Capture of Mladic and the Bosnian tragedy

The worst crime against humanity and of genocide since the end of the Second World War in the heart of Europe was committed in Bosnia at the end of the 20th century. Triggered by the recent arrest of Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, I am writing this essay lest people forget that episode. Having worked in the World Bank in the 1980s on the-then Yugoslavia, consisting of six republics, including Serbia and Bosnia, I was naturally saddened by the protracted civil war engulfing Yugoslavia in the years 1992-95, particularly in the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The capture after 16 years of Mladic, regarded as the ‘Butcher of Bosnia’, was a great relief to some of us who have long been waiting for it. When a few days ago on television I saw a plane finally carrying him from Belgrade to the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, I felt that the cause of justice will be served at long last.

The current pro-western Serb government, succumbing to the pressure of the European Union and the United States, decided to capture and hand him over to his prosecutors at The Hague. His superior—poet, psychiatrist and ex-president Radovan Karadiz of the Bosnian Serbs—is there since 2008 undergoing trial for war crimes. Mladic is accused of carrying on a ruthless war in violation of the rules of war and humanity and particularly of ordering the cold-blooded murder of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebinica, where they had taken refuge under UN protection and guarded by Dutch troops. Mladic was present there, and TV clips show him patting the boys, assuring them that everything would be alright and then at the next moment callously sending them to death by shooting in a nearby forest.

Bosnia had a Muslim majority (44 per cent) but the Serbs had a significantly large presence (31 per cent). In Bosnian areas adjoining the republic of Croatia, there was also a Croat population (17 per cent). In 1992, Bosnia seceded from the Yugoslav federation, which was dominated by the Serbs and became independent. This was strongly opposed by the Bosnian Serbs as well as by the government of Serbia. A long, brutal civil war followed between the Bosnian Muslims and the local Serbs who were mostly orthodox Christian. The latter, heavily aided by Serbia’s financial resources and armed forces under President Slobodan Milosevic, formed their own government and named it Republika Srpska.

Vast majority of the Bosnian Muslims were ethnically Serbs, who converted to Islam during the long 500 years of Turkish rule in Bosnia. The Serbs, however, treated them as Turks, though there were many inter-marriages between the Muslims and the Serbs. During numerous visits to the beautiful old city of Sarajevo and the picturesque interior areas and the single-span 16th-century Mostar Bridge (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site) built by the Turks over a 90-foot deep gorge in the Neretva River in southern Bosnia, I developed a special attachment for Bosnia and its people. Unfortunately, the bridge was destroyed during the war; it was later rebuilt with international assistance. Sarajevo is the city where the 1986 Winter Olympics were held. During the civil war, the Olympic Stadium was converted into a graveyard such was the number of deaths and the scarcity of places of burial. Staying at the Moscova Hotel, next to the old Turkish Bazaar with antique shops and restaurants serving fine food of kebas, chicken-ala-Kiev and many kinds of sweet Baklavas and a mosque and a Muslim graveyard, we were awakened early in the morning due to azaan on loudspeakers for the Fazr prayers. Mainly Muslim in character and architecture, Sarajevo had, however, a cosmopolitan culture and outlook. Sadly, its 300-year-old library and many other historical buildings and mosques were systematically destroyed by Serb artillery and bombardment.

The brutality of the long Bosnian civil war during 1992-95 and especially the 44-month siege of Sarajevo could be seen daily on TV all over the world. Seeing the Serbs perched on windows shooting the Muslims like chicken while they crossed a street named ‘sniper’s lane’ gave us nightmare. Ten thousand people died during that siege. Bosnian winter is very harsh and due to the energy supplies and roads being cut off, people had to burn their furniture and even books to somehow keep warm. The Serbs, in order to preserve the so-called purity of the Serbian race, unleashed atrocities in the name of ‘ethnic cleansing’. This resulted in the killing of 97,000 and displacement of two million innocent civilians. The terrible suffering of the Bosnian people shocked the Americans and the Europeans and people the world over. It should be mentioned that there were some allegations of crime by the Muslims on the Serbs, too. In the end, US and European pressures during the presidency of Bill Clinton compelled the Serbian president Milosevic to stop the civil war. This allowed the Bosnian Muslims and Croats to settle their affairs under UN supervision. By the way, Milosevic, who was the patron of Karadic and Mladic, was equally guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Milosevic was later handed over to the tribunal at The Hague by the Serbian government but died there in 2006 during his long trial.

