Interesting sidebar on the slave trade

I ran into this from a source discussing with apologetics to Muslims though it is actually a piece of independent academic research. The issues that Muslims often raise is that Islam is egalitarian and unrascist and the American slave trade was perpetrated by white Christians against black people. This article points out that muslim background "corsairs" probably enslaved a fair number of Europeans and terrorised southern Europe and the mediterranean.

Of course these folk and others in Muslim north Africa were enslaving black Africans too [who procured the people for the Atlanstic slave trade?] and we should remember that it was Christians who effected the abolition of the slave trade and abolition of slavery. And when one hears of slaves being taken in Sudan by the Islamic regime forces ....

So as always these things are not as simple as they might first appear, and I'm certainly not saying that Chirstian history is innocent of betrayals of the spirit of Christ. When it comes to dialogue or even argument between people of different faiths we should remember as Christians that comparing like with like is the 'do-as-you-would-be-done-by' thing to do; in other words compare the best of ours with the best of theirs and if they do the reverse then truthfully and grace-fully to point out that we all have skeletons in the closet. I guess the issue then becomes whether those skeletons are a necessary product of the true spirit of the spirituality or religion or not.