Blog

By Bassam Michael Madany

4 January 2021

In 2018, I dealt with the subject of the “Veiled Genocide” and posted it on the website Middle East Resources. Two more years later, the book of the Senegalese scholar Tidiane N’Diaye, has not been translated into English from the original French edition.

I’m perplexed why the Anglophone world still cannot read this timely work.                            

The Veiled Genocide: A forgotten Historic Tragedy - Middle East Resources (www.unashamedofthegospel.org)

There is a great deal of interest in the subject, as I learn from the report of Stat Counter. People from various parts of the world are accessing my article on a daily basis.

On 23 May 2018, Tidiane N’Diaye used the means of YouTube, to give a passionate three-minute lecture on “The Veiled Genocide.”  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxc5ENT8ajg

The text of the message

The trans-Sahelian and Eastern slave trade, lasted more than 13 centuries, without interruption. The Arabs raided the black continent. It is a chapter in African history that is still taboo: the slavery of black populations by the Arab world.

There is no degree of horror, nor a monopoly of suffering or cruelty. But we can safely say that the trans-Sahelian and Eastern Slave Trade was much more devastating for the African populations, than the Transatlantic slave trade. If I called my study "Veiled Genocide" it is because the generalized castration that was done on the African slaves, annihilated any possibility of them leaving any descendants. This explains why today there is hardly African presence in the Arab world.

It seems that most Muslim intellectuals hesitate to approach this part of our history, a painful page that not only Arab-Muslim scholars should have opened, but African intellectuals also hesitate to deal with it. African students living in the Maghreb are often treated in a rather despicable manner. African maids have their passports confiscated in Lebanon or elsewhere [that is to keep them from leaving the country due to their maltreatment]. By keeping silent about a crime, it risks repeating itself. Exactly as Elie Wiesel said. Whoever ignores their past is at risk of having it all over again.