For centuries, African men, women and children were transported through trans-Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean slave-trading networks toward North Africa, Arabia and beyond.

European sailors and civilians were captured by North African corsairs, taken to slave markets and subjected to slavery, forced labour or ransom.

The abolition of slavery was not one simultaneous global event. Legal slavery and slave-like systems survived considerably longer in several regions outside Europe.

Mauritania became the last country to formally abolish slavery in 1981, yet descent-based and hereditary forms of slavery have continued to be documented.

Millions of migrant workers helped build the Gulf. Behind the wealth lies a sponsorship system repeatedly associated with dependency, exploitation and forced-labour risks.

ISIS did not merely commit random wartime sexual violence. Yazidi women and girls were systematically captured, traded and subjected to sexual slavery.

Millions of women live with permanent consequences of female genital mutilation. The practice predates Islam and is not exclusively Muslim, yet remains widespread in several Muslim-majority societies.

Marriage before adulthood remains widespread in parts of the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, exposing girls to interrupted education, dependency and increased health risks.

Islam did not spread through preaching and trade alone. From the seventh century onward, rapidly expanding Muslim armies created one of history's largest empires.

Long before modern Arab nation-states existed, Byzantine territories and indigenous North African populations experienced military conquest, political transformation and gradual Arabisation and Islamisation.

In 711, Muslim forces entered the Iberian Peninsula and established political control over much of what is now Spain and Portugal.

The Ottoman Empire was not confined to the Middle East. Its armies conquered Constantinople, expanded across the Balkans and repeatedly fought deep inside Europe.

For centuries, Ottoman authorities took selected Christian boys from subject populations, converted and trained them for service within the imperial system.

Non-Muslims could receive protected status under historical Islamic governments, but protection came with a separate legal position and, frequently, payment of the jizya tax.