Why I am Ahmed, not Charlie?

[Riaz Haq]

Ahmed Merabet was a French Muslim police officer who died defending the people at Charlie Hebdo who mocked his prophet and his religion.  He was a real hero. He stood for the rule-of-law and against vigilante justice imposed by the terrorists who attacked and killed a dozen people at Charlie Hebdo's office in Paris, France. So I honor him by saying "I am Ahmed" (Je Suis Ahmed).

French Police Officer Ahmed Merabet

As I condemn the terrorist attack and honor Ahmed's memory, I must also say why "I am not Charlie" (Je ne suis pas Charlie).  Here are my reasons:

1. While I  strongly condemn the terror attack and sympathize with the families of those killed at Charlie Hebdo's office, I do not lionize satirists who"punch down" rather than "punch up", to borrow from Daily Beast's Arthur Chu.  The whole idea of satire is to challenge those in positions of power and authority rather than the underdogs like the poor French Muslims who make up 60 to 70 percent of the prison population despite being less than 10 percent of the population overall.

2.  People who defend Charlie Hebdo as an "equal opportunity offender" are just plain wrong.  There was at least one instance where Charlie apologized for a satirical piece and fired  Sine (Maurice Sinet) the cartoonist for an "anti-Semitic" caricature of Ms. Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish wife of President Nicholas Sarkozy's son Jean Sarkozy.

3. France's commitment to civil liberties is selective. While it is strongly invoked as absolute when Charlie mocks Islam and its prophet, it does not extend to Muslim women's right to choose what they wear. The French law against “religious symbols in public spaces” is specifically enforced to target Muslim women who wear hijab.

Negative stereotyping of Prophet Mohammad has been the preoccupation of generations of Western writers from the time of the Crusades to the present day. Among those who have engaged in highly offensive portrayal of Islam's prophet are Italian poet-philosopher Dante Aligheri (1265-1321), Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (1325-1450) and European "Enlightenment" leader François-Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1778). More recently, there have been attempts by Salman Rushdie (Satanic Verses), Kurt Westergaard (Danish Jyllands-Posten cartoons), Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (Innocence of Muslims)  and Charlie Hebdo to ridicule Muslims' most revered leader.

While I strongly condemn the terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo and the loss of a dozen lives in Paris, let me remind everyone that Europe has a long history of mocking Islam and its prophet. It is well documented in "Muhammad in Europe" by Minou Reeves which covers everything from Dante's Inferno to Voltaire's Mahomet. What has changed now is that the  emergence of the new Internet-based social media has made such anti-Muslim bigotry much more commerce-oriented and accessible to a global audience.

As we fight the menace of global terror perpetrated in the name of religion, we must also address the genuine issues of racism and rising anti-Muslim bigotry in Europe.  This will require thought leaders on both sides to find common ground for a serious and sustained inter-faith and inter-racial dialog to end the threat of violence.

Here's a related video discussion:

http://youtu.be/2TiBpi-jUPw





http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2egwxz_viewpoint-from-overseas-vi...



Viewpoint from Overseas - Violent protest on... by faizanmaqsood1010

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Globalization of Hate Speech

The Prophet I Know

Misaq e Madina Inspired Quaid e Azam MA Jinnah

Growing Intolerance in Pakistan

Exposing Congressman King's Hypocrisy

FBI Entrapping Young Muslims

Fighting Agents of Intolerance in Pakistan

Muslim Scholars Must Fight Hate in Pakistan

South Asian Christians Celebrate Christmas in Fear

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's Vision

Pakistan Must Defeat Agents of Intolerance 

Celebrating Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah's Birthday

[Riaz Haq]

Malian Muslim worker saved Jews at a kosher supermarket in Paris, France: 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally thanked him. French politicians called for him to be awarded France’s highest honor. And now, just days after a deadly terrorist attack hit a Parisian kosher store, he was dubbed the “Malian Muslim,” the man who risked everything to save the lives of some Jews.

“I want to express my appreciation to the Mali citizen who helped save seven Jews,” Netanyahu said Sunday night during a visit to a synagogue as the audience erupted in cheers.

As French authorities stitched together the details of what transpired during last week’s days of terror, a cast of villains and heroes emerged. There were the French police officers who died during the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo, and the female officer an Islamist militant gunned down in southern Paris. Then there was the owner of a printing plant who distracted gunmen while a 26-year-old colleague escaped. And finally — perhaps most incredibly — there’s the Malian Muslim.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/12/the-mu... 

