Muhammad and slavery

The Prophet Muhammad did not try to abolish slavery, and bought, sold,
captured, and owned slaves himself. But he insisted that slave
ownerstreat their slaves well andstressed the virtue of freeing
slaves.
There are two different ways of interpreting this:
*. some modern writers believe that Muhammadintended his teachings to
lead to the gradual end of slavery by limiting opportunities toacquire
new slaves and allowing existing slaves to become free. This idea
doesn't appear in early writings.
*. others writers argue that by regulating slavery the Prophet gave
his authority to its continued existence, andthat by having slaves
himself he showed his approval
Muhammad treated slavesas human beings and clearly held some in the
highest esteem.
For example, he personally ensured the freedom of Bilal, an African
slave who had converted to Islam. Bilal was chosen as the first
muezzin of Islam because of his beautiful voice. A muezzin is the
person who calls the community to the daily prayers, and isa position
of great prominence and responsibility.
Zayd was a young boy who had grown up in the household of the Prophet
as a slave, and remained with the household, almost as an adopted
son,even after he was freed. He was amongst the first four people to
adopt Islam. Indeed when Zayd'sfather (a wealthy nobleman) tracked his
sondown and offered to buy his freedom from Muhammad, Muhammad told
Zayd that he was freeto go with his father with no money changing
hands, and to his father's astonishment Zayd chose to stay with
Muhammad.
The Prophet also married a Coptic Christian slave girl.
In his lifetime the Prophetintroduced the following rules about slavery:
*. Stated that freeing slaves was the act that God found most acceptable
*. Zakat (charity - the third Pillar of Islam ) was often used by the
state to free slaves
*. Stated that freeing a slave was the appropriate way to
gainforgiveness for certain wrongs
*. Ordered that those who committed certain wrongs should be penalised
by having to free their slaves
*. Stated that slaves should be allowed to buy their freedom, and if
necessary should be given the opportunity toearn money, or be lent
money by the state, in order to do so
*. Allowed slaves to be freed in certain circumstances
*. Stated that slaves' contracts should be interpreted in favour of the slaves
*. Stated that the duty of kindness towards slaves was the same of
that towards family, neighbours and others
*. Stated that when a slaveowner had a child with a female slave, the
child should be freed and could inherit from their father like any
other child (as in the case of Ibrahim )
There are a number of hadith that show that the Prophet treated slaves
well and expected others to do the same...
He will not enter Paradisewho behaveth ill to his slaves. The
Companions said, 'O Apostle of God! have you not told us, that there
will be a great many slaves and orphans amongst your disciples?' He
said, 'Yes; then be kindto them as to your own children, and give them
toeat what you eat yourselves. The slaves that say their prayers are
your brothers.
Be kind to slaves as to your own children...and those that say their
prayers are your brethren.
They (slaves or servants) are your brothers, and Allah has put them
under your command. So the one under whose hand Allah has put his
brother, should feed him of what he eats, and give him dresses of what
he wears, and should not ask him todo a thing beyond his capacity. And
if at all he asks him to do a hard task, he should help him therein.'
'There are three categories of people against whom I shall myself be a
plaintiff on the Day of Judgement. Of these three, one is he
whoenslaves a free man, then sells him and eats this money'.
al-Bukhari and Ibn Majjah
Narrated Abu Musa Al-Ash'ari: "The Prophet said, 'Give food to the
hungry, pay a visit to the sick and release (set free) the one in
captivity (by paying his ransom).'"
Bukhari/

