Made an Edit to my previous post correcting a mistake I made.
Also, what does "first world Middle East" mean? Does the entire Middle East have to be first world? Making the United States a third world nation isn't terribly hard. But making the entire Middle East first world is a bit harder.
Now, reformed Ottomans are a good solution. But would they necessarily spend their oil income improving the Middle East instead of improving the core areas in Thrace and Western Anatolia?
Well what kind of Ottoman Empire are we talking about? Even in the OTL OE of 1914, west Syria was the most heavily urbanized part of the Empire and far from a forgotten backwater. Different timelines would make this even less true-really, aside from rural inland areas in Anatolia and Iraq, all Ottoman territory was integral to the state. Egypt for example would have been an extremely important thriving source of indigenous capital if the central government had managed to maintain control (not to mention controlling a Suez canal).
So are you going to rely on other posters to make your arguments for you from now on or...?
EDIT: I mean it's pretty sad that you're reduced to low-effort trolling.
@123456789blaaa , I doubt you would want to be a slave in the Ottoman Empire over the US.... There were no formal laws to defend slaves, only the hope that your master was a correct Muslim. Then, there is no real outrage or dislike of slavery at all in the Muslim world at the time, only pragmatic fears of slave revolts such as the Zanj 700 years earlier. In the US, you at least had abolitionists and an acceptance by millions that the practice was decadent, the Muslim world had no such conviction. Instead, the Islamic world still had the same view of the 850s, that is that slavery is a natural occurrence ordained by Allah and regulated this for vice. Punishment of slaves was always seen as just for a slave was given his position in life for a specific reason, perhaps as a way to avoid a greater evil this person could wrought. There is also the aspect of slaves carrying the role of status as opposed to economic values. Thus, slaves were expendable and not valued. So, the numbers of slaves killed or discarded in terms of property, would likely have been immense.
There is also and aspect that slavery in the Islamic world continued to be connected to dominance. By dominance, I mean martial dominance, not cultural. Then, there too was racial components despite attempts by revisionists to write the colonial societies only developed such. Nearly all Muslim scholars for a thousand years wrote the 'kinky haired african' as perpetually occupying a place of slavery for if left to his/her own devices, would bring fitnah and slavery was the gift of Islam for him/her. It should also be said, as a woman, you are much more likely to be sex slave within the Ottoman Empire than the US.
Please give me an example of a realistic situation in which laws in the US made being a slave there more favorable than laws in the OE. Simply citing that there were laws to defend slaves doesn't mean much. What matters is how things play out in practice. Islamic law also have rights for slaves but you point out how those don't always apply in practice.
Please explain to me how abolitionists in New York help me getting brutally whipped in the cotton fields and forced to breed in Georgia before abolition? I don't really care what people think. I care about the actual situation that I will be in. Furthermore, you don't think that the difference in attitudes between the Ottomans and US abolitionists might be in large part due to the nature of slavery in each society?
You're saying that Ottoman slaves didn't have an economic value??? How on earth does doing domestic work or sexual work not have an economic value? Do you think the decision of whether to pay for a slave or to pay a servant has no impact on a pocketbook? That the work Ottoman slaves did had no value on its own except as a status symbol? I honestly don't understand what you mean. I also find it unbelievable that the amount of Ottoman slaves killed or discarded was "immense" in comparison to the US. Do you have anything to back that up besides speculation?
What is your point in bringing up "martial dominance"?
Please keep this discussion within the realm of the Ottoman Empire. What Islamic scholars thought before and after them is irrelevant and I haven't researched enough to know if your claims are accurate.
I didn't say that there wasn't a racial component? The racism of the 19th c US is however far more virulent than the racism in the OE. Racial chattel slavery was the focal point around which Southern society evolved. It was deeply embedded into every aspect of Southern life. There was no equivalent to the KKK or Jim Crow after Ottoman abolition for a reason. When 'Abd al-Rahman al-Baghdadi, an Ottoman Arab scholar n the 1860s went to Brazil, he barely mentioned the race of the black people he lived around. They were simply Muslims to him. It's impossible to imagine an American counterpart to that. One of the most powerful figures in the OE was the Chief Black Eunuch-it would be impossible for a black man in the US to be so powerful.
Being a sex slave was a likely reality for most female slaves in the US. You can see this simply by going out and looking at African-American faces today. US slave owners raping their slaves was an open secret-Thomas Jefferson had his own rape-children doing work in his own household. Furthermore, the status of Ottoman sex slaves was also far more varied. In some cases, it was even aspirational or desirable. Women in the imperial Harem for example were allowed to leave after 7 or 9 years of service if they wished. They could also possibly become the mothers of Emperors, lived in luxury, commissioned art, and were given excellent educations. Now, not all sexual slavery in the OE was like this of course but the potential was there. Contrast to American sex slaves where the very notion is absurd. Could Lady Montagu have ever written such a positive account of American sexual slavery? Of course not.
In general, most Ottoman slave work was domestic. Now compare to the US where "house nigger" is a term of insult amongst black Americans. The same work that is perceived as particularly privileged and easy among slaves in the US was the norm among slaves in the OE. Furthermore, the status of a slave was much more flexible. Besides all the examples of OE slaves rising to high positions, manumissions were also much more common. Compare to the US where laws were specifically put into place to make manumission harder. Slaves could also lead the free in prayer in the OE. Slave owners would also often marry freed slaves into their own family-unthinkable in the US. The list goes on...