Islamic views on slavery
[14][15] The hadiths, which differ between Shia and Sunni,[16] address slavery extensively, assuming its existence as part of society but viewing it as an exceptional condition and restricting its scope.
[26] In some Muslim countries in the Arabian peninsula and Africa, slavery was abolished in the second half of the 20th century: 1962 in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Oman in 1970, Mauritania in 1981.
The minority were white slaves of foreign extraction, likely brought in by Arab caravaners (or the product of Bedouin captures) stretching back to biblical times.
Abu Bakr freed Bilal when his master, Umayya ibn Khalaf, placed a heavy rock on his chest in an attempt to force his conversion.
[54] According to Sikainga, the Quranic references to slavery as mainly contain "broad and general propositions of an ethical nature rather than specific legal formulations.
[37] Bernard Lewis states that the Quranic legislation brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far-reaching effects: presumption of freedom, and the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances.
[61] According to Brockopp, the idea of using alms for the manumission of slaves appears to be unique to the Quran, assuming the traditional interpretation of verses 2:177 and 9:60.
"[37] The most common term in the Qur'an to refer to slaves is the expression ma malakat aymanuhum or milk al-yamin[64] in short, meaning "those whom your right hands possess".
[19] Ghulam Ahmed Pervez and Amir Ali have argued that the expression ma malakat aymanukum should be properly read in the past tense, thus only referring to people already enslaved at the time the Qur'an was revealed.
[67] The corpus of hadith attributed to Muhammad follows the general lines of Quranic teaching on slavery and contains a large store of reports enjoining kindness toward slaves.
[75] Traditional Islamic jurisprudence presumed everyone was free under the dictum of The basic principle is liberty (Arabic: al-'asl huwa 'l-hurriya), and slavery was an exceptional condition.
[8] Azizah Y. al-Hibri, a professor of Law specializing in Islamic jurisprudence, states that both the Quran and Hadith are repeatedly exhorting Muslims to treat their slaves well and that Muhammad showed this both in action and in words.
[81] Lewis explains, "the humanitarian tendency of the Quran and the early caliphs in the Islamic empire, was to some extent counteracted by other influences,"[3] notably the practice of various conquered people and countries Muslims encountered, especially in provinces previously under Roman law.
[85] According to Kecia Ali, the Qurʾanic passages on slavery differ strikingly in terms of their terminology and main preoccupations compared to the jurisprudential texts, that the text of the Qurʾan does not permit sexual access simply by the virtue of her being a milk al-yamīn or concubine while the "Jurists define zina as vaginal intercourse between a man and a woman who is neither his wife nor his slave.
Though seldom discussed, forced sex with one's wife might (or, depending on the circumstances, might not) be an ethical infraction, and conceivably even a legal one like assault if physical violence is involved.
[92] Jonathan Brown argues that the modern conception of sexual consent only came about since the 1970s, so it makes little sense to project it backwards onto classical Islamic law.
Brown notes that premodern Muslim jurists rather applied the harm principle to judge sexual misconduct, including between a master and concubine.
[8] Lovejoy writes that as an umm walad, they attained "an intermediate position between slave and free" pending their freedom, although they would sometimes be nominally freed as soon as they gave birth.
"[102] One rationale given for recognition of concubinage in Islam is that "it satisfied the sexual desire of the female slaves and thereby prevented the spread of immorality in the Muslim community.
The Shiite scholar Shaykh al-Tusi stated: ولا يجوز إعارتها للاستمتاع بها لأن البضع لا يستباح بالإعارة "It is not permissible to loan (the slave girl) for enjoyment purpose, because sexual intercourse cannot be legitimate through loaning"[105] and the Shiite scholars al-Muhaqiq al-Kurki, Allamah Al-Hilli and Ali Asghar Merwarid made the following ruling: ولا تجوز استعارة الجواري للاستمتاع "It is not permissible to loan the slave girl for the purpose of sexual intercourse"[106] Under the legal doctrine of kafa'a (lit.
[109] Freed slaves are able to occupy any office within the Islamic government, and instances of this in history include the Mamluk who ruled Egypt for almost 260 years and the eunuchs who have held military and administrative positions of note.
[3][114] Patrick Manning states that Islamic legislations against the abuse of the slaves convincingly limited the extent of enslavement in the Arabian Peninsula and to a lesser degree for the whole area of the Umayyad Caliphate where slavery had existed since the most ancient times.
"[139] The abolitionist movement starting in the late 18th century in Western Europe[140] led to gradual changes concerning the institution of slavery in Muslim lands both in doctrine and in practice.
They expressed two religious considerations in their support for abolition of slavery: "the initial enslaving of the people concerned comes under suspicion of illegality by reason of the present-day expansion of Islam in their countries; masters no longer comply with the rules of good treatment which regulate their rights and shelter them from wrong-doing.
According to the influential thesis of Ameer Ali, the Qur’an disapproved of slavery, but Muhammad could not abolish the institution overnight as it would have disrupted society and economy.
According to Brockopp, in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere the manumission contract (kitaba) was used by the state to give slaves the means to buy their freedom and thereby end slavery as an institution.
[152] Abul A'la Maududi (1903–1979) wrote: Islam has clearly and categorically forbidden the primitive practice of capturing a free man, to make him a slave or to sell him into slavery.
[159] In 2014, ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi met with Pope Francis and other religious leaders to draft an inter-faith declaration to "eradicate modern slavery across the world by 2020 and for all time."
[164] In response to the Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram's Quranic justification for kidnapping and enslaving people,[165][166] and ISIL's religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women as spoils of war as claimed in their digital magazine Dabiq,[167][168][169][170][171] 126 Islamic scholars from around the Muslim world, in late September 2014, signed an open letter to the Islamic State's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, rejecting his group's interpretations of the Quran and hadith to justify its actions.
[172][173][n 2] The letter accuses the group of instigating fitna – sedition – by instituting slavery under its rule in contravention of the anti-slavery consensus of the Islamic scholarly community.
