Ethical Canons and Scientific Inquiry

  PART I ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING WAR
  Chapter  1 About Ethical Canons and War
  Chapter  2 Decisions Precipitating War
  Chapter  3 Human Sacrifice
  Chapter  4 Amiriyah Shelter
  PART II ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING EQUALITY
Chapter  5 Slavery
  Chapter  6 Arens' Atrocity Attribution Theory
  Chapter  7 Genocide of Native Americans
  Chapter  8 Intermarriage
  PART III ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING JUSTICE
  Chapter  9 Incarceration
  Chapter 10 Reemergence of Torture
  Chapter 11 Witchcraft Trials
  Chapter 12 Trials of Heretics
  PART IV ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING RELIGION
  Chapter 13 The New and Old Testaments
  Chapter 14 Transplanted Mentality
  Chapter 15 God and His Messengers
  PART V ETHICAL CANONS CONCERNING EMPATHY
  Chapter 16 Karla Tucker and George W. Bush
  Chapter 17 A Girl with the Almond Eyes
  Chapter 18 Beyond Partiality: Building a World of Laughter and Love
Slavery
Punishment of slaves included hangings by the ribs. An incision was made into the victim's side and a hook was threaded around the person's ribs. As thus hanged person could stay alive up to three days, the severity of this method of punishment could be graduated by increasing the time of the suspension.

 

Slave Traders  During the recent centuries, the slavery was imposed by the Judeo-Christians and Muslims on the native people of Africa. The slave trade was predominantly perpetrated by the Arab countries and by the Portugal, Spain, Great Britain and the Netherlands, all of these countries having economically influential Jewish or Marano minorities. While many European countries that were involved in the slave-trade to a lesser degree (Denmark, Sweden, France) have recognized slavery as a crime against humanity, so far none of the major slave-trading nations did. During the centuries of the slave trade, at least 28 million people were forcibly removed from Africa as slaves. Muslim traders exported as many as 17 million slaves to the Middle East and at least 12 million Africans were shipped from Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to Americas and the West Indies with a mortality rate of probably 10-20% during the Atlantic crossings. Unknown numbers of Africans died in forced marches before being shipped.

 

 

Slave Ships  The following narrative by Robert Walsh, describes conditions on a slave ship in 1829. 'When we mounted Feloz, we found her full of slaves. She had taken in, on the coast of Africa, 336 males and 226 females, making in all 562. The slaves were all enclosed under grated hatchways between decks. The space was so low that they sat between each other's legs and were stowed so close together that there was no possibility of their lying down or at all changing their position by night or day. They had sailed from the coast of Africa on the 7th of May and had been out but seventeen days, and they had thrown overboard no less than fifty-five, who had died of dysentery and other complaints in that space of time, though they had left the coast in good health.'

 

 

 
Monument in Lisbon, Portugal to
Henry the Navigator(1394-1460)
 

 


Fort Jesus, Mombasa, Kenya
Portuguese Slave Trade  In Portugal, Prince Henry the Navigator sponsored early voyages of discovery along the western coast of Africa as it was believed that somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa is a 'River of Gold.'  In 1441, a Henry's ship returned from a voyage along the western coast of Africa with twelve twelve black Africans aboard. Two years later, Portuguese ships returned from Africa with nearly thirty slaves and within ten years, thousands of slaves had been transported by sea to Portugal and the Portuguese Islands.

 In 1499 Portuguese built the Fort Jesus on the island city of Mombasa, the present capital of Kenya. The Fort Jesus was designed by the Italian architect Jao Batisto Cairato with cell for slaves and 'tunnels of no return' used to channel them onto slave ships waiting in the harbor.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Spanish Slave Trade  After the Spain's entry to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Portuguese preferred the South Atlantic routes while the Spanish dominated the traffic in the Northern Atlantic.

 

 

 


Dutch Slave Fortress on the Gold Coast of Africa.


Netherlands' national monument to the victims of slavery.

  

Dutch Slave Trade  Holland was a powerful state throughout the 17th Century. The slave trade of the Netherlands was conducted by the Dutch West Indies Company, established in 1621 and governed by a small group of interconnected elite families. According to the paper presented in 1966 by John M. Shaftesley to the Jewish Historical Society of England, the Dutch Jews owned about 60% of the Dutch East India Company, the second largest of the slave-traders along the "middle passage" from Africa to North and South America and the West Indies.

