Slavery is fair game in mainstream/traditional Islam. I have heard various commentaries that abolishing of slavery in various Muslim-dominated countries actually coincided with the 2nd wave of Western colonialism (19th century on).
I the particular area is North Africa.
Is that true -- did slavery as an economic system/alternative get abolished in North Africa only when the Europeans started colonizing it?
There is at least a kernel of truth here for sure. Here is a relevant article which described Europe's role in the gradual decline of slavery in Africa:
Although colonial authorities began outlawing slavery in some African territories as early as the 1830s, the complete legal abolition of slavery in Africa did not take place until the first quarter of the 20th century. By that time, however, slavery was deeply ingrained in most African societies, and thus the practice continued illegally. Slaves who became liberated often did so by escaping and going to the colonial authorities or by simply leaving the areas in which they had been held to take up residence elsewhere. In some places, enslaved persons held that status throughout their lives, despite the legal prohibition. It was not until the 1930s that slavery in Africa was almost totally eliminated.
However the role of European colonial powers in ending slavery, relative to other factors, should not be over-emphasized. As the Wikipedia article on slavery in the Muslim world puts it:
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, slavery gradually became outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, due to a combination of pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France, internal pressure from Islamic abolitionist movements, and economic pressures.
A key episode in the early part of this process was in the 1830s when the Barbary slave trade was ended as a result of the French colonization of Algeria. But for about two centuries prior to this, Europeans played the most pivotal role in driving the expansion of the much larger slave trade in West Africa and the Atlantic.
DOCTOR THOMAS SOWELL, in his very illuminating book "BLACK REDNECKS & WHITE LIBERALS" wrote a chapter, "The Real History of Slavery", in which he described the significant efforts of the British, the Royal Navy, etc., to interdict, disrupt, stop slavery, & to free slaves, in their colonized lands around the world.
It’s been a few years since I read this book, so I can’t provide quotes or anything more at this time except to say that it mentioned a number of lands on the African continent, and this would include some Muslim areas. So I commend it for your research.
This was rarely recognized fact was done, of course, after their well-known long record to profit by the Slave Trade. I also suggest you might look into England’s SLAVERY ABOLITION ACT of 1833, and the years following. That act abolished slavery throughout the British Empire; and strenuous efforts were made to enforce it in its colonies.
