Eric Vickers’ letter on the “Essence of Islam” served an educational purpose by recounting incidents in the prophet Muhhamad’s life. I found his quote defining what true piety is as the essense and substance of Islam most interesting, especially the portion citing “for the freeing of human beings from bondage.”
How many African Americans know that Arab Muslim slave raiders and traders were and continue to be the most prevalent in Africa and that black Africans are their major booty? This too is necessary education. For centuries they have come from the north to raid the south of thousands upon thousands of black Africans to be shipped north and to the Middle East as slaves.
If this is the essence of Islam, why is it that the Arab Sudanese Muslims in the north have raped and murdered so many black Sudanese Christians and animists in the south and then turned on fellow black Muslims in Darfur?
Let’s not mention the stonings for adultery or homosexual acts or the honor killings – even one in South St. Louis where a Roosevelt High School Palestinian student was murdered by her parents for dating an African American student.
Helen Louise Herndon
Via email