If you ever hear a conversation or debate about slavery, it is most often about the slavery practices in the west that were abolished 150 years ago, but what you will most likely not hear about is the plight and suffering of slaves today.
Most western Christians have no idea that slavery still exists and is in fact growing – especially in Islamic nations like Sudan, Pakistan, and Eritrea.
The nation of Eritrea, for instance, has more slaves per capita than any other nation in the world and the international community fails them by not publicly demanding the end to the practice. Eritrea falls under the judicial bodies of the African Union and the United Nations, yet neither body has made any attempt to stop the clear violations against international law.
The Eritrean government and corporations make huge profits from institutional slave labor and there is no signs of stopping. Currently, one out of every nine people in Eritrea is a slave. It is not called slavery. It is called conscription. Every adult between the age of 18-40 are required to serve in the military, but many are not sent to military training, but instead are sent to work in factories, fields, and mines. The workers are not paid or paid very little, and their service is often indefinite.
In a Canadian court five years ago, Nevsun Resources was sued by three Eritreans for benefiting from Eritrean slavery. The Eritreans claimed they were forced to work in gold, copper, and zinc mines along with 1,000 other slaves and subjected to violent, cruel and inhuman treatment.
In court documents, the Africans alleged being forced to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, being beaten with sticks, and being bound and left to bake under the hot sun. The company apologized in July 2019 for the rights violations as part an out-of-court settlement, but nothing was done about the actual practice of slavery in Eritrea.
None of the anger that spilled over in the Canadian protests against Nevsun Resources, where several were shot and wounded, was ever directed at the leaders in the nation where the actual slavery took place and is still enshrined in the law.
Eritrea is not alone. One report from 2021 estimates that more than 50 million people are living in “modern slavery,” an increase of 10 million over 2016 when the problem was last measured. This means that the number of slaves is increasing every year, not decreasing.
One of the reasons for the increase is Islam. Though slavery is also regularly practiced in places like India and North Korea which are not Islamic, BTJ missionaries working in Islamic nations are reporting an increasingly more prominent problem with slavery – especially in Africa.
One group of BTJ missionaries in Pakistan have reported a “significant increase” in the number of Christians that are being enslaved by Muslims. Reports of eye witness accounts in UAE and Saudi Arabia are almost monthly, but nowhere does slavery seem to be seeing more expansion than in Islamic areas of Africa. In the Muslim nation of Mauritania for instance, there is an estimated 149,000 slaves, 85,000 in Morocco, 174,000 in Sudan, 84,000 in Algeria, 98,000 in Somalia, 27,000 in Tunisia and a whopping 1.6 million in Nigeria, which incidentally, also has the highest persecution of Christians by Muslims.
Islam is resurrecting the practice of slavery, especially in places like Africa. The situation is arguably worsening against the backdrop of a more accepting western world towards Sharia Law. Sharia Law is directly derived from the Quran and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, who owned slaves, and it is recently being seen with more favor in places like the UK, US, and EU.