[Riaz Haq]

Freedom of speech is a French myth

The bloodbath in Paris, though, had nothing to do with freedom of speech nor, indeed, Islam.

The deliberate provocation of six million Muslims in France and their 1.8 billion co-religionists worldwide through constant racial vulgarity and indignity directed at the Prophet and Islam under the guise of freedom of speech is reckless and reprehensible. Do French "values" and democracy really confer the freedom to denigrate someone who is cherished so deeply by fellow human beings?

It is now being promoted that the French media is free to publish anything as a fundamental right without restrictions of any kind; this is a myth. For example, French law does not permit the publication of material that promotes the use of drugs; hatred based on race or gender; insults about the national flag and anthem; or questions about the Nazi Holocaust. Dieudonné M'Bala, a French comedian and satirist, was convicted and fined in a French court for describing Holocaust remembrance as "memorial pornography".

In fact, in 2008, one of Charlie Hebdo's famous cartoonists, Siné, wrote a short note citing a news item that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy's son Jean was going to convert to Judaism to marry the heiress of a prosperous appliance chain. Siné added the comment, "He'll go far, this lad." For that, Siné was sacked on the grounds of his "anti-Semitism".

When Sarkozy was the Interior Minister he ordered the sacking of the director of Paris Match because he had published photos of his wife Cécilia Sarkozy with another man in New York. He even had rapper "Joestarr's" song censored because it criticised the politician.


A French court banned Closer magazine from re-publishing or distributing photographs in France of Britain's Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless. Despite this, Muslim women have been ostracised and forbidden to wear the headscarves in educational institutions and are ridiculed, arrested and fined for wearing the face veil in public.

The "Quenelle" hand sign has been described as anti-establishment and anti-Zionist by French youth and famous footballer Nicolas Anelka. It has stoked serious controversy in France since first being used by anti-establishment comedian M'Bala in 2005. He has been barred from many theatres and convicted a number of times for exercising his "freedom of speech" and using the Quenelle.

Protests by Muslims about blasphemous films and cartoons have been banned by the French authorities; France was the first country in the world to ban demonstrations in support of the Palestinians massacred in Gaza. This has led to the further marginalisation of France's Muslim and African minorities in the political and social life of the nation and increasing anti-Muslim bigotry and hate-crimes.

Many have seen through the hypocrisy of a nation outraged at the murder of 12 people at Charlie Hebdo's office, and yet is complicit with Israel in the murder of 17 journalists and 2,300 men, women and children in Gaza last year.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/europe/16295-freedom-of-...

[Riaz Haq]

Dear liberal pundit,

You and I didn't like George W Bush. Remember his puerile declaration after 9/11 that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists"? Yet now, in the wake of another horrific terrorist attack, you appear to have updated Dubya's slogan: either you are with free speech... or you are against it. Either vous êtes Charlie Hebdo... or you're a freedom-hating fanatic.

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In the midst of all the post-Paris grief, hypocrisy and hyperbole abounds. Yes, the attack was an act of unquantifiable evil; an inexcusable and merciless murder of innocents. But was it really a "bid to assassinate" free speech (ITV's Mark Austin), to "desecrate" our ideas of "free thought" (Stephen Fry)? It was a crime - not an act of war - perpetrated by disaffected young men; radicalised not by drawings of the Prophet in Europe in 2006 or 2011, as it turns out, but by images of US torture in Iraq in 2004.

---
Has your publication, for example, run cartoons mocking the Holocaust? No? How about caricatures of the 9/11 victims falling from the twin towers? I didn't think so (and I am glad it hasn't). Consider also the "thought experiment" offered by the Oxford philosopher Brian Klug. Imagine, he writes, if a man had joined the "unity rally" in Paris on 11 January "wearing a badge that said 'Je suis Chérif'" - the first name of one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen. Suppose, Klug adds, he carried a placard with a cartoon mocking the murdered journalists. "How would the crowd have reacted?... Would they have seen this lone individual as a hero, standing up for liberty and freedom of speech? Or would they have been profoundly offended?" Do you disagree with Klug's conclusion that the man "would have been lucky to get away with his life"?

