As Baha’ al-Din (d. after 1042 CE)
[al-Hakim] [r. 996-1021] ordered the freedom of all the slaves and those who were otherwise owned, in a special decree that was absolute, forceful, and irrevocable, such that no one could return to a state of being owned or enslaved or being subject to summary punishment. That [decree] was meant for all races and groups [such that] no one could object to it or deny the [civil] rights of these people in any way. Whosoever does not comply with this order would be damned as an oppressor… This [measure] cuts the road on those who claim to be what they are not and who would like to return to the practice of slavery… This decree was issued for no purpose except to please God.
Ahmad ibn Khalid al-Nasiri (1834-1897)
We have wronged ourselves, and if you do not pardon us and have mercy upon us, we shall be among those who suffer (eternal) loss…
Ahmad ibn Khalid al-Nasiri (1834-1897)
Slavery is one of the foulest and gravest evils perpetrated upon God’s religion.
Ahmad ibn Khalid al-Nasiri (1834-1897)
How can any man with the least bit of religious scruples acquire such people? How could he have the audacity to take their women as concubines?
Wafa ‘Ali Shah (1847-1918)
The purchase and sale of human beings is contrary to the dictates of religion and the practice of civilization; and therefore in our eyes any persons, men or women alike, who are claimed as slaves, are in legal fact completely free, and the equals of all other Muslims in their community.
Alexander Russell Webb (1846-1916)
Slavery and concubinage are not allowed by the Koran, and the spirit of the Islamic religious and civil laws are diametrically opposed to it. The Koran says: “Have naught to do with adultery, for it is a foul thing and an evil way.” “Speak unto the believers that they restrain their eyes and observe continence. Thus will they be more pure…” Sir W. Muir, in his Life of Mahomet, could neither quote any verse of the Koran sanctioning the enslavement of the captives of war or servile concubinage nor relate any instances of them during the several battles described therein.
Slaves are mentioned in the Koran de facto but not de jure. The Koran took several measures to abolish future slavery. The steps for its abolition were taken in every moral, legal, religious, and political department. The liberation of slaves was morally declared to be a work of piety and righteousness. Legally, the slaves were to be emancipated on their agreeing to pay a ransom. They were to be set at liberty as a penalty for culpable homicide or in expiation for the use of an objectionable form of divorce, and they were also to be manumitted from the public funds out of the poor taxes. They were religiously to be freed in expiation of a false oath taken by mistake. These were the measures for the abolition of existing slavery; the future slavery was abolished by the Koran by putting the axe deep into its root and by annihilating its real source.
Rashid Rida (1865-1935)
Nowhere in the Qur’an is enslavement prescribed for captives of jihad. No verse calls for such enslavement. Moreover, it does not allow it. It is inconceivable that the Qur’an would call for the enslavement of free men, even if they were captives (before their captivity), while calling for the emancipation of slaves in more than one of its verses.
Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966)
The Qur’anic commentator believed that Qur’an 3:64, which prohibits people from taking others as lords and masters, was an emancipation proclamation. In Qutb’s interpretation, Islam was “total liberation of man from enslavement by others.”
Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr (1935-1980)
Man’s submission to God in Islam… is breaks all other chains of submission or slavery… Therefore no power on earth has the right to fare with his destiny…
Morteza Muttahari (1919-1979)
The Iranian Twelver Shiite scholar opposed slavery. He argued that, according to Qur’an 3:64, social freedom is sacred and that if there is true social freedom, in the Islamic sense, there could be no slavery.
Fazlur Rahman (1919-1988)
No intelligent and morally sensitive Muslim can argue in favor of slavery today as surely the whole tenor of the teaching of the Qur’an is that there should be no slavery at all.
Aslam Abdullah
The companions of the Prophet competed with each other in setting slaves free. The Prophet personally liberated as many as seventy-seven slaves. The number of slaves freed by his wife ‘A’ishah was sixty-seven. His uncle ‘Abbas released seventy. The son of the second caliph ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Umar liberated one thousand, and another companion ‘Abd al-Rahman [ibn ‘Awf] purchased thirty thousand and set them free. How is it possible that those liberating and freeing slaves would buy new slaves against the dictates of the Qur’an?
