It has been years since I read the book, but Patricia Seed's 
Ceremonies of Possession may discuss how the Spanish used 
Islamic models to justify their treatment of natives in South 
America.

Ed Bond

> 
> It is interesting that you now lay the association of Islam 
> with slavery in 
> my lap. I did not make that association, which is why I posed 
> the question. 
> We are supposed to be discussing Virginia history in general 
> and American 
> history in particular. I was simply attempting to bring the 
> discussion back 
> to Virginia History. BTW I was not posing the question to anyway in 
> particular, so please do not take offense.
> 
> However, thank you for at least attempting to answer the question.
> 
> Anita
> 
> 
> >From: David Kiracofe <[log in to unmask]>
> >Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history         
> >      <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: Re: Islamic Slavery (was Re: Slavery and immoral stance, etc.)
> >Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:21:55 -0400
> >
> >I'm a bit put off with your association of Islam, which is a cultural
> >and religious system, with the institution of slavery as practiced in
> >its various locales.   Yes, Islamic law validated the holding of slaves,
> >but so did Christianity and numerous other faiths.  But surely the
> >association of the buying and selling of people should be with the
> >people who did the buying and selling and not their presumed belief
> >systems.  Neither the African Muslim seller (and not all sellers were in
> >fact Muslims) nor the European Christian buyers were behaviing in ways
> >that one would call specifically religious, rather they were engaged in
> >a very secular economic activity.
> >
> >To get to your question though (I wouldn't want to be accused of evading
> >it), Europeans began associating Africans with exploitable labor well
> >before Columbus.   The Portuguese who acquired the first African slaves
> >(around 1440) did so from Muslim merchants in West Africa.  The
> >degradation of people who were so different from themselves validated
> >Europeans' sense of occupying a higher place in the hierarchy of nature.
> >   Europeans were quick to exploit Native workers in the Americas as
> >well.  When desease and other problems with Native workers created
> >shortages, the contacts with those West African merchants were already
> >in place and ready to fill the need.   Muslim merchants didn't create
> >this worldview, their role was simply to make it concrete for Europeans.
> >
> >To jump ahead to Virginia, we can see that the English came to the new
> >world with pre-existing social notions about the nature of the universe
> >-- in which some were of higher order than others -- and economic ideas
> >about the exploitation of the labor of lower orders, including both
> >Native Americans and Africans as well as other Europeans.   If Native
> >American people resisted coerced labor, those who were prepared to be
> >dominant were ready to turn to other "lower" people.   In Virginia that
> >meant principally the lower orders of English society and so there was
> >the massive migration of lower class servants.
> >
> >One result of bringing over people from the English-speaking world was
> >that the society of early Virginia was very fluid: one could serve one's
> >time and then acquire freedom, and possibly land and status, and so move
> >up from the lower ranks.  As the colonial society matured, however,
> >there was a desire to make a more fixed, less fluid, society (more like
> >that of England where rank was very clearly delineated) and so there was
> >a need to settle on a labor system where labor was unable to achieve
> >freedom and its material and social benefits.  Therefore we see the
> >movement toward slavery and particularly African slavery.   It wasn't
> >all about race and yet race was so central to the practice of it as to
> >make the distinction all but irrelevant.
> >
> >I know this is a very truncated history of the beginnings of slavery in
> >Virginia, leaving out the perhaps anomalous experience of the first
> >Africans brought to Jamestown, and further skipping past the
> >developments in Virginia law pertaining to labor and race, but I will
> >leave it there and if anyone wants to add, subtract or even just
> >quibble, well, that's what we're all here for.
> >
> >David Kiracofe
> >
> >
> >David Kiracofe
> >History
> >Tidewater Community College
> >Chesapeake Campus
> >1428 Cedar Road
> >Chesapeake, Virginia 23322
> >757-822-5136
> > >>> Anita Wills <[log in to unmask]> 06/14/07 12:53 PM >>>
> >My question is what did Islam have to do with Europeans enslaving
> >Indians?
> >No one seems to want to answer that.
> 
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