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It's for these reasons that I can't "be", don't want to "be", Charlie - if anything, we should want to be Ahmed, the Muslim policeman who was killed while protecting the magazine's right to exist. As the novelist Teju Cole has observed, "It is possible to defend the right to obscene... speech without promoting or sponsoring the content of that speech."

And why have you been so silent on the glaring double standards? Did you not know that Charlie Hebdo sacked the veteran French cartoonist Maurice Sinet in 2008 for making an allegedly anti-Semitic remark? Were you not aware that Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet in 2005, reportedly rejected cartoons mocking Christ because they would "provoke an outcry" and proudly declared it would "in no circumstances... publish Holocaust cartoons"?

----
Does it not bother you to see Barack Obama - who demanded that Yemen keep the anti-drone journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye behind bars, after he was convicted on "terrorism-related charges" in a kangaroo court - jump on the free speech ban wagon? Weren't you sickened to see Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of a country that was responsible for the killing of seven journalists in Gaza in 2014, attend the "unity rally" in Paris? Bibi was joined by Angela Merkel, chancellor of a country where Holocaust denial is punishable by up to five years in prison, and David Cameron, who wants to ban non-violent "extremists" committed to the "overthrow of democracy" from appearing on television.

Then there are your readers. Will you have a word with them, please? According to a 2011 YouGov poll, 82% of voters backed the prosecution of protesters who set fire to poppies.

Apparently, it isn't just Muslims who get offended.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/charlie-hebdo-free-spee... 

[Riaz Haq]

From Haaretz: "Pencil and Hijab" 

This week, looking at photos of the mass rally in Paris, I was impressed by the apparent show of shared purpose. But I wondered how many of the marchers using the symbol of a pencil to defend free speech would also defend the right to express oneself by wearing a hijab. This isn't a rhetorical question; I don't know the answer. I'd suggest, however, that acceptance of the woman in the pastel hijab as a full citizen of the republic, a Frenchwoman, is essential to the war on terror.

That phrase, "war on terror," is usually misused in too wide or too narrow a sense – too wide when it's a synonym for "conflict of civilizations"; too narrow when it refers only to tactical means of preventing attacks or pursuing perpetrators.

What both usages ignore is that modern terrorism is a political strategy born in Western revolutionary movements. It's a tool of the few to mobilize the many: Acts of extravagant violence are expected to spur the enemy – the regime, or colonial power, or post-colonial powers – to overreact, to harm the innocent. People whom the terrorists believe should be on their side will be unable to remain quiet or seek compromise. In the larger conflict that ensues, the terrorists expect victory.

Renamed jihad, terror takes on a religious garb but the goals of polarization and escalation remain. So responding to an act of terror by Islamic radicals as if Islam alone produces such violence, or as if all Muslims were automatic terror suspects, plays into the hands of the terrorists. When Israel reacts to Hamas terror in ways that hurt the entire Palestinian population, it serves the terrorists. Those people in France who react to the brutal attacks of the past week by voting for the radical right will grant the terrorists a victory.

On the other hand, to the extent that the somber crowds in Paris demonstrated the civic unity of a diverse France, they handed a strategic defeat to terror. Those Israeli commentators who dismissed the demonstration as a useless gesture were mistaken.

The signs saying "Je Suis Charlie" bore a more contradictory message. Correct: Nothing that the magazine Charlie Hebdo published could provide a shadow of justification for murder. To identify with the victims seems a natural way to insist on freedom of expression. Intentionally or not, though, the slogan "I am Charlie" also suggests identifying with the magazine's content.

http://www.haaretz.com/mobile/.premium-1.637011

[Riaz Haq]

Controversial French Comedian Arrested Over Facebook Post On Paris Attacks

JANUARY 14, 201511:46 AM ET

KRISHNADEV CALAMUR

Twitter

Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala, the French comedian better known as Dieudonne, has been arrested and held on charges of apologizing for terrorism in the wake of a Facebook post that referred to last week's deadly attacks in Paris.

Michel Euler/AP

Controversial French comedian Dieudonne has been arrested in the wake of the deadly attack on the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and held on charges of apologizing for terrorism. He was one of 54 people held across the country; none has been linked to the attacks.

Dieudonne's alleged crime: writing "Je suis Charlie Coulibaly" [I am Charlie Coulibaly] on his Facebook account.

