avoid muslim Mauritania

Mauritania, pronounced mawr ih TAY nee uh, is a country in western Africa. It stretches eastward from the Atlantic coast into the Sahara. Arabic-speaking people called Moors make up most of the population. Black Africans form a large minority group. About 99 percent of the people are Muslims.

Arab Elites’ Racial Slavery Against Africans in Mauritania

JUN 1, 2025 12:00 PM
BY UZAY BULUT

“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.

Though slavery has been banned in Mauritania several times, the law has not been enforced and in reality, the practice persists.

The continued existence of the practice of slavery is one of the major problems in the country that causes social division and acrimony, says Minority Rights Group. Anti-slavery activists face harassment and imprisonment.

According to the 2023 Global Slavery Index, an estimated 32 in every thousand people were in modern slavery in Mauritania during 2021. In other words, 149,000 people experienced forced labor or forced marriage in Mauritania. In terms of the prevalence of modern slavery, Mauritania ranks 3rd globally and 2nd within Africa.

Slavery in Mauritania is racial, and descent based. While the enslavers are of Arab-Berber descent, most slaves are of ethnic African descent.

Almost all political and economic power is in the hands of the Arab-Berber elite, which means the majority of society (70%) remains significantly marginalized.

“Mauritania has the highest proportion of hereditary slavery of any country in the world,” writes Stephen J. King, Professor of Government at Georgetown University.

Mauritania has earned the title of slavery’s last stronghold due to the widespread existence of descent-based racial slavery in the country despite successive abolition decrees.

In practice, this is descent-based, chattel slavery that treats human beings as property, with violent enforcement. Modern slavery or “slave-like conditions” prevail for up to 500,000 more. Slavery in Mauritania is also a racial slavery.

Mauritania’s Arabic-speaking Arab-Berber elite, an exclusionary and predatory group that self-identifies as White (Bidan), ruthlessly dominates the country’s state and economy. They represent, at most, 30% of the population. The enslaved are Blacks from within Mauritania’s Arab-Islamic linguistic and cultural sphere (Black Arabs or Sudan).

Blacks freed from slavery, an institution that has lasted many centuries in Mauritania, are called Haratin (Haratin pl. Hartani, male, Hartania female).

Haratin and enslaved Blacks make up 40% of the population. Sometimes the term Haratin refers to both “slaves” and freed Black “slaves.”

In general, all Blacks in Mauritania are referred to as “Abd, ‘Abid” (slave, slaves).

According to the organization Open Doors, “the issue of slavery in the country, which is linked to ethnicity, has also contributed to persecution since proponents of slavery argue that it is sanctioned by Islam.”

According to the US State Department, “some defenders of slavery interpreted texts from the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, the predominant school of Islamic teaching in the country, as justifying the practice.”

The campaign against slavery has triggered a hostile reaction from Islamists in the country, notes Open Doors. “In the context of slavery and the prevalence of a caste system in Mauritania, the current situation is reinforced by and fused with religion [Islam]. Islamic clan leaders are intent on preserving ethnic-racial hierarchy and social order in the country.”

The history of Islam in Africa can be traced back to the early seventh century. It is the first continent that jihadist armies invaded from Southwestern Asia.

Islam emerged in the Arabian Peninsula during the early 600s CE. Shortly after the death of its prophet Muhammad in 632 CE, Muslim Arab armies began targeting Africa, Europe and Asia for their empire’s expansion. From the Atlantic Ocean through Egypt and Morocco, Islam became a dominant religion in North Africa by the early eighth century. During and in the aftermath of these jihadist campaigns, many Africans were massacred, forced to convert to Islam, or to become slaves.

Islam also arrived in Mauritania in the seventh century. The US State Department explains: From the 3rd to 7th centuries, the migration of Berber tribes from North Africa displaced the Bafours, the original inhabitants of present-day Mauritania and the ancestors of the Soninke. Continued Arab-Berber migration drove indigenous black Africans south to the Senegal River or enslaved them. By 1076, Islamic warrior monks (Almoravid or Al Murabitun) completed the conquest of southern Mauritania, defeating the ancient Ghana empire. Over the next 500 years, Arabs overcame fierce Berber resistance to dominate Mauritania.

