Slaves In Saudi: The Muslim World's Shame

[Guest guest]

" Slaves " In Saudi: The Muslim World's Shame

By Naeem Mohaiemen, July 22, 2004

 

" On July 15, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the condition of

Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. The revelation that " Guest Workers "

are systematically abused in Saudi Arabia should come as no surprise

to anyone familiar with that region's history. What a shame that it

took Sarah Whitson, executive director of HRW's Middle East and North

Africa Division, to finally speak the unpalatable truth. " We found

men and women in conditions resembling slavery, " said Whitson in the

press conference announcing their findings. The report described " the

pervasive abuses foreign workers endure...the abysmal and

exploitative labor conditions many workers face, and the utter

failure of the justice system to provide redress. " The real question

is this - why did the Islamic world not uncover these human rights

abuses, so close to the holy city of Mecca?

 

Based on interviews taken in Bangladesh, India and the Philippines,

HRW found abysmal and exploitative labor practices, wanton rape of

women workers, and beheading of guest workers accused of crimes

without proper legal process. Anyone who has visited Saudi Arabia

knows the racism with which many ordinary Saudis treats the brown and

black-skinned masses that come for Hajj. Like hundreds of

Bangladeshis every year, my parents endured these indignities during

their recent pilgrimage. When he returned from Mecca, my father told

me, " To them, we will always be miskeen (beggar). Doesn't matter what

we do, or where we come from. They see our skin and don't need to see

more. " If this is how pilgrims are treated, imagine how much worse is

the plight of the " Guest Worker " . Yet, we Muslims remain silent on

these abuses - after all the Saudis are the keepers of Islam's

holiest site, so they cannot possibly be racist!

 

How appropriate as well that HRW used the phrase " slavery " to

describe conditions inside the desert kingdom. Saudi Arabia was in

fact one of the last nation-states to abolish slavery. Along with

Yemen, the Saudis only abolished slavery in 1962. Prior to that, the

Islamic world's experience with slavery was extremely problematic.

Muslims once led the rest of the world in science, culture and human

emancipation. The positive examples are numerous and often-repeated.

However, the advances brought about in the early days of the Islamic

Caliphate ossified, with very little innovation or re-interpretation

in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although slavery and the

taking of concubines was legal in the Islamic world, in practice it

was far milder than that practiced in nineteenth century North and

South America. Henri Dunant, the Swiss founder of the Red Cross,

visited North Africa in 1860 and commented on the " relative mildness "

of the slavery practiced there. As compared to ancient Rome and

modern colonial systems, Islam gave the slave a certain legal status

and the slave-owner also had obligations (as well as rights).

 

The Islamic world started off by giving more rights to slaves than in

the European colonies, but as with many other areas, these

progressive positions did not keep up with changing times. By the

early nineteenth century, Britain, under pressure from domestic

abolitionists, had abolished slavery in its colonies. Slave-trading

was declared an " international crime " and traders were to be punished

wherever they were encountered. With this newly liberal outlook, the

British Empire soon came into conflict with the Ottoman Empire's

practice of slavery.

 

The Persians initially rejected the British push for emancipation of

slaves in 1846, but eventually a compromise agreement was reached.

Over in the Ottoman Empire, an 1830 ferman freed all Christian slaves

who had not converted. Oddly, slaves who had converted to Islam were

not freed (perhaps due to the British focus on Christian slaves).

Finally, in 1857, again under British pressure, a second ferman was

issued banning trafficking in black slaves throughout the Empire,

with special exception for the Hijaz.

 

There was also, by now, internal pressure to reform slavery in the

Islamic world. The Bey of Tunis announced in 1846 that every black

slave who asked for it would receive a " deed of enfranchisement. " In

his announcement, he also noted that Muslim jurists were divided

about the legal basis for slavery. One noted anti-slavery advocate

was Moroccan writer Ahmad Khalid al-Nasiri, who accepted the legality

of slavery under Muslim law, but vigorously protested its

application. He wrote in the 1800's, condemning " the unlimited

enslavement of the blacks and the importation of many droves of them

every year, for sale in the town and country markets of the Maghrib,

where men traffic in them like beasts, or worse. " (Bernard Lewis,

quoting Kitab al-Istiqsa, Casablanca, 1955)

 

The unpalatable truth is that, the Ottoman and Persian empires were

one of the last to abolish slavery, falling far behind their European

counterparts in matters of human emancipation. Full abolition of

slavery did not come until the twentieth century, with Saudi Arabia

holding out until 1962. Given that desert kingdom's shameful record

on this basic human right, it was no surprise to read Human Rights

Watch's report and find that today's migrant workers are kept in

conditions of " near-slavery. "

 

The Muslim world is sliding backwards into medievalism, and it is

time for reformers to speak openly and bravely. There is a cancer

that is eating away at our soul - a disease marked by paranoia,

double standards and virulent racism. While we are in full-throated

cry against abuses in Iraq and Palestine, we stay completely silent

when it is Muslims who are the abusers (of both non-Muslims and

Muslims). How else to explain our outpouring of sympathy for the

Bosnian genocide, but our complete silence on the ongoing genocide in

Sudan? In that country's civil war between the Arab Muslim North, and

the Black Christian and Animist South, 2 million people have been

killed to date.

 

In a BBC profile (June 10, '04) of the hundreds of Black Africans who

have been raped by pro-government Janjaweed Arab militia, one victim

described the attackers: " They called me Abeid (slave in Arabic). " A

UN resolution on the Sudan crisis was blocked by China and the two

Muslim nations with Security Council seats - Pakistan and Algeria.

 

Saudi Arabia, Sudan - the list goes on. Shame on the Muslim world for

staying silent! "

 

" Slaves " In Saudi: The Muslim World's Shame

By Naeem Mohaiemen, July 22, 2004