It's an apparent reference to "Je Suis Charlie," the message of solidarity that many people shared after the attack on the magazine that was targeted by Islamist extremists for its cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad. Coulibaly is the last name of Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four people at a Kosher market in Paris last week.

Reporter Eleanor Beardsley tells our Newscast unit:

"It's not the first time Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, who goes by the stage name Dieudonne, has been in trouble with French authorities. He has been fined for hate speech in the past, and in 2013 the French government tried to shut down his shows. Many believe Dieudonne's views and comedy skits are anti-Semitic and incite hatred. Dieudonne claims he is not anti-Semitic but anti-Zionist. He says he makes fun of everyone in his skits, but that Jews think they have the monopoly on suffering and are given special treatment in France."

Dieudonne's Facebook post has since been deleted, but in a separate post he wrote an open letter to France's interior minister: "Whenever I speak, you do not try to understand what I'm trying to say, you do not want to listen to me. You are looking for a pretext to forbid me. You consider me like Amedy Coulibaly when I am not any different from Charlie," he wrote. A translation was provided by The Associated Press. His Facebook page now bears the message: "Je Suis Dieudo: Liberté D'Expression."

As we have previously reported, Dieudonne's trademark gesture is a straight-arm salute known as a "quenelle." Critics say it's a reverse Nazi salute, but he denies that, insisting that it is anti-Zionist and anti-establishment. Last year, the French government banned his show, calling it a threat to public order. [Beardsley reported on the controversy at the time.]

France's Justice Ministry said the 54 people arrested today included four minors; several had already been convicted under special measures. Inciting terrorism is a crime with a five-year prison term in France; inciting terrorism online can lead to seven years in prison. The AP adds:

"In its message to prosecutors and judges, the ministry said it was issuing the order to protect freedom of expression from comments that could incite violence or hatred. It said no one should be allowed to use their religion to justify hate speech."

"We have all heard 'Yes, I support Charlie, but,' the double standards, the 'Why defend liberty of expression here and not there?'" Education Minister Najat Vallaud Belkacem said, according to the AP. "These questions are intolerable above all when we hear them at school, which has the duty to teach our values."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/14/377201227/controvers...

[Riaz Haq]

Elsa Ray, the spokeswoman of the Paris-based Collective Against Islamophobia in France, declined to react specifically to the new cartoon, but said that cartoons that lampooned Muhammad breached the limits of decency and insulted Muslims. “The freedom of expression may be guaranteed by the French Constitution, but there is a limit when it goes too far and turns into hatred, and stigmatization,” she said.

Moreover, she argued that the failure of French courts to clamp down on cartoons satirizing Muhammad was a double standard, given the robustness of action taken when Jews were insulted by cartoonists or artists, including Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, a comedian, who in 2013 came under the scrutiny of courts, which banned a series of his shows.

Mr. M’bala M’bala has said it was a shame that a Jewish journalist had not been killed in the gas chambers. He has also come under fire for popularizing a gesture that strongly resembles a Nazi salute.

In a statement on his Facebook page after Sunday’s enormous unity march in Paris, Mr. M’bala M’bala expressed his admiration for Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman behind the killings at a kosher supermarket. “As far as I am concerned, I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly,” he wrote, alluding to the “I am Charlie” rallying cry. The Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday it had opened an investigation to determine if Mr. M’bala M’bala should be charged with promoting terrorism.

Mr. M’bala M’bala said he was being unfairly targeted.

French laws safeguard the freedom of speech, but there are many exceptions to the rule.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the National Assembly on Tuesday that “blasphemy” was not in French law and never would be. But he refused to draw any analogy between the satirists of Charlie Hebdo and Mr. M’bala M’bala.

“There is a fundamental difference,” he said.

Some cultural observers praised Charlie Hebdo for upholding Western values of liberal democracy, even at risk of violence. Flemming Rose, the former cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, whose 2005 publication of cartoons lampooning Muhammad — including one with his turban depicted as a lit fuse — drew violent recriminations that reverberated across the world, recalled that the publication of the cartoons resulted in a fatwa against him by a radical cleric, threats against the newspaper and one of its cartoonists, and attacks against Danish embassies in the Middle East.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/world/europe/new-charlie-hebdo-ha...

