Refutation: Can a disciple of Christ be racist ?
Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ ,
Just in time before the new year, Chessie L. Edwards is back again, trying to defend the racism within his faith. Let’s see what ignorance he spews this time:
Considering that to this vary day at the close of 2011 black Africans can be purchased in Muslim majority nations such as Mali, Mauritania and Sudan, I would have thought that Muslim Dawahist’s would have wanted to avoid the topic of slavery at all costs.
It perplexes me as to why an adult man, would steep so low into academic dishonesty, shall we remind him that citing statements should be done to prevent intellectual fraud. To begin with, Mali has actually outlawed slavery. Funny enough, it’s the very first country he lists. What exactly is the problem if these countries are Muslim in majority? That’s called appealing to the fallacy of a hasty generalization, a commonly used fallacy. Meaning if one X does Y, then all X’s do Y. The problem here is that while Islam permits slavery, it does not permit Christian promoted slavery, also known as chattel slavery. Slavery in Islam is contractual agreement, a covenant of sorts between two parties, whereas in chattel slavery it is forced labour, something we shall discover later on the Bible endorses in great detail.
The notion is creeping up yet again that Christianity was the cause of the trans-atlantic slave trade and that the Bible is a book of White racist ideology, a throw back to more Biblical ignorant times of propagandist………..
This is the denial of basic history by a desperate man. My peoples, the children of slavery, my home, the results of slavery, are imbedded within my people’s culture. The streets I walk on, our capital city (Puerta de Espana – Port of Spain), the many forts we have, the many sugar estates which still exist are all evidences against this Chessie L. Edwards, but to protect his religion, this man has to stoop to low moral grounds. He’s not only denying the history we can experience today as left behind from my nation’s colonial rulers, but he’s denying history as acknowledged by the world:
The Church also supported the slave trade. The Spaniards saw in it an opportunity of converting the heathen, and the Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans were heavily involved in sugar cultivation which meant slave-holding. The story is told of an old elder of the Church in Newport who would invariably, the Sunday following the arrival of a slaver from the coast, thank God “that another cargo of benighted beings had been brought to a land where they could have the benefit of a gospel dispensation.” – [R. Terry, Some Old Papers relating to the Newport Slave Trade (Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society, July, 1927), 10.]
History speaks for itself and unlike my uneducated and cowardly counterpart, I am not afraid to cite my references from the numerous works authored on this massive topic. The next quote from his article really left me speechless. Sure, he’s already denied the historicity of Christian empowered slavery among my peoples, but it is low to distort his own scripture:
…………………..the egregious actions of the trans-atlantic slave traders were categorically condemned in the Holy Bible the only Word of God(before even the advent of Islam). A prime example of this can be found in 1 Timothy 1:8-10:
But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, 9 knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine,
The problem with this argument, is that it backfires wholeheartedly on him. The Bible here is endorsing slavery as the Newport Slave Trade bulletin suggests, the Christians believed using slavery was as a means of gospel dispensation, they didn’t believe that slavery was an act of oppression, but a means of admittedly, spreading the religion of Christ, which is why the priest from the above quote, praised God for the “benighted beings”. In fact, Christianity and the Negro slave trade had become so synonymous that famous British authors and writers were documenting their close cohesion within their societal framework:
In 1750 Horace Walpole wrote scornfully of “the British Senate, that temple of liberty and the bulwark of Protestant Christianity,….pondering methods to make more effectual that horrid traffic of selling negroes. – [P. Cunningham (ed.), The Letters of Horace Walpole (London, 1891, II, 197. To Sir H. Mann, Feb. 25, 1750.)]
Yes slavery was in the Old Covenant law’s, it was governed and regulated but just as we see in the N.T an enslaver/manstealer/kidnaper was a Sinner in the Mosaic law as well.