The Mauritanian Thirty-Year War (1644-74) was the unsuccessful final Berber effort to repel the Maqil Arab invaders led by the Beni Hassan tribe. The descendants of Beni Hassan warriors became the upper stratum of Moorish society. Berbers retained influence by producing the majority of the region’s Marabouts — those who preserve and teach Islamic tradition. Hassaniya, a mainly oral, Berber-influenced Arabic dialect that derives its name from the Beni Hassan tribe, became the dominant language among the largely nomadic population. Aristocrat and servant castes developed, yielding “white” (aristocracy) and “black” Moors (the enslaved indigenous class).

Tidiane N’Diaye, a Franco-Senegalese author and anthropologist, writes in his book “The Veiled Genocide”:
The Arabs raided sub-Saharan Africa for thirteen centuries without interruption. Most of the millions of men they deported have disappeared as a result of inhumane treatment. This painful page in the history of black people has apparently not been completely turned.

Liberty Mukomo, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, explains: The practice of castration on black male slaves in the most inhumane manner altered an entire generation as these men could not reproduce. The Arab masters sired children with the black female slaves. This devastation by the men saw those who survived committing suicide. This development explains the modern black Arabs who are still trapped by history.

Dr Andrew Bostom notes that the mass, ongoing chattel slavery of blacks by the ruling Arabo-Berber Muslims in Mauritania is an Islamic tradition: From the advent of Islam, through the present era, Muhammad’s sacralized behaviors have engendered jihad chattel and sexual slavery on a massive scale.

Indeed, the enduring scale and scope of Islamic slavery in Africa exceeded the far better known Western trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Americas. Quantitative estimates of 10.5 million have been calculated for the trans-Atlantic slave trade during the 16th through the end of the 19th century. Professor Ralph Austen’s working figure for the composite of the trans-Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean traffic generated by the Islamic slave trade out of Africa, from 650 through 1905, is 17 million. In addition, the horrific plight of those enslaved animist peoples drawn from the savannah and northern forest belts of western and central Africa for the trans-Saharan trade, equaled the sufferings experienced by the tragic victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade…

Modern historian Jan Hogendorn’s analysis of eunuch slavery notes that Islamdom, uniquely, captured these slaves via predatory raids on non-Muslim populations, alone—and then gelded them—whereas eunuch slaves in China were almost exclusively Chinese procured locally. Extending his assessment into the early 20th century, Hogendorn adds that when sub-Saharan African blacks became the major source of eunuchs, undergoing simultaneous total removal of both testicles and the penis, death rates due to hemorrhage, sepsis, and renal failure, per French physician Richard Millant’s 1908 study, remained 90%.

Dr. Bostom also quotes the 14th century North African Maliki jurist, and renowned Muslim historian-sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, and the eminent 15th century Maliki legist al-Wansharisi.

Khaldun opined, ‘the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals,’ while al-Wansharisi averred slavery was a justified affliction for those who did not abide Islam’s prophet or law, and thus warrant “humiliation”…

Mainstream, authoritative contemporary sanction for the persistence of chattel slavery in Mauritania, and ISIS’s jihad sex slavery, has been provided, respectively, by a leading Saudi government cleric, and author of the Kingdom’s Islamic religious education curriculum, and a female professor at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, the de facto Vatican of Sunni Islam. Saudi Sheik Al-Fawzan proclaimed in 2003, “Slavery is part of jihad and jihad will remain as long as there is Islam.” Consistent with the call to put Mauritanian anti-slavery activist Abeid to death as an “apostate,” Al-Fawzan added those Muslims who contend Islam is against slavery should be declared apostates, citing Koran 4:89, which states, “But if they turn from Islam, take (hold) of them and kill them wherever you find them” — a verse whose classical and modern glosses sanction killing those Muslims who forsake Islam. During a September 12, 2014 television appearance discussing “fatwas,” Suad Saleh, a woman Professor of Theology at Al-Azhar, outlined the Islamic law concept of “those whom you own.” She maintained that Muslims who capture women in jihad wars may enslave them as property, and sexual objects,

“In order to humiliate them.”

Meanwhile, Biram Dah Abeid, an anti-slavery activist and politician from Mauritania, has exposed how Islamic scholars in his country are complicit in the ongoing, mass slavery. He founded the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA-Mauritania). On November 11, 2014, Abeid and 16 fellow activists were arrested while taking part in protests against ongoing impunity for slaveholders in the country.

