Islam and Slavery Compliation.pdf - Somayeh

Please enable JavaScript to view the full PDF

Islam and Slavery Compiled by Somayeh Haqayeqi Contents The History of Slavery…………………………………………………3 Can We Define Slavery?.........................................................................4 The Problem of Defining Slavery………………………………….......5 Slavery in Islam – A Political Question ………………….....................8 Why Didn’t Prophet Muhammad Use Force to Abolish Slavery?........10 The Experience of US in Abolishing Slavery by Force……………….10 How Islam Fought Slavery…………………………………………….11 Captives in Wars……………………………………………………….12 How Prophet Muhammad Treated Slaves……………………………...13 The Rights of Slaves:  Slave Women and Children……………………………………16  The Right to Liberation………………………………………..16  Liberation of Slaves in Quran………………………………….17  Emancipation of Slaves as Penance for Sin……………………17 Mothers of Shia Imams…………………………………………………18 Islam and Sex Slavery…………………………………………………..19 Modern Forms of Slavery……………………………………………….20 Focus on the Conditions, not the Word………………………………….23 Bibliography……………………………………………………………..24 2 The History of Slavery Slavery was not an institution invented by Christianity or Islam. It was there long before these religions came into being. In Persia, the palace of the Emperor had twelve thousand women slaves. When the Byzantine Emperor sat on the throne, thousands of slaves remained in attendance with full attention and hundreds of them bowed when he bent to put on his shoes. In Greece, the number of slaves was far greater than the number of free men, although Greece had produced great advocates of humanity and justice. Every Greek army which entered with ridings of victory over the enemy was followed by a host of slaves. Aristotle, the famous ancient philosopher, while discussing the question whether or not any one is intended by nature to be a slave, says, “There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” Then he concludes, “...some men are by nature free, and others slave, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.”1 At the time of the advent of Islam (in 7th century CE) slavery was rampant throughout India, Persia, Rome, the Arabian Peninsula, Rumania and Greece. The elite and educated class of these countries did not regard the slaves eligible even for the basic human rights. He was regarded as a commodity not worthier than cattle. Often he was sold cheaper than sheep and goat. On special social occasions the distinguished citizens of the State used to get together with the Head of the State to watch the gladiatorial games in which the slaves were made to fight with swords and spears just like the shows of cock-fights and partridges in our old feudal society. The people cheered the hands until one of the fighters was killed. The audience would then applaud the winner heartily.2 On the one side, the Arabian Peninsula was surrounded by countries which still bore traces of the grandeur of the then declining Roman-Greek civilization, and on the other side, by countries wrapped in Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. As mentioned above, in all these countries slavery was a recognized institution. As far as slavery was concerned, Arabs in the pre-Islamic days were as bad offenders as their neighbors. Slaves were a commercial commodity, and slavery was an established institution. It was a source of livelihood for thousands and a source of labor for scores of thousands. To the elite, the number of slaves in the household was a symbol of status.3 1 . Aristotle, Politics, Book I, chp. 5 (New York: Modern Library, 1943), 58-60. 2 . Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. III (New York, 1944), 29. 3 . Slavery From Islamic And Christian Perspectives | Al-Islam.org 3 Can We Define Slavery? Many historians, proceeding from a Marxist paradigm, have sought to explain slavery as a purely economic phenomenon. Others, especially scholars of slavery in the Islamic world, have stressed that slavery is often much more of a social phenomenon. Definitions of slavery have tended to revolve around three notions: the slave as a family-less outsider, the slave as property, and the slave as the object of violence4 . But for a definition to fit all the things that people today commonly associate with slavery, that definition has to be so vague that it’s almost useless. So slavery is “the forced labor of one group by another,” according to some social scientists5. Others have suggested that the slave is always an outcast.6According to Davis, to apply across human history, slavery can only be defined as extreme social “debasement”; whatever the hierarchy, slaves are always at the bottom.7 The most influential, specific definition comes from Orlando Patterson, who defines slavery as always exhibiting three features. First, slavery involves perpetual domination ultimately enforced by violence. Second, slavery involves a state of natal alienation, “the loss of ties of birth in both ascending and descending generations” that preclude making claims of birth or passing them on to one’s children and that cuts the slave off from family and community except as allowed by the masters. They inherit no protection or privilege and can pass none on to their children. Finally, slaves are denied any honor.8 Slavery is thus defined as the “permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons.”9 4 . Martin Klein, “Introduction,” in Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia, ed. Martin Klein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 4-5. 5 . Rodney Coates, “Slavery” in Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) 6 . A. Testart, “The Extent and Significance of Debt Slavery,” Revue Française de Sociologie 43 (2002): 176. 7 . David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) p. 17-19; Brenda Stevenson, What is Slavery? (Malden, MA: Polity, 2015), 8. 8 . Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. (Harvard University Press, 1982), 1- 7. 9 . Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery (London: Athlone, 1991). 