Islamic views on slavery

Slavery was widely practiced in before Muhammad's declaration of prophethood or pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as in the rest of the ancient and early medieval world. 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. Native Arab slaves had also existed, a prime example being Zayd ibn Harithah, later to become Muhammad's adopted son. Arab slaves, however, usually obtained as captives, were generally ransomed off amongst nomad tribes. The slave population increased by the custom of child abandonment (see also infanticide), and by the kidnapping, or, occasionally, the sale of small children. There is no conclusive evidence of the existence of enslavement for debt or the sale of children by their families; the late and rare accounts of such occurrences show them to be abnormal, Brunschvig states Islam also prohibits the use of female slaves for prostitution which was common in pre-Islamic history. Brockopp states that the Qur'an was a progressive legislation on slavery in its time because it encouraged proper treatment. Others state that Islam's record with slavery has been mixed, progressive in Arabian lands, but it increased slavery and worsened abuse as Muslim armies attacked people in Africa, Europe and Asia. Murray notes that Quran sanctified the institution of slavery and abuses therein, but to its credit did not freeze the status of a slave and allowed a means to a slave's manumission in some cases when the slave converted to Islam. ==Quran==

The Quran contains a number of verses aimed at regulating slavery and mitigating its negative impact. It calls for the manumission (freeing) of slaves. The Quran establishes that a thorough massacre is a prerequisite to taking captives of war as slaves. Many Muslims have interpreted Quran as gradually phasing out slavery. and expiation of sins. devises a manumission contract in which slaves buy their freedom in installments. Two One of the uses of zakat, a pillar of Islam, is to pay for the freeing of slaves. The Quran prescribes kind treatment of slaves. Several verses list slaves as members of the household, sometimes alongside wives, children and other relatives. The Quran recognizes slaves as morally and spiritually equal to free people. God promises an eternal life in the Hereafter. refers to master and slave with the same word. Nevertheless, the Quran doesn't abolish slavery. One reason given is that slavery was a major part of the 7th century socioeconomic system, and it abolishing it would not have been practical. The word 'abd' (slave) is rarely used, being more commonly replaced by some periphrasis such as ma malakat aymanukum ("that which your right hands own"). However the meaning and translation of this term has been disputed. Ghulam Ahmed Pervez argued that the term is used in the past-tense in the Quran, thus signalling only those individuals who were already enslaved at the dawn of Islam. This slight change in tense is significant, as it allowed Parwez to argue that slavery was never compatible with the commandments of the Quran and is in fact outlawed by Quranic Law. There are many common features between the institution of slavery in the Quran and that of neighboring cultures. However, the Quranic institution had some unique new features. 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 and . Similarly, the practice of freeing slaves in atonement for certain sins appears to be introduced by the Quran (but compare Exodus 21:26–27). Murray Gordon notes that this ban is "of no small significance." Brockopp writes: "Other cultures limit a master's right to harm a slave but few exhort masters to treat their slaves kindly, and the placement of slaves in the same category as other weak members of society who deserve protection is unknown outside the Quran. The unique contribution of the Quran, then, is to be found in its emphasis on the place of slaves in society and society's responsibility toward the slave, perhaps the most progressive legislation on slavery in its time." in short, meaning "those whom your right hands possess". This term is found in 15 Quranic passages, Thus, this term is a Qur'anic innovation. The term can be seen as an honorific, as to be held by "the right hands" means to be held in honor in Arabic and Islamic culture, a fact that can be seen in Quranic verses that refer to those who will enter Paradise as "companions of the right hand." The term also implies that slaves are "possessions". In four places, the Qur'an addresses slaves in the same terms as the free; for example, Q39:29 refers to both the master and the slave using the same word (rajul). 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. ==Prophet's traditions==

was an African slave who was emancipated when Abu Bakr paid his ransom upon Muhammad's instruction. He was appointed by Muhammad as the first official muezzin. This image depicts him atop the Kaaba in January 630, when he became the first Muslim to proclaim adhan in Mecca. Islamic sources indicate that Muhammad acquired slaves through various means, including purchase, gift, and as part of war spoils. While 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, critics point to specific hadiths and historical accounts as evidence of direct involvement in the slave trade and ownership, arguing that this validates the institution within the religion. When the people of Banu Qurayzah were defeated, he ordered some of the captives to be exchanged to purchase horses and arms. Gordon argues that Muhammad instead assured the legitimacy of slavery in Islam by lending it his moral authority. Likely justifications for his attitude toward slavery included the precedent of Jewish and Christian teachings of his time as well as pragmatic considerations. The most notable of Muhammad's slaves were: Safiyya bint Huyayy received in exchange for seven other slaves, whom he freed and married; Maria al-Qibtiyya, given to Muhammad by a Sassanid official as a gift, who gave birth to his son Ibrahim and was freed. Sirin, Maria's sister, whom he freed and married to the poet Hassan ibn Thabit and Zayd ibn Harithah, whom Muhammad freed and adopted as a son. ==Traditional Islamic jurisprudence==