  On the 1st of July, 2002 the Queen of the Netherlands unveiled a national monument to the victims of slavery while expressing remorse for the nation's slave trading past. The Netherlands National Committee on Slavery is lobbying for compensations and a permanent museum, patterned after the Washington, D.C. Holocaust Museum.

 

Stowage of a British Slave Ship

 

 

British Slave Traders  In 1562 John Hawkins became the first Englishman to carry a cargo of 300 black slaves to the new world. His voyage netted such a profit that Queen Elizabeth, who initially chastised Hawkins that his slave trading voyage was 'detestable and would call down vengeance from heaven upon the undertakers,' invested quite heavily in Hawkins' subsequent slaving expeditions and provided two of his six ships.

 Names of the ships Queen Elizabeth added to the Hawkins' flotilla were 'Jesus' and the 'Grace of God.' Hawkins was knighted in 1588. In 1672 Charles II chartered the Royal African Company, which quickly established Britain as the world's greatest slave trader. While the abolition of slavery was one of the first decrees of the French Revolution of 1789, the entry of Britain into the war with France in 1793 was to a degree motivated by concerns about the safety of the British slave-trade. At that time, the British slave traders were hailed as patriotic and the slave-trade was seen as the 'nursery of seamen.'

 When Britain abolished the slave trade in 1834,
slave holders were paid £20 millions in compensation
(£43 billions in 2002 according to the eh.net calculator),
nothing was paid to former slaves.

Rabbi Raphael on the Slave Trade The Internet site of Rabbi Marc Lee Raphael gives his credentials as follows:

The Nathan and Sophia Gumenick Professor of Judaic Studies and Chair, Department of Religion, The College of William and Mary, and a Visiting Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford University. He just completed a 20 year term (1982-2002) as the editor of the quarterly journal, American Jewish History, for 19 years, and a visiting professor at Brown University, the University of Pittsburgh, HUC-JIR, UCLA, and Case Western Reserve University. He came to The College of William and Mary in 1989 after 20 years at Ohio State University. He is the author of many books on Jews and Judaism in America.

With respect to Jewish role in the slave trade, Marc Lee Raphael his 1983 book Jews and Judaism in the United States  writes:

'Jews also took an active part in the Dutch colonial slave trade; indeed, the bylaws of the Recife and Mauricia congregations (1648) included an imposta (Jewish tax) of five soldos for each Negro slave a Brazilian Jew purchased from the West Indies Company. Slave auctions were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday. In Curacao in the seventeenth century, as well as in the British colonies of Barbados and Jamaica in the eighteenth century, Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade. In fact, in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated. This was no less true on the North American mainland, where during the eighteenth century Jews participated in the 'triangular trade' that brought slaves from Africa to the West Indies and there exchanged them for molasses, which in turn was taken to New England and converted into rum for sale in Africa. Isaac Da Costa of Charleston in the 1750's, David Franks of Philadelphia in the 1760's, and Aaron Lopez of Newport in the late 1760's and early 1770's dominated Jewish slave trading on the American continent.

Punishment of Slaves  Slave who attempted to escape was branded with an R, had a leg cut off, or was whipped. William Dickson in his 1789 book Letters on Slavery described whipping of slaves as follows:

'The instrument of correction commonly used is composed of leathern thongs, platted in the common way, and tapers from the end of the handle (within which is a short bit of wood) to the point, which is furnished with a lash of silk-grass, hard platted and knotted, like that of a horse-whip but thicker. Its form gives it some degree of elasticity towards the handle; and when used with severity it tears the flesh, and brings blood at every stroke.'

Other punishments were lynching, burning, hanging upside-down above an ant-hill, the list goes on and on.

Slavery in the Bible   In Greek, 'doulos' means 'slave' and 'diakonos' means 'servant.' This difference in meaning was considered insignificant by many translators of the Bible who frequently translated both words as 'servant.' However, in some contexts, the 'doulos' had to be translated as 'slave,' as 'servant' would detract from the severity of punishments meted out by Judeo-Christians not only to voyeurs, but also to their children and children of their children.

Babinsky's (2005) in his Bible and Slavery lists the Biblical passages dealing with slavery as follows: 'The Bible says that all the patriarchs had slaves. Abraham, “the friend of God,” and “the father of the faithful,” bought slaves from Haran (Gen. 12:50), included them in his property list (Gen. 12:16, 24:35-36), and willed them to his son Isaac (Gen. 26:13-14). What is more, Scripture says God blessed Abraham by multiplying his slaves (Gen. 24:355).

