Obama’s Version of American Slavery Is False

Obama’s Version of American Slavery Is False

The slavers who sold black African slaves to European and American slave-traders were Muslims, while the human beings these Muslim slavers sold into bondage in foreign lands were Kafirs (non-Muslims).  This truth is contrary to President Obama’s recent remarks — during a speech he made at a Baltimore mosque in February of 2016—that black African slaves were originally Muslims.  Obama’s claim is patently untrue.  None other than Muhammad himself encouraged slaveholders to free any slave who converts to Islam: “Whoever frees a Muslim slave, Allah will save all the parts of his body from the [Hell] Fire as he has freed the body-parts of the slave.”  To this day, freeing a Muslim-convert slave is considered zakat (a form of obligatory alms-giving for Muslims).

Kafir slaves cannot be freed, since zakat is prohibited for non-Muslims, according to Sharia Law (Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, Amana Publications, 1994 & 2015, Section h8.24, p. 274).  Although Muslim slaveholders are not forced to free Muslim-convert slaves, it is unlikely that Muslims would sell other Muslims into bondage in a land without Islam.  What if such a Muslim slave tried to escape, to find his way back to the Islamic world?  Muhammad has said, “When the slave runs away from his master, his prayer is not accepted.”  This means that, in the situation described, the attempt to return to Islam would incite Allah’s wrath, making Muhammad’s own words a curse to slaves trying to be good Muslims.