Islamic Republic of Mauritania intensifies crackdown on anti-slavery activists

September 30, 201610:17 am By Robert Spencer 12 Comments
We constantly hear in the West that Islam forbids slavery. Reality is otherwise.
The Qur’an has Allah telling Muhammad that he has given him girls as sex slaves: “Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.” (Qur’an 33:50)
Muhammad bought slaves: “Jabir (Allah be pleased with him) reported: There came a slave and pledged allegiance to Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) on migration; he (the Holy Prophet) did not know that he was a slave. Then there came his master and demanded him back, whereupon Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) said: Sell him to me. And he bought him for two black slaves, and he did not afterwards take allegiance from anyone until he had asked him whether he was a slave (or a free man).” (Muslim 3901)
Muhammad took female Infidel captives as slaves: “Narrated Anas: The Prophet offered the Fajr Prayer near Khaibar when it was still dark and then said, ‘Allahu-Akbar! Khaibar is destroyed, for whenever we approach a (hostile) nation (to fight), then evil will be the morning for those who have been warned.’ Then the inhabitants of Khaibar came out running on the roads. The Prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and woman taken as captives. Safiya was amongst the captives. She first came in the share of Dahya Alkali but later on she belonged to the Prophet. The Prophet made her manumission as her ‘Mahr.’” (Bukhari 5.59.512) Mahr is bride price: Muhammad freed her and married her. But he didn’t do this to all his slaves:
Muhammad owned slaves: “Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah’s Apostle was on a journey and he had a black slave called Anjasha, and he was driving the camels (very fast, and there were women riding on those camels). Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Waihaka (May Allah be merciful to you), O Anjasha! Drive slowly (the camels) with the glass vessels (women)!’” (Bukhari 8.73.182) There is no mention of Muhammad’s freeing Anjasha.

“Mauritania intensifies crackdown on anti-slavery activists, says campaigner,” by Nellie Peyton, Reuters, September 30, 2016 (thanks to Lookmann):
DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Mauritanian anti-slavery activists jailed last month have been tortured in detention and transferred to a remote desert location in an “intensification of repression” by the state, a leading campaigner said.
The West African nation in August jailed 13 members of the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA) for up to 15 years for their role in June protests by residents of a slum in the capital Nouakchott, many of whom are former slaves.
Slavery is a historical practice in Mauritania, which became the last country worldwide to legally abolish it in 1981.
Today some 43,000 people or at least one percent of the population live as slaves, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index. Yet other estimates put the number as high as 20 percent in a country that is a focus of activism by the modern anti-slavery movement.
The 13 activists have been tortured and were this week moved to the desert north where they are cut off from their families, doctors, and lawyers, according to members of the IRA in the northern town of Zouerate who were informed of the relocation.
Mauritanian government officials did not respond for requests to comment.
“This intensification of repression is equal to the intensification of the fight (against slavery),” Biram Dah Abeid, head of the IRA and an opposition politician, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Dakar, Senegal.
“Our colleagues suffered physical and psychological harm,” he said, adding that people cannot even visit the prisoners’ families for fear of being watched by the government….