Numbers, chapter 31, says that the Hebrews slew all the Midianites with the exception of female virgins whom the Hebrews “kept for themselves." At God’s command Joshua took slaves (Josh 9:23), as did David (1 Kings 8:2,6) and Solomon (1 Kings 9:20-21). Leviticus 25:44-46, says, “You may acquire male and female slaves from the nations that are around you. Then too, out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you...they also may become your possession. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever [i.e., the slave’s children would be born into slavery along with their children’s children, forever].” The “Lord” also tells his people to “bore holes in the ears” of a slave to mark him as his master’s possession “forever.”

The Bible also allows a creditor to enslave his debtor or his debtor’s children (2 Kings 4:1). Also, children could be sold into slavery by their parents (Exodus 21:7; Isaiah 50:1), so sayeth “the word of the Lord.”

The Bible tells us that a master may beat his slaves: “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives a day or two (before dying), no vengeance shall be taken; for the slave is his master’s money.” (Ex. 21:20-21).

According to the Bible, anyone who has enough money to buy another human being is “worthy of all honor” (1 Tim. 6:1) in the eyes of the one who has been purchased. Slaves should seek to fulfill the “will of God” by obediently serving their masters (Eph. 6:5-6). Slaves who endured “suffering” (including “unjust suffering”) were “acceptable of God” (1 Peter 2:18-20). So if slaves do not find their masters “worthy of all honor,” but “disobey” their masters, and refuse to “endure sufferings” imposed by their masters, such behavior displeases not only man, but God as well. Even Jesus, in his parables, took for granted that a master had the right to discipline his disobedient slaves: “The slave who knew his master’s will, but did not do it, was beaten with many stripes.” (Luke 12:47).

According to Talmud, Noah is not mad at Ham for
 'seeing him naked,' but because Ham performed
 fellatio on him.

Consider the following quote from the Bible (Genesis 9:25-27), where Noah curses his grandson Canaan and his descendants because Noah's son Ham had seen Noah naked:

'Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.' He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem and may Canaan be his slave.' "

However, as described in detail in Dreyfuss and Lawrence (1979, p. 257) Politics of Inequality, the above quote is only the toned-down rephrasing of the original verse of the Talmud where Noah is not mad at Ham for 'seeing him naked,' but because while Noah was (as he claims) sleeping, Ham performed fellatio on him:

'Because you have abused me in the darkness of the night, your children shall be born black and ugly; because you have twisted your head to cause me embarrassment, they shall have kinky hair and red eyes; because your lips jested at my exposure, theirs shall swell; and because you neglected my nakedness, they shall go naked with their shamefully elongated male members exposed for all to see.'

This passage is one of the favorite of theologians who wished to justify slavery on Biblical grounds. The descendants of Ham were assumed to be Africans, sentenced to perpetual slavery, while the slave owners were only implementing God's wishes. 


Nubian Girls


Slavery in the Qur'an   Srdja and Serge Trifkovic in The Sword of the Prophet  (2002) write that

'The Koran not only assumes the existence of slavery as a permanent fact of human existence, but regulates its practice in considerable detail, thereby endowing it with divine sanction by revealing God's detailed will for how it should be conducted. Mohammed and his companions owned slaves. The Koran recognizes the basic inequality between master and slave and the rights of the former over the latter.' 

Moslem slave-owners were entitled by law to the sexual enjoyment of their slave women and preferred the Nubian and Ethiopian female slaves with their slender features while castrating their male counterparts. Thus, over the time, the black female slaves genetically merged with the Arab population while the black male slaves died without offspring. This can be contrasted with the Judeo-Christian countries where slaves, even though abused sexually, were bred for profit. According to Trifkovics, this could explain that ' there are tens of millions of descendants of slaves in the Americas, and practically none in the Moslem world outside Africa.'
 

Contemporary Hyper-Calvinism 

  Gary North in his Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (1986, p.214) elaborates on the claim that Judeo-Christians should dominate not only the American continent, but the whole of the Earth:

'What the ten commandments set forth is a strategy. This strategy is a strategy for dominion. Was Moses arrogant and unbiblical when he instructed the Israelites to kill every Canaanite in the land (Deut. 7:2; 20:16-17)? Was he an "elitist" or (horror of horrors) a racist? No; he was a God-fearing man who sought to obey God, who commanded them to kill them all. It sounds like a "superior attitude" to me. Of course, Christians have been given no comparable military command in New Testament times, but I am trying to deal with the attitude of superiority--a superiority based on our possession of the law of God. That attitude is something Christians must have when dealing with all pagans. God has given us the tools of dominion.'