Source of slaves As per Islamic law, enslavement is allowed in two instances: capture in war (on the condition that the prisoner non-Muslim), or by birth into slavery. Islamic law does not recognize the classes of slave from pre-Islamic Arabia including those sold or given into slavery by themselves and others, and those indebted into slavery. Purchasing slaves and receiving slaves as tribute was permitted. Many scholars subjected slave purchases to the condition that slave should have been "rightfully enslaved" in the first place.Traditional Islamic jurisprudence presumed everyone was free under the dictum of The basic principle is liberty (), and slavery was an exceptional condition. Non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, known as dhimmi, could not be enslaved. Treatment (1912) In the instance of illness it would be required for the slave to be looked after. Manumission is considered a meritorious act. Based on the Quranic verse (24:33), Islamic law permits a slave to ransom himself upon consent of his master through a contract known as mukataba. Levy concurs, adding that "cruelty to them was forbidden." Al-Hibri quotes the famous last speech of Muhammad and other hadiths emphasizing that all believers, whether free or enslaved, are siblings. Islamic law, using the term Ma malakat aymanukum ("what your right hands possess") considered sexual relations with female slaves as lawful. 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. One might speculate that the same is true of forced sex with a slave. This scenario is never, however, illicit in the jurists' conceptual world". Responding to a query about whether a man can be forced to have intercourse or if it is obligatory for him to have intercourse with his wife or concubine, Imam Al-Shafiʽi stated "If he has only one wife or an additional concubine with whom he has intercourse, he is commanded to fear Allah Almighty and to not harm her in regards to intercourse, although nothing specific is obligated upon him. He is only obligated to provide what benefits her such as financial maintenance, residence, clothing, and spending the night with her. As for intercourse, its position is one of pleasure and no one can be forced into it." Tamara Sonn writes that consent of a concubine was necessary for sexual relations. 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. He further states that historically, concubines could complain to judges if they were being sexually abused and that scholars like al-Bahūtī require a master to set his concubine free if he injures her during sex. Islam permits sexual relations between a male master and his female slave outside marriage. This is referred to in the Quran as ma malakat aymanukum or "what your right hands possess". There are some restrictions on the master; he may not co-habit with a female slave belonging to his wife, neither can he have relations with a female slave if she is co-owned, or already married. In theory, the recognition by a master of his offspring by a slave woman was optional in Islamic society, and in the early period was often withheld. By the High Middle Ages it became normal and was unremarkable in a society where the sovereigns themselves were almost invariably the children of slave concubines. The mother receives the title of "umm walad" (), which is an improvement in her status as she can no longer be sold. Among Sunnis, she is automatically freed upon her master's death, however for Shi'a, she is only freed if her child is still alive; her value is then deducted from this child's share of the inheritance. 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" Under the legal doctrine of ''kafa'a'' (lit."adequacy, equivalence"), the purpose of which was to ensure that a man should be at least the social equal of the woman he marries, a freedman is not as good as the son of a freedman, and he in turn not as good as the grandson of a freedman. This principle is pursued up to three generations, after which all Muslims are deemed equally free. Lewis asserts that since kafa'a "does not forbid unequal marriages", it is in no sense a "Muslim equivalent of Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany or the apartheid laws of South Africa. His purpose, he states, is not to try to set up a moral competition – to compare castration and apartheid as offenses against humanity." Legal status Within Islamic jurisprudence, slaves were excluded from religious office and from any office involving jurisdiction over others. 