More and more, the IRA’s (Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement) position concerning the Islamic Malekite scripts, which have been used as a justification for slavery, is becoming more broadly accepted on Mauritania’s national scene, remarks IRA President, Mr Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid [16 April 2013]. Recently, at a conference entitled “Sharia and Liberty”, the President of the Islamist Tawassoul Party, Mohamed Jemil Mansour, called for the liberation of ‘Fiqh’ [Islamic jurisprudence] from the narrow position some have confined it to, in order to rid slavery from the narrow jacket it has been encased in over the past centuries.

Day by day, we are seeing the progress of the IRA’s anti-slavery movement and its progressive influence on the social, political and even religious level. After exerting pressure on the Mauritanian government, it introduced the 2007 Law criminalizing slavery, which made it possible to arrest and detain slave-owners for the first time in the practice of slavery in Mauritania.  The IRA has undeniably become the main instigator of a new agency created to fight slavery and its consequences. Its activism has exasperated the authorities, so much so, that it has forced them to find a radical solution to end the practice.

However, the IRA’s battle is one that concerns the sensitive issue of Islamic religious ideology, which has been used to justify slavery practices in Mauritania. This battle is about the very rigid application of Fiqh that Mohamed Jemil Mansour, President of the Islamist Party, has recently denounced. The Tawassoul leader has urged others to fight against slavery, based on an Islamic discourse that clearly opposes slavery. According to Mr Mansour, this is based on the fact that Islam is a religion of freedom, not servitude. He adds that there is no contradiction between Sharia and liberty, noting that all other interpretations are grossly flawed. In support of this, he has cited several examples from the Prophet Mohammad’s life and those of his companions that show that Islam has always been opposed to slavery.

He recalls that in Mauritania, slavery has been a conflict over race and class and that the Mauritanian Ullamas’ [Muslim scholars] writings and declarations establish the slave trade as illegal.