One nation under God?

Recently, there has been a good deal of controversy in the United States over a U.S. Court of Appeal’s ruling that it is unconstitutional for public school teachers to lead their students in the Pledge of Allegiance due to the phrase in the pledge, “one nation, under God.” This has long been controversial for both believers and unbelievers alike. In fact, most of the opposition to this phrase has traditionally come from Christians whose beliefs do not allow them to pledge allegiance to any nation, or for whom, “one nation, under God” conflicts with their doctrinal beliefs.

There is, of course, a good deal of validity to these views. As a Christian believer it is obvious that my first allegiance is to God my Father and my Lord Jesus Christ (I Cor. 8:6). My second allegiance is to God’s family throughout the world - over and above any national, racial, ethnic, denominational, or other worldly distinction (Mark 3:31-35). My primary citizenship is as a member of God’s royal household, holy nation and heavenly kingdom (Eph. 2:18-19; I Pet. 2:9-10; Phil. 3:20). And finally, my sole hope for true liberty and justice is the second coming of Christ and the final establishment of God’s kingdom - in a new heavens and new earth, where righteousness will dwell (Matt. 6:9-10; II Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1-7).

All of these above truths should be “givens” for every generation of Christian believers. Christians, however, may differ as to what their relation and duties to any particular nation or government may entail. Nevertheless, the great majority of us living in the twenty first century are citizens of earthly nations, not only citizens of a heavenly new Jerusalem. And so, just as Paul was a citizen of the Roman Empire and used his citizenship rights in advancing the gospel, so I, as an American citizen, try to do the same in my life as a Christian. Therefore, it is interesting to see the views of the U.S. “Founding Fathers” in relationship to what they believed were mankind’s responsibilities in living “under God.”

The United States of America was founded and built on belief in God. In fact, the legal basis for its existence and laws derives from its belief in that God. The founding document of the United States of America, written principally by Thomas Jefferson but edited and signed by all of the members of the Second Continental Congress, is The Declaration of Independence. It was signed on July 4, 1776 and it sets forth the following “self-evident truths” as the legal foundation for the new American republic:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

How can a nation founded on the concept that the role of government is to secure the inalienable rights of men - given to them by a Creator - not teach in public schools that the world was created by that Creator? One would think that this “expression of the American mind” as Thomas Jefferson called it, would be the underlying philosophical basis for the laws of the United States of America. Of course, originally, this was the case. In fact, all of signers of The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States of America believed that the existence of a sovereign, loving and just God was the only basis for both personal morality and just government in this world.

The American Founding Fathers - men such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams - did not believe in a merely formal or ceremonial “deism” – that is, in a God who was thought to have created an orderly universe and then withdrew from it to let the world run on its own – like a great clock. Instead, almost to a man the American Founding Fathers believed in a creator God who also providentially governed the universe and cared for his people. As the last line of the Declaration of Independence states, “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Though men such as Franklin, Jefferson, and even Washington were at times accused of being deists, the historical record makes it clear that this was not the case. They each believed in God’s providential rule of the world. Though somewhat influenced by deistic thought of the Enlightenment, they were far more influenced by their own study of the Bible, and all openly professed some form of Christianity. In fact, all of these men became increasingly more interested in the things of God as they aged and as they had to deal with the huge pressures and burdens of public life. “Unorthodox” by some standards they may have been, but deists they certainly were not. Let’s look at some of their beliefs and then leave it to God to decide their true orthodoxy.

Most important of all was the great American hero and first President of the United States, George Washington. Washington set out his religious views, and their importance to the life of the infant American republic, in his famous Farewell Address to the Nation, at the end of his second term of office. In this address he stated, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

“It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”

John Adams, the second President of the United States was a devout Christian and expressed his views as follows,
“One great advantage of the Christian religion is that it brings the great principle of the law of nature and nations, love your neighbor as yourself, and do to others as you would that others should do to you – to the knowledge, belief and veneration of the whole people. Children, servants, women as well as men are all professors in the science of public as well as private morality…The duties and rights of the citizens are thus taught from early infancy to every creature.” [Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, p. 208].

Thomas Jefferson, who was often called a deist, or even atheist, forcefully denied this and instead claimed, I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus [David Barton, Original Intent, p. 144].