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. With the permission of their owners they are able to marry. Annemarie Schimmel, a contemporary scholar on Islamic civilization, asserts that because the status of slaves under Islam could only be obtained through either being a prisoner of war (this was soon restricted only to infidels captured in a holy war) Islam's reforms stipulating the conditions of enslavement seriously limited the supply of new slaves. Some Muslim scholars have taken this mean that his true motive was to bring about a gradual elimination of slavery. An alternative argument is that by lending the moral authority of Islam to slavery, Muhammad assured its legitimacy. Thus, in lightening the fetter, he riveted it ever more firmly in place." In the early days of Islam, a plentiful supply of new slaves were brought due to rapid conquest and expansion. But as the frontiers were gradually stabilized, this supply dwindled to a mere trickle. The prisoners of later wars between Muslims and Christians were commonly ransomed or exchanged. According to Lewis, this reduction resulted in Arabs who wanted slaves having to look elsewhere to avoid the restrictions in the Quran, meaning an increase of importing of slaves from non-Muslim lands, primarily from Africa. These slaves suffered a high death toll. In practice, traditional propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves. Rights and restrictions "Morally as well as physically the slave is regarded in law as an inferior being," Levy writes. Under Islamic law, a slave possesses a composite quality of being both a person and a possession. The spiritual status of a Muslim slave was identical to a Muslim free person, with some exemptions made for the slave. For example, it is not mandatory for Muslim slaves to attend Friday prayers or go for Hajj, even though both are mandatory for free Muslims. Slaves were generally allowed to become an imam and lead prayer, and many scholars even allowed them to act as an imam for Friday and Eid prayers, though some disagreed. As slaves are regarded as inferior in Islamic law, death at the hands of a free man does not require that the latter be killed in retaliation. The killer must pay the slave's master compensation equivalent to the slave's value, as opposed to blood-money. At the same time, slaves themselves possess a lessened responsibility for their actions, and receive half the penalty required upon a free man. For example: where a free man would be subject to a hundred lashes due to pre-marital relations, a slave would be subject to only fifty. Slaves are allowed to marry only with the owner's consent. Jurists differ over how many wives a slave may possess, with the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools allowing them two, and the Maliki school allowing four. Slaves are not permitted to possess or inherit property, or conduct independent business, and may conduct financial dealings only as a representative of the master. Offices of authority are generally not permitted for slaves, though a slave may act as the leader (Imam) in the congregational prayers, and he may also act as a subordinate officer in the governmental department of revenue. Such a contract is recommended by the Qur'an. The child would be automatically free and equal to the owner's other children. • The owner can promise, either verbally • Anytime the owner of the slave declares the slave to be free the slave becomes automatically free, even if the owner made the statement accidentally or jokingly. According to Jafar as-Sadiq, all Muslim slaves become automatically free after a maximum of 7 years in servitude. This rule applies regardless of the will of the owner. However a slave who fled from his master remained an infidel (kafir) until he returned to his master. Some scholars hold that the abolition of slavery was one of the aims of Islam, a view that Islamic feminist scholar Kecia Ali finds well intentioned but ahistorical and simplistic. She has suggested that while there was definitely an "emancipatory ethic" (encouragement for freeing slaves) in Islamic jurisprudence and that "it is possible to view slavery as inconsistent with basic Qur'anic precepts of justice and human equality before God", slavery was also "marginal to the Qur'anic worldview" and "there has not been a strong internally developed critique of past or present slaveholding practices". The subsequent shift in attitudes within Islam towards slavery have also been compared to similar shifts within Christianity towards Biblically sanctioned slavery, which was widespread in the late antique world in which both the Bible and Quran arose. ==Modern interpretations==

Abolitionism Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu (1556–1627), a West African scholar, argued against the enslavement of free Muslims during the trans-Saharan trade. Though not an abolitionist in the modern sense, he insisted that Islamic law prohibited enslaving Muslims and free persons unjustly. In British India, Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898), a Muslim reformer and educator, supported the abolition of slavery. He argued that slavery was a historical institution, not a religious obligation, and encouraged reinterpretation of Islamic teachings in favor of human dignity and social justice. In the Ottoman Empire, restrictions on the slave trade began to be introduced during the eighteenth century, in the context of Ottoman-Russian warfare. Bilateral agreements between the Ottoman and Russian empires enabled both sides to retrieve captives taken during war in return for ransom payments. Ransoming of enslaved war captives had been common before this, but had depended on the agreement of a captive's owner; by establishing this as a legal right, the agreements restricted the rights of slaveowners and contributed to the development of the international law concept of "prisoner of war." The abolitionist movement starting in the late 18th century in Western Europe led to gradual changes concerning the institution of slavery in Muslim lands both in doctrine and in practice. According to Brunschvig, although the total abolition of slavery might seem a reprehensible innovation and contrary to the Quran and the practice of early Muslims, the realities of the modern world caused a "discernible evolution in the thought of many educated Muslims before the end of the 19th century." These Muslims argued that Islam on the whole has "bestowed an exceptionally favorable lot on the victims of slavery" and that the institution of slavery is linked to the particular economic and social stage in which Islam originated. 