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Stefan Molyneux claims in The Truth About The Crusades that:

Islam dominated slave trade between the 7th and the 15th century, while the Christians entered the market of human flesh much later - 1519 to 1815 is the period of Christian slave trading.

He also claims in The Truth about Slavery: Past, Present and Future that:

Slavery was indigenous to African and Arab countries before it made its way to Europe.

Did Islam dominate slave trade, and did Christians enter the slave market about only later?

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    What exactly do you consider the "slave trade"? Given the extent that slavery is discussed in the Bible, I assume it must be using some specific definition, or I don't see how it could be credible at all. – Is Begot Oct 09 '17 at 19:43
  • Technically speaking, Celts and Germanic tribes practiced it well before Christianity started, though whether you want to count pre-Ceasar Europe as "Europe" in the context of the claim is rather a big stretch. – user5341 Oct 09 '17 at 19:51
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    You also need to define "trade". If slaves were occasionally bought or bartered by people who mostly did something else does that count? – Paul Johnson Oct 09 '17 at 20:05
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    The first quote may be referring to just the slave trade in sub-Saharan Africa. It's certainly well-documented that Islam played a major part in that trade, and that they also took slaves from Europe and western Asia. Essentially all non-Muslims could be taken as slaves. And of course slavery pre-dates Islam by many thousands of years: it was the norm in the pre-industrial world. – jamesqf Oct 09 '17 at 20:23
  • 7th -> 15th c is 800 years, not 1200. – Kevin Oct 09 '17 at 20:25
  • This question might be a better fit at history.SE. For skeptics, it seems too vague. What does "dominate" mean? It suggests that there was Christian slavery, but less so than Muslim slavery. On the other hand, the next sentence seems to imply that there was no Christian slavery at all? For the second quote, a timeframe would be helpful. Could you maybe edit in a bit more context for the quotes? That might help clarify the question a bit. – tim Oct 09 '17 at 20:48
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    Maria, I see that the migration of this question into History stack exchange has been rejected. I disagree with the rejection, and have asked essentially the same thing there, so that it can be answered, as it is obviously a question about history. – Luís Henrique Oct 10 '17 at 14:03
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    Here, to be precise: https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/40899/is-it-true-that-slavery-was-endemic-in-sub-saharan-africa-previous-to-the-establ – Luís Henrique Oct 11 '17 at 10:44
  • @LuísHenrique Can you join the Skeptics chat? It's too big of a comment to post here. – Maria check profile Oct 11 '17 at 12:52
  • @LuísHenrique https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/311/hub-of-reason here – Maria check profile Oct 11 '17 at 13:01
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    @Mariacheckprofile - Thanks, Maria. I left a note for you there. – Luís Henrique Oct 11 '17 at 13:59
  • @IsBegot What _I_ consider slave trade? It's not _my_ claim, so that would be irrelevant. What Stefan Mulinex meant... I can only make assumptions. I hoped someone more knowledgable that me could answer it by "guessing" correctly Mulinex's assumptions. – Maria check profile Oct 11 '17 at 14:09
  • @user5341 _"while the Christians entered the market of human flesh much later"_ - By "entered" I guess he means "dominated" or perhaps "entered [international slave trade]". I mean, it's common knowledge that even Athens where democracy originated had slaves hundreds of years before Christianity and Islam appeared. – Maria check profile Oct 11 '17 at 14:11
  • Did you check out his page on Wikipedia? After glancing at that, I don't expect him to emit much in the way of sensible statements about anything. – Fizz Oct 13 '17 at 20:05
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    @Fizz Yes I took a look and you are right, but I m trying to debunk individual claims regardless of how absurd other of their claims are. The reason is that these claims are used by other alt-right and far-right bigots, so attacking the Moulineux wouldn't do much, since someone else would claim the same thing :) – Maria check profile Oct 14 '17 at 05:48
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    @LuísHenrique: and you've got 41 upvotes. The moderator who rejected the migration must be eating his hat. – Fizz Oct 14 '17 at 05:50
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    @Fizz - Yeah, and it is a shame that I am getting all that rep, instead of Maria... – Luís Henrique Oct 14 '17 at 12:19
  • @LuísHenrique Don't worry about it. It's just virtual points after all :) What matters is that we made this world a better place. – Maria check profile Oct 14 '17 at 18:33

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Well yes the claim is correct for the African slave trade, see

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade

The slave trade used mainly the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Note that there were other trades e.g. in Slavs, which extended earlier but only enslaved white people.

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    I don't think that it makes a lot of sense to restrict the claim to a specific slave trade. If you could do that, I could restrict the Islam slave trade part to the ISIL slave trade and thus show that the claim is false. And there have been [other](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe#Christians_holding_Muslim_slaves) slave [trades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_medieval_Europe#Italian_merchants) (just two example) in which Christians were involved. – tim Oct 09 '17 at 20:44