Muslim schools creating new class of African beggars

The AP has an expose of the side of Islam that CAIR never tells you about: Servitude to greedy imams who send children out to beg so the imams can live in luxury.

For some reason, the International Herald Tribune—owned by the New York Times—thinks they need to preface the article with a caveat that children are treated like property all over Africa.

There are 1.2 million Colis in the world today, children trafficked to work for the benefit of others. Those who lure them into servitude make US$15 billion (€9.5 billion) annually, according to the International Labor Organization.

It’s big business in Senegal. In the capital of Dakar alone, at least 7,600 child beggars work the streets, according to a study released in February by the ILO, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Bank. The children collect an average of 300 African francs a day, just 72 US cents (45 euro cents), reaping their keepers US$2 million (€1.3 million) a year.

Most of the boys — 90 percent, the study found — are sent out to beg under the cover of Islam, placing the problem at the complicated intersection of greed and tradition. For among the cruelest facts of Coli’s life is that he was not stolen from his family. He was brought to Dakar with their blessing to learn Islam’s holy book.

In the name of religion, Coli spent two hours a day memorizing verses from the Quran and over nine hours begging to pad the pockets of the man he called his teacher.

It was getting dark. Coli had less than half the 72 cents he was told to bring back. He was afraid. He knew what happened to children who failed to meet their daily quotas.

They were stripped and doused in cold water. The older boys picked them up like hammocks by their ankles and wrists. Then the teacher whipped them with an electrical cord until the cord ate their skin.

Apparently, you’re not allowed to charge for an Islamic education. So things like this are the norm in the Muslim world.

Not all Quranic boarding schools force their students to beg. But for the most part, what was once an esteemed form of education has degenerated into child trafficking. Nowadays, Quranic instructors net as many children as they can to increase their daily take.

“If you do the math, you’ll find that these people are earning more than a government functionary,” said Souleymane Bachir Diagne, an Islamic scholar at Columbia University. “It’s why the phenomenon is so hard to eradicate.”

Middle men trawl for children as far afield as the dunes of Mauritania and the grass-covered huts of Mali. It’s become a booming, regional trade that ensnares children as young as 2, who don’t know the name of their village or how to return home.

Watch this story get buried quickly. Imagine the outcry if Christian or Jewish schools were doing the same thing. Double standards abound.

Buwaro is a thin man in his 30s who wears a pressed olive robe and digital watch. The children wear T-shirts black with filth. He expects them to beg to pay the rent, because there are no fields here to till.

But their earnings far exceed his rent of $50. If the boys meet their quotas, they bring in around $650 a month in a nation where the average person earns $150.

Buwaro expects the children to suffer to learn the Quran, just as he did at the hands of his teacher.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for CAIR to condemn these practices. Just as I won’t hold my breath waiting for the media to pick up this story the way they would pick up a negative story about Israel. It simply doesn’t fit the narrative.