……..another Liverpool slave trader, Foster Cunliffe, contributed largely. He was a pioneer in the slave trade. he and his two sons are listed as members of the Liverpool Committee of Merchants trading to Africa in 1752. Together they had four ships capable of holding 1,120 slaves, the profits from which were sufficient to stock twelve vessels on the homeward journey with sugar and rum. An inscription to Foster Cunliffe in St. Peter’s Church describes him this: “a Christian devout and exemplary in the exercise of every private and publick duty, friend to mercy, patron to distress, an enemy only to vice and sloth, he lived esteemed by all who knew him….and died lamented by the wise and good….” – [For Cunliffe, see Bourne, op. cit., II, 57, Botsford, op. cit., 122; Enfield, op. cit.,43, 49; Donnan, op. cit., II, 492, 497.]
And whoever kidnaps a man, and he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.
1. And these are the ordinances that you shall set before them. 2. Should you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall work [for] six years, and in the seventh [year], he shall go out to freedom without charge. 3. If he comes [in] alone, he shall go out alone; if he is a married man, his wife shall go out with him. 4. If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone. 5. But if the slave says, “I love my master, my wife, and my children. I will not go free,” 6. his master shall bring him to the judges, and he shall bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.
Why is this said? Since it is said: “If a man be found to have stolen a person from among his fellow—men [he shall die]” I would know only [that this applies to] a man who stole another person.By thus law every man-stealer, and every receiver of the stolen person, should lose his life; no matter whether the latter stole the man himself, or gave money to a slave captain or negro-dealer to steal for him. – Adam Clarke Biblical Commentary.
And Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive?
Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. 18 But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.
and thirty-two thousand persons in all, of women who had not known a man intimately.
Some of these dawahist desperate to give poor unsuspecting westerners “shahadah”(maybe to marry them?)
may try to use Genesis 9:21-24 as proof that the Bible endorses racism. If anyone with at least half a bit of intellect would read the whole passage there is nothing in the text about Africa or African slavery.
The bells of the Bristol churches pealed merrily on the news of the rejection by Parliament of Wilberforce’s bill for the abolition of the slave trade. The slave trader, John Newton, gave thanks in the Liverpool churches for the success of his last venture before his conversion and implored God’s blessing on his next. He established public worship twice every day on his slaver, officiating himself, and kept a day of fasting and prayer, not for the slaves but for the crew. “I never knew,” he confessed, “sweeter or more frequent hours of divine communion than in the last two voyages to Guinea.” – [Larimer, op. cit., 100. & S. H. Swinny, The Humanitarianism of the Eighteenth Century.]
You read that correctly, while Mr. Edwards Genesis has anything to do with Biblical Slavery, the Christians in England were busy celebrating the prohibition of outlawing the slave trade. What a striking difference between Mr. Edward’s narrative and historical accounts. His drunken stupor then allowed him to state:
“The prophecy of Noah regrading Canaan was fulfilled in the Old Testament, there is no bases to apply it to anyone else or any other time period. If ignoramuses in the 1700’s tried to read their racist ideology into the text..”
Again, he finds himself at odds with missionaries and clergy men:
Many missionaries found it profitable to drive out Beelzebub by Beelzebub. According to the most recent English writer on the slave trade, they “considered that the best way in which to remedy abuse of negro slaves was to set the plantation owners a good example by keeping slaves and estates themselves, accomplishing in this practical manner the salvation of the planters and the advancement of their foundations.” The Moravian missionaries in the islands held slaves without hesitation; the Baptists, one historian writes with charming delicacy, would not allow their earlier missionaries to deprecate ownership of slaves.74 To the very end the Bishop of Exeter retained his 655 slaves, for whom he received over 12,700 compensation in 1833. Church historians make awkward apologies, that conscience awoke very slowly to the appreciation of the wrongs inflicted by slavery and that the defence of slavery by churchmen “simply arose from want of delicacy of moral perception.” – [ Mackenzie-Grieve, op. cit., 162., G. R. Wynne, The Church in Greater Britain (London, 1911), 120., H. of C. Sess. Pap., 1837-8, Vol. 48. The exact figure was 12,729.4.4 (pp. 19, 22)., Wynne, op. cit., 120; C. J. Abbey and J. H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1878), II, 107. and its results, in F. S. Marvin (ed.), Western Races and the World (Oxford, 1922), 130-131.]