4 The Problem of Defining Slavery How would we know who’s a slave and who isn’t on our voyage? Most Westerners today would probably think that the young man being smacked and the chained laborers were slaves, because we associate slavery with physical degradation, harsh labor, and violence. We would probably not assume the ‘soft and delicate’ man was a slave because he told us he would soon move to another job on his own terms, while we associate slavery with a total loss of agency, presumably for life. We would certainly not presume that the minister was a slave, since he clearly wielded immense wealth and the power over life and death throughout an empire. If we are searching for the phenomenon of slavery, what are we really looking for? Is it the label ‘slave’ that matters? Or is it the reality of the condition behind it? The soldiers and administrators of China’s Manchu Qing dynasty (1644-1912) were technically slaves (aha) of the dynasty and proudly referred to themselves as such. The title of slave was later applied to anyone of Manchu descent in Qing China. But the word had no link to the reality of any servile condition.10 Up through the 1800s, the upper administration of the Ottoman Empire was in the hands of people technically classified as kul (privileged sultanic slaves) who had more power and esteem than their free counterparts.11 When we come across a word that translates as ‘slave’ in English, does that word necessarily mean what we mean by slavery? Our word ‘slave’ in English comes from the Medieval Latin word for Slavic peoples, Sclavus, since they were the population in the Balkans from which European slave traders drew their cargo up through the thirteenth century.12 A common English dictionary definition of a slave is ‘someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay.’ This notion of slavery as reducing human beings to things owned by other people has been a major theme in how the concept has been understood in the West. It was crucial to how abolitionists understood slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the movement to end slavery began. But the roots of this definition go further back to the roots of Western heritage. They lie in Roman law, which divided people into two categories: the free (a free person has the ‘natural right’ to ‘do as he pleases, unless prevented by the force of law’) and slaves, who exist as the property of others. Ownership is as much about how we imagine relationships as exercising real control. As the famous social historian Orlando Patterson points out, who and what we say 10 . Pamela Kyle Crossley, “Slavery in Early Modern China,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3 AD 1420-1804, ed. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 200. 11 . Christoph K. Neumann, “Whom did Ahmet Cevdet represent?,” in Late Ottoman Society, ed. Elisabeth Özdalga, 117-134. London: Routledge, 2005), 117. 12 . David Brion Davis, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 17-18. 5 we own is really only a matter of our customs and manners.13 Modern Americans would gasp at the notion of ‘owning’ their children, but from the Roman through the medieval period in Europe parents could and did sell their children off as slaves to creditors in order to pay debts. Moreover, poor parents abandoning their children was a regular source for slave markets in Europe.14 Yet all these children started off as technically ‘free’ in the legal sense, not legally owned by anyone. In the US, wives and husbands have numerous claims on and powers over each other and their labor, as becomes clear during divorce. 15 But we would never speak about marriage as a relationship of ownership. Conventions in early imperial China were different. There, husbands regularly listed their (free!) wives as property in their will, bequeathing them to some friend.16 Astoundingly, between 1760 and 1880—less than a century and a half ago—there were 218 cases of Englishmen holding auctions to sell off their wives, even advertising these auctions in the newspaper.17 What would it mean to ‘own’ a person? Does it mean to have total control over them? We have full control over our young children, but, unlike a chair or a pen, we cannot seriously physically harm them without legal consequence. In fact, this distinction between ownership and control is not very helpful for defining slavery. As with our children today, it was impermissible for Muslims to kill or seriously injure their slaves, and those who did faced legal consequences under the Shariah. In some contexts, ownership might fail completely as a concept for understanding slavery. Slavery existed in imperial China, but it was not conceptualized through ownership. Slaves were not legally ‘owned’ at all for the very technical reason that Chinese law could not categorize people as ‘things’.18 If we think about slavery as exploitation, does slavery mean not compensating someone for their labor? Sokollu Mehmet Pasha was a slave ‘owned’ by the Ottoman sultan, but he was also paid handsomely for his work as grand vizier. Saffron was owned by his master, but only partially, since he had already bought back a portion of his freedom through wages he earned elsewhere in his time off. He received no pay from his master, but the master paid for his food, clothes, and shelter. Incidentally, in this regard, the slave was no different from the master’s own son. Both were his dependents, relying on his support for their basic needs. At a theoretical level, how we understand freedom in the West is inherited from Classical Greece and Rome, where ‘free’ was the legal category of citizens of a democratic republic. A free person is autonomous, at liberty to do whatever he or she wants unless the law prohibits it. Everyone else is a slave. But even in Classical times, this legal definition of freedom was no more than a “rhetorical argument,” as one scholar puts it, since in reality 13 . Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 22 14 . Cam Grey, “Slavery in the Late Roman World,” 496; Rotman, Byzantine Slavery, 174-76. 15 . Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 22. 16 . Pamela Kyle Crossley, “Slavery in Early Modern China,” 191; The Cambridge World History of Slavery, part II – Slavery in Asia 17 . Julia O’Connell Davidson, Modern Slavery: The Margins of Freedom. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 162. 18 . Crossley, “Slavery in Early Modern China,” 187. 