The Arab Enslavement of Europeans Was Not a Marginal Episode

The UN  wants school curricula in the UK to cover black slavery even more than they already do: “UN Tells Britain To ‘Honour Contributions of People of African Descent’ as ‘Reparation’ for Colonialism and Slavery,” by Javier Villamor, European Conservative, September 3, 2026:

London explained at the time that it did not question the gravity of slavery, but rejected establishing a “hierarchy of historical atrocities” and argued that there is no legal obligation today to pay compensation for actions that did not constitute a violation of the international law in force when they were committed.

Compensation would be impossible to calculate. To whom would such reparations be owed? To the people who live in West Africa now? But they may be the descendants of those who sold slaves to the white slavers in the first place. To blacks now living in North America, the presumed descendants of slaves? Would white people of modest means be expected to pay reparations to black entertainers and sports stars with many millions to their name? Would a black man who moved to America from Nigeria be one of those who should be given reparations? Would Barack Obama be provided with reparations even though his black father was not descended from slaves? And would the amount provided depend on just how black someone is, so that those who have only one black grandparent would receive one-quarter of what someone with four black grandparents would receive? And should the Asians in the U.S. be expected to contribute to these reparations? What about Jews whose parents who arrived from D.P. Camps after World War II? Or the descendants of Sicilian peasants who came over in 1910 — what do they owe black Americans? Questions, questions, and without a plausible answer in sight. It would be a financial and moral nightmare.

Nowhere does the CERD report mention the Arab slave trade. It began in the 7th century and lasted into the 20th century. Slavery was outlawed in Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962, and In Oman in 1970. The reluctance of Muslims to abolish slavery may be traced back to the example of Muhammad, the Perfect Man (al-insan al-kamil) and Model of Conduct (uswa hasana). Muhammad bought, sold, and kept slaves. That is why there was never a Muslim William Wilberforce. It was the Royal Navy that stamped out the Arab trade in African slaves. It was Western nations that pressured Saudi Arabia,Oman, and Yemen to ban slavery.

The Arab slavers went deep into east Africa, where they seized men and women, but also a large numbers of boys. These were intended to serve as eunuchs in the harems that Arabs and Turks kept. The slavers castrated the boys in the bush. Many did not survive that operation. Those who did were taken, first in slave coffles to the coast, and then in dhows across the sea to the coast of Arabia, and from there would be taken overland to the Islamic slave markets in Jeddah, Muscat, Cairo, Baghdad, and Istanbul. Jan Hogedoorn, in his scholarly study The Hideous Trade, estimates that only 10% of those seized in the bush lived to be sold at those slave markets.

And then there was the Arab trade in white slaves from Europe.

For centuries, Muslim raiders went up and down the coasts of Europe, even as far as Ireland, and in one famous instance, Iceland. Rape and plunder of people living on the coasts were the intent. And the greatest wealth was the people themselves, the ones left alive after the raids, who were seized and taken back to North Africa. There they were enslaved, set to hard labor for their Muslim masters. A recent book, White Gold, by Giles Milton, in telling the story of one Thomas Pellow of Cornwall, reminds us of the one million people from Western Europe seized over the centuries by Muslim raiders.

In eastern and central Europe, and in present-day southern Russia, men were seized as slaves (and then forcibly converted). In certain areas, the kidnapping of women, especially Circassian and Georgian and other women from the Caucasus region who were famed for their beauty, helped fill the harems not only of the rulers, but of ordinary Muslims.

This Arab enslavement of Europeans was not a marginal episode. Academic historiography extensively documents the enslavement of Europeans in the Barbary states of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli and within the Ottoman system. One of those Europeans who spent years as a slave in Algiers was Miguel de Cervantes. A study published by Cambridge University Press cites an estimate of around 1.25 million captives, predominantly Europeans, whom Barbary corsairs took between 1530 and 1780.

Oxford University Press has also published a study specifically examining the thousands of Britons captured and enslaved in North Africa between 1580 and 1750, where they were used as laborers, galley slaves, or held until a ransom was paid.

More than fifty-three nations abstained from the resolution on “reparatory justice.” The UK and every member of the EU abstained. Only three states voted against the non-binding resolution. Would it not be possible for some of those who refused to go along with this horror present their own resolution, one focused solely on the Arab trade in both white and black slaves which, after all, was far more destructive than the Atlantic slave trade carried on by Europeans? The three nations that voted against the CERD resolution were Israel, the U.S., and Argentina. Why am I not surprised? Perhaps those three countries, along with a few dozen of those EU nations that abstained, will present a resolution at the UN on “reparatory justice” for the descendants of victims of that Arab slave trade that took its victims from both Africa and Europe. That will enrage the Arabs, but after all, how can they deny that well-documented and horrific history?