The Silence on Arab Colonialism

The Other Colonial History We Ignore: Arab Conquest, Silent Slavery, and the Missing Narrative on Indigeneity

In schools, documentaries, activism, and social movements, most discussions of colonialism focus on European empires—their expansion, forced conversions, and exploitation of Indigenous peoples around the world.
This focus is justified: the impact of European conquest shaped today’s world dramatically. But it also creates a partial view of history.

There was another large imperial expansion that transformed cultures, languages, and identities across continents: the Arab Muslim conquests. By contrast, Jews do not proselytize. Jews are indigenous to Israel. Ryan Bellerose, a Canadian Metis, has given many lectures explaining how Jews are Indigenous to Israel.

A Parallel Colonial Expansion

After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century, armies from the Arabian Peninsula expanded outward with remarkable speed. Within a century, they controlled vast regions:

• North Africa

• The Levant

• Mesopotamia

• Persia

• Much of the Indian Subcontinent

This wasn’t simply religious. It also reshaped identity and culture.
Local languages were replaced or marginalized. Indigenous groups were absorbed into the emerging Arab political and cultural framework. Over time, many populations—such as in North Africa—became culturally Arab even though their roots were Amazigh, Nubian, Coptic, or other ancient peoples.

In the Levant, this historical process is often forgotten. Today, there is a strong belief that “Arab identity” is Indigenous everywhere it is found, rather than recognizing that Arab culture spread outward from the Arabian Peninsula.

Forced Conversion and Power

Just like European empires, Islamic expansion sometimes involved pressure to adopt new religious and cultural systems.
The relationship between faith and power shifted: those who converted often received economic advantages and legal status, while those who didn’t faced limitations.
This wasn’t universal or identical everywhere, but it was a form of imperial expansion that deserves attention.

Yet in global activism, especially in the West, we rarely see public protests or campaigns about Arab colonial violence, historical or modern. There is passionate anger about crimes committed by Europeans long ago, but almost no attention to the ongoing abuses tied to historic Arab power structures, including:

• the modern Arabic slave trade

• discrimination against African migrant workers

• forced labor

• human trafficking across the Sahel and Horn of Africa

These abuses are not ancient history—they still exist today.

A Different Kind of Slave Trade

The Arab slave trade historically operated differently from the Atlantic system. While the European model was built around plantations in the Americas, the Arabic trade moved people across the Red Sea and deep into the Middle East.

The pattern of exploitation was different, often involving:

• forced labor

• human trafficking

• sexual exploitation

Western activism often focuses on the Atlantic slave trade, which is important to study, but ignores the reality that slavery exists today, under regimes that face little international pressure.

Movements like BLM condemn historical European crimes, but are largely silent about ongoing abuses committed today by Arab networks against African people.
If we care about human rights, modern slavery should be as important as historical accountability.

The Missing Narrative on Jewish Indigeneity

Discussions about colonialism in the Middle East often include allegations that Jews are a “colonial” population. Historically, this argument does not reflect how Judaism developed.

Jews are Indigenous to the land of Israel.
Their cultural identity, language, law, and ritual life originated in that region thousands of years ago—long before the rise of Christian or Islamic empires.

There are several key differences:

Judaism does not proselytize

Unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism does not spread through conversion or empire. Jewish communities historically grew through family lineage and community life, not through missionary activity or conquest.
European and Arab imperial expansion spread religion by political force; Judaism spread by staying rooted to its origin, even when Jews lived far away from their homeland.

Cultural survival under empire

Throughout history, Jews lived under other empires—Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Ottoman—almost always as a minority, not as a ruling class.
Their identity was preserved through:

• language recovery (Hebrew)

• holidays tied to their land’s seasons

• prayer facing Jerusalem

• ancestral stories tied to specific landscapes

This is how most Indigenous cultures survive under domination, not how empires are built.

The Cost of Holding Identity

Resisting assimilation always has consequences.
For many Indigenous peoples—including Jews—the cost of maintaining identity under empire was persecution, displacement, and violence.

Instead of expanding outward, Jewish communities held their culture inward.
This is why describing Jews as “colonial settlers” misunderstands the history. They are a people returning to their ancestral origin, not expanding into someone else’s land.

Why We Need to Tell a Complete History

The point of raising Arab colonial history isn’t to blame modern populations for ancient wars. Just like we don’t blame modern Italians for the Roman Empire.
It’s about honesty and consistency.

If we want to understand global colonial trauma, we need to include:

• European imperial systems

• Arab/Muslim imperial systems

• Indigenous cultural resistance

• Ongoing human rights abuses today

Selective outrage is not real solidarity.

Ignoring modern slavery while protesting centuries-old crimes creates a world where some victims matter and others do not.

History is complex enough to hold all of these truths at once:

• Europeans committed massive colonial violence

• Arab conquests reshaped continents and erased Indigenous identities

• modern Arab networks still traffic African children and women

• Jews are an Indigenous people, not a colonial empire

Understanding these realities isn’t about dividing communities—it’s about making sure every story is visible, not only the ones that fit a Western political framework.