“Paradise Is Under the Feet of Your Master”

Abstract

Few stories about the practice of slavery in Mauritania have received much national and international press attention as a result of the arrest and trial of Birame Ould Abeid, the President of an anti-slavery non-governmental organization (NGO) called Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement in Mauritania (IRA). The arrest came in relation to the burning of some outdated Islamic books of the Mālikī School of jurisprudence. These are books that IRA views as a justification for the continued enslavement of Hratin in Mauritania. The present article probes the psychological and religious dimensions of racial slavery in Mauritanian Arab-Berber society. I contend that the Arab-Berber religious scholars have developed twisted interpretations of Islam, to justify the legality of the enslavement of Hratin. I treat the instrumentalization of books-burning event by the mainstream media in Mauritania, as an attempt to suppress any oppositional voices that may subvert the dominant narrative about slavery in Mauritania.