2024 Ramadan Intensive Sessions "The Robbery Part II: Adaptation"

Genesis 9:24-25. “So, Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. Then he said: ‘Cursed be Canaan. A servant of servants he shall be to his brethren’.”

Since the 15th century, religious leaders have cited this passage as the justification for the enslavement of all African people. For almost 500 years, priests taught their flocks that a Hebrew prophet had condemned millions of Africans to slavery because they were descended from Ham’s son Canaan. The curse of Ham thus formed the core religious justification for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.