Doug Ross @ Journal

Slavery in the 21st Century

There's a thriving slave trade active -- even now, in the 21st century -- in certain corners of the world. I'll leave it up to you, my esteemed reader, to determine where responsibility lies for this abomination.

Slavery... is alive and well in the Islamic world. This report comes from Sandro Magister in Chiesa: "Sudan’s first saint, Iosephina Bakhita, was canonized by John Paul II in the year 2000. From an early age she was made a slave, sold and resold at the El Obeid and Khartoum markets. She was fortunate to have ended up in Italy. It was in 1890 that she was finally freed and baptized. "Yet today, more than a century later, there are still slaves found between the Sahara and the Nile. What’s more, it is slavery having its basis in Islam, inheritor of the trade which for centuries has forcibly sent 11-14 million Africans from the sub-Sahara region to Arab and Muslim countries. "Little is studied or said about the trade, the opposite being true of slave trade directed toward the Americas. The last general assembly of the African Catholic bishops conferences took place in Dakar in October 2003, where a session was dedicated to the issue, being introduced by statements such as the following: "'Analyses of this issue have been prohibited at length. One cause of the paralysis of this historical conscience has been the attitude of many intellectuals and Muslim rulers regarding the trans-Saharan trade. For reasons of religious sensitivity they don’t want to properly admit to Arab and Islamic responsibility in this drama, whose evil effects still continue. Today in the Arab world the word ‘black’ simply means ‘slave.’ The tracks of the trans-Saharan trade have formed geographic roads leading to Maghreb and the Middle East.' ...

It's an old article, but one well worth reading.

Slavery in the 21st Century