| Slavery In 2002 the United Nations reported that the number of people forced into slavery around the world had risen to an estimated twenty-seven million. Irshad Manji in The Trouble with Islam, A Wake-up Call For Honesty and Change mentions the resurgence of the slave trade in African countries that have adopted the Koran as the equivalent of their constitution. Countries such as her native Uganda, Mali, Mauritania “where little boys are seduced into slavery by Muslim hustlers” to the Sudan where “Khartoum’s onslaught has rekindled the trade in black slaves” to Nigeria “where Islamic governments encourage the enslavement of Christians.” According to Barnaby Rogerson, author of The Prophet Muhammad, the young Muhammad celebrated his marriage to the twice widowed Khadijah “by giving Barakak (the slave girl he had inherited from his father) her freedom. For her part, Khadijah gave her new husband as a wedding gift a fifteen-year-old male slave named Zayd.” This marriage of the future Prophet, his first, took place more than twenty years before Allah would confirm the righteousness of both transactions in humanity in His Koran. Allah is of two minds when it comes to slavery. His instructions concerning slavery exhibit this dichotomy. The most prominent is in verses that deal with the treatment of female slaves, most of which are yet to come. Whenever in these verses you see the phrase “what your right hands possess” or a variation thereof it means slave-girls. Slave-girls are captives of war; the wives of an enemy defeated in battle or females given as settlement of a debt or other obligations such as compensation to resolve a blood-feud. There are no verses, to my knowledge, that offer specific advice on the treatment and disposal of male slaves. The second type of verse on slavery deals mainly with situations where a slave might be freed, as penance for example. These verses could and have been interpreted as Allah encouraging slave owners to grant their human chattel their freedom. This interpretation notwithstanding, the Koran unambiguously allows slavery, including the enslavement of young women and girls and, what the Koran allows no one can deny, not even God’s Messenger; that would be like contradicting God. Yet, in many verses like those that follow, Allah appears to go out of his way to find excuses for freeing slaves. He even, in the following verse, calls “righteous” those who would spend their money to buy a slave’s freedom. 2:177 Righteousness is not to turn your faces towards the East and the West; the righteous is he who believes in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Book and the Prophets; who gives of his money, in spite of loving it, to the near of kin, the orphans, the needy, the wayfarers and the beggars, and for the freeing of the slaves; who performs the prayers and pays the alms-tax. Such are also those who keep their pledges once they have made them, and endure patiently privation, affliction and in times of fighting (in the Way of Allah). Those are the truthful and the God-Fearing. Allah’s suggestion about what believers should do with they money would have meant little, if anything, for female slaves. Under normal circumstances you only freed slaves that had the means to look after themselves. In traditional Islamic society, the forced seclusion of women and their property-like status meant that a female slave could never be expected to be able to look after herself. Therefore, her slave status was more or less a lifetime thing unless she was a believer and her proprietor decided to make her one of his four permanent wives or give her in marriage to another believer. Perhaps realizing this, Allah, with His usual attention to detail, did provide some thoughtful suggestions about the care and feeding of your female slaves, including when you can have sex with what your “right hand possesses” (see It Is God’s Will - Women and The Koran III). One of the ingenious contrivances that Allah uses to compel slave owners to free some of their slaves is requiring the freedom of a slave as penance for a transgression. In the following verse Allah makes the freeing of a believing slave part of the payment for the accidental killing of a believer by another believer. 4:92 It is not given to a believer to kill another believer except by mistake; and he who kills a believer by mistake should free a slave who is a believer and pay blood-money to his relatives, unless they remit it as alms. If he happens to belong to a people who are your enemies, but he is a believer, then you should free a believing slave. If he belongs to a people bound to you by compact, then blood-money should be paid to his relatives and a believing slave should be freed. As for him who has not the means, he should fast for two consecutive months, as a penance from Allah. Allah is All-Knowing, Wise! A slave could also find freedom in death as retribution for the deliberate killing of another slave-owner’s property. 