Like most serious people Jefferson grew over time in his search for the truth. But his opposition was always forceful against religious hypocrisy, institutional religion’s position of political power and tyranny, and especially, against the legal establishment of a national or state religion as with the Anglican Church in England as well as in colonial Virginia. For a time he was influenced by deist thought but he was too independent of mind to be forced into an established system of belief whether that of deism or of established Christian denominations. In his excellent book Thomas Jefferson, A Life, William Randall sets forth Jefferson’s search for certainty in religious belief:
“The attacks on his religious views during the 1800 campaign had wounded him… As the Federalists kept up their attacks on him as irreligious and an enemy of Christianity, Jefferson studied the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, marking the passages that he thought represented the simple beliefs of Jesus Christ and ignoring those he considered later corruptions … He became convinced that early Christians most closely resembled the [biblical] Unitarians of the early nineteenth century and he found that his concept of God most closely resembled theirs.” [p. 555-556].

In a letter to John Adams after his Presidency was long over, Jefferson professed to believe in, “the pure and unsophisticated doctrines such as professed and acted on by the unlettered apostles, the Apostolic fathers and the Christians of the first century.” [Ibid, p. 556].

Most of the Founding Fathers mentioned in this article would have agreed with these sentiments to a great degree because the biblical Unitarianism of that time – unlike the Universal Unitarianism of today – was one of the most biblically based of all the Christian denominations of that day. The Theological Dictionary of 1823 described Unitarians as follows:

“In common with other Christians, they confess that He [Jesus] is the Christ, the Son of the Living God; and in one word, they believe all that the writers of the New Testament, particularly the four Evangelists, have stated concerning him.” [Original Intent, p. 314]
These men were not interested in the post-biblical Christian arguments over creeds and doctrinal issues. Instead, they
“reject all human creeds and articles of faith, and strictly adhere to the great Protestant principal, “the Bible – the Bible only;” [Ibid].
In short, many of the founding fathers who adhered to these beliefs simply desired to live upright lives according to the simple truths of first century biblical Christianity, as they understood it.

Benjamin Franklin, like Jefferson, seemed to become more and more concerned with the things of God as he grew older. Like Jefferson, he dabbled in Deism but came to regard it as morally corrupting and “not very useful” [H.W. Brands, The First American, p. 94]. Franklin followed the ethical precepts of Christ, first and foremost, and came to revere a God who was both the creator of the world and providentially at work in the world. His famous speech at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 best exemplifies his belief in a God who is active in the world. Addressing the President of the Convention, George Washington, Franklin asked for the assembly to have daily prayers asking for God’s aid. Then he stated, “I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better that the builders of Babel: we shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and byword down to future ages.” [Quoted from Original Intent, p. 111].

And this from the most famous of all Americans at that time, indeed; the foremost Enlightenment scholar of the world!

This speech was recorded by James Madison. Madison, who is often called the Father of the U.S. Constitution and who was the fourth President of the United States, was a great student of history and somewhat of a protégé of Jefferson and Franklin. Though ardently against any form of a legally established national or state religion he was also a student of the Bible and a strong proponent of the right of individuals and groups to freely exercise their religious beliefs. He expressed his basic belief in God as follows:
“Belief in a God All Powerful, wise and good is so essential to the moral order of the World and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources. [Ralph Ketcham, James Madison, University of Virginia Press, p. 667]

Madison did not believe in a separation of God from state. Instead, he was instrumental in changing the old phrase “toleration of religion” - derived from England where the Church of England increasingly agreed to “tolerate” other Christian denominations - to the American concept of “the free exercise of religion” which gave all individuals and religious groups the equal right to practice their religious beliefs according to their own conscience rather than being forced to acknowledge a national “establishment of religion” such as the Church of England. This became an important right spelled out in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which was written primarily by Madison. It states;

‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…’

In his remarkable book, A History of the American People, the British Christian historian, Paul Johnson, does an excellent job of summarizing the original understanding of this “religion clause” of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“This guarantee has been widely, almost willfully, misunderstood in recent years, and interpreted as meaning that the federal government is forbidden by the Constitution to countenance or subsidize even indirectly the practice of religion. That would have astonished and angered the Founding Fathers. What the guarantee means is that Congress may not set up a state religion on the lines of the Church of England, ‘as by law established.’ It was an anti-establishment clause. The second half of the guarantee means that Congress may not interfere with the practice of any religion, and it could be argued that recent interpretations of the First Amendment run directly contrary to the plain and obvious meaning of this guarantee …

“In effect, the First Amendment forbade Congress to favor one church, or religious sect, over another…The next day it passed, by a two-to-one majority, a resolution calling for a day of national prayer and thanksgiving.

