense that dresses itself up as moral advice. That doesn’t make it much different from any number of other books, ancient and modern. What makes the Bible different is that groups like FCCI cite the Bible as divinely inspired – infalliable, and to be taken as a whole. The FCCI presents the Bible as a moral authority only when it makes sense and when it matches current secular morals. When the Bible commands us to beat women slaves or to not cut our beards in God-displeasing ways, only a few verses away from the ‘good’ stuff, the FCCI has to rely on people not reading the Bible for themselves to maintain their moral authority.

Slavery was formally abolished in Saudi Arabia only in 1962, with much protesting and grumbling and, in the case of one Saudi princess, a refusal to comply.

Dhimmi Watch: Fitzgerald: Blacks, slavery, Islam

What if you could know that your unborn baby boy is likely to be sexually attracted to other boys? Beyond that, what if hormonal treatments could change the baby’s orientation to heterosexual? Would you do it? Some scientists believe that such developments are just around the corner. [...] If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

[Article continues at link. Let's consider Dr. Mohler's claims. He claims Hinuism, Buddhism and Marxism are satanic (Catholics, too), and he claims that atheism is a religion. He claims "intelligent design" is a scientific theory. Dr. Mohler claims the North won the US Civil War because they were Christians (but, uh, weren't the South Christians too? And isn't the Bible just queer for slavery?) He is also way against torture except sometimes. So for sure and for real this guy has the high ground when it comes to morals and facts, and oh thank heaven he and his kind have the ear of the Bush administration. American Samizdat, March 9 2007 - Trevor Blake]

In the US, there are 2,270 prisoners who were sentenced as children to life without parole. They will die behind bars. [...] Michigan is one of 41 states in America that allows children under 18 to be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. The US is among a tiny minority of countries (Somalia is another) that have refused to sign up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that expressly forbids the practice. According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, only three other countries – Israel, South Africa and Tanzania – mete out the sentence and they have collectively just 12 prisoners serving it.

[How do the crimes and sentences of these children compare to the crimes and sentences of Nazi war criminals? Karl Donitz, second Reichsprasident of the Third Reich following Hitler's suicide, was sentenced to 10 years. Konstantin von Neurath, found guilty of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war-crimes and crimes against humanity, was sentenced to 15 years. Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth and found guilty of crimes against humanity, was sentenced to 20 years. Albert Speer, found guilty of the use of slave labor, was sentenced to 20 years. Nothing can bring back the men and women murdered by children serving life sentences in US prisons. But life in prison for children cannot be the only answer to this problem. - Trevor Blake]

In “Working for the Enemy,” historians tell the astonishing story of what happened at Opel and Ford Werke under the Third Reich, and of the aftermath to the present day.

Working for the Enemy – Ford, General Motors & Forced Labor in Germany during the Second World War

forced into sexual slavery shortly after arriving in Los Angeles in 1976. She faces deportation in May unless she wins a pardon from California’s governor for a murder that she says she did not commit.

Once a slave in the US, still fighting for her freedom | csmonitor.com

Lawyers in Sudan’s Darfur region are investigating reports of slavery during the conflict

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Probe of Darfur ‘slavery’ starts

“We have achieved what the American plantation owners dreamed of – the breeding of perfectly submissive slaves”.

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Slavery: Mauritania’s best kept secret