>The lack of empathy is a matter of perspective: our prejudice of the past, our blindness of the present. It is not historical fact.

This is the most important takeaway from this post, and an entirely worthwhile point to make. That being said, I'm going to have to remove this comment because, as it stands, it is in violation of our 20-year rule and our rule against moralizing. I understand that this question in particular lends itself to comparisons between past and present, and I don't think that in and of itself would represent a rule violation; I also understand that there are many injustices in the world today that go overlooked, and I certainly don't mean to imply that these injustices or your opinions aren't worthy of discussion.

However, the first 2/3rds of your post deal entirely with current, controversial events, using politically charged terminology. It's not until the third-to-last paragraph that you address any historical issue! I understand that your post intended to challenge the OP's assumptions about empathy in the modern world, but i think 6 paragraphs devoted only to modern human rights crises is really more than you needed to prove the point. This is a pretty clear-cut violation of our 20-year rule, and there isn't really any way I can let this post stand as-is, unfortunately.

The moralizing is a little trickier, and if there wasn't the previously-mentioned violation I would probably have just let it go. With the caveat that I am not in any way an expert on Islamic slavery, and it's entirely possible that I've misinterpreted you, but this post comes off as near-apologia for the institution of slavery under Islam by comparing it

I hope you understand why I've removed your comment; although you made an excellent point and answered the OP's question, we have our subreddit rules in place for a reason and they ought to be applied with as much objectivity as we can.