Most of us are so possessive of our religions that we put on blinders. Like some of you, perhaps, I am aware that it was not too long ago that the term Christian was reserved exclusively for the (Western) white man. That is because, aside from the Ethiopians, Egyptians and Yemenis - of whom we (Blacks) in the US are not direct descendants really - Christianization of African (American) people is largely a process-outcome of European colonization here in North America, and in Africa since colonization (1880-1950) ... So too, it is for Islam, especially in the West of Africa, where the "aggression" was from many blacks themselves whom had gradually become culturally Arabic-Muslim.
However, this book recounts history around the Mediterranean between roughly 1550-1800 A.D. In this history the victims where those (white people) who dwelled in the coastal regions of the northern Mediterranean from Spain to Italy. Evidently, the perpetrators were by this time largely, though not exclusively (white people) of Turkic extraction. The point here is mostly for clarity. We can then easily change the title of the book to White Slaves and Turkish-Arab Masters.
I have long held that we (black and white people) in America exercise a peculiar identity with slavery. On one hand we react with a sense of shame over it, only seeing it as a useful bludgeon against attacks from racist (white) people. [Which seems to be less effective with each passing decade]. On the other hand we don't want to share slavery with the rest of humanity. As if to say, "Ha, you call that slavery? I'll tell you 'bout some slavery..." Now had I known when I was in middle school that other people around the world suffered a similar horrific and prolonged bondage, in effect if not in magnitude, as the Negro in America has, I would have felt less stigmatized and less defensive growing up. And of course I would have been better educated.
Three Things I learned:
1) Wide spread slavery becomes possible when a people are dispossessed by their nation (Think Rohingya today.); Or their nation is not strong enough to mount an assault against would-be enslavers (Think Libya today.)
2) Slavery is always a business. It is about obtaining cheap labor or economic ransom...
3) There is nothing inherent in religion that ends slavery, or even makes it more humane or tolerable. The perpetuation of slavery by religious (institutions and clergy-people) is a moral failing of the collective practice of their religion. We who practice must demand better of our kind.
Although the book's title plays on historical religious divisions and current day politics, I do recommend it. That is mostly because it adds a little known piece of the historical puzzle surrounding slavery and modern Western Muslim anxiety too. More importantly, perhaps, is that it raises further questions, and it leads the curious to further reading on the topic.
