Researchers have reportedly found evidence that the ancestors of Al Sharpton may have been owned by the ancestors of Democrat-turned Dixiecrat-turned Republican Strom Thurmond. This is an interesting, albeit ironic, possibility.

We are now hearing demands from descendants of West African Americanized slaves claiming reparations. Who should be responsible for paying those reparations? And who should receive them?
First, what about an American Black U.S. citizen who is not a descendant from American slaves, such as Barak Obama, or others who immigrated to the U.S. from other countries? Clearly, they have no stake in this matter. Now, for those who truly are descendants of West Africans who became slaves in America, just where should their demands for reparations be directed?

Let it be said that no living black Americans have been slaves in America. It is also safe to say that no living white Americans owned slaves. In fact there are probably far more living Americans whose ancestors fought and died to end slavery because they found it ugly and absolutely abhorrent. Approximately 700,000 Americans died in the Civil War to bring an end to slavery.

So who is responsible for slavery? Some ill-informed people tend to blame it all on American southern plantation owners and ignore the role of British, Spanish, and Portuguese merchants who bought slaves and transported them to the Americas for resale. Some want to blame it on those middle-men slave merchants and slave ship owners and ignore the role of those who first seized free Africans, dragging them from their homes to be sold to the middle-men.

And just who were those at the bottom of this ugly supply chain? Who seized free men and women and forced them into slavery in the first place? History tells us in almost all cases they were Arab Muslim slavers whose religion, Islam, decreed that the taking of slaves of those they conquered is approved by Allah; A lawful reward for striving to carry out Allah's edict to his believers to force all people and all nations into Islam (submission); a doctrine which still prompts conquest, subjugation, terrorism and slave-taking today.

Some political leaders of former slave states have taken steps to apologize and to try to make some amends for this horrid but now long-abolished-in-America practice. True, without plantation owners there may have been no slave ships sailing to our shores, but as we take a closer look at the history of slavery, we see this interesting truth: it was mostly Arab Muslims who had been actively engaged in the practice of seizing and selling human beings into slavery for centuries. So, the real....the original slavers (and still in the business today) are Muslim slavers who seized and enslaved not only black Africans but also white Europeans, brown Indonesians, and olive-skinned people of India, Persia and the Mid-east.

Al Sharpton's ancestors were in all probability captured and first made slaves by Arab or Black MUSLIMS. Yes, they were eventually bought by plantation owners who needed strong healthy males and females capable of sustained hard work under onerous conditions. Those slaves at least found conditions and the courage within themselves to survive, and even raise children, their descendants now living as free people, some in America.

The same was not so for many millions of slaves of various nationalities who were captured. Often Arab Muslim slavers didn't want to deal with whole men. Eunuchs were more valuable. Many unfortunate victims were often mutilated in a most barbaric and savage manner in castration stations established along the slaver's routes. This practice continues in sub-Sahara Africa to this day. These acts were not clean and surgical. They were performed with dirty knives, and more of the victims died than lived, and still die horribly today, in Mauritania, in the Sudan (Darfur today, and who knows where next) and everywhere in between.

In lieu of reparations, our political, religious, educational, and business leaders need to not only demand, but take real steps to end the vicious ugliness of slavery and human subjugation today and for all times wherever this ugliness takes place.

And our black descendants of American slaves might more appropriately direct their demands for reparations to states of the Muslim world which first seized and enslaved their fore bearers. They might also consider that, had that not happened, they might today be living in an impoverished African nation, and themselves at risk of being enslaved tomorrow.

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This article was authored by the following writers with the United American Committee: Jim Horne, Al Rawley (Commander, USN Ret.), Jesse Petrilla, & Ted Hayes.

The United American Committee is a leading educational group dedicated primarily to awakening the nation to the threats of radical Islam, and works to educate Americans on the nature of Islamic extremism. Its mission is to protect America by fighting the ideological aspects of the War on Terror.
More information on the UAC can be found at www.UnitedAmericanCommittee.org