  David Chilton in his book (1981, pp.61-62) Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators writes:

'The bible permits slavery. This statement will come as a shock to most people. The laws in the Bible concerning slavery have very seldom been studied, much less preached upon. But the biblical laws concerning slavery are among the most beneficent in all the Bible. There are four legal ways to get slaves. They may be purchased (Leviticus 25:44-46), captured in war (Numbers 31:32-35; Deuteronomy 21:10-14), enslaved as punishment for theft (Exodus 22:1-3), or enslaved to pay off debts (Leviticus 25:39; Exodus 21:7). We should especially note God's merciful justice here. Heathen slaves who were purchased or captured in war were actually favored by this law, since It placed them in contact with believers and they were able to hear the liberating message of the gospel. Slavery has certain benefits (job security, etc.), however, slaves have no economic incentive to work, since they cannot improve their situation regardless of how hard they labor. Therefore the master is allowed to provide that incentive by beating them (Exodus 21:20-27).'

 These ongoing justifications of slavery from the religious perspective speak volumes in itself.

 

Statistics and Slavery    There are many reasons why we want to distinguish the visual statistics from the traditional statistics, one of them being the Thornton Stringfellow's (1856) book Scriptural and Statistical Views in Favor of Slavery. Stringfellow asserts that slavery is recognized by Jesus Christ and the Mosaic Law as legitimate and uses data from the 1850 census to compare the Southern states with the New England states. These comparisons show that at that time the Southern states were superior with respect to parameters indicating the intensity of religious life, general prosperity, and population growth. Stringfellow concludes that slavery is not a curse but a blessing, as God rewards those who worship him with material abundance.

Miss Evers' Boys  Another reason (and there are many more) why we want to distance the visual statistics from the traditional statistics is the Tuskegee experiment where 412 subjects in the experimental group were compared with the 200 subjects in the control group. This study, concluded in 1972 after the Washington Star published (on July 25, 1972) Jean Heller's article about this study, conducted in Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service. In this study, 412 African-American subjects diagnosed with syphilis were were induced to participate in this experiment by the promise of being treated. However, they were 'treated' with placebo and not antibiotics to study the progress and terminal symptoms of this disease. This story was captured in the 1997 movie 'Miss Evers' Boys' with Alfre Woodard as cast as Eunice Evers, R.N. As commented by a viewer,

'I (as a psychology student) have read about a lot of experiments,
some of which were morally more acceptable than others, but
never in my life have I read something as terrible as this.'

 


Flagellation of a female slave

Compensation for Slavery  As discussed in the Genocide of Native Americans,

among the countless atrocities of the last centuries, by far the greatest were the
genocide of the native Americans, deaths associated with the slavery trade
(estimated to be 28 million people, cf., Stannard, p. 151) , and the holocaust
of the Jewish people (estimated to be 6 million people).

The Black perspective on the compensation for slavery is provided by Poumier (2007) in The real Holocaust is that of Blacks, excerpted as follows:

This is the moment to be angry and let it know. There is another Holocaust: the one against millions of Africans, considered non-human by the white people during many centuries. When the European industry of black slavery began, it was allowed and encouraged by pope Nicolas V, in 1542, as a privilege for the Portuguese, the country that was a refuge for Spanish Jews who were among the slaves traders for the Arab world.

Nowadays, the Black claims are not listened to with sympathy. Moreover, the Black Holocaust still takes place, in bloody conflict  in Africa where the neo-colonial powers fight for the control of minerals, oil, land, and by proxy encourage “tribal” or “ethnic” cleansing. The African genocides can take place because many white people feel that Blacks are not exactly their brothers, but somehow less than human. The quality of full humanity is not denied to Jews, as they succeeded in obliging other people to respect them. The question of compensations is a test : Jews receive compensations as any white person who loses property in a war, but most white people reject the idea of compensations in the case of the bigger Holocaust, the Black one. There are many means to compute the debt, among them the many extant trade and tax books of the corporations whose capital comes directly from slaves trade.