https://www.frontpagemag.com/arab-elites-racial-slavery-against-africans-in-mauritania/
“Over the years, the global focus and discourse on slavery has concentrated on the Trans-Atlantic trade that featured American and European merchants. One other trade has however remained largely ignored, and at times has even been treated as a taboo subject, despite being a key component of African history owing to the devastating impact it has had on the continent, its generations and its people’s way of life,” writes the Kenyan journalist Bob Koigi.
The Arab Muslim slave trade, also known as the trans-Saharan trade or Eastern slave trade, is noted as the longest slave trade, having occurred for more than 1,300 years while taking millions of Africans away from their continent to work in foreign lands in the most inhumane conditions.
Koigi further explains:
Male slaves would work as field workers or guards at the harems. To ensure that they never reproduced in case they got intimate with their fellow female slaves, the men and boys were castrated and made eunuchs in a brutal operation by which the majority would lose their lives in the process.
When Muslims conquered much of Africa, indigenous blacks were converted to Islam, either by sword or persuasion. Tragically, the Arab Islamic slavery of Africans is not a thing of the past. It is an ongoing human rights abuse prevalent in some African nations. The Islamic Republic of Mauritania, a country in northwest Africa, is one of the most pressing cases where racial slavery of Africans is widespread.
The Arabo-Berber rulers of Mauritania still enslave Africans. Blacks are wholly owned, may be given as wedding gifts or loaned out to friends.
Since its independence from France in 1960, Mauritania has been an Islamic republic. The Constitutional Charter of 1985 declares that Islam is the state religion and Sharia is the law of the land.
“Mauritania is consistently ranked as the worst place in the world for slavery, with tens of thousands still trapped in total servitude across the country,” reports Minority Rights Group.