6 few people in the Greek and Roman world were ‘free’ by this definition. Almost everyone was constrained by powerful social, economic, and even legal bonds.19 Ironically, even in theory this notion of freedom only applies in liberal democracies. In autocracies—perhaps a majority of societies in human history—almost no one is free by this definition.20 19 . Youval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 19 20 . Rotman, Byzantine Slavery, 17-18. For more information, see the link below: Slavery and Islam: What is Slavery? | Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research 7 Slavery in Islam – A Political Question Before delving into how slavery existed in Islam we should note that this is not a question asked in a vacuum. It hasn’t been for well over two centuries. In conversations and debates the response, ‘Well, does that mean slavery would be ok?’ is the ultimate trump card against someone arguing for indulging different values. Slavery is the ideal example to invoke because its evil is so morally clear and so widely acknowledged. Who would defend slavery? It is the Hitler of human practices. Yet despite all its power, the word ‘slavery’ is rarely defined. In that sense, it is much like the word terrorism—its power lies in the assumptions behind its meaning and the moral condemnation it carries. But it is very poorly defined. Like the word terrorism, slavery is also a deeply, deeply political issue, not in the sense of politics as what we see on the nightly news, but rather in the sense that it is inherently tied to questions of power. Just as the practice of slavery is an extreme exercise of power by some human beings over others, wielding the language of slavery is a claim to moral authority over others. It is no surprise that advocates of ending brutal or unacceptably exploitative labor practices such as sweatshops, child sex trafficking, forced marriage, and organ trading refer to such phenomena as ‘modern day slavery.’ The reason for invoking the word ‘slavery’ instead of other definitions such as bonded labor or child labor is clear: slavery provokes an emotional reaction that spurs people into action and support for a cause. From students to rock stars, who wouldn’t support ending slavery? Though such practices are indeed reprehensible, with ‘modern day’ slavery we run across some familiar problems. If we took the definitions of slavery used by activists fighting ‘modern slavery’ (the main one is it’s slavery ‘if you can’t walk away’) and applied them to just Western history we’d find that almost no one was free by their standards.21 As some scholars have observed, the most prominent advocates for ending modern day slavery have not applied the label to the forced labor of criminals in the American penal system.22 (This is no doubt a very political choice since fewer rock stars and students would be as willing to accuse the US government of engaging in ongoing slavery. So even when invoked for noble causes today, ‘slavery’ is still a deeply political word, both in the emotional reaction it triggers and in the self-censorship that people use in when and where they apply it. The political nature of slavery is particularly pronounced in the history of Islam and the West. During the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries the fear of being captured by Muslim pirates in the Atlantic and western Mediterranean loomed large in the Western European (particularly British) imagination. And indeed thousands of British and Americans were taken as slaves in such a way. We still see the cultural imprint of this fear 21 . Julia O’Connell Davidson, Modern Slavery: The Margins of Freedom (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 3, 6, 22-23, 37-39, 69, 169. 22 . Davidson, Modern Slavery, 100 8 in movies like Never Say Never Again (1983), where James Bond rescues Kim Basinger from a remarkably out of place Arab slave auction, and Taken (2008), where Liam Neeson finally rescues his daughter from first (Muslim) Albanian traffickers and finally from a lascivious Arab sheik. But, like the selective use of the term ‘modern day slavery,’ this conversation is selective in its claim to Western moral authority. During the same era that Europeans and Americans were decrying capture and enslavement by Muslim pirates, the enslavement by Europeans of Muslims from the Ottoman Empire was booming.23 And our Western cultural memories are even more selective. Western theater-goers likely felt no outrage in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) when Bond visits the harem of his Arab sheik friend and is offered one of the women (when in the Orient, says the sheik, “one should delve deeply into its treasures”). From the British tabloids to then private citizen Donald Trump, in 2015 many parroted the claim that Muslims in northern England were luring young white girls in as sex slaves. Some Muslims were doing this, but few media reports stated that the majority of offenders were actually white men.24 23 . William Clarence-Smith and David Eltis, “White Servitude,” 139, 144. 24 . thestar.co.uk/news/majority-of-rotherham-child-exploitation-suspects-are-white-claims-new-report-1- 739263. For more information, see the link below: Slavery and Islam: What is Slavery? | Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research 9 Why Didn’t Prophet Muhammad Use Force to Abolish Slavery? This was the state of affairs at the advent of Islam. Slavery offended the spirit of Islam as much as idolatry did. But while the latter had its roots in spiritualism and hence could be countered by reason, slavery had its roots in commerce, in social structure, in agriculture undertakings; and reason alone was but a feeble weapon against a foe so insidious and so deeply rooted. How was then slavery to be eradicated? The ill-informed may well suggest that the Prophet of Islam could have used force. But the ineffectiveness of force for such purpose is well recognised by all dispassionate students of sociology. Force may achieve submission but it inevitably achieves hostility, and very often hostility is so fierce that many a good cause has been lost when force has been employed for its advancement.25 The Experience of US in Abolishing Slavery by Force The sad plight of the Negroes of America is but one illustration of how ineffective the employment of force can be when the object is to achieve a social reform. The emancipation of slaves did not change the attitude of the white masters towards their ex- slaves; and what a bitter legacy of racial antipathy has it left! Toynbee writes, “The Blacks in the United States who were emancipated jurisdically in 1862 are, with good reason, feeling now, more than a century later, that they are still being denied full human rights by the white majority of their fellow-citizens.26 25 . Slavery From Islamic And Christian Perspectives | Al-Islam.org 26 . Toynbee, A. J., Mankind and Mother Earth, (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1976), 1. 