[Riaz Haq]

Facebook CEO on free speech:


"Most countries have laws restricting some form of speech or another," the CEO said. If Facebook were to let users post something that would be illegal in their country, would that result in more people being able to express themselves? The best course of action is often to remove the content, he suggested.

"If you break the law in a country, often times the country blocks the service entirely," Zuckerberg said.

He was responding to a question about whether Facebook would break the law in a country that curtails free speech in order to empower its users.


Facebook's philosophy, Zuckerberg said, is to give people as many tools as possible to express themselves. The company sometimes pushes back against government requests to block content, he said, but Facebook must respect local laws.

The issue of freedom of speech is front and center after the shootings last week in Paris at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

At the time, Zuckerberg aligned himself with those advocating for the freedom to publish, writing a post that ended with the hash tag "JeSuisCharlie."

His comments were quickly criticized by some, who noted that Facebook has its own, sometimes seemingly arbitrary rules about posts it will not display.

On Wednesday, a person from Pakistan in a question submitted online, asked Zuckerberg why he decided to speak out about the shootings. The attack is relevant to Facebook because it wants to connect the world and give everyone a voice, the CEO replied.


In the first half of 2014, Facebook blocked access to thousands of pieces of content, though mostly in India and Turkey, according to its latest transparency report. In India, for instance, local laws prohibit criticism of religion or the state, the company said.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2870953/zuckerberg-describes-n...

[Riaz Haq]

"Free speech" claims out the window. #CNN fires Jim Clancy for tweets about Zionist propaganda. #Israel #CharlieHebdo 

http://www.mediaite.com/online/34-year-veteran-jim-clancy-leaves-cn...

“The cartoons NEVER mocked the Prophet. They mocked how the COWARDS tried to distort his word. Pay attention,” Clancy tweeted on the day of the Paris attacks. Subsequently, he accused Israel and Zionist propaganda of being partially responsible for the attacks. As of yesterday, he had deleted his Twitter account.

A CNN spokesperson confirmed the news, saying, “Jim Clancy is no longer with CNN. We thank him for more than three decades of distinguished service, and wish him nothing but the best.”

[Riaz Haq]

Excerpts of CBS 60 Minutes' "A New Kind of Terrorist" segment about Charlie Hebdo massacre:

Clarissa Ward: All three of these men (2 Kouachis brothers and Coulibaly) were very well-known to the police. How did this happen?

Xavier Raufer: And not only were they known to the police on the terrorist side, because they had the terrorist past but they were also known on the criminal side. Those are not 100 percent pure terrorists. Those are hybrids-- people, who at the same time, are hardened criminals. So, why did that happen? Is that the French legal system has a small box for a terrorist, has another small box for criminals and if you are at the same time one and the other, you fall into the crack in the middle and you are lost. This is basically what happened.

Clarissa Ward: Is this the new face of terrorism, this hybrid between jihad and petty criminals?

Xavier Raufer: Of course. Those are the only ones that are left. You know, jihad as an ideal has degenerated along the last 10 or 20 years. Fifteen, 20 years ago the bin Laden type. Now you have common criminals and thugs. One day they drink beer, the next day they smoke pot, the third day they are in a mosque. So, those are totally unstable people. They are human bombs, you know. They can explode any time.

---------
Alain Chouet: No one in Yemen in al Qaeda gave to the Kouachi brothers any instruction to attack Charlie Hebdo such on such day, such time, such date.

Clarissa Ward: So what did they give them? What kind of instructions--

Alain Chouet: They had no instructions. It's their own initiative.

Clarissa Ward: Some people have suggested that security forces were so fixated on finding terrorists, kingpins, pa-- part of a larger network, that to focus on a petty criminal like Cherif Kouachi or Amedy Coulibaly, it seemed not very exciting-- not very important.

Alain Chouet: So when you are always catching little fishes which are forgotten after two or three years, then you try to catch a bigger one. And you put all your means on the possibility of catching a big one.

Clarissa Ward: But now it seems that little fish are the real danger.

Alain Chouet: Sure. The problem is ours. The problem is in our own society, on our own territory.

Amedy Coulibaly's life is a good illustration of that problem. Like Cherif he was a hybrid. He had a long rap sheet for armed robbery. And was trying to live the good life, gangster style. On beach vacations he posed for pictures with his girlfriend who was in a bikini. But look at this later photo, the couple is still together but the picture is radically different.

