Ultra Muslim Mauritania still has slavery

By Caleb Campos —

The last country in the world to abolish slavery, Mauritania, still has 149,000 people living in descendent slavery (according to an estimate), and human rights advocates themselves get hampered and arrested by police.

Critics of Islam say that slavery is deeply embedded in the Muslim scriptures. The Qur’an says that a man may keep a concubine as part of the spoils of war. Her children are automatically slaves. The Hadith says Mohammad was a slaver.

“The reason slavery persists in places like Mauritania is because classical Islamic law explicitly codifies it as an ongoing and permissible reality,” says Somali Christian TV Ex Muslim. “In every single major Sunni school of thought, a slave is legally classified as property. When you open the foundational text of Islam, you can find that slavery is actually completely allowed.”

Mauritania embraces one of the harshest implementations of Sharia in the world.

Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981, officially the last nation in the world to do so. But it wasn’t criminalized until 2007. Then in 2015, Mauritania stiffened penalties (up to 20 years) for having slaves.

Just last year, the government created a new national special tribunal dedicated to hereditary slavery, human trafficking, and migrant smuggling cases, indicating at least some increase in enforcement efforts.

For generations, the Beydan — or White Moors — have been the ruling class and have held in slaver some (not all) Haratine — or Black Moors — in slavery.

While the Mauritanian laws have improve, how are the police enforcing those laws? Who is requiring slave owners to give up slaves they’ve held for generations?

“Activists on the ground actually report that to this day many Haratine remain in servitude,” Somali Christian TV reports. “Enslaved masters maintain control through a form of spiritual gaslighting, teaching these enslaved peoples that questioning their bondage is equal to questioning Islam.”

The 2023 Global Slavery Index estimates that roughly 149,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in Mauritania (about 3% of the population).

Because the Qur’an and the Hadith enshrine slavery, the Muslim world has been general slow to abolish it. Only after international pressure was applied to Saudi Arabia did the home of Mecca finally abolish it in 1962.

Of course, the United States too was slow to abolish slavery and had to fight a bloody civil war to stamp out the vile oppression of humans in 1865. This remains one of the greatest stains and shames in U.S. history.

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