10 How Islam Fought Slavery Islam's war against slavery aimed at changing the attitude and mentality of the whole society, so that after emancipation, slaves would become its full-fledged members, without any need of demonstrations, strikes, civil disobedience and racial riots. And Islam achieved this seemingly impossible objective without any war. To say that Islam waged no war against slavery would not be a true statement. A war it waged, but a war in which neither sword was resorted to, nor blood was spilled. Islam aimed at striking at the roots of its foe and created allies by arousing the finer instincts of its followers. A three-pronged attack on slavery was launched. Islam placed restrictions on acquisition of slaves. Prior to Islam, slavery was practiced with abandon. Debtors were made slaves, war captives were either killed or made slaves. In weaker nations, people were hunted like animals, killed or captured and reduced to slavery. Islam, in unambiguous terms, forbade its followers to enslave people on any pretext. The only exception was an idolatrous enemy captured in a war which was fought either in self-defense or with the permission of the Prophet or his rightful successors. This exception was, in words of Ameer Ali, “in order to serve as guarantee for the preservation of the lives of the captives.”27 27 . Ameer Ali, Muhammadan Law, vol.2, 31. 11 Captives in Wars Before slave trade was started on a large scale by the Westerners (when colonization began), it was only in wars that men were made captives. But Islam did not permit wars of aggression. All the battles fought during the life-time of the Prophet were defensive battles. Not only this, an alternative was also introduced and enforced: “…..to let the captives go free, either with or without any ransom.” 28In the battles forced upon the Muslims, the Prophet had ordered very humane treatment of the prisoners who fell into Muslim hands. They could purchase their freedom on payment of small sums of money, and some of them were left off without any payment. It all depended upon the discretion of the Prophet or his rightful successors, keeping in view the safety of the Muslims and the extent of danger from the enemy. The captives of the very first Islamic battle, Badr, were freed on ransom (in form of money or work like teaching ten Muslim children how to read and write), while those of the tribe of Tay were freed without any ransom.29 The norm among all societies at that time was to either kill the POWs or make them slaves. But Prophet Muhammad instructed the Muslims to treat the POWs humanely; they were brought back safely to Medina and given decent lodging in the houses of the people who had taken them prisoners. The Qur’ãn decreed that the POWs must not be ill-treated in any way. According to a Western biographer of Prophet Muhammad, Sir William Muir, “In pursuance of Mahomet’s commands, the citizens of Medina…received the prisoners and treated them with much consideration. ‘Blessings be on the men of Medina’, said one of the prisoners in later days, ‘they made us ride, while they themselves walked, they gave us wheaten bread to eat when there was little of it; contenting themselves with dates.”30 28 . The Qur'an 47:4. 29 . Al-Waqidi, Muhammad bin 'Umar, Kitabul Maghazi, ed. M. Jones, vol. I (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 129; Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqatul Kabir, Vol. II:1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1912), 11, 14. Slavery From Islamic And Christian Perspectives | Al-Islam.org 30 . Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi, Justice, Peace & Prophet Muhammad, 7. 12 How Prophet Muhammad Treated Slaves “Islam enjoined that a master should treat his slave as one of his family-members; he must be given all the necessities of life, just like any other dependent. The Prophet used to eat together with his slaves and servants, and sit with them; he himself did not eat or dress better than them, nor did he discriminate against them in any way. “The masters were obliged not to put them under hardship; slaves were not to be tortured, abused or treated unjustly. They could marry among themselves (with their master's permission) or with free men or women. They could appear as witnesses, and participate with free men in all affairs. Many of them were appointed as governors, commanders of army and administrators. “In the eyes of Islam, a pious slave has precedence over an unpious free man.”31 It is stated in reliable traditions from the Prophet that one should feed his slave what he himself eats and should dress him with what he himself dresses. In his famous sermon in 'Arafat, on 9th Dhul-hijjah 9 AH, during his last pilgrimage, the Prophet said, “...and your slaves, see that you feed them such food as you eat yourselves and dress him with what you yourself dress. And if they commit a mistake which you are not inclined to forgive then sell them, for they are the servants of Allah and are not to be tormented...”32 The Prophet of Islam always exhorted his followers to treat their slaves like family- members. He and his household always treated their servants as such. A female servant in the employ of Fatimah, the Prophet's daughter, testifies that her mistress had made it a rule to share all household drudgery with her and insisted that the servant should have rest every alternative days when she, Fatimah, would attend to the work. Thus, there was equal division of work between the mistress of the house and the maidservant. Prophet Muhammad treated slaves so kindly that they did not want to leave him. On their wedding day, Khadijah had presented him with a young slave called Zayd ibn al- Harith from one of the northern tribes. He became so attached to his new master that when his family came to Mecca with the money to ransom him, Zayd begged to be allowed to remain with Muhammad, who adopted him and gave him his freedom.33 The revelations had already started to push Muhammad away from the norm. He could not help noticing that many of his followers came from the lower classes. A significant number were women, other freedmen, servants, and slaves. Fore- most among the latter was Bilal, an Abyssinian with an extraordinarily loud voice. When the Muslims 31 . Al-Tabataba'i, Sayyid Muhammad Husayn, al-Mizan fi Tafsir'l Qur'an, vol.16, 2nd ed. (Beirut, 1390/1971), 338-358. 