“It is worth pausing a second to look at the details of this gesture, which may regarded as the House’s opinion of how the First Amendment should be understood. The resolution reads:
‘We acknowledge with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peacefully to establish a constitutional government for their safety and happiness.’

“President Washington was then asked to designate the day of prayer and thanksgiving, thus inaugurating a public holiday, Thanksgiving, which Americans still universally enjoy. He replied, ‘It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His mercy, to implore His protection and favor … That great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that ever will be, that we may then unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people.’ “ [pp. 209-210].

So let us finally ask: is it right for the United States of America to proclaim itself as “one nation, under God”? Yes, because it accurately reflects the original intent of the founding principles of The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This statement is not an “establishment of religion” since it does not set up a legal established national religion. Nor does it express any sectarian or denominational belief as opposed to others. However, all of the Founding Fathers believed that the United States should be “one nation, under God.” But better yet, perhaps we should go all the way with Washington and the U.S. Founding Fathers who believed not only in “one nation, under God,” but in the “self-evident” truths that:
1. “all men are created equal” and that
2. “it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God” and “to obey His will.”

The Warrior Monks

To research the Knights Templar proved a daunting undertaking. The voluminous quantity of written material devoted to the subject was intimidating; and we could not at first be sure how much of this material was reliable. If the Cathars had engendered a welter of spurious and romantic legend, the mystification surrounding the Templars was even greater.

On one level they were familiar enough to us the fanatically fierce warrior-monks, knightmystics clad in white mantle with splayed red cross, who played so crucial a role in the Crusades. Here, in some sense, were the archetypal crusaders the storm-troopers of the Holy Land, who fought and died heroically for Christ in their thousands. Yet many writers, even today, regarded them as a much more mysterious institution, an essentially secret order, intent on obscure intrigues, clandestine machinations, shadowy conspiracies and designs. And there remained one perplexing and inexplicable fact. At the end of their two-century-long career, these white garbed champions of Christ were accused of denying and repudiating Christ, of trampling and spitting on the cross.

In Scott’s Ivanhoe the Templars are depicted as haughty and arrogant bullies, greedy and hypocritical despots shamelessly abusing their power, cunning manipulators orchestrating the affairs of men and kingdoms. In other nineteenth-century writers they are depicted as vile satanists, devil-worshippers, practitioners of all manner of obscene, abominable and/or heretical rites. More recent historians have been inclined to view them as hapless victims, sacrificial pawns in the high-level political manoeuvrings of Church and state. And there are yet other writers, especially in the tradition of Freemasonry, who regard the Templars as mystical adepts and initiates, custodians of an arcane wisdom that transcends Christianity itself.

Whatever the particular bias or orientation of such writers, no one disputes the heroic zeal of the Templars or their contribution to history. Nor is there any question that their order is one of the most glamorous and enigmatic institutions in the annals of Western culture. No account of the Crusades or, for that matter, of Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries will neglect to mention the Templars. At their zenith they were the most powerful and influential organisation in the whole of Christendom, with the single possible exception of the papacy.

And yet certain haunting questions remain. Who and what were the Knights Templar? Were they merely what they appeared to be, or were they something else? Were they simple soldiers on to whom an aura of legend and mystification was subsequently grafted? If so, why? Alternatively was there a genuine mystery connected with them? Could there have been some foundation for the later embellishments of myth?

We first considered the accepted accounts of the Templars the accounts offered by respected and responsible historians. On virtually every point these accounts raised more questions than they answered. They not only collapsed under scrutiny, but suggested some sort of ‘cover-up’. We could not escape the suspicion that something had been deliberately concealed and a ‘cover story’ manufactured, which later historians had merely repeated.

