Pro



It's actually a very handy historical intro to many small positive historical stories about Islamic slavery. Lots of very positive and feel-good stories about how some slaves lived good lives and liked their place in life. Mixed in are harsh realities of primitive life. It's a nice take on such a gloom topic. It's like watching The Great Escape after watching Schindler's List. A refreshing take on the time period and not just negative depictions of the human spirit.



It's also well-written and

It's actually a very handy historical intro to many small positive historical stories about Islamic slavery. Lots of very positive and feel-good stories about how some slaves lived good lives and liked their place in life. Mixed in are harsh realities of primitive life. It's a nice take on such a gloom topic. It's like watching The Great Escape after watching Schindler's List. A refreshing take on the time period and not just negative depictions of the human spirit.It's also well-written and well-studied. There are a lot of great stories here and great summaries of historical Muslim claims. Slavery was a major part of Islam and is supported by Islam's holy texts and the Quran. The fact that the Quran supports it is why he says that he, as a Muslim, can't attack the practice. And frankly I somewhat accept this endeavour as he doesn't seem to have any evil need or want. It's all just a defense of Islam and no other religion is attacked. Islam does have Jewish and Christian proffets so it makes sense he doesn't have a bone to pick with these religious either. He, as a Muslim, says he needs to defend the Quran. It is what it is. I'm not a fan of such subjective books but I accept them once in a while.There were many of vastly different slaves in Muslim countries. The slaves themselves could only be non-Muslims and should be captured in battles but these rules were obviously not followed at all times. And the author really tries to depict slavery as something that was needed in pre-modern societies. Slaves did have some protection according to the law. But even that was of course not always followed. Life was not easy or safe even though he tries to make it seem that way at most times. All the negative claims about Muslim slavery are always followed up by positive retellings. It's good that he presents the negative parts but very silly that he never dares to explore them fully without constantly attacking them. When you read a negative claim you can expect the story to stop a few sentences later and be replaced by an overly long subjective claim defending slavery and Islam. His claims are often longer than what they respond to. But it does feel like he dares to present these negative claims. So it's not a book that just hides evidence.One of his positive claims is that slaves could buy their freedom and as slaves often didn't look much different from the population overall you couldn't just keep slaves in many generations. They seemed to dissipate into the overall population a bit like slaves in Brazil did. And Muslims mostly couldn't be taken as slaves. All of this made slavery extra appealing to Muslims. It's part of their culture but is disappearing today.Overall it's a very impressive study of Islamic slavery. And even though it's only one single very positive viewpoint it's still impressive how much info there is in this book. Very impressive! These religious scholars study their own history and texts with an extreme passion. And this American academic brings a Western style to it where historical claims are critically looked into. I didn't observe him claiming anything factually wrong. But he had a very strong opinion on everything.Now, while the Western style is what makes this a stellar historical book it's unfortunately also what makes it fail as a book and not recommended unless you really want to read it.While the pro part of the book is awesome the con part of the book is unfortunately what brings it down by itself. It's not that the pro part is bad. It's that the book is not just good history. The other half of the book are very loosely made arguments on a very low argument level. Basically your average high school level claims without much to them. That's half of the book! Most of it is just fine and while it's pretty much a waste of my time to read these low level arguments and they often seemed misguided I didn't hate most of them. They didn't seem completely unwarranted. It's fine enough to argue that slavery has a good side to it or that slave concubines may theoretically have had good lives, as Muhammad's slave concubine likely did. It's hazy and opinionated but still fine even though he should have cut 100 pages from the book by getting to the case a tad faster. But unfortunately he takes a step further and makes some claims that are completely unsupported by any data or even clear examples. It's just a very few claims but it's enough to make me rate this book ⅖ instead of ⅘ or even 5/5.It's because the claims are the very reason the book exists. It's not a history book even though the history in it is great. It's a single book-length argument. And the argument is lousy and something I completely disagree with as he doesn't even make it. He just claims it is so.His main argument starts with him saying that it's conclusively true that supposedly white people need to pay reparations to black people and American Indians in USA. On the question of Muslims needing to repay for their slavery he says it's not the book to answer that question.This is the main statement to keep in mind while reading the book. It's his main argument. Slavery in the West was horrible torture and white people, author included, need to pay black people and American Indians for it today. While, according to him, Islamic slavery is complicated and doesn't really warrant any great critique. Even though Muslims also had race slavery it wasn't their main focus so it's not as bad at all.I don't mind a Muslim defending Islamic slavery. He's fairly transparent about this bias. Where his argument crashes and burns is how he depicts 2 different kinds of slaveries to make a point. One outside and one inside Islam. One evil, one good. That's his argument. Yet while he spends a lot of time going over the positive things of Islamic slavery he never in any way explains Western slavery or why it's