Aslam Abdullah
The prevalence of slavery and the concubinage system in the Muslim world until 1969 does not justify them. Scholars’ silence in denouncing it and preventing the traders from engaging in this trade does not sanctify it. The practice of having concubines for one’s pleasure by rulers, traders, and even scholars does not support it. Slavery was wrong, and those who were engaged in slave trades were against the fundamental teachings of Islam that built its ethics on the idea of the dignity of human beings.
Mohammed Jebara
Upon marrying Khadijah and joining her household, Muhammad technically became a co-owner of slaves. As his liberation of Barakah and Zayd demonstrated, Muhammad reviled the institution of slavery, which represented to him the ultimate example of forced stagnation…
Khadijah’s slaves, of course, belonged to her — and could be freed only with her consent. When Muhammad became her business partner, he began to subtly sow the seeds of liberation in her mind. He treated the enslaved members of her household with consideration unheard of in Meccan society. He helped them load camels, gave them rest breaks and time off to recover from illness, dressed them in fine linens, shared his perfumes with them, and paid them for doing exceptional work.
One day on his way to work, Muhammad saw a master ruthlessly whipping his enslaved servant. On the spot, he offered the owner double the man’s worth and purchased his freedom. With Khadijah’s slaves, Muhammad took an alternative approach. He chose to sit on the ground and eat with them from the same serving platter. He learned that most had been abducted as young children… They not only knew what it was like to be free but had endured the trauma of abduction and dehumanization.
Recognizing that Khadijah’s enslaved workers had free minds inside their bonded bodies, Muhammad encouraged them to voice their opinions and, in the process, restored their sense of dignity… Muhammad began to demonstrate to his wife that they did not need forced labor… Khadijah… was inspired by his example.
Fatima Mernessi (1940-2015)
Since Islam condemned slavery, how was it able to continue to exist?” Through linguistic and legal tricks, as always. There would be quibbles about the identity of a slave. Islam forbids that a Muslim be reduced to slavery? Never mind, we will look elsewhere. It will be non-Muslims who will be made slaves. The era of the great Muslim conquests was used to reduce conquered peoples to slavery.
William Gervase Clarence-Smith (b. 1948)
Opposition to slavery did not begin as a result of Western influence, as is so often assumed, for the Druze abolished slavery in the eleventh century… In the case of Akbar, Mughal emperor of India from 1556-1605, there was a possibility that slavery might have withered away, if his reforms had been continued…
The emergence of fully-fledged Islamic abolitionism from the 1870s was no mere response to Western pressure. Reformers of various kinds returned to the original texts of the faith, especially the Qur’an, as part of a broader movement of revival and renewal. Rather to their surprise, they discovered that the foundations for slavery in holy writ were extremely shaky, not to say non-existent. The Qur’an nowhere explicitly allowed the making of any new slaves by anybody save the Prophet himself and called repeatedly for the manumission of existing slaves. The hadith literature was scarcely more supportive of slavery, and many reformers queried the authenticity of some of these traditions. The entire edifice of slavery, accounting for a third of the compendium of holy law most used in Inner and South Asia, was found to be built on a cumulative set of dubious exegetical exercises.
The reformers split into four broad groups. In more rural and remote areas, some ‘ulama,’ usually with a Sufi background, evolved a quasi-abolitionist stance. In its most extreme form, as enunciated by Ahmad b. Khalid al-Nasiri of Salé in Morocco, no wars since the times of the companions of the Prophet could be dignified with the epithet of holy, and thus no slaves had been taken legitimately after those early years. As unbroken servile descent from the slaves of that time could not be proven, all slaves should be freed. Musa Kamara later spread such notions in West Africa.