Reference : THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL

 Source :

Starvation returns to the Horn of Africa

Drought and war threaten millions with famine, as the refugee camps overflow

In the Horn of Africa, unseen as yet by the world's television cameras, a pitiful trek of the hungry is taking place. Tens of thousands of children are walking for weeks across a desiccated landscape to reach refugee camps that are now overflowing. They are being driven there by one of the worst droughts in the region for 60 years which, combined with the war in Somalia and soaring food prices, is threatening a famine that could affect between eight and 10 million people.

The malnourished children, some of whom become separated from their parents on the way, are now arriving at the camps in northern Kenya at a rate of 1,200 every day. At the largest, built for 90,000, there are now nearly 370,000. Many have covered hundreds of miles on feet that are bare and bleeding. Some reach their goal barely able to stand. Most are exhausted, and dehydrated. All are hungry. 

Aid agency after agency has told The Independent on Sunday in the past few days of the terrible plight of these families from Somalia and Ethiopia. Save the Children (SCF), like many charities so worried it has launched an emergency response to the crisis, said: "Some families have walked for over a month through sand and searing heat in search of food, water and shelter. Many discarded the few possessions they had along the way." The charity's Kenya programme director, Catherine Fitzgibbon, said: "Children have made long journeys in terrifying conditions, often losing their families along the way and arriving at the camps in desperate need of security, healthcare and a normal life." 

Neil Thorns, Cafod's director of advocacy, who led an emergency conference on food shortages in Nairobi last week, said: "There's no rain, no crops and the livestock are dying. There is nothing on the horizon that will make any of that better, and it's almost certain it will get much, much worse. People are migrating in their tens of thousands, but there is nowhere better for them to go. Governments need to wake up to the urgency of the situation and take the action that is needed immediately." 

Cafod said that one aid worker, Nelly Shonko, drove the 100-odd miles between Marsabit in northern Kenya and Moyale on the border with Ethiopia, "seeing hundreds of rural people moving the other way, carrying all their possessions in search of food for their livestock. She knew that the land they were walking towards was no better than where they'd come from." 

Journeys of more than 300 miles are typical: SCF spoke to one woman, called Fatuma, who had walked from her home in Somalia for a month and a half with her four children aged between three and 10 to reach a Kenyan camp. She said: "The weather was very harsh. It was so hot, and there was very little shelter. I left my husband in Somalia. I do not know if I will see him again. The war in Somalia is very bad for families. The drought as well is just too much. We cannot cope. We had 15 goats. But they died one by one because of the drought. We had a well in my village, but it dried up. Then the one in the next village dried up." 

Adan Kabelo, head of Oxfam's work in Somalia, said in a blog: "The situation here is truly shocking, and, as the local elders warned me, we are facing a terrible human catastrophe unless the world acts quickly."

This is a situation that has been brewing – and deteriorating – for a long time. Across much of Somalia and Ethiopia, the last two rains have failed – something which, says SCF's Andrew Wander, used to occur every 10 to 12 years, but now happens almost every other year. The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) says: "In June, the famine early-warning systems network said it had compared rainfall data for Kenya and Ethiopia and concluded that 2010-11 was the driest or second driest year since 1950-51 in 11 of 15 analysed pastoral zones. This does not, however, mean that this is yet the worst drought in the Horn of Africa. The 2007-09 drought, for instance, peaked in September 2009 with 22 million people in need of humanitarian assistance." 

Nevertheless, many of the people in the region are pastoralists, and in some places about 70 per cent of livestock have died. Even in a place like Dobley in Somalia, where there has been a little recent rain, the situation is desperate. Oxfam reports that animal carcasses litter the road to the borehole and "there are hundreds of people and about 15,000 emaciated cows, camels, sheep, and goats crowded around trying to get water to stay alive". Oxfam is frantically trying to keep this borehole flowing. If its engineers fail, the outlook is not good. The next water point is 80km away. 

Audrée Montpetit, senior humanitarian programme quality adviser at Care International, has recently visited the drought-affected region of Borena in Ethiopia. She said: "People are eating less, cutting trees to make charcoal and sell. Since there's no pasture, men are cutting trees to get leaves for their animals. Women, who are responsible for getting water, are having to travel six to 10 hours every day to get it. We've seen an increase in acute malnutrition but there's obviously a lot of water-borne disease too; that's been increasing. People accept that the worst is yet to come." 