2:178 O believers, retaliation for the slain is prescribed for you; a free [man] for a free [man], a slave for a slave and a female for a female. But if he is pardoned by his brother (the aggrieved), usage should be followed (capital punishment would be replaced by blood-money) and he should pay him (the aggrieved) liberally and kindly. This is remission and mercy from your Lord. He who transgresses after that will have a painful punishment. The freeing of a slave is also the penance if you ignore your wife’s sexual needs, claiming she reminds you of your mother, and then wish to get back together to indulge in more than social intercourse. These verses, which do not stipulate whether the slave to be freed must be a believer, are found in the somewhat aptly named surah, The Pleading Woman. 58:2 Those of you who ignore their wives saying: “You are like our mother’s back”, should know that they are not really their mothers. Their mothers are only those women who gave them birth, and they are certainly making a reprehensible statement and a lie. But Allah is indeed Al-Pardoning, All-Forgiving. 58:3 And those who say of their wives: “You are like our mother’s back”, then retract what they said, have to free a slave before touching each other. That is what you are admonished, and Allah is Fully Aware of what you do. A slave could also be freed as penance for a broken oath. 5:89 Allah will not take you to task for what is unintentional in your oaths, but will take you to task for the oaths you intentionally take. Expiation for it, is feeding ten poor people with such average food as you would feed your own families, clothing them or freeing one slave. But he who cannot find [the means] should fast for three days. That is the expiation for your oaths when you have sworn (those oaths which you have not kept). Keep your oaths; that is how Allah makes clear His Revelations to you, that you may be thankful. If you have a choice between marrying a believing slave or an unbelieving free-woman, Allah recommends that you marry a believing slave. This could also be construed as Allah, again, doing what he can to free the slaves, in this instance a female slave, by making her a respectable women. Considering the significant demands placed on “free” Muslim women in traditional Islamic society, for example, a slave-girl could refuse sex but a married woman could not, for many women this change of status may not have been an improvement. Also, unlike the female slave who could be given as a token offering to an unbeliever thereby perhaps improving her lot in life, a free woman could not marry an unbeliever. For a believing woman this is a divine imperative, for a believing man, not marrying an unbeliever is just a recommendation. 2:221 Do not marry unbelieving women (polytheists) until they believe. A believing slave-girl is certainly better than an unbelieving woman, even if the latter pleases you. And do not give your women (believing women) in marriage to polytheists until they believe. A believing slave is certainly better than a polytheist even if the latter pleases you. Those (the polytheists) call to the Fire and Allah calls to Paradise and Forgiveness by His Leave; and He makes clear His Revelations to mankind so that they may be mindful. ---------------------- Fakhry’s translation of verse 2:221 is the only translation consulted that uses the term polytheists i.e. idol worshippers instead of unbelievers. In his translation “marrying your women” to Christians and Jews would appear to be permitted. Since this seldom happens in practice, I side with what appears to be a majority of translators that a believing women can not be given in marriage to a non-Muslim. ---------------------- Allah also recommends that slaves should answer to one master (which would probably make their lives easier), if my interpretation of the following parable is correct. 39:29 Allah has given as a parable a man owned by partners who are at odds and a man exclusively owned by one man. Are they equal in status? Praise be to Allah, but most of them do not know. You should be kind to your slave-girls. 4:36 Worship Allah and do not associate with Him anything. Show kindness to the parents, to kinsmen, to orphans, the destitute, the close and distant neighbour, the companion by your side and those whom your right-hands possess. Allah does not love the arrogant and the boastful, The question remains: “Why did Allah, in revelations that were meant to guide mankind for thousands of years, not simply abolish slavery?” Believers would say it is because Allah sees nothing wrong in en-slaving your fellow men, women and children as long as it is done in accordance with the standard slavery practices prescribed in the Koran, and they are probably right. Consider the following verse. 