An even more radical version of liberation emerged from millenarian Mahdist movements. One, based in what are today Nigeria and Niger in the 1900s, called for the root and branch abolition of slavery. This was part of the process of filling the earth with justice prior to the imminent last judgment. Other millenarian movements were rarely so explicit, but often contained an emancipatory potential.
Gradualist modernists were often more urban and middle class, and less likely to be drawn from the ranks of the ‘ulama.’ They became more numerous and influential as the twentieth century progressed. They were particularly inspired by Sayyid Amir ‘Ali, a Shi‘i lay reformer from Bengal, and Muhammad ‘Abduh, grand mufti of Egypt. They argued that the Prophet personally opposed slavery. However, he risked losing his following had he explicitly banned the institution. Since the infidel had adopted abolition, the time was now ripe for the command of God and the desire of His messenger to be fulfilled.
Radical modernists, in contrast, held that the Prophet had openly prohibited the making of new slaves, and ordered the freeing of existing ones. Subsequent generations of Muslims had therefore sinned grievously by failing to heed his commands. Indeed, this might have been one of the reasons for which the infidel had become so powerful relative to the believers. The early torchbearers of this strand of abolitionism were Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Maulvi Chiragh Ali, in India, and Musa Jarulla Bigi, in Russian Tatarstan. The Lahori branch of the Ahmadiyya took a similar position, but its “heretical” status limited its influence.
Abdul Malik Mujahid (b. 1951)
The Prophet Muhammad launched an anti-slavery movement in which he personally liberated all of his slaves, and even promised prisoners of war their freedom if they taught ten Muslims how to read. The Prophet’s companions followed his example, freeing tens of thousands of slaves of their own volition. To the Prophet and his companions, liberating slaves was not merely one specific good deed out of a long list of potential opportunities for good; rather, it was one of the ultimate means of reaching moral and spiritual excellence. This is why his wife, Khadijah, and his … companion, Abu Bakr, both wealthy businesspersons, became almost penniless buying slaves their freedom.
It was because of this anti-slavery movement that most people who accepted the Prophet’s invitation to believe in One God and join his peace movement were slaves. It was this core message of the equality of all human beings as explained in Surah 49, Verse 13, “People, We created you from a male and a female and made you nations and tribes so that you may know one another. The best among you in the sight of God is the one who is most mindful of God. God is All-knowing and All-Aware,” that attracted Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X), Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, among hundreds of thousands of African Americans, as well as former untouchables in India, to Islam.
Abdul Malik Mujahid (b. 1951)
There is not a single verse in the Qur’an that encourages or commands people to take others as slaves. Also, there is nothing to suggest that it is the Divine Will for the practice of slavery to continue until the end of time.”
Abdul Malik Mujahid (b. 1951)
God has never ordered anyone to establish slavery, nor is there any verse in the Qur’an that commands the practice to be continued or reinstated. Likewise, God has instructed us to follow Him, the Prophet, and our Leaders: “Believers, obey God and the messenger and those among you who have been entrusted with authority. If you have a dispute about anything, refer it to God and the Messenger, if you truly believe in God and the Last Day. This is best to do and in turn gives the best results” (4:59). They have all prohibited slavery through their commandments and treaties, and it is a sin to violate such treaties.
Abdul Malik Mujahid (b. 1951)
Muslims around the world must be at the forefront of speaking out against slavery and rape based on God’s Commandments for emancipation, Islam’s emphasis on establishing an egalitarian society, and the Prophet’s movement for the liberation of slaves. Our voices must be louder than those of groups like Daesh and Boko Haram.
Rudoph T. Ware III (b. 1974)
Slavery’s standing in Islamic law was contested. Some ‘ulama’ challenged every aspect of the production and sale of human beings from the seventh century through the nineteenth. Some argued that no legal precedent existed for the forms of enslavement practiced during the expansion of the caliphate. Others sought inspiration in the Prophet’s example and noted that … the Qur’an calls for pious manumission… Others noted that the Prophet himself freed anyone he had ever owned before he died. If the sunnah was so important, they suggest, Muslims should have done likewise. Still others challenged the weak legal basis for aggressive jihad, hoping to curb enslavement by curbing war.