32 . Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabaqatul Kabir, Vol. II:1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1912), p. 133; al-'Amili, Hurr, Wasa'ilu 'sh- Shi'ah, vol.16 (Tehran, 1983), 21. 33 . Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: The Prophet of our Time (HarperOne, 2007), 26. 13 gathered to pray together in the Haram, Muhammad found himself surrounded by “the young men and weak people of the city.”34 By looking after the poor and needy, freeing slaves, performing small acts of kindness on a daily, hourly basis, the Muslims learned to cloak themselves in the virtue of com passion and would gradually acquire a responsible, caring spirit, which imitated the generosity of Allah himself. If they persevered, they would purge their hearts of pride and selfishness and achieve a spiritual refinement.35 It is also recorded that once 'Ali and his male servant Qambar went to a shop where 'Ali selected two garments, one a cheap coarse dress, the other expensive. He gave the expensive garment to Qambar. Qambar was shocked. “Oh Master!”, he said, “This is the better one and you are the ruler of the Muslims. You should take this one.” 'Ali replied, “No, Qambar, you are young and young man should wear better clothes.” Could such a treatment produce any sense of inferiority in slaves? Masters were forbidden to exact more work than was just and proper. They were ordered never to address their male or female slaves by the degrading appellation, but by the more affectionate name of “my young man', or “my young maid”; it was also enjoined that all slaves should be dressed, clothed and fed exactly as their masters and mistresses did. It was also ordered that in no case should the mother be separated from her child, nor brother from brother, nor father from son, nor husband from wife, nor one relative from another.36 “Worship Allah (alone) and associate nothing with Him, and do good to parents, to kinsfolk, to orphans, to the needy, to the neighbour who is a relative, to the neighbour who is a stranger, to a companion by your side, to the wayfarer and to (the slave) which your right hands possess; verily Allah loves not the proud, the boastful.”37 P. L Riviere writes: A master was enjoined to make his slave share the bounties he received from God. It must be recognised that, in this respect, the Islamic teaching acknowledged such a respect for human personality and showed a sense of equality which is searched for in vain in ancient civilization.38 A.J. Toynbee says in Civilization on Trial: The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue...” Then he 34 . Armstrong, 42 35 . Armstrong, 53 36 . Slavery From Islamic And Christian Perspectives | Al-Islam.org 37 . Quran, 4:36. 38 . Riviere P.L., Revue Bleaue (June 1939). 14 comments that “in this perilous matter of race feeling it can hardly be denied that (the triumph of English-speaking peoples) has been a misfortune.39 39 . Toynbee, A.J., Civilization on Trial (New York, 1948), 205. 15 The Rights of Slaves Slave Women and Children Islam also declared that any slave woman who bore a child by her master could not be sold and, on her master's death, she became automatically a free woman. 40 Moreover; in contrast to all previous customs, Islam ordained that the child born to a slave woman by her master should follow the status of the father.41 The Right to Liberation Slaves were given a right to ransom themselves either on payment of an agreed sum or on completion of service for an agreed period. The legal term for this is mukatabah. Allah says in the Qur'an: And those who seek a deed [of liberation] from among those [slaves] whom your right hands possess, give them the writing (kitab) if you know of goodness in them, and give them of the wealth of Allah which He has given you.42 The word kitab in the verse stands for the written contract between the slave and his master known as “mukatabah - deed of contract”. The significant factor in mukatabah is that when a slave desires to get into such a mutual written contract, the master should not refuse it. In the verse quoted above, God has made it incumbent upon Muslims to help the slaves in getting liberated.43 It also directed that the slaves seeking freedom should be helped from the public treasury (baytul mal).Thus, as a last resort, the Prophet and his rightful successors were to provide ransom for the slaves out of state coffers. The Qur'an recognises the emancipation of slaves as one of the permissible expenditures of alms and charity.44 It is worth remembering that a slave automatically became free if the master cut his ear or blinded his eye.45 Also if the slaves, living in an Islamic state, accepted Islam before their masters, then they would become free automatically. If the slave became blind or handicapped he would become free.46 According to Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq (peace be upon him), if a slave is Muslim and has worked for seven years then he should be set free. Forcing him to work after seven years is not permissible.47 It is because of this tradition 40 . Al-'Amili, Hurr, Wasa'ilu 'sh-Shi'ah, vol.16 (Tehran, 1983), 128. 41 . Al-'Amili, Hurr, Wasa'ilu 'sh-Shi'ah, vol.16 (Tehran, 1983), 128. 42 . Qur'an 24:33 43 . Al-'Amili, vol.16, 101 44 . Qur'an 9:60, 2:177 45 . Al-Hilli, Muhaqqiq, Sharaya'ul Islam, (kitabul-'itq); also see The Encyclopaedia of Islam:, vol. I (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960), 31. 46 . Al-Hilli, Muhaqqiq, 31-3. 