Dr Bostom reported: Intrepid Mauritanian anti-slavery activist Biram Abeid has openly condemned what he terms the majority of his country’s ulama—religious scholars—whose fatwas perpetuate the practice of Islamic slavery. At a protest rally in 2012, Abeid burned texts of Malik b. Anas, 8th century founder of the Maliki school of jurisprudence—the predominant school of Sunni Muslim Islamic law in Mauritania—that upheld slavery and the brutal treatment of slaves. Perhaps Abeid destroyed Malik’s comment which decried a Muslim for breaking his “binding oath that he will beat his young slave and then not beat[ing] him.”

Abeid’s dramatic 2012 act of protest led to his arrest, amid a storm of demonstrations against him, with even Mauritania’s president, Mohamed Abdel Aziz, calling for Abeid to be judged per the Sharia, and killed as an apostate. Only after international pressure was Abeid spared execution, and released. However Abeid was arrested again for protesting the continued practice of Islamic slavery in Mauritania during November 2014.

In 2018, Abeid was released from prison after charges against him were withdrawn.

Throughout the centuries, millions of Africans are estimated to have been enslaved by Muslim Arabs. So why has there been so much silence, even censorship, surrounding this issue that has devastated an entire continent?

It is time for the international community to shed light on this most dehumanizing practice and help liberate the African slaves in Mauritania.

Uzay Bulut is a Turkey-born journalist formerly based in Ankara.

Mauritanian Anti-Slavery Activist Arrested

Freedom United
August 7, 2018

Anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, a candidate in the upcoming Mauritanian elections, was arrested early Tuesday morning at his home in Nouakchott. Freedom United supporters will recognize Biram from taking action on our campaign, which garnered 370,891 signatures asking the Mauritanian government to free him after he was imprisoned for speaking out against modern slavery.

The timing of the arrest is significant, coming on the last day to submit candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections. Biram is the head of Mauritania’s Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement.

According to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), Biram has yet to be charged with any crime.

Pressafrik.com reported a statement given by Biram Abeid in French, shortly after his arrest:

“The police have just woken me up to tell me that they have received an order from above to arrest me and that I have to go with them to the police station.

I [believe] that it is related to the fact that the CENI [the electoral commission] must hand over today the final list of deputies, MP candidates for the election, as well as some mass actions I started a few nights ago.”*

The Guardian also explains why Biram is seen as a threat to the current government:

Abeid, a Haratine and himself the son of a slave, has vowed to oust the incumbent president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, in national elections next year. Aziz came to power in a 2008 coup and has since dismantled the senate in what critics see as a bid to broaden his powers.

Abeid founded the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in 2008, and has been arrested many times for his anti-slavery activism. He was most recently released in 2016, after spending 20 months imprisoned on charges related to “inciting trouble” and belonging to “an unrecognised organisation”, according to UNPO.

Karine Penrose-Theis, the Africa program manager at Anti-Slavery International, urged the government to stop its crackdown on activists.

“The Mauritanian government has a long track record of cracking down on anti-slavery activists and, given that he was due to stand in the parliamentary election in the autumn, one can’t help but worry,” she said.

In May 2016 Biram and fellow activist Brahim Bilal Ramdhane were released from prison after spending 18 months in detention. He subsequently received the U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons Report Hero Award. He has also received awards from Front Line Defenders and the United Nations Prize in Human Rights.

Mauritania failing to tackle pervasive slavery, says African Union

The Guardian
January 29, 2018

In landmark ruling, AU orders compensation for brothers born into slavery and failed by legal system, criticising ‘culture of impunity’.

The African Union has reprimanded Mauritania for failing to take action against widespread slavery within its borders and ordered the government to give financial compensation to two child slaves who were failed by its legal system.

The landmark ruling is the first time the AU has spoken out against the pervasive practice of hereditary slavery in Mauritania, which activists believe affects many thousands of people.

Despite passing slavery laws in 2007, and amending them in 2015, Mauritania has only prosecuted two cases of slavery. In 2011, after sustained regional and international pressure, the Mauritanian courts sentenced Ahmed Ould El Hassine to two years in jail and to pay 1.35m Mauritanian ouguiya (£2,700) to two brothers, Said and Yarg Ould Salem, who had been kept in slavery since birth.

After lawyers representing the brothers appealed to the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC), an AU body that was set up to protect child welfare across the region, the committee criticised the leniency of the sentence and said the Mauritanian government was creating a culture of impunity, allowing slavery to continue unfettered across the region.