And the famine looms at a time when food prices have been increasing sharply for some time – and still are. Since last May, the price of maize has more than doubled in parts of Ethiopia, and that of red sorghum has risen in Somalia by 240 per cent. Even in Kenya, white maize now costs 58 per cent more than it did a year ago. And then there is the conflict in Somalia, which drives people to the camps and which, in much of southern and central parts of the country, severely limits humanitarian access.

Aid workers are beginning to wonder for how much longer the camps can contain the need. Dadaab, in Kenya, originally built to accommodate 90,000, now has 367,855 refugees, making it the world's largest refugee camp. There were plans for an extension, but the Kenyan government scotched that, and thousands now squat hopefully outside the perimeter. 

And yet still people come. The numbers arriving at Dadaab's three camps are swelling at an alarming rate – 5,621 arrived in the last week of June compared with 1,866 in the first week of the month. According to the UN, more than half of the camps' refugees are children, and 153,525 of those are under the age of 11. There are also 12,328 people over the age of 60 in the camps, while 95 per cent of the total population are from Somalia, with the rest mainly from Ethiopia. 

The overcrowding produces problems beyond comfort, food rations and sanitation. On Thursday, two people were killed and dozens injured when a riot broke out. The UN refugee agency said the "serious disturbance" occurred when authorities tried to demolish illegal buildings at a food distribution point. 

Camps elsewhere are also reaching bursting point. Getinet Ameha, a WFP aid worker, visited two camps last week in Dolo Ado on the Somalia, Kenyan and Ethiopian border. Last week the government opened a third camp, Kobe, to deal with the 1,200 new arrivals each day. He said: "The majority of people in the camps are women and children, and it's very difficult because the camps were only built to hold 20,000 in each one and there's now almost 40,000 people living in each." Here, some 45 per cent of the new arrivals are malnourished – the threshold for declaring an emergency is 15 per cent. He added: "A lot of people are coming, 1,400 new people each day, but the WFP is providing food. There are problems with health. The people are having to live very close to each other. In one tent I witnessed a family of 12 together."

Aid agencies are doing all they can, but the "perfect storm" of drought, war and costly food is difficult to overcome when resources are so limited. SCF says it has less than half the money it needs for a proper response. And a statement from the WFP last week said bleakly: "The humanitarian response in Somalia and Ethiopia in particular is hampered by large funding shortfalls. New contributions are urgently needed or suffering will grow." 

It continued: "In Somalia, having started cutting ration sizes from February, WFP in May had only enough food left to feed 63 per cent of the almost one million people that WFP had planned to be feeding in May ... Because of a lack of funding, WFP in Ethiopia reduced food rations in certain areas of the country from March onwards." 

The international food security scale of one to five rates a few parts of Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya as category two, "Stressed". Many areas are at three and four, "Crisis" and "Emergency", but none, as yet, is a five, "Catastrophe/Famine". Unless there is a rapid change in the weather, the war or the food supply, that day may not be long postponed.

Islamic and European slavery: a very brief comparison

The “European powers” (particularly Spain, Portugal, France and Britain) are rightly condemned for their past actions in respect of slavery, as is America.

There is no disputing the fact that in the course of the approx 350 years of European/American slavery some eleven million African slaves were transported across the Atlantic ocean in the most atrocious of conditions, which resulted in an average of 10% (more than a million) perishing on the journey.

That they were worked hard, sometimes literally to death, and that some of the women were used as sex-slaves is also indisputable. (The latter is provable on genetic grounds. Many African-Caribbean people have genes that could only possibly have come from Caucasians.)

That this was a dreadful crime against humanity is also beyond doubt.

In slight mitigation, it has to also be accepted that these same “Powers” and especially Britain were at the forefront of efforts to ban slavery worldwide, an objective that has not yet been totally achieved, though it has been achieved within the “West” and much of the world.

Many peoples throughout the World, including the Islamic world “point the finger” at the West in general, and Europeans and Americans in particular, over this issue.

Whilst this is morally justified, it has to be said that in the case of the Islamic world in particular the “finger of blame” should be pointed at themselves also.

Slavery in Islam is a scarcely mentioned matter, though books and resources are available, going right back to the records kept by Islamic Sultans, their advisers and other Muslim chroniclers.

At its zenith the Islamic Empire stretched from India through northern Africa and into Eastern Europe.

From its very inception Islam practiced slavery as a part of war and then as a tax- or tribute-measure.