47 . Al-Hilli, Muhaqqiq, 43-4 16 (hadith) that the religious scholars are of the opinion that freeing the slave after seven years is a highly recommended deed of virtue.48 Liberation of Slaves in Quran Islam is the first and the only religion which has prescribed liberation of slaves as a virtue and a condition of genuine faith in God. No religion other than Islam has ever preached and enjoined how best we can show our love for fellow human beings in bondage. In chapter ninety of the Qur'an, liberating a slave has been prescribed as a cardinal virtue of the faith: Certainly We have created men [to dwell] in distress. What! Does he think that no one has power over him? He shall say, “I have wasted much wealth” Does he think that no one sees him? Have We not given him two eyes, a tongue and two lips, and We pointed out to him the two conspicuous ways [of good and evil]? But he would not attempt the uphill road. What will make you comprehend what the uphill road is? It is the setting free of a slave....49 Emancipation of Slaves as Penance for Sin Secondly, Islam commenced an active campaign to emancipate the slaves. Emancipation of slaves was declared to be expiation for a number of sins. This question is related to canonical laws of Islam, but we shall enumerate a few of them to show how for small sins of commission the penalty imposed was manumission of slaves. For instance, if a man failed to fast without any reasonable excuse during the month of Ramadan, or if he failed to observe fast of i'tikaf or vow, etc, he had to free a slave for each day, in addition to fasting afterwards.50 48 . Slavery From Islamic And Christian Perspectives | Al-Islam.org 49 . Quran, 90:4-13 50 . Slavery From Islamic And Christian Perspectives | Al-Islam.org 17 Mothers of Shia Imams From its advent until the rise of the Umayyads, Islam had achieved a marked degree of success in its benign war against slavery. Slaves were no longer sub-human animals, but men and women of dignity and respect. Many a freed slave rose to high ranks. The descendants of the Prophet and their followers continued the Islamic attitude towards slavery. A number of Imams married slave-women who became mothers of Imams. Even Shahr Banu, daughter of Yazd Jurd (the last emperor of Iran) who was married to Imam Husayn and was mother of Imam Zaynul 'Abidin, had come to Arabia as a captive. Still her personal virtues earned her the title of “chief of the ladies”. Hamidah Khatun, mother of Imam Musa al-Kazim was a slave-girl from Berber. She is renowned for her knowledge and piety. She was called Hamidah the Pure. Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq used to send the women to learn the tenets of religion from her and used to say that “Hamidah is pure from every impurity like the ingot of pure gold.” The mother of Imam 'Ali al-Riza also was a slave-girl from Maghrib (North-West Africa). Her name was Taktum (or Najma) and she was known as Tahirah, the purified one. She was renowned for her piety and knowledge. Imam Muhammad al-Taqi was son of Sabikah, commonly known as Khayzuran, a slave-girl from Nuba. Imam Musa al-Kazim had told Yazid bin Sabt to convey his salams to Sabikah. She is referred to in the traditions as Tayyibah. Imam 'Ali al-Naqi's mother, Sammanah, of Maghrib, was a slave, but she was called “Sayyidah” (chief of the ladies). She had no equal in piety, and love and fear of Allah. She fasted nearly the whole year. Imam 'Ali al-Naqi told her that she was protected by Allah and was foremost amongst the mothers of siddiqin and salihin - the truthful and virtuous people. Imam Hasan al-'Askari was also born of a slave-girl, Hudayth (or Salil). To show her high prestige among the Shi' ahs, it is enough to say that after the death of Imam Hasan al-'Askari she was the central figure of Shi'ism around whom the whole community gathered and she guided them in the best possible way. The Shi'ahs referred to her as “Jaddah”, the grandmother. Narjis Khatun, the mother of our 12th and present Imam, was a princess of the Byzantine empire. But she also had reached to Imam Hasan al-'Askari as a slave.51 51 . Slavery From Islamic And Christian Perspectives | Al-Islam.org 18 Islam and Sex Slavery First, what scripture is being cited by extremists and has it been distorted? The main reference cited is Chapter 23:1-6 in the Quran. It reads: “And successful are the believers who guard their chastity … except from their wives or those that their right hands possess.” The reference is about sexual relations, which are forbidden with any woman unless she is a spouse or ‘those their right hands possess’. To be clear, this means a concubine, bondmaid or a slave, but intercourse has to be consensual. Rape is forbidden as it is violent, and Islamic texts legislated for the proper and honourable treatment of slaves. Furthermore this is not an entitlement. Concubinage and interpersonal relations with various bondmaids/slaves was already occurring at the time the Quran came about and subsequent passages list restrictions as a starting point to help to bring about the end of slavery. In any case, marriage was encouraged with slaves.52 Rape and sexual violence is not permitted in Islamic texts. It is of course something that causes harm to other humans, which is not Halal (permissible) and, in early Muslim communities, rape was a crime punishable by death. Even consensual sexual relations with a slave were not permissible if it caused harm and abuse elsewhere (e.g. to a wife) as all parties involved would be affected. In fact, slavery was never endorsed by Islamic texts; rather it was something inherited from pre-Islamic cultures (pre-600s) that needed to be voluntarily and gradually weeded out of society through manumission, which was highly encouraged.53 Islamic texts list a plethora of avenues to free slaves, as it was seen as a highly virtuous act. It’s difficult to find any references on how to make slaves out of people; rather the focus is always on ending slavery. Conveniently this is something the extremists ignore, and it further enforces the point that religious illiteracy is a root cause of extremism. Islamophobic extremists as well as Islamist extremists (like Isis) who promote and validate sexual violence through unspecific passages in the Quran - or without context - do so to justify their own violent mindsets.54 52 . Quran, 24:32 53 . Quran, 24:32-33 & 16:71 54 .https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-truth-about-muslims-and-sex-slavery-according-to-the-quran- rather-than-isis-or-islamophobes-a6875446.html. 19 Modern forms of slavery Yet as we have seen, ownership, freedom, and exploitation come in shades of gray. They exist on spectrums. Historians and sociologists have attempted to delineate categories on this spectrum, in part to determine if we can really talk about slavery as something separate from other forms of forced labor or involuntary servitude. The main categories on this ‘continuum of dependency’ other than slavery are:55 • Serfdom: In Europe, this tradition goes back to ancient Greece. Laborers, usually peasant farmers, were free in the sense that they owned their own clothes, tools, livestock as well as the fruits of their labor. But they