1b] Slavery in Islam

1b]
Is slavery still legal in Islam?
The answer is that slaveryis legal under Islamic law but only in
theory. Slaveryis illegal under the state law of all Muslim countries.
Theoretically Islamic law lays down that if a personwas captured in a
lawful jihad or was the descendent of an unbroken chain of people who
had been lawfully enslaved, then it might belegal to enslave them.
Nonetheless, should the legal condition for the enslavement of anyone
be proven (because he had been taken prisoner fighting against Islam
with a view to its extirpation and persisted in invincible ignorance
in his sacrilegious and infidelconvictions, or because there did exist
legal proof that all his ancestors without exception had been slaves
descended from a person taken prisoner conducting a warfare of such
invincible ignorance) Islam would be bound to recognize such slavery
as legal, eventhough recommending the freeing of the person and if
possible his conversion, in this modern age.
Tabandeh, Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, quoted in 'Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im, Shari'a and Basic Human
Rights Concerns, in Liberal Islam, ed Charles Kurzman, 1998
In practice, it seems virtually impossible that there will ever again
be a jihad that is lawfully declared according to the strict letter of
the law, and there are no living descendants of lawful slaves, which
means that legal enslavement is unthinkable.
The law on slavery
Islamic law recognises slavery as an institution within society, and
attempts to regulate and restrict it in various ways.
Different Islamic legal schools differ in their interpretation of
Islamic law on slavery. Local customs in Muslim lands also affected
the way slaves were treated.
In the merchant cities of South-East Asia the sharia helped forge a
legal distinction between slave and non-slave unknown in the rural
hinterland.
More frequently, however,the application of the sharia outside the
Middle East was tempered by local customs. This allowed Muslims in
regions as distant as Somalia, India and Indonesia to argue for
themaintenance of pre-Islamic and other local structures of slavery
even if these ran counter to the prescriptions of thesharia.
Gwyn Campbell; Frank Cass, The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean
Africa and Asia, 2004
Islamic law clearly recognises that slaves are human beings, but it
frequently treats slaves asif they are property, laying down
regulations covering the buying and selling of slaves.
It encourages the freeing of slaves, which has the good effect of
diminishingthe slave population of a culture and, paradoxically,the
bad effect of encouraging those whose livelihood depends on slave
labour to find new ways of acquiring slaves.
Who can be enslaved
Under Islamic law people can only be legally enslaved in two circumstances:
*. as the result of being defeated in a war that was legal according to sharia
*. if they are born as the child of two slave parents
Other legal systems of thetime allowed people to beenslaved in a far
wider range of circumstances.
The sharia limits were often either ignored or evaded, and many
instances of slave trading by Muslims were in fact illegal, but
tolerated.
The following groups of people cannot be made slaves:
*. Free Muslims, but note that:
*. Slaves who convert to Islam are not automatically freed
*. Children born to legally enslaved Muslims are also slaves
*. Dhimmis
Slave rights
Islamic law gives slaves certain rights:
*. Slaves must not be mistreated or overworked, but should be treated well
*. Slaves must be properly maintained
*. Slaves may take legal action for a breach of these rules, and may
be freed as a result
*. Slaves may own property
*. Slaves may own slaves
*. Slaves can get married iftheir owner consents
*. Slaves may undertake business on the owner's behalf
*. Slaves guilty of crimes can only be given half the punishment that
would be given to a non-slave (although some schools of Islamic law do
allow the execution of a slave who commits murder)
*. A female slave cannot be separated from her child while it is under
7 years old
*. Female slaves cannot beforced into prostitution
Slave rights to freedom
Islamic law allows slaves to get their freedom under certain
circumstances. It divides slaves with the right to freedom into
various classes:
*. The mukatab : a slave who has the contractual right to buy their
freedom over time
*. The mudabbar : a slave who will be freed when their owner dies
(this might not happen if the owner's estate was too small)
*. The umm walid , a female slave who had borne her owner a child
Slaves must accept
*. Owners are allowed to have sex with their female slaves

1a] Slavery in Islam

1a]
Muslim slavery was not just economic
Unlike the Western slave trade, slavery in Islam was not wholly
motivatedby economics.
Although some Muslim slaves were used as productive labour it was not
generally on the samemass scale as in the West but in smaller
agricultural enterprises, workshops, building, mining and transport.
Slaves were also taken formilitary service, some serving in elite
corps essential to the ruler's control of the state, while others
joined the equivalent of the civil service.
Another category of slavery was sexual slaveryin which young women
were made concubines, either on a small scale or in large harems of
the powerful. Some of these women were able to achieve wealth and
power.
These harems might be guarded by eunuchs, men who had been enslaved
and castrated.
Where did the slaves come from?
Muslim traders took their slaves from three main areas:
*. Non-Muslim Africa, in particular the Horn
*. Central and Eastern Europe
*. Central Asia
The legality of slavery today
While Islamic law does allow slavery under certain conditions, it's
almost inconceivable that those conditions could ever occur in today's
world, and so slavery is effectively illegal in modern Islam. Muslim
countries also use secular law to prohibit slavery.
News stories do continue to report occasional instances of slavery in
a few Muslim countries, but these are usually denied by the
authorities concerned.:->

