Straight Talk with Sheikh Shaheed Satardien In the sex industry there are cascading levels of debasement, in consensual prostitution, slavery in forced prostitution and frankly, abomination in forced prostitution of children. So whilst I may abhor every aspect of the sex industry, not every part of that industry is necessarily equally bad, and not every part involves slavery as commonly defined.
Such grades of ‘bad’ are reflected in slavery itself. A human being worked to near death in a concentration camp, existing on starvation rations, is not the same as a bonded slave in charge of a household, with responsibilities and a reasonable standard of living and comfort. Both involve the ownership of one person by another, both are slaves, both are an affront to humanity – but one is ‘less bad’ than the other.
Such semantic niceties may explain the often ambiguous attitudes of religion towards slavery. The early Christian Church did not oppose slavery, probably because slavery was a cultural norm, and opposition to it would have been difficult. Indeed, the New Testament advises slaves to obey their masters, although urging kindness towards slaves. Such biblical attitudes may have influenced the Dutch Reformed Church in its support for the apartheid system in South Africa.
Slavery was often part of the spoils of war, but was sometimes the very reason for battle in the first instance. The Muslim Corsairs of North Africa and the pagan Vikings of Scandinavia pillaged coastal towns for slaves, including Irish towns. An infamous Moorish pirate raid off the south coast of Ireland allegedly netted hundreds of slaves who never saw Ireland again. These slaves were sold at market value to the highest bidder.
This indicates a trend that appears in contemporary times – that it was acceptable to enslave those who were not of one’s own race or religion. Thus, the Romans enslaved the Gauls, the Arabs and Europeans enslaved Black Africans, the Vikings enslaved the Celts, the Moors enslaved Europeans and Asians, African tribes enslaved other African tribes, and so on. The nature of the human condition appears to make it much easier to accept the degradation of those who do not look or believe the same as ‘we’ do. It is much more difficult to enslave someone from one’s own community.
This cycle is repeated in the modern incarnation of sexual slavery. It is the ‘foreigner’ who is trafficked. How many citizens in the UK are trafficked into forced prostitution? How many Irish citizens are trafficked in Ireland? Trafficked human beings in the sex industry are generally from another country, another race, another religion – this ‘otherness’ helps to rationalise the debasement into which they are forced.
So what do we do about this problem? Organised crime has entered the human enslavement business with a vengeance, partly because of the huge profits, but also because the custodial penalties for these crimes are much less than for, say, drug offences. Clearly the justice system still has to catch up with the criminals.
The demand for enslaved women is clearly at such a level that staggering sums of money can be earned by the criminals. It seems logical, therefore, to look at efforts to limit that demand, and thus cut the profits.
Some commentators have led calls to criminalise the users, the ‘punters’, in order to reduce the demand. Currently only prostitutes and brothel owners are criminalised; the users of the industry are not. Some commentators have called for the legalisation and licensing of prostitution, with draconian sentences for those facilitating the non-licensed sex industry. While morally dubious, to put it mildly, at least this would offer a space where women in the sex industry could operate with some level of official scrutiny and would be less likely to be coerced.
The practice of coercing women into being sex workers breaks every human rights code in existence. That this practice has grown to affect up to 800,000 people per year is a bitter indictment of society’s failure to tackle serious ethical, social and health issues. And this is simply because the will to tackle the problem is not there. We must generate that will to confront this issue, we must shine the light of truth on the extent of the problem and demand that action be taken.
Perhaps as a start, the onus on establishing the status of any sex worker should be put on the user of the service – those persons having paid for sex with a person later found to be enslaved should face a mandatory prison sentence. Indeed, given the non-EU national profile of a typical enslaved sex industry worker, any such workers should be presumed as being forced against their will by any ‘punter’.
It is somewhat ironic, in a country where over 10 per cent of the population are non-Irish nationals, that the patron saint of Ireland was a foreign slave. St Patrick was reported to have been trafficked to this island and endured many harsh times before embarking on his mission of proselytising Christianity to the Irish. How many new Patricks are in Ireland today?