bad. He just assumes it's a horrible hell on Earth. But if his main argument is a comparison where one side easily wins out then not presenting the other side means that he doesn't even have an argument here. He wants to have one but he goes nowhere as it's based on nothing at all.This is unfortunately the constructivist academic debate style. He never feels the need to logically make a case for anything concrete. It's all based on emotional, ideological, progressive arguments. He says Western slavery is horrible without telling us why and we just need to just believe him as he really feels it strongly. Yet Western slavery varied as much as Muslim slavery so it's not clear why it loses this battle. After the Middle Ages Western slavery at its worst was not nearly as bad as the worst Muslim slavery. He of course largely ignores this horrible Muslim slavery while just assuming that the worst things in the West are much worse than depicted in any history book. He constantly attacks USA and Western culture this way. I don't hate the attacks themselves. They are pointless and biased, but not cruel. It's just that it completely destroys his very own argument. Him just ignoring the West would have won me over to his side easily. But if he has a need to use it to make a big claim then deceiving the reader is not the way to do it. You can't freely pick when and how you are critical of claims. You can't assume the out-group is evil without making a case for it. Instead he should have just said Islamic slavery or slavery overall is not that bad and then not made it a competition where he needed to deceive to win it.Let's go over the constructivism argument. As he starts taking about Muslim slavery his defense is how varied it was. So his main defense is an overly long intro to constructivism and how all words and ideas are cultural constructions.For example, the book tries to "defend" terrorism by claiming that all term definitions are constructed so we don't actually know what terrorism is. Hence it's just a concept we invented. An example of the made up term of slavery is that a son may be more slavelike than an Islamic slave as the son cannot buy his freedom as some slaves can. I get where he is going with this. Full idea: slavery can mean many things. But spending over 100 pages explaining this by applying modern semi-academic tricks to do so is a waste of the reader's time. I've read such basic constructivism intros 100 times before, I didn't need a huge one yet again. He could have been historically focused and not made any comparisons to Western slavery or constructivism whole saying things directly and I'd agree with him. Slavery can be many things, I know. He shouldn't have used ideological progressive tools to make this point and made it the main argument. Because he doesn't fully explain these logical assumptions so the whole book fails.For example, the first 3:15 hours of the audiobook have more clear opinions on American slavery than Islamic slavery and neither is explained via examples but mainly via his biased opinions. That's insane. That part has maybe 15 minutes of good info in Islamic slavery which is completely unacceptable for any book with such a title. The book is not a historical overview of Islamic slavery. It's a moral attack on American slavery and a defense of Islamic slavery at the very same time!?! Basically, the first 3:15 hours is mainly a vague social constructivism intro and how it applies to Islamic slavery. A dog is a dog because we define the word. Slavery is horrible as we know it's horrible. But Islamic slavery is not horrible because what does the word slavery even mean? It has no meaning! Gotcha!Anyone thinking this is a good argument must be very ignorant indeed. It's just him picking whatever point of view he needs to make a claim. It's easy to win all your arguments when you state things you agree with as pure factual claims but then also tell the reader that Islamic slavery is not even as thing as it's a constructed term.But despite his big failure the idea that Islamic slavery can be non-awful is very much clear and detailed. I don't think readers will disagree with that. His conclusion is very much correct and easy to agree with after just 10 historical pages. It's just his way to his claim that's so perplexing and maddening that it's nonsensical. It's like if I told you that 2+2 is 4 because four has one more letter than two and therefore somehow must be the answer.Ufffff… so damn close to being a great book. So close. Just remove 15 horrible pages from the book and the rating may even improve 2 full stars. Unfortunately he himself has picked his poison. He himself has a need to make some fine historical claims but then center them around an argument that's not even horrible. It's one step below that. It's not even a clear argument as he doesn't present the other side of the comparison.It's not rare that I pan a book for a few horrible pages in it. But it rarely happens that the whole book goes from great to bad because of that alone. I've had this experience with some social science textbooks too. Great intro to psychology suddenly ruined by some completely stupid pet theory the author had the need to present while depicting all the counter-evidence, the actual science, as pseudoscience. It's hard to defend a book I know will lead readers to the wrong conclusions.Besides the main argument I also did think the hundreds of pages about constructivism and the vague moral arguments were pointless and a waste of time. But maybe some high schoolers would need such a step-by-step basic moral argument intro where all his claims need several pages each.The history in the book is good even though it's very one-sided. It's not really a book about Islamic slavery. For that you'd need to find another book. But it still needs to contain this stuff to support the main claim and it makes it 70% good. I did learn a ton about the topic. And now I'm very eager to learn much more.If you want a truly magnificent intro to Islamic slavery I very strongly suggest, Skeletons on the Zahara. It's just one story but it's so clear and direct that I learned more from it than from this book. Then there are good documentaries too. I need to seek out specific books Islam now. There are very few English ones it seems, unless it's badly written religious teachings.