Rudoph T. Ware III (b. 1974)
Muslim jurists codified slavery, a matter of pre-Islamic law in the lands that became the caliphate, as if it enjoyed the unambiguous approval of God and Prophet. These medieval jurists were functionaries in expansionist slaving states, so it is not surprising that they protected property rights and condoned slaving and slave trafficking. Nowhere in the history of Islamic legal thought is the worldly imprint of the caliphate as clear as in the sophistry used to make perpetual aggressive jihad (and its corollary, slavery) appear as divinely ordained.
Rudoph T. Ware III (b. 1974)
Countless verses promote manumission. Countless sayings attributed to the Prophet echo the call. Nonetheless — and without support in any foundation text — many scholars came to see slavery as a legitimate punishment for unbelief. Slowly, a “fragile Sunni consensus” on slavery’s permissibility gathered the strength of precedent and became an unquestioned part of Islamic legal practice. But even this consensus was disputed, especially in the African West, where successive generations of jurists in Timbuktu pulled at the loose threads of this consensus.
Khaled al-Mullah
The shari‘ah does not allow us to capture women as [slave girls]. The times of taking captives, the times of slavery, are over.
Muhammad Diakho
This principle is well known to specialists in the sources of Islamic law… From the standpoint of Islamic ethics to harm another, regardless of the reason, is a wrong. To respond to a wrong with another wrong (equal treatment), only quantitatively increases the initial wrong, an attitude contrary to ‘amr bi al-ma‘ruf or encouraging good. To reduce someone to the status of servitude is, after physical death, the greatest evil that one could commit against all of humanity.
Muhammad Diakho
“Far is Islam… from participating by its principles and general rules — the genuine ones — from such a humanely shameful and religiously condemnable enterprise.” As Diakho rightly argues, slavery is an “inhumane system,” an “infamy,” and “barbaric violation of fundamental Islamic rights.” “Despite repeated and insisting calls,” points out Diakho, “slavery, the most abhorrent form of injustice and inequity, continued to be transmitted from generation to generation.”
Muhammad Diakho
Neither implicitly nor explicitly does the Qur’an recognize the right to reduce war prisoners to slavery; the Prophet never did such a thing.
Muhammad Diakho
Why have the principles of equality of men never worked in favor of the slave? What about the principle of the inviolability of one’s rights? What about the principle of the non-superiority of races as of classes? What about the principles that protect the dignity of man, his property, and his family… Can’t these same hadith serve as legislative texts?
Muhammad Diakho
The Qur’an and the sunnah, as well as the general rules of Muslim law, are all in agreement when it comes to such an inhuman phenomenon such as slavery, that lowers the status of a man, who is equal in rights, to that of an object, and children to the level of lunatics, idiots, and the comatose.
Muhammad Diakho
It is grotesque and unacceptable for any theologian who respects himself and his religion to believe that Islam, its revelation, and prophetic tradition, would have maintained, until the present, a large part of the “non-Arab” ummah, in a permanent state of slavery. Such an affirmation is false and unjustified. The Qur’an never stops reminding people of their natural equality and liberty from the moment of their birth.
Riffat Hasan (b. 1943)
It is a profound irony and tragedy that the Qur’an, despite its strong affirmation of human equality and the need to do justice to all of Allah’s creatures, has been interpreted by many Muslims, both ancient and modern, as sanctioning various forms of human inequality and even enslavement.
Riffat Hasan (b. 1943)
Because the Qur’an does not state explicitly that slavery is abolished, it does not follow that it is to be continued, particularly in view of the numerous ways in which the Qur’an seeks to eliminate this absolute evil.