1] Slavery in Islam

1]
Slaves were owned in all Islamic societies, both sedentary and
nomadic, ranging from Arabia in the centre to North Africa in the west
and to what isnow Pakistan and Indonesia in the east. Some Islamic
states, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, and the
Sokoto caliphate [Nigeria], must be termed slave societies because
slaves there were very important numerically as well as a focus of the
polities' energies.
Encyclopaedia Britannica - Slavery
Many societies throughout history have practised slavery , and Muslim
societies were no exception.
It's thought that as many people were enslaved in the Eastern slave
trade as in the Atlantic slave trade.
It's ironic that when the Atlantic slave trade was abolished the
Eastern trade expanded, suggesting that for some Africans the
abolition of the Atlantic trade didn't lead to freedom, but merely
changed their slave destination.
It's misleading to use phrases such as 'Islamic slavery' and 'Muslim
slave trade', even though slavery existed in many Muslim cultures at
varioustimes, since the Atlantic slave trade is not called the
Christian slave trade, even though most of those responsible for it
were Christians.
Slavery before Islam
Slavery was common in pre-Islamic times and accepted by many
ancientlegal systems and it continued under Islam.
Although Islam is much credited for moderating the age-old institution
of slavery, which was also accepted and endorsed bythe other
monotheistic religions, Christianity and Judaism, and was a
well-established custom of the pre-Islamic world, it has never
preached the abolition of slavery as a doctrine.
Forough Jahanbaksh, Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran,
1953-2000, 2001
The condition of slaves, like that of women, may well have improved
with the coming of Islam, but the institution was not abolished, any
more than it was under Christianity at this period.
Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World, 2000
How Islam moderated slavery
Islam's approach to slavery added the idea that freedom was the
natural state of affairs for human beings and in line with this it
limited the opportunities to enslave people, commended the freeing of
slaves and regulated the way slaves were treated:
*. Islam greatly limited those who could be enslaved and under what
circumstances (although these restrictions were often evaded)
*. Islam treated slaves as human beings as well asproperty
*. Islam banned the mistreatment of slaves -indeed the tradition
repeatedly stresses the importance of treating slaves with kindness
and compassion
*. Islam allowed slaves to achieve their freedom and made freeing
slavesa virtuous act
*. Islam barred Muslims from enslaving other Muslims
But the essential nature ofslavery remained the same under Islam, as
elsewhere. It involved serious breaches of human rights and however
well they were treated, the slaves still had restricted freedom; and,
when the law was not obeyed, their lives could be very unpleasant.
The paradox
A poignant paradox of Islamic slavery is that the humanity of the
various rules and customs that ledto the freeing of slaves created a
demand for newslaves that could only be supplied by war, forcing
people into slavery or trading slaves.
Muslim slavery continued for centuries
The legality of slavery in Islam, together with the example of the
Prophet Muhammad , who himself bought, sold, captured, and owned
slaves, may explain why slavery persisted until the 19th century in
many places (and later still in some countries). The impetus for the
abolition of slavery came largely from colonial powers, although some
Muslim thinkers argued strongly for abolition.
Slaves came from many places
Unlike the Atlantic slave traders, Muslims enslaved people from many
cultures as well as Africa. Other sources included the Balkans,
Central Asia and Mediterranean Europe.
Slaves could be assimilated into Muslim society
Muhammad's teaching that slaves were to be regarded as human beings
with dignity and rights and not just as property, and that
freeingslaves was a virtuous thing to do, may have helped to create a
culture in which slaves became much more assimilated into the
community than they were in the West.
Muslim slaves could achieve status
Slaves in the Islamic world were not always at the bottom of the
social hierarchy. Slaves in Muslim societies had a greater range of
work, and took on a wider range of responsibilities, than those
enslaved in the Atlantic trade.
Some slaves earned respectable incomes and achieved considerable
power, although even such elite slaves still remained in the power of
their owners.