This is where it's believed his transformation took place, in an infamous French prison, Fleury-Merogis, where Coulibaly served time for robbery. It was here that he met Cherif Kouachi and where they both came under the influence of this man: Djamel Beghal an al Qaeda operative doing time for a conspiracy to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris. Beghal was in solitary confinement but Coulibaly later described how the men would communicate by talking through an open window and even passing notes to each other. The dysfunctional French prison system had put the little fish in with a shark.

Clarissa Ward: Djamel Beghal was in solitary confinement, right? How, if you're in solitary confinement in prison, are you still able to radicalize two young men?

Alain Chouet: It's a joke. How do you want that to isolate someone when you have 50,000 cells and 65,000 prisoners?

After they were released from prison the three continued to mee. These surveillance photos show Cherif and Coulibaly visiting Beghal in the French countryside.

Xavier Raufer: Beghal, for them, is the guru type. They don't know much about Islam. So, they are like kids, saying, "Mommy, what if I do this? Mommy, what if I do that?" And who is Mommy? It's the guru--

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-terror-attacks-60-minutes/

[Riaz Haq]

In 1807, American readers were titillated by a potboiler entitled “History of the captivity and sufferings of Mrs. Maria Martin.” Its salacious story was summed up by its pithy subtitle: “Who was six years a slave in Algiers, two of which she was confined in a dark and dismal dungeon, loaded with irons for refusing to comply with the brutal request of a Turkish officer.”

We often forget that Americans have been thinking about Islam for centuries. In the republic’s early days, Muslims not only accounted for a large part of the enslaved labor force but also often appeared in stories as fearful figures in far-off places—dark hazards to American virtue. These old images help illuminate today’s American debates about Islam.

In the early republic, popular accounts of “Mohammedanism” were largely limited to tales of the capture and enslavement of Americans in Muslim lands. Narratives like Mrs. Maria Martin’s joined fears of North African pirates with titillating plots of kidnapping. They echoed the era’s best-selling accounts of colonists trapped by American Indians.

As the 19th century progressed, some abolitionists began to argue that Islam had things to teach Christianity. Slavery’s foes called slave owners in Muslim lands more fair than their U.S. counterparts.

In 1810, for instance, the New Hampshire Patriot ran a story called “Mohammedan Forbearance,” depicting a Muslim caliph as a model of faith and morality. Even after a slave spills a dish and scalds him, the caliph treats the slave well and later frees him, quoting the Quran to buttress his mercy. This example, the journal says, “might be usefully imitated by the professors of purer doctrines.”

Islam was deployed here as a setting for a morally instructive yarn that sought at once to enlighten and shame its audience. If a Muslim could heed his supposedly lesser religion’s call to free slaves and improve their lot, how could Christians—even if they disdained Islam—not do likewise?

The notion that slavery governed by Islam was more humane than slavery governed by the Gospel was no doubt a fantasy—but a durable one. Seven years later, the Connecticut Courant published a report called “Treatment of Negro Slaves in Morocco,” calling for Christians to learn moral virtues from Muslims. The abolitionists behind the report didn’t deny that many Muslims were slave owners and traders, but they argued that those who prayed to Allah often treated their captives better than did those who prayed to Christ. “The more intelligent [slaves] learn to read and write” and “acquire a partial knowledge of the Koran,” the Courant claimed of slaves in Islamic lands. Their “master exults in having converted an infidel”—and then, like the Patriot’s caliph, sets such slaves free.

Such kid-glove treatment of Islam in the press soon disappeared—due in part, perhaps, to widespread fears from an 1835 Muslim-led slave revolt in the Brazilian city of Bahia, which riveted Americans even outside the slave states. A Massachusetts report was typically breathless: “On the morning of the 25th of January the whole city of Bahia was thrown into a state of the greatest excitement in consequence of an insurrection of the slaves…It was by far the best planned and most extensive rising ever contemplated by those unfortunate beings.”

Later called the Malê rebellion—from the Yoruba word for Muslim—this slave uprising was a religious battle waged by Muslims against Christian slavery. Many of the dead were found wearing protective amulets made of leather pouches, containing slips of paper upon which were inscribed Quranic verses. It was Christian slaveholders’ worst nightmare—a potential holy war on every plantation....

http://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-forgotten-images-of-islam-1425...