Perhaps there are some among you here today who could assist the Irish native and immigrant communities to face up to what is happening behind closed curtains. I encourage you to do so.
Sheikh Shaheed Satardien lectures in World Cultures and Contemporary Thought at the Free University of Ireland and is also imam of the West Dublin Islamic Society.
sheikhshaheed@gmail.com
Such semantic niceties may explain the often ambiguous attitudes of religion towards slavery. The early Christian Church did not oppose slavery, probably because slavery was a cultural norm, and opposition to it would have been difficult. Indeed, the New Testament advises slaves to obey their masters, although urging kindness towards slaves. Such biblical attitudes may have influenced the Dutch Reformed Church in its support for the apartheid system in South Africa.
Slavery was often part of the spoils of war, but was sometimes the very reason for battle in the first instance. The Muslim Corsairs of North Africa and the pagan Vikings of Scandinavia pillaged coastal towns for slaves, including Irish towns. An infamous Moorish pirate raid off the south coast of Ireland allegedly netted hundreds of slaves who never saw Ireland again. These slaves were sold at market value to the highest bidder.
This indicates a trend that appears in contemporary times – that it was acceptable to enslave those who were not of one’s own race or religion. Thus, the Romans enslaved the Gauls, the Arabs and Europeans enslaved Black Africans, the Vikings enslaved the Celts, the Moors enslaved Europeans and Asians, African tribes enslaved other African tribes, and so on. The nature of the human condition appears to make it much easier to accept the degradation of those who do not look or believe the same as ‘we’ do. It is much more difficult to enslave someone from one’s own community.
This cycle is repeated in the modern incarnation of sexual slavery. It is the ‘foreigner’ who is trafficked. How many citizens in the UK are trafficked into forced prostitution? How many Irish citizens are trafficked in Ireland? Trafficked human beings in the sex industry are generally from another country, another race, another religion – this ‘otherness’ helps to rationalise the debasement into which they are forced.
So what do we do about this problem? Organised crime has entered the human enslavement business with a vengeance, partly because of the huge profits, but also because the custodial penalties for these crimes are much less than for, say, drug offences. Clearly the justice system still has to catch up with the criminals.
The demand for enslaved women is clearly at such a level that staggering sums of money can be earned by the criminals. It seems logical, therefore, to look at efforts to limit that demand, and thus cut the profits.
Some commentators have led calls to criminalise the users, the ‘punters’, in order to reduce the demand. Currently only prostitutes and brothel owners are criminalised; the users of the industry are not. Some commentators have called for the legalisation and licensing of prostitution, with draconian sentences for those facilitating the non-licensed sex industry. While morally dubious, to put it mildly, at least this would offer a space where women in the sex industry could operate with some level of official scrutiny and would be less likely to be coerced.
The practice of coercing women into being sex workers breaks every human rights code in existence. That this practice has grown to affect up to 800,000 people per year is a bitter indictment of society’s failure to tackle serious ethical, social and health issues. And this is simply because the will to tackle the problem is not there. We must generate that will to confront this issue, we must shine the light of truth on the extent of the problem and demand that action be taken.
Perhaps as a start, the onus on establishing the status of any sex worker should be put on the user of the service – those persons having paid for sex with a person later found to be enslaved should face a mandatory prison sentence. Indeed, given the non-EU national profile of a typical enslaved sex industry worker, any such workers should be presumed as being forced against their will by any ‘punter’.
It is somewhat ironic, in a country where over 10 per cent of the population are non-Irish nationals, that the patron saint of Ireland was a foreign slave. St Patrick was reported to have been trafficked to this island and endured many harsh times before embarking on his mission of proselytising Christianity to the Irish. How many new Patricks are in Ireland today?
Perhaps there are some among you here today who could assist the Irish native and immigrant communities to face up to what is happening behind closed curtains. I encourage you to do so.
Sheikh Shaheed Satardien lectures in World Cultures and Contemporary Thought at the Free University of Ireland and is also imam of the West Dublin Islamic Society.
sheikhshaheed@gmail.com