A survey of sources concerning the numbers enslaved by the “Islamic powers”, according to their own records (which are incomplete and thus will under-estimate the figures) show the following:

Europeans enslaved: 400,000{1} (A secondary source{4} I have places this figure >1million.)

Indians enslaved: 6,000,000{2}

Africans enslaved: 12,000,000{3} (This figure neglects slaves for the Western trade – see below.)

Total enslaved: 18,400,000

Let me repeat: the figures shown above are, in each case, an under-estimate of the true figure. For example the Senegalese Author Tidiane N’Diaye in his book LE GENOCIDE VOILÉ, (Jan. 2008) says :  “17 million Africans who were brought to the Arab-Muslim world and transformed into eunuchs have disappeared … It was a programmed ‘ethnic extinction by castration.”. If this was the total number of male slaves, then the total number of Africans enslaved must have been much higher than that.
 
Even the most conservative figures show that the “Islamic powers” over their history (632 AD to present, approx 1380 years) have enslaved at the very least 66% more people than the Christian West over it’s history (approx 2000 years). 

Further it is also documented that the European slave trade was founded on the supply of slaves by muslim slave-traders who supplied about 80% of the slaves for the Atlantic slave-trade.

Thus, in total, muslims enslaved perhaps twenty-one million Africans – about nine million for the transatlantic trade and (as previously mentioned) a minimum of twelve million for the “internal” Islamic slave trade.

Furthermore, there are some aspects of Islamic slavery that are uniquely cruel. In the first place was the wide-spread Islamic practice of killing all the adult males captured in war or slave-raiding and only retaining the females, especially the children and fertile women. The latter were widely used as sex-slaves. (Harems containing many hundreds of sex-slaves are well documented in history.)

When the adult males were not killed they were frequently castrated. (Again the presence of numbers of eunuchs within the Islamic system is well documented.)

These two practices (slaughter and/or castration) had the consequence that the enslaved population had little or no chance to reproduce itself which meant that the surviving slave women could only have children fathered by their Muslim overlords. Since in Islam the child of a slave is a slave, the practice of castration was often carried out on subsequent generations also, thus the descendents of the slaves died out over time or, on occasion, were assimilated within the Muslim population.

(Sometimes Mussalmen married a slave – usually freeing her as her Mahr{10} – in order to aquire legitimate offspring.)

That the killing of the majority of the male population would have had a devastating effect on both the population of the peoples raided for slaves in particular and the population balance between muslims and non-muslims is self-evident and well documented in the case of India.{2}

Another source{5} claims that Jihad caused up to 270 million deaths. Given that jihad and slavery are inextricably linked in Islamic history, it is not beyond the bounds of reason that the upper limit for Islamic slave-taking is in the 100′s of millions range{6}.

Quoting N’Diaye again, he points out that “The slave trade of Negroes … was an invention of the Arab-Muslim world.  It was the Arabs, Berbers, Turks, and Persians, who originated this infamous practice long before the Europeans began the African slave trade. For one thousand years, they[Muslims] were trading in African people, from the 7^th to the 16^th centuries. They resumed the practice from the 19^th to the 20^th centuries, long after the Western nations had abolished this trade.” The only mistake here, due to the date of N’Diaye’s writing is that Islamic slaving continues into the 21^st century also.

The modern situation{7}

In the West today, slavery of any sort is illegal. This should not be conflated with the criminal human-trafficking that still takes place within the West for the purposes of prostitution etc, that no (Western) Country sanctions.

The only slaves still found in the West are those that arrive as part of the entourage of (typically) diplomats who, due to their diplomatic immunity, are not prosecuted on the occasions when a slave escapes and goes to the Police.

Despite world-wide condemnation of slavery, it still exists today in the Islamic world, though on a reduced scale.

The abuse (both physical and sexual) of servants in Arab (esp. Saudi and Sudanese) households is well documented as well as the conditions under which they are kept prisoners within the “employers’” households. Whilst this could be considered as parallel to human-trafficking in the West, the comparison is false: whereas Western Countries try to rescue the victims and will prosecute those caught in this heinous activity when possible, no such redress – legal or civil – exists within parts of the Islamic world.

