For cancel culture, slavery is the original sin of the United States. It is an eternal and indelible sin for which there can be no forgiveness or redemption. No amount of groveling will lessen the magnitude of the sin. Not even attempting to atone for the sin with affirmative action, Black History Month, civil rights legislation, DIE, Juneteenth, the Martin Luther King holiday, the election of a black president and vice president, and the recent appointments of unqualified black women to the Supreme Court and the presidency of Harvard College reduce or nullify the sin. In fact, for cancel culture, as the gap between the end of slavery and the present increases, so does the debt on the sin.
Lest we forget the everlasting sin of slavery, cancel culture frequently finds ways to remind us. One way is by pointing out the Founding Fathers who owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson is often mentioned, not only because he owned slaves, but because some believe he has the additional sin of having had a sexual relationship with a female slave. As a result, cancel culture forced schools with Jefferson’s name to be renamed and a statute of him to be removed from New York’s City Hall. In addition to the Founding Fathers, Robert E. Lee is an easy target for cancel culture because of his association with the Confederacy. Thus, cancel culture bought about the removal of his statues from a historic area in Richmond and the U.S. Capitol. Attempts to remove Lee’s name from Washington and Lee University failed, but cancel culture was able to cancel his horse.
Unfortunately for cancel culture, attacking statues, school names, long dead white guys, and a horse is getting old. After all, slavery, which ended 160 years ago, is simply not as pressing an issue as current issues, such as inflation or the millions of illegals infesting our country. Thus, it is becoming more difficult to convince those who never owned slaves that they should feel guilty and pay reparations to those who never were slaves.
Confronted with increasing resistance in the United States, it may be time for cancel culture to shift from focusing on Western civilization. After all, there are hundreds of non-Western societies that cancel culture could hold accountable for their sin of slavery. Perhaps these societies will be more susceptible to the imposition of guilt and self-contempt over their sin of slavery and their responsibility to pay reparations. The question becomes, where to start?
A modest suggestion for cancel culture is to start by focusing on Muslim countries in the Middle East. After all, far more blacks were taken as slaves from Africa to Middle Eastern Muslim countries than were taken to the New World.
The question for cancel culture becomes how to start making Muslims in the Middle East aware of their sin of slavery. In the United States, cancel culture had some success by focusing on well known slave owners such as the Founding Fathers. Cancel culture might want to use the same strategy and focus on well known slave-owners who were Muslims.
The obvious place to start is with Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. It is well known that Muhammad owned and traded slaves. We even know the names of some of his slaves and the details of some of his slave transactions. He also had a harem, with sex slaves that included a white Coptic slave with whom he had a child. So, unlike Thomas Jefferson, where sex with a slave is alleged, Muhammed’s rape and the subsequent birth of a child because of the rape is well documented in Islamic history.
With Muhammad, cancel culture will have to deviate from its traditional tactics, since there are no statues to remove or horses to cancel. So cancel culture might want to start with something simple, such as demanding that Muslim parents stop naming their male children Muhammad. After all, who would want to name his child after a known slave-owner and rapist?
Cancel culture can then demand that those already named Muhammad change their name. It worked with schools.
Next, cancel culture can focus on the public call to prayer. Unfortunately, the call to prayer mentions Muhammad by name, and repeatedly announcing the name of a slave-owner has the appearance of justifying or normalizing slavery. This can’t be allowed, so there must be demands that Muhammad’s name be removed from the call to prayer.
Finally, cancel culture can address the honorifics Muslims use with Muhammad’s name, such as “blessings and peace be upon him.” Should Muslims be blessing and wanting peace for a slave-owner? Shouldn’t they instead be cursing him and wanting his eternal damnation? Cancel culture must demand that all currently used honorifics cease. I am sure that cancel culture can come up with an “honorific” appropriate for a slave-owner.
After canceling Muhammad, if cancel culture is serious about dealing with the sin of slavery, it then needs to address the Koran, which allows and justifies Muslims owning and raping slaves. Unfortunately, because Muslims believe that the Koran is perfect and that Muhammad revealed all its verses, cancel culture can’t demand that it be modified by adding something like the Thirteenth Amendment. Thus, the Koran needs to be canceled, or it is going to be challenging to convince Muslims that they should feel guilty and pay reparations for their sin of slavery. To justify canceling the Koran, cancel culture can claim that it is hate speech, disinformation, or misinformation.
Next, after canceling Muhammad and the Koran, if cancel culture honestly wants to deal with the sin of slavery, it needs to cancel Islam. Admittedly, canceling Islam is going to be more difficult than getting a statue removed from a park or canceling a horse. But if cancel culture honestly believes that slavery is a sin, and since all Muslims are slaves of the Islamic god, then Islam must be canceled. Indeed, the emancipation of millions of living slaves — Muslims — would be a more meaningful legacy for cancel culture than canceling a horse, statues, or school names.
When cancel culture has successfully helped Muslim countries atone for their sin of slavery, the next recommendation is to focus on Africa, where blacks enslaved exponentially more blacks than were taken to the Middle East and the New World.
The author taught at the university level for 50 years, during which he watched the once proud discipline of sociology transform into a cesspool of liberal lies, indoctrination, and propaganda. As a result of this transformation, he is in a recovery program for sociologists, which, unlike programs with a set number of steps, is a perpetual walk of shame. (Fortunately, each step in the program includes wine.) In addition to some articles, the author has written gerontology textbooks, a scientific book on the consequences of running, and books on Inuit art and on Islam. He is finishing a book, Islam: The Evil Among Us.
Image: Ron Cogswell via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
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