No, this is not some sort of a perversion of the ‘One Laptop per Child’ initiative – a very positive effort to help fight poverty in developing nations by placing education within the reach of each and every child, and which I wrote about here.
Instead, one Kalashnikov rifle is the price Osama bin Laden paid for each one of the child slaves he purchased to work on his marijuana farm in Sudan. Think about that next time someone offers you a toke.
Yes – child slaves.
This seems unthinkable – today, in 2008, there are still children being captured and sold to slavery! Some of their stories are beginning to come out, like ‘Slave: My True Story’ by Mende Nazer and ‘Escape from Slavery: The True Story of My Ten Years in Captivity and My Journey to Freedom in America’ by Francis Bok.
You can read more in FrontPageMagazine’s story, ‘Child Slavery in the Sudan’ by Stephen Brown. The callousness and lack of empathy of the slavers is difficult to comprehend.
So, how could it be that today, slavery could still be practiced so openly?
I suppose we can thank the ‘desert religions’ and their ‘holy texts’ for this!
Please, do not misunderstand me – most Christians, Jews and Muslims today unequivocally condemn the practice of slavery. Francis Bok even says that he could only escape his slavery because a Muslim family which disapproved of slavery helped him!
Yet, Christian, Jewish and Muslim ‘holy books’ not only permit slavery, they describe the rules of how it should be practiced. And, because ‘it is permitted by God’, many people justify the practice today.
Let’s look at the Christian’s Old Testament (it’s Jewish counterpart being the Torah). Thanks to the Society of Christians for the Restoration of Old Testament Morality, here is an easy link to their ‘Biblically Correct Family Values’ , which quotes:
Exodus 21:7-8: “And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.”
If you are confused by the term ‘maidservant’, note that someone is sold to become one. (Just keep this in mind when reading other bits of the Bible, and the word ‘maidservant’ is used.) And, we know what ‘bethroher her to himself’ means…
The Society’s ‘Biblically Correct’ pamphlet on how to treat rape victims is no less informative:
Deuteronomy 22:28-29: If a man find a damsel [that is] a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty [shekels] of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
Note that it is her father who gets the fifty shekels. The rape victim herself is not even worthy to receive monetary damages.
In other words, the rapist has just bought himself a ‘wife’ by paying her father 50 sheckles. And, she becomes her rapist’s ‘wife’!
But there is more – here is explicit command to obey one’s owner– especially if one’s owner is also a Christian!
1 Tim. 6:1-2: “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and [his] doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise [them], because they are brethren; but rather do [them] service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.”
My point is not that the slavers in this story are Muslims – there are all kinds of slavers in the world today, both religious and secular. However, it seems that feeling justified in owning (and abusing) other humans who are enslaved, feeling righteous in this practice, truly believing that one has the right to oppress others because it pleases God – that is a monstrous mindset.
Yet, it is this very mindset which is at the root of both slavery and the imposition of religious law onto secular society. Whether it be the medieval Inquisition or modern-day Sharia – the mindset is the same. People feel justified in committing atrocities because they truly and honestly believe this is the will of one God or another…
That is why it is essential that we do not allow our secular laws to become increasingly accomodating of religious laws or even religious sensitivities! That is why we must fight against the creeping of religious rules – ALL religious rules – into governing the behaviour (and speech) of the people in our society!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 