The Way of Islam by R. da - Costa Vaughan - HTML preview

ISLAM—FATHER OF COLOR RACISM

I have little doubt that most historians with an interest in Black Studies, Afro-American History, African History, Slavery and Blacks, along with the history of racial attitudes in general are unfamiliar with the name Abu ‘Uthman ‘Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz.

Al-Jahiz‘s life spanned the eighth and ninth centuries, from 776 to 869. Some may be more familiar with the 20th century scholar of the Classics, Frank Snowden. An interest in things black and racial attitudes towards Africans and Black people linked Al-Jahiz’s ninth century writings on the subject to Frank Snowden’s 20th century researches and writings.

Frank Snowden wrote Blacks in Antiquity and Before Color Prejudice. He maintained that color prejudice was neither widely practiced nor endemic in the Graeco-Roman world. Abu ‘Uthman ‘Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz went farther in his assertions. Al-Jahiz was Muslim. He lived under Islam. This was centuries before Snowden and our time.

Al-Jahiz said that Arabs and Muslims developed biased color-based racial attitudes only after the rise of Islam and only “after the justice of Islam came.” And there we have it reliably documented. Al-Jahiz alerts us to his recognition of the “before” and the “after” for color-based racial prejudice. This was the ninth century, long before trans-Atlantic slavery and New World atrocities.

When al-Jahiz made the assertion, no one accused him of insulting, lying or attacking Islam. He was not violently assaulted as an enemy of Islam. No one called for his death. Could it be because, at the time, a time when Islam was unquestioned as a world power, everyone knew that what he was saying was about Islam's racial color prejudice was widely accepted as true? Could it be that his leaving that record in the history books, no one back then took any offense at the truth he stated?

So, from around the time of Al-Jahiz to around 1900—a span of some eleven hundred years—those of us interested in how race-based color prejudice was unleashed on the world remained ignorant. So many of us continue to this day to have little clue that Islam was at the forefront of originating and spreading color racism.

When the poet around 792 (see previous chapter) used the words from the Qur'an Sura 24:40 to say that Allah had made Blacks deficient because Allah chose not to put any light in their complexions, he left a clearly, directly stated Qur'anic link for existing color prejudice against Blacks under Islam.

The evidence of Islam's culpability was there all along. It has long been in the open, but in Arabic and how many people routinely read Arabic who would have an interest in the subject? Most Blacks who have submitted to Islam have been (as I see it) mentally colonized, having accepted tall tales and fiction that Muslims and Islam were at worst, kinder masters to Blacks and at best (as Arab Muslims like to use in their recruiting way) free of the evil of racial color prejudice.

The 1955 Bandung Conference added to the on-going deceit. The conference was largely organized by Islamic countries. It added coals to the fires of deception in our time. Twenty-two Arab and Muslim nations attended the conference while few Black African nations were present. The late Richard Wright documented this fact. Bandung further tarred and feathered Whites for being the originating perpetrators of racial color prejudice—as if Arab Muslims were not the real culprits.

Whites do hold their share of atrocities once they took in the lessons they learned under the influence of sugar and other things from the time of the crusades. But, truth be told, they did not (as Frank Snowden provided us evidence to show) create the heinous monster that still rears its ugly head in the form of on-going color racism against Blacks.

History records how Muslims were prejudiced against both Blacks and Whites on the basis on color. It is a fascinating subject for which there is much more than scant evidence. Perhaps it most clearly can be seen in a specialized sub subject, the tale of Muslims and Islamic eunuchs. This appendix takes a quick look at the little known subject. Here is a short historical introduction to end this picture book's look at the “Ways of Islam.”