The Hidden “Holocaust” in Sub-Saharan Africa

Alberto Mudjadjo"

For centuries, millions of Africans from sub-Saharan Africa were sold into slavery in North Africa. Between 650 and 1800, more than 10 million Africans from the lands south of the Sahara Desert were sold into slavery, with buyers coming from Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Morocco, etc. Many testimonies legitimize this historical event, but the lack of anything written about it and of statistics make it impossible to know the exact number of people involved in this historical process. Without ignoring the transatlatic (European) slave trade that continued for 4 centuries, it is considered that the Arabs devastated sub-Saharan Africa for 13 uninterrupted centuries and that most of the men they deported disappeared due to inhumane treatment and widespread castration. Given these facts, I think that this “hidden holocaust” of the slave trade perpetrated by Arab-Muslims should have been discussed as is the case with the transatlatic slave trade. It is very important to bring this information about Arab slavery, because it is necessary to recognize that the pre-colonial implosions inaugurated by the Arabs undoubtedly destroyed the African peoples, who had no respite since their arrival; it was a continuous exploitation. As history shows, the Arab-Muslims were the origin of the calamity through trafficking and slavery, which they practiced from the seventh to the twentieth century, and from the seventh to the sixteenth century, for almost a thousand years they were the only ones to practice this miserable trade, deporting millions of Africans before the Europeans entered the scene. The Arab invasion of sub-Saharan Africa began the era of permanent devastation of villages and the terrible “holy wars” carried out by converts in order to obtain slaves from neighbors who were considered pagans. When this was not enough, they invaded others claiming to be “Muslim brothers” and confiscated their goods. Under this Arab-Muslim agreement, African peoples were kidnapped and held hostage permanently. In some countries of so-called “white” Africa, there is still a subordination of blacks by the Arabs, because in the unconscious of the Maghreb people this history has left so many traces that for them a “black” continues to be a slave, they cannot even conceive that blacks are among them. We have a clear example of what is happening in Mauritania, where the Tuaregs of the north will never accept black power. It is worth remembering that in France during the slave trade there were philosophers who defended blacks, while in the Arab-Muslim world the most respected intellectuals, such as Ibn Khaldun, were also obscurantists and claimed that blacks were animals. No intellectual from the Maghreb raised their voice to defend the cause of blacks, for this and several other reasons this “holocost” has assumed such magnitude and continues. In Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, African domestic workers live in conditions of slavery, racial division is still a reality. We saw the deplorable conditions to which workers were subjected during the construction of the stadiums for the World Cup in Qatar, and several personalities came out in defense of the workers, but nothing relevant was done due to the financial power of these emerging powers. This subordination of black people even goes as far as the racialism perpetrated by the Jew, who is also considered the “black man of Europe”, where he categorically states that he has nothing against black people, but does not want to see them around. Arab-Muslim slavery is considered by some to be more barbaric than transatlantic slavery because the former decided to castrate blacks to prevent them from reproducing. They were subjected to terrible situations to prevent them from integrating and establishing descendants in the areas where they arrived. These were terrible treatments reserved for African captives, from total castration, that of eunuchs, which were extremely dangerous operations. When performed on adults, it killed 75% to 80% of those subjected to it; the mortality rate was only lower in children, where it lost 30% to 40% due to total castration. Today, the vast majority of descendants of African slaves are actually mixed-race people born to women deported to harems. Only 20% are black, which is the big difference with the transatlantic trade. Because a slave, even in extremely bad conditions, had a market value for the owner who wanted him to be productive and long-lived. For the 9 to 11 million people deported during that time, there are today 70 million descendants. The Arab-Muslim slave trade deported more than 15 million people who had only 1 million descendants because of the massive castration practiced for almost 13 centuries. As Fernand Braudel says, the slave trade was not a diabolical invention of Europe. It was the Arab Muslims who were at the origin and practiced it for a long time and on a large scale. While the Western slave trade lasted from 1660 to 1790, the Arab Muslims attacked blacks from the seventh to the twentieth centuries. The question that begs to be asked is why there is so much talk about Western slavery and less about Arab-Muslim slavery?

2025/12/3