Children as young as 5 (yes five) years old from North African Countries such as Mauritania are sold as sex-slaves (under the guise of marriage to elderly men) into the Mid. East, especially Yemen, Saudi Arabia and UAE, from whence numbers have been rescued by Save the Children – rather than government agencies. Again this is not parallel to the general pattern of human-trafficking since these “child-brides” are knowingly sold for sexual purposes by their own families. (To be fair, from the Islamic perspective, there is nothing wrong with this child-marriage – except that the families get the bride-price or “Mahr” rather than the girl herself.)

In the Sudanese civil war, which cost two million (approx.) non-Muslims their lives, the Arab “Janjaweed” militia and the Islamic government forces made a practice of enslaving the young women when they razed villages and killed the men. Several charities bought these slaves back (thus freeing them) and helped them return home. Almost all had been multiply raped, many were pregnant by their rapists – which is pretty clear evidence of sexual slavery.

More recently (pre-2002) the Afghani Taliban and their allies (in particular “Mujahid”s from Pakistan) were in the habit of sex-slave raiding within Afghanistan itself. The Taliban and its allies were at war and in Islam war-booty has always included the women of a defeated enemy, thus when the Taliban et al “captured” a village (even if undefended), the women in it became the Talib’s property.

In Mauritania slaves and their off-spring are still handed down as chattels generation to generation.

Abduction, rape and forced conversion of non-Muslim girls and women in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and elsewhere is also reliably documented. In these last cases the situation is also more akin to that of claiming women as “war booty” rather than “conventional” slave-raiding, but in many respects the effects and the (lack of) response of the Authorities (Police, legal system) is similar. In any case, this is still the accepted and, apparently, Islamically acceptable abuse of non-Muslim women for sexual purposes.

Thus muslims still believe that the enslavement of others (in particular non-Muslims, especially women) is acceptable. Indeed the Muslim Sudanese claim that it is sanctioned by Islam itself, which whilst no more than the truth, is a bold claim to make in today’s World.

Conclusion

Taken together the evidence; religious, historical and contemporary; shows that:

• Islamic slavery was pervasive, endemic and religiously sanctioned{8,9,11}.
• That it continues to this day in the Islamic world where at best it is ignored and at worst actively and openly practiced and supported.
• The evidence also “gives the lie” to the claim by those apologists for Islam who claim that “Islam abolished slavery”. This claim is, quite simply, a bare-faced lie; far from abolishing slavery, Islam regards the enslavement of women and non-Muslims as normative and regulates it legally within Sharia codes{8,9}

 References and notes

1. White Slaves, African Masters, The University of Chicago Press 1999
2. Islamic Jihad, M.A.Khan, iUniverse inc.
3. Slavery in the Arab World, Murray Gordan, New Amsterdam Books, 1989, similar figure quoted by “Arabslavetrade.com”, a Muslim-authored site.
4. Sharia Law for the non-Muslim, Bill Warner. CSPI. Available as pdf.
5. The Submission of Women and Slaves, CSPI Publishing, p.181
6. “The scourge of slavery”, Christian action. This source suggests that ~140 million Africans were “victims” (either through being killed or enslaved) of the Muslim slave trade. However, I acknowledge that the source may be less than impartial.
7. The evidence for my statements in this section are freely available on the web.
8. Interestingly, the translators of the “Reliance of the Traveller” do not translate the entire “book” devoted to slavery on the grounds that “it is no longer relevant” (!) and they also assert that it is a fallacy to understand Islamic slavery in terms of Western slavery. Were the latter the case, they should have no qualms about presenting the translation!
9. A quick “google” of “Sharia and slavery” shows an incredibly wide range of sources from all parts of the social-political spectrum (inc. Wikipedia and the BBC) all agreeing that Sharia regulates rather than abolishes slavery.
10. Mahr or “bride-price” is a sum of money (or other valuables) paid to a women to “buy” use of her vagina and the right to get children on her as part of the “Nikah” (lit: “sexual intercourse”, usually translated “marriage”) contract. For a slave, the example of Mohammed is to free her (therefore not costing a penny) as this elevation in status was considered enough to buy her vagina.
11. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292-1350 AD) who is one of the greatest scholars and chroniclers of Islam. In “Zad al-Ma’ad” (Part I, p. 160), commenting on the “holy” actions of Mohammed writes: “Muhammad had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more than he sold, especially after God empowered him by His message, as well as after his immigration from Mecca. … He was used to renting out and hiring many slaves, but he hired more slaves than he rented out.” 

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