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. The Prophet thus ordered an immediate betterment in the status and treatment of slaves, and encouraged manumission, trusting that slavery would soon die out. Tunisia was the first Muslim country to abolish slavery, in 1846. Tunisian reformers argued for the abolition of slavery on the basis of Islamic law. They argued that while Islamic law permitted slavery, it set many conditions, and these conditions were impossible to enforce in the 19th century and widely flouted. They pointed to evidence that many slaves sold in Tunisian markets had been enslaved illegally, as they were either Muslim or the subject of a friendly state at the time of capture (Islamic law allowed the enslavement only of non-Muslims in the course of war). They also argued that the circumstances for legal enslavement in the 19th century were very rare, because Tunisia and other Muslim states were not permanently at war with non-Muslim powers, as the first Muslim state had been. Therefore, one could assume that the vast majority of the 19th-century slave trade was illegal, and the only way to prevent illegal enslavement was to prohibit the slave trade entirely. Furthermore, since the child of a slave and a free man was considered free (if the father chose to acknowledge paternity of the child), the institution of slavery was not sustainable without a slave trade. Contemporary By the 1950s–1960s, a majority of Muslims had accepted the abolition of slavery as religiously legitimate. Islam as a whole has never preached the freedom of all men "as a doctrine" up to the current day. However, by the end of the 20th century, all Muslim countries had made slavery illegal, and the vast majority of Muslim organizations and interpretations of sharia firmly condemn modern-day slavery. Proceedings from an Organization of Islamic Conference meeting in 1980 upheld human freedom and rejected enslavement of prisoners. Most Muslim scholars consider slavery to be inconsistent with Quranic principles of justice. Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) wrote in Fi Zilal al-Quran (a tafsir) that slavery was adopted by Islam at a time it was practiced world-wide for a period of time "until the world devised a new code of practise during war other than enslavement." Qutb's brother, Muhammad Qutb, contrasted sexual relations between Muslim slave-owners and their female slaves with what he saw as the widespread practice of pre-marital sex in Europe. 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. On this point the clear and unequivocal words of Muhammad are as follows:"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 who enslaves a free man, then sells him and eats this money" (al-Bukhari and Ibn Majjah). The words of this Tradition of the Prophet are also general, they have not been qualified or made applicable to a particular nation, race, country or followers of a particular religion. ... After this the only form of slavery which was left in Islamic society was the prisoners of war, who were captured on the battlefield. These prisoners of war were retained by the Muslim Government until their government agreed to receive them back in exchange for Muslim soldiers captured by them ... William Clarence-Smith criticized the above two as: "dogged refusal of Mawlana Mawdudi to give up on slavery" and the notable "evasions and silences of Muhammad Qutb". . Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, a shariah judge and founder of Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, gives the following explanation: When Islam came, for the situations where people were taken into slavery (e.g. debt), Islam imposed Shari’ah solutions to those situations other than slavery. ... It (Islam) made the existing slave and owner form a business contract, based upon the freedom, not upon slavery ... As for the situation of war, ... it clarified the rule of the captive in that either they are favoured by releasing without any exchange, or they are ransomed for money or exchanged for Muslims or non-Muslim citizens of the Caliphate. The website of the organization stresses that because sharia historically was responding to a contract, not the institution of slavery, a future caliphate could not re-introduce slavery. 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." The declaration was signed by other Shi'ite leaders and the Sunni Grand Imam of Al Azhar. In 1993, ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi declared that "Islam has devised solutions and strategies for ending slavery, but that does not mean that slavery is condemned in Islam". He argued that ordinances of slavery could apply to prisoners of war. Iranian ayatollah Mohsen Kadivar has used an Islamic legal technique called naskh aqli (abrogation by reason) to conclude that slavery is no longer permissible in Islam. In response to the Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram's Quranic justification for kidnapping and enslaving people, and ISIL's religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women as spoils of war as claimed in their digital magazine Dabiq, 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. 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. ==Notable enslaved people and freedmen==