He then begins to divert attention from his own Bible, by trying to claim the Qur’aan allows the chattel slavery of the Bible:
“…then they are no worst off then the Muslim slavers(many illiterate unable to read the Bible see Quran 62:2) who used the same misunderstandings to justify their own actions in Africa.”
So what does Qur’aan Surah 62, Ayat 2 say?
It is He Who has sent amongst the Unlettered a messenger from among themselves, to rehearse to them His Signs, to sanctify them, and to instruct them in Scripture and Wisdom,- although they had been, before, in manifest error;-
There’s a reason the clown didn’t quote it in his article, because the citation is bogus, it’s not only irrelevant to the topic of discourse but goes on to demonstrate how desperate he has become. To deflect from his own ignorance of the Qur’aan, history and Biblical teachings he has to cast a diversion to draw aspersions on a scripture he incorrectly referenced. May God help this jackal of a man. His own words continue to defile any form of intellectual responsibility and accountability:
Further more the reality is that Slavery was not nearly eradicated from the earth by Mullahs, Ulamah, and Caliphs, but the abolitionist movements which were germinated and watered by many Christians who looked keenly into the Bible and saw that the enslavement of people of African decent was abhorrent and needed to be stopped. May I remind the reader that the only reason slavery is not as prevalent in the Muslim world as it was even 60 years ago is because the principles of the abolitionist movement enshrined in Western culture influenced(or just shamed) the Muslim world?
This is probably one of the dumbest statements a man can make. The Muslims (West African tribes) were the slaves, brought forcibly to the West Indies. How could a Muslim in Arabia free a slave in the Caribbean? Mr. Edwards is trying to claim that it wasn’t Muslims who abolished slavery, it was the English Christians. Whereas this isn’t the case. To begin with, the very first person to propose enslaving Africans was a Christian. Christian priest, Bartholomew de la Casas, whom himself had slaves, proposed the use of Africans to ease the suffering of the slavery of the Amerindians. Lest we digress, how could the Arabs who did not have colonies in the West Indies, abolish the slave colonies of the Christian world super powers of England, France and Spain? I demand to know what is the source of this man’s logic.
“…where is the Muslim world’s William Wiberforce? Where is the Islamic John Brownfighting slavery in Dar ul Sudan? When has there ever been any indigenous grassroots abolitionist movement in a Muslim land?”
Well to answer our ignorant friend’s question, roughly 1200 years before any of these figures existed, Muhammad (peace be upon him) commanded the freeing of slaves through the revelation of the Qur’aan:
Indeed We have created man (to live) in hard struggle. Does he think that no one has power over him? He says, “I have spent a lot of wealth.” Does he think that no one has seen him? Did We not make for him two eyes, And one tongue and two lips, And showed him the two ways? Yet he did not make his way through the steep course, And what may let you know what the steep course is? It is freeing the neck of a slave.
In fact the Qur’aan clearly details removing slavery:
…..And those who seek a contract [for eventual emancipation] from among whom your right hands possess – then make a contract with them if you know there is within them goodness and give them from the wealth of Allah which He has given you. And do not compel your slave girls to prostitution, if they desire chastity, to seek [thereby] the temporary interests of worldly life. And if someone should compel them, then indeed, Allah is [to them], after their compulsion, Forgiving and Merciful.
It was even the Muslims who compelled the British to remove slavery from being legal, they even did so themselves, leading by example in Morocco:
Moorish envoy to England, in 1813, from Mulai Sulaiman, Emperor of Morocco (1794-1822), in whose reign Christian slavery was abolished in Morocco. His son Meïr Cohen Machim visited England in the same capacity in 1827.
All slaves should show full respect for their masters so they will not bring shame on the name of God and his teaching. 2 If the masters are believers, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. Those slaves should work all the harder because their efforts are helping other believerswho are well loved.
And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.48 But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.
[and God knows best.]
Calling Christians 
The encyclapedia britanica states that the islamic slave trade displaced 10 to18 million africans. So please stop complaining about christianity without aknowleding this. Mohsmmad even had an african slave and said ethiopians had a head like a raisin. Please stop complaining .