were bound to the land on which they lived or to their landlord wherever he might go.56 Serfdom in Europe developed as the status of free peasants and settled Barbarian prisoners of war in the late Roman Empire collapsed into a single class of “quasi-servitude” not too different from slavery.57 (Serfdom disappeared in most of Western Europe in the wake of the Black Death in the 1300s, though it continued in the institution of villeinage in England until around 1600 and continued into the 1800s in mining areas of Scotland and German-speaking lands. Serfdom is most associated with Russia, where it came to replace slavery in agriculture and domestic spheres in the late 1600s and early 1700s.58 • Master/Servant Relationship: When serfdom disappeared from Western Europe, it was replaced by the relationship between the laborer and the landowner/employer. Unlike our modern notion of a worker’s contract, however, failing to live up to this contract was a criminal offense. Only in the British colonies in North America did a notion of free labor eventually appear in the 1700s, and this did not make its way back to Britain until 1875.59 In England this issue was governed by the Statute of Artificers, which the American colonies only adopted in a limited way. • Debt servitude: This has been one of the most widespread forms of coerced labor. When a person is unable to repay a debt, he or she becomes the slave of the creditor. This was extremely common in Southeast Asia, where our Western model of slavery was extremely rare.60 Bonded labor/indentured servitude: This is similar to debt servitude and has been very common in history. A person willingly enters into an agreement to exchange their labor and a loss of some freedoms for a fixed period of time in return for some service or up-front payment. This differs from debt servitude because the person willingly surrenders their labor and a degree of freedom. 55 . David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, “Dependence, Servility, and Coerced Labor in Time and Space,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume 3, 3. 56 . Richard Hellie, “Russian Slavery and Serfdom, 1450-1804,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery Vol. 3, 276-77. 57 . Cam Grey, “Slavery in the Late Roman World,” 484-6 58 . Hellie, “Russian Slavery,” 284, 292-93 59 . Eltis and Engerman, “Dependence, Servility, and Coerced Labor,” 7; Davidson, Modern Slavery, 68. 60 . Kerry Ward, “Slavery in Southeast Asia, 1420-1804,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume 3, 165-66. 20 These categories are not fixed or hermetically sealed. They bleed into each other, making it very hard to come up with a clear line distinguishing slavery from other forms of coerced labor. Scottish mining serfs often wore collars with the names of their masters on them, for example, something we’d probably associate more with slavery.61 Indentured servants from Britain, who made up two-thirds of the immigrants to British North America before 1776, could be sold, worked to exhaustion and beaten for misbehavior. They could not marry and, in Virginia at least, could be mutilated if they tried to escape. In Maryland the punishment was death.62 We might think of slavery as distinguished from other types of coerced labor by the question of choice. Indentured servants chose to enter into those contracts. Slaves would never choose to become slaves, right? But realities are much more complicated. Outside of slavery in the Americas, ‘voluntary slavery’ was not uncommon at all.63 In Ming China many impoverished tenants sold themselves into slavery when they could not pay rent.64 In 1724, the Russian czar abolished slavery and converted all of Russia’s slaves into serfs because serfs were offering themselves as slaves to avoid paying taxes; serfs paid taxes, slaves did not.65 Earlier, in the fifteenth-century duchy of Muscovy, what scholars term ‘limited service contract slavery’ became common. In such a contract, a person asks someone wealthy for a loan for a year, at which point the person will pay them back and will also work for them in the meantime instead of paying interest. If the borrower cannot pay the creditor back in a year, they become their slave. Most often, they became a lifetime slave. This type of slavery replaced all other forms of slavery in Russia. And yet there was also indentured servitude at the same time, differing from slavery only in that an indentured servant could not be physically harmed by their master.66 The author notes the similarity between this Russian contract and the ancient Persian custom of antichrisis (as named by Greek authors). Unlike bonded laborers or serfs, we might think of slaves as people with little or no legal right to protection. This has often been true. In Ming China, slaves were often referred to as “not human.” Not only could they not own property, marry or have legitimate children, but killing one of them also posed no legal problem.67 Among the Toraja people of Sulawesi (today in Indonesia), someone who had been convicted of a capital crime could 61 . Eltis and Engerman, “Dependence, Servility, and Coerced Labor,” 6. 62 . Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 8-9, 20; David Galenson, “The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis,” Journal of Economic History 44, no. 1 (1984): 4). 63 . Stanley Engerman, “Slavery at Different Times and Places,” American Historical Review 105, n. 2 (2000): 481). 64 . Pamela Kyle Crossley, “Slavery in Early Modern China,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3 AD 1420-1804, ed. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 189. 65 . Hellie, “Russian Slavery,” 284, 293. 66 . Hellie, “Russian Slavery,” 279-80. 67 . Crossley, “Slavery in Early Modern China,” 191 21 have one of his slaves executed instead of himself.68 A judge in South Carolina in 1847 declared that a slave “can invoke neither magna carta nor common law”; for the slave the law was whatever the master said.69 68 . Kerry Ward, “Slavery in Southeast Asia, 1420-1804,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery Volume 3, 171. 69 . Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2nd ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 225. For more information, see the link below Slavery and Islam: What is Slavery? | Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research 22 Focus on the Conditions, not the Word The word slavery has been political even when it has been invoked for the best of causes. And the political forces that have shaped how slavery is understood have often hobbled the best efforts of those fighting against the extreme exploitation of fellow human beings. Abolitionists in the nineteenth century chose to define slavery as treating human beings as property in part because, if they defined slavery as harsh deprivation or exploitation, their pro-slavery opponents would just point to the factory of conditions of industrial England and America and note that ‘free’ workers were being treated just as badly.70 Having emphasized that slavery consisted of humans being treated as property, abolitionists were left with no objection to continued exploitation of the same people they had just freed once it became technically illegal to own people. British abolitionists succeeded in ending slavery in the Indian Ocean in the 1830s. But then they found that laborers were still being transported to East Africa from India in the same horrid conditions as slaves and with the same high mortality rate. They were just called ‘coolies’ rather than slaves.71 Today, decades after the legal right to own other human beings was abolished globally, activists referred to as new abolitionists, seeking to mobilize public concern over exploitative labor, have redefined slavery as ‘not being able to walk away.’72 Ultimately, the word ‘slavery’ can mean so many things that it’s not very useful for accurate communication. It often ends up referring to things we don’t mean when we think of slavery, or it fails to match things we do associate with slavery. As such, the word slavery has limited use as a category or conceptual tool. It’s much more useful to talk about the extreme exploitation of human beings’ labor and the extreme deprivation of their rights. In any society, whether it has ‘slavery’ or not, we are likely to find such conditions. Instead of fixating on a word or ill-defined category, it is much more useful to focus on regulating conditions and protecting people’s rights in order to prevent extreme debasement.73 70 . Davidson, Modern Slavery, 33. 71 . Davidson, Modern Slavery, 32. 72 . Kevin Bales, Understanding Global Slavery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 52-54. 73 . Slavery and Islam: What is Slavery? | Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research 23 Bibliography  Al-Hilli, Muhaqqiq, Sharaya'ul Islam, (kitabul-'itq).  Al-Tabataba’i, Sayyid Muhammad Husayn, al-Mizan fi Tafsir'l Qur'an, 2nd ed. (Beirut, 1390/1971).  Al-Waqidi, Muhammad bin 'Umar, Kitabul Maghazi, ed. M. Jones (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).  Aristotle, Politics (New York: Modern Library, 1943).  Brenda Stevenson, What is Slavery? (Malden, MA: Polity, 2015).  Cam Grey, “Slavery in the Late Roman World,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume I The Ancient Mediterranean World, ed. Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)  Christoph K. Neumann, “Whom did Ahmet Cevdet represent?,” in Late Ottoman Society, ed. Elisabeth Özdalga, 117-134. London: Routledge, 2005).  Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery (London: Athlone, 1991).  David Brion Davis, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).  David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).  David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, “Dependence, Servility, and Coerced Labor in Time and Space,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery.  David Galenson, “The Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Analysis,” Journal of Economic History 44, no. 1 (1984): 4).  Eltis and Engerman, “Dependence, Servility, and Coerced Labor, in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Eltis and Engerman, “Dependence, Servility, and Coerced Labor,” 6.  https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-truth-about-muslims-and-sex-slavery- according-to-the-quran-rather-than-isis-or-islamophobes-a6875446.html.  Julia O’Connell Davidson, Modern Slavery: The Margins of Freedom. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).  Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: The Prophet of our Time (HarperOne, 2007).  Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 8-9, 20;  Kerry Ward, “Slajvery in Southeast Asia, 1420-1804,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Kevin Bales, Understanding Global Slavery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 52-54.  Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2nd ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 225. 24  Martin Klein, “Introduction,” in Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia, ed. Martin Klein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993).  Muḥammad ibn Sa'd, Kitāb aṭ-Tabaqāt al-Kabīr (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1912).  Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. (Harvard University Press, 1982).  Pamela Kyle Crossley, “Slavery in Early Modern China,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Richard Hellie, “Russian Slavery and Serfdom, 1450-1804,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Riviere P.L., Revue Bleaue (June 1939).  Rodney Coates, “Slavery” in Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).  Sayyid Muhammad Rizvi, Justice, Peace & Prophet Muhammad (Al-Ma’arif Publications, 2006).  Slavery and Islam: What is Slavery? | Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research  Slavery From Islamic And Christian Perspectives | Al-Islam.org  Stanley Engerman, “Slavery at Different Times and Places,” American Historical Review 105, n. 2 (2000).  Syed Ameer Ali, Muhammadan Law (Kitab Bhavan: 1986).  Testart, “The Extent and Significance of Debt Slavery,” Revue Française de Sociologie 43 (2002).  The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960).  thestar.co.uk/news/majority-of-rotherham-child-exploitation-suspects-are-white- claims-new-report-1-739263.  Toynbee, A. J., Mankind and Mother Earth, (N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1976).  Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. III (New York, 1944).  William Clarence-Smith and David Eltis, “White Servitude,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. David Eltis and Stanley Engerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Youval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 25