16:75 Allah sets forth this parable. Consider an owned slave who is unable to do anything; and one for whom We have provided from Our Bounty a fair provision, and he spend from it secretly and publicly. Are they then alike? Praise be to Allah; but most of them do not know. According to Dr. Victor A. Gunasekara, author of Slavery and the Infidel in Islam, this verse is “one of the clearest instances where the institution of slavery is justified in the Koran as a divine dispensation." "This parable contrasts two people a slave who is owned by another and is completely powerless and a freeman on whom Allah has granted 'a goodly sustenance’ which he can spend openly or secretly as he pleases … Since Allah claims for himself the position of the granter of all benefits both the freeman's fortune and the slave's misfortune are ultimately determined by Allah. By his rhetorical question ‘Are the two alike?’ the Prophet Muhammad is actually justifying the inequality between the slave and the freeman as if it was a natural thing … because it is what Allah has ordained and ‘all praise is due to Allah’.” Also, in the brutal, inescapable logic of Islam, how could a believer make amends for the transgressions described here if he was not allowed to own slaves in the first place? Without slaves, Allah’s prescribed penance would not make any sense and for the believers, Allah is a consistent, logical, methodical, no-nonsense type of god, the embodiment of wisdom and good judgment. The Koran is not so much a philosophy of life as a set of rules. Allah will judge the believers based on their strict adherence to these rules. A slaver who follows Allah's rules governing slavery is being a good Muslim. The Koran’s explicit condoning of slavery and the increase in the number of slaves around the world, especially in countries where traditional Islam finds acceptance, has to be particularly worrisome for non-traditional believers and unbelievers alike. Judging from a sample of the sayings and examples of the Prophet Muhammad, God’s Messenger, unlike his Mentor, is unequivocal in his approval of slavery. Remember, in Islamic law, where the Koran is ambiguous, the Prophet’s saying or example is the law. The Prophet rebuking a woman for freeing (manumitting) a slave-girl instead of giving her to an uncle: Narrated Kurib: the freed slave of Ibn 'Abbas, that Maimuna bint Al-Harith told him that she manumitted (freed) a slave-girl without taking the permission of the Prophet. On the day when it was her turn to be with the Prophet, she said, "Do you know, O Allah's Apostle, that I have manumitted my slave-girl?" He said, "Have you really?" She replied in the affirmative. He said, "You would have got more reward if you had given her (i.e. the slave-girl) to one of your maternal uncles." al-Bukhari 47.765 The Prophet helps a man in need of money by selling his slave for him: Narrated Jabir bin Abdullah: A man decided that a slave of his would be manumitted after his death and later on he was in need of money, so the Prophet took the slave and said, "Who will buy this slave from me?" Nu'aim bin 'Abdullah bought him for such and such price and the Prophet gave him the slave. al-Bukhari 34:351 The Prophet cancelling a dying man’s wish that six if his slaves be freed, manumitting only two and keeping the other four for himself or someone else: 'Imran b. Husain reported that a person who had no other property emancipated six slaves of his at the time of his death. Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) called for them and divided them into three sections, cast lots amongst them, and set two free and kept four in slavery; and he (the Holy Prophet) spoke severely of him. Imam Muslim 4112 The Prophet cancelling the freeing of a slave and selling it for its former owner who has no other chattel: Narrated Jabir: A man manumitted a slave and he had no other property than that, so the Prophet cancelled the manumission (and sold the slave for him). No'aim bin Al-Nahham bought the slave from him. al-Bukhari 41:598 The Prophet explaining his and Allah’s position on coitus interruptus while having sex with a female captive e.g. slave: Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri: that while he was sitting with Allah's Apostle he said, "O Allah's Apostle! We get female captives as our share of booty, and we are interested in their prices, what is your opinion about coitus interruptus?" The Prophet said, "Do you really do that? It is better for you not to do it. No soul that which Allah has destined to exist, but will surely come into existence." al-Bukhari 3:34:432 Abu Sirma said to Abu Sa'id al Khadri (Allah be pleased with him): 0 Abu Sa'id, did you hear Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) mentioning al-'azl? He said: Yes, and added: We went out with Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to the Bi'l- Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing 'azl (Withdrawing the male sexual organ before emission of semen to avoid conception). But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah's Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born. Imam Muslim 8:3371 One last hadith about what the Prophet had to say about slavery; and it’s somewhat of a confounding one. "The Prophet said, 'The freed slave belongs to the people who have freed him.'" al-Bukhari 80:753
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