Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery [Paperback]

Samuel Cotton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 1999

Research expose

Product Details

• Paperback: 170 pages
• Publisher: Writers & Readers (February 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0863162592
• ISBN-13: 978-0863162596
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #783,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worthy cause, aggravating exposition, November 28, 2000

By 

hugh riminton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery (Paperback)

Samuel Cotton's account of his own awakening to the issues of slavery in Africa falls into four sections.

1/ The commissioning of a journalistic article, which leads him to examine available documentary evidence about slavery in Mauritania,

2/ A trip to see for himself,

3/ His return to the US, where he delivered evidence to a US Congressional sub-committee.

4/ A call to arms.

An African-American, his commitment is plainly sincere ("I had found my history. I had found my future. I had found myself.") He has achievements to show for it - his own anti-slavery organisation "CASMAS", and success in changing official US policy through a Congressional resolution based on evidence gained from his field trip.

In giving voice to the people that he met in bondage in Mauritania and Senegal, he has borne witness to lives that need and deserve all the help they can get.

He also accurately identifies the failure of so many Muslims of otherwise good standing to put pressure on regimes that nod and wink at the practices of slavery. Sudan is an appalling offender through its sponsorship of slave-raiding militias that attack the black, Christian South.

But it is Sam Cotton's very emotiveness - understandable as it might be - that weakens his argument. He is guilty of extreme sloppiness. At one point he accuses the US Ambassador to Mauritania, among others, of having their silence "bought" by "plenty of envelopes passing under the table" from the Islamic government. This is a scandalous charge, which if proven would have the Ambassador doing time in jail, but Cotton offers no evidence whatsoever to support it. It is purely an expression of his frustration.

And while he resolutely stands by his evidence that Arabs still persist with chattel slavery in Mauritania, he quickly dismisses evidence that black Africans also keep black African slaves. "It is a thing of the past...a charge that does not stand up to inspection," he insists, refusing to apply the same tests (are they paid? are their children educated?) that he applies to the "slaves" of Arabs.

On the material Cotton (and others before him) have gathered, Mauritania certainly has a case to answer that slavery still exists. Furthermore, it should be required to answer it, and the world should not tolerate any fudging.

Cotton has added something to the fund of knowledge, and deserves acknowledgment for that. But his writing is too cliche-ridden, too unexamined, too hasty in seeing what it wants to see. And Cotton, inexperienced in African conditions, also overlooks another reality of life on that continent. People do what they must to survive. Millions work in terrible conditions for no cash return. Millions of their children go without food, let alone education. I little doubt slavery exists in Mauritania. I have seen it myself, and written about it, in Sudan. Beating it, however, requires a discipline of approach that is not enough in evidence in this otherwise worthy account.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, Courageous, and Real., July 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery (Paperback)

Samuel Cotton has displayed in this book what many poeple around the world ignore-truth, anguish, submission, and power. Contaray to what some readers may think, Mr. Cotton did not just take a trip to Mauritania and say "Oh I wanna exploit slavery here, I heard about yeay", he does much more with this information. He does a great job at explaining the previous research he sought out about this issue and the inner emotions that were embedded into his heart and mind throughout his life connecting to the African Struggle. I believe that any person that stands for any ideal on this planet should confront this book. I found it to be most inspiring and beneficial as a woman interested in politics, society, and the benefit of our brothers and sisters all over the world not just in Africa. Government officials should be challenged with the facts that Mr. Cotton has exploited and try to figure out an answer to why this tradgedy continues to occur in this part of the world along with any other nation (even the USA). This book is true, it's real. Why else would a man risk his life?

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery., August 5, 2001

By 

Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Terror: A Journey into Contemporary African Slavery (Paperback)

Slavery - the crude ownership of a person and his exploitation like a beast of burden - has two major venues in the contemporary world, Sudan and Mauritania. The Sudanese practice results in large part from a war conducted by Muslims against Christians; when the former conquer the latter, they frequently enslave them (and often convert them to Islam). Mauritania has no war and no religion other than Islam-it close to being a purely Muslim country - but it does have a racial divide of (light-skinned) Arabs and (dark-skinned) "Negro-Africans," as they are known. Out of a total population of some 2 million, some tens of thousands of Mauritanians are enslaved. When Cotton, a graduate student at Columbia University and part-time journalist, learned about this situation, it horrified and absorbed him. His short but intense trip to Mauritania in early 1996 showed him first-hand of the existence of this foul institution; and as a black American, he felt the servitude of the black Mauritanians with special poignancy. Cotton began his researches as a reporter, thinking that the mere exposure of facts would affect other African-Americans much as they did himself, as they startled at the racism and servitude in Mauritania, somewhat akin to the experience of their own ancestors. But they did not. He found that black leaders (Louis Farrakhan, mainstream black American Muslims, former congressman Mervyn Dymally, and academics at Howard University) not only pooh-pooh the issue but in many cases actively apologize for the slave system. So he became an activist. Thus far, he has found, even his seeming successes, such as passing a NAACP resolution condemning slavery, turned out to have no operational significance.

Cotton's account of the Mauritanian scene is harrowing, his personal story moving, and his report on African-American reactions depressing. Some two centuries after the great American abolitionist effort, a new iteration is needed, this time focusing on the Muslim world.

Middle East Quarterly, December 1999