Under Mauritanian law the minimum sentence for slavery crimes is five years. The convicted slave master is yet to be jailed, pending appeal, and according to anti-slavery campaigners other members of his family are yet to face prosecution.

In the ruling, the committee found the state to be in violation of its obligations to protect children’s rights under the African Children’s Charter, a legal framework that was set up to protect African children from discrimination, child labour and harmful cultural practices.

Mauritania is now required to pay the two child victims financial compensation and to provide them with psychosocial support and education.

The ACERWC ruling also demanded that Mauritania take wider actions to prevent child slavery across the region.

Despite the ruling having no enforcement mechanism, Anti-Slavery International said the verdict puts a lot of pressure on Mauritania to act.

“This ruling will make it hard for the Mauritanian government to deny that this remains a very serious problem that they need to address,” said the organisation’s Jakub Sobik.

“Hopefully it will pave the way for some of the nearly 50 cases of slavery stuck in the Mauritanian court system to progress. If the Mauritanian government is unwilling to prosecute slavery of its own volition, we will have to make it happen through international pressure.”

Mauritania was the last country in the world to abolish slavery in 1981 and passed anti-slavery laws in 2007, but these laws still haven’t been implemented. In large parts of the country, slave status is still passed down from mother to child.

US warned Mauritania’s ‘total failure’ on slavery should rule out trade benefits

US labour unions cite Mauritania’s unwillingness to act on slavery as Trump administration is urged to deny country duty-free exports

The Guardian
August 25, 2017

The routine abuse of thousands of enslaved Mauritanians, including rape, beatings and unpaid labour, should prevent the African republic from receiving US trade benefits, American labour unions have said.

Mauritania, which has one of the highest rates of modern-day slavery in the world and has been roundly criticised for its poor human rights record, is currently on a list of countries that benefit from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). The act, designed to promote the economic development of countries that can show they uphold human rights and meet labour standards, enables African countries to export goods duty-free to US markets.

The US trade union AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, this week called on the US trade representative to remove Mauritania from the roster of approved countries.

“The government of Mauritania routinely fails to conduct investigations into cases of slavery, rarely pursues prosecutions for those responsible for the practice and fails to ensure access to remedy or otherwise support victims,” the union wrote in a petition, adding that the state harasses and imprisons anti-slavery activists and will not publicly acknowledge the continued existence of slavery.

“This represents a total failure to take any meaningful steps to establish freedom from forced labour,” said the petition.
Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981, the last country in the world to do so, but only made it a crime in 2007. Since then, campaigners say the government has passed a handful of inefficient reforms and failed to properly address the issue.

Although the union says it is unlikely the US will immediately remove Mauritania from the Agoa list, Celeste Drake, trade and globalisation policy specialist at the AFL-CIO, said the petition should “put Mauritania on watch”.

The petition adds to the mounting pressure facing the Mauritanian government. In June, the International Labor Organisation (ILO) warned that slavery continues “on a widespread basis, despite numerous discussions”. For the past three years, the country has been under review by the ILO over its failure to act.

Last year, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights concluded that Tadamoun, the agency set up to address the consequences of slavery and poverty in Mauritania, had taken “a very low profile” in tackling the problem.

Jeroen Beirnaert, human and trade union rights coordinator at the International Trade Union Confederation, which has supported the petition, said the government had done little to enforce its anti-slavery law. Beirnaert said there had been only two known slavery convictions, with the sentences handed out too lenient.

“It took decades to actually have a conviction let alone compensation for any victims,” he said. “One issue we have with the agency [Tadamoun] is that it doesn’t involve any of the former slaves. It’s run by the white Moor community there, and it focuses a lot on a poverty alleviation mandate and doesn’t really address the slavery issues.”

Sarah Mathewson, Africa programme manager at Anti-Slavery International, said the Mauritanian government is sensitive to criticism and that further bad publicity won’t be welcomed. “They do seem to take initiatives and actions against slavery and forced labour practices in response to [negative] publicity,” she said. “They’ll set up a commission or a new government agency or introduce a new law or policy.”

Mathewson added that such initiatives are never serious attempts to tackle the issue, but “window dressing” that distracts the international community.

The government is balancing demands for reform with the need to retain its grip on power, she said: “They also have to balance the pressures of their own power base and the social and economic privileges that slave ownership entails for them, and how intrinsically linked it is to their own hold on power.”

UN envoy on modern-day slavery says plan will include number of economic projects to help victims out of trade.
First Published: 2014-02-28
Middle East Online

NOUAKCHOTT - The United Nations envoy on modern-day slavery said on Thursday Mauritania had agreed to adopt a roadmap for eradicating the trade, which campaigners say remains widespread in the west African nation.

The country was the last in the world to abolish slavery, in 1981, and since 2012 its practice has been officially designated a crime, but campaigners say the government has failed in the past to acknowledge the extent of the trade, with no official data available.

Gulnara Shahinian, the UN's Special Rapporteur on contemporary slavery, announced as she ended a four-day visit that Mauritania would adopt a roadmap on March 6 which had been prepared with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

She said the plan was "an important step in eradicating slavery in the country" and would include "a number of economic projects" to help victims out of the trade.

Shahinian added she was "satisfied with the action of the government, which has taken important steps towards the eradication of slavery" since her last visit in 2009.

Forced labour is a particularly sensitive issue in Mauritania, where anti-slavery charities are very active, especially SOS Slaves and the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Struggle against Slavery (IRSS), which supports victims in court.

Shahinian told reporters she had obtained a commitment from the government to appoint lawyers specifically trained to represent slaves in the courts, however, rather than leaving the work to charities.

She praised the "political will displayed by the authorities" in introducing anti-slavery legislation but called for better enforcement of the law.

President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is in the process of setting up a special tribunal to prosecute suspects accused of involvement in slavery and various social security programmes have helped former slaves in the past.

But the beneficiaries were never recognised as such, with schemes officially targeting other disadvantaged groups.

In March last year Mauritania announced the launch of its first government agency charged explicitly with helping former slaves.

"While the train is certainly in motion, much needs to be improved, but as long as the will is there, the rest will follow in time," Shahinian said.

The envoy, a lawyer with extensive experience as an expert consultant on children's rights, migration and trafficking, was appointed as the first Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery in 2008.

Her findings and recommendations will be presented at a session of the UN Human Rights Council in September.

Military junta overthrows Mauritania's president
Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya seized power in a 1984 coup.

NOUAKCHOTT, MAURITANIA – A military junta overthrew Mauritania's U.S.-allied president Wednesday, prompting celebrations in this oil-rich Islamic nation that has been looking to the West amid alleged threats from al-Qaida- linked militants.

The junta promised to yield to democratic rule within two years, but African leaders and the United States were quick to condemn the coup, saying that the days of authoritarianism and military rule must end across the continent.

President Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya, who himself seized power in a 1984 coup and dealt ruthlessly with his opponents, was out of the country when presidential guardsmen cut broadcasts from the national radio and television stations and seized a building housing the army chief of staff headquarters.

Later, the junta named the national police chief, Col. Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, 55, as the country's new leader.

Its statement identified Vall as "president" of the military council that seized power.

Taya, who had allied his overwhelmingly Muslim nation with the United States in the war on terrorism, refused comment after arriving Wednesday in nearby Niger from Saudi Arabia, where he attended King Fahd's funeral.

The State Department joined the African Union in calling for the restoration of the government.

"We call for a peaceful return for order under the constitution and the established government of President Taya," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington.

The junta said it would exercise power for up to two years to allow time to put in place "open and transparent" democratic institutions.

Oil recently was discovered in reserves offshore, and Mauritania is expected to begin pumping crude for the first time early next year.

Hundreds of people celebrated the coup in the city center, saluting soldiers guarding the presidential palace, clapping and singing anti-Taya slogans in Arabic.

"It's the end of a long period of oppression and injustice," civil servant Fidi Kane said. "We are very delighted with this change of regime."

State television and radio were back on air by afternoon, with journalists reading the junta's statement repeatedly, interspersed with Quranic readings - normal in the Islamic nation.

Taya had survived several coup attempts, including one in 2003 that led to days of fighting in the capital.

After that, he jailed scores of members of Muslim fundamentalist groups and the army accused of plotting to overthrow him. His government also has accused opponents of training with al-Qaida-linked insurgents in Algeria.

A June 4 border raid by al-Qaida-linked insurgents sparked a gunbattle that killed 15 Mauritanian troops and nine attackers.