Letter to al-Baghdadi
No scholar of Islam disputes that one of Islam’s aims is to abolish slavery. God says: “And what will show you what the obstacle is?, the freeing of a slave, or to give food on a day of hunger” (90: 12-14); and: “then [the penalty for them is] the setting free of a slave before they touch one another” (58:3). The Prophet Muhammad’s sunnah is that he freed all male and female slaves who were in his possession or who had been given to him. For over a century, Muslims, and indeed the entire world, have been united in the prohibition and criminalization of slavery, which was a milestone in human history when it was finally achieved.
The Prophet said regarding the pre-Islamic “League of the Virtuous” (hilf al-fudul) during the time of jahiliyyah: “Had I been asked to fulfil it in Islam, I would oblige.” After a century of Muslim consensus on the prohibition of slavery, you have violated this; you have taken women as concubines and thus revived strife and sedition (fitnah), and corruption and lewdness on the earth. You have resuscitated something that the shari‘ah has worked tirelessly to undo and has been considered forbidden by consensus for over a century. Indeed all the Muslim countries in the world are signatories of anti-slavery conventions. God says: “And fulfil the covenant. Indeed the covenant will be enquired into” (Al-Isra’, 17:34) You bear the responsibility of this great crime and all the reactions which this may lead to against all Muslims.
Fatwa from al-Azhar University
Islam came to find slavery existing in every part of the world. At that time, slavery was practiced through different means; people were enslaved through kidnapping and abduction, wars, and debts. Islam abolished all of these means with the exclusion of the enslavement of war prisoners. In its characteristic manner of introducing rulings, Islam did not abruptly abolish slavery but banned it by degrees to maintain social stability. The phenomenon of slavery existed in all the communities around the world, and slaves were considered an important resource in the social and economic life of ancient times.
Enslavement
Enslavement [in general] and the enslavement of prisoners of wars was legally institutionalized worldwide. Islam limited the sources of slavery to abolish it; Islam prohibited enslaving anyone except those captured in battles when Muslims fought and defended themselves against tyrant enemies. This prohibition included the offspring of previously taken slaves. Islam allowed the enslavement of those who fought against Muslims in non-Muslim countries including women and children. However, only the Muslim ruler was entitled to decide this according to what he sees as being in the best interest of Muslims. It was categorically forbidden to enslave anyone who did not fight Muslims. Enslaving a warrior is less evil than killing him. Islam prohibited the killing of female captives of war and substituted this with enslavement. In spite of this, Islam set certain ethics for the good treatment of slaves. It urged Muslims to treat them kindly, not harm them, and prohibited aggression against them.
Out of its eagerness to free all people, Islam expanded the means for emancipating slaves by making the manumission of a slave an [atonement] of sins. These include breaking the fast in Ramadan, zihar (wherein a husband deems his wife as unlawful to him as his mother), involuntary manslaughter, breaking oaths, and the like. At the outset, Islam urged its followers to emancipate slaves and then limited the sources of slavery to help in its abolishment.
Islam commanded Muslims to treat slaves kindly until they obtained their freedom. This was stated in multiple texts of the shari‘ah in which slaves were described as brothers to their masters since they shared with them the brotherhood of humanity, which necessitated being merciful towards them and respecting their dignity. Mercy towards slaves was expanded, and their emancipation was prescribed as an expiation for beating or abusing them. As a result of such great mercy towards slaves, people entered Islam in multitudes.
Islam’s Stance on Slavery
Islam observed a noble stance towards the institution of slavery; it limited its sources, increased the means towards their freedom, and exhorted Muslims to treat them kindly and emancipate them. This differed from what prevailed worldwide at that time and [the evil practices] of slave traders in later centuries after the discovery of the New World. Slavery ended worldwide after the international treaty for the abolishment of slavery was signed in Berlin in 1860 AD. This has become a binding system that disallows anyone to enslave another.
Ruling
Based on the above, slavery is impermissible in the shari‘ah. By virtue of the above-mentioned treaty, all humans are deemed free and cannot be bought or sold. Muslims signed international treaties to end slavery which came in accordance with Islam’s desire to limit its sources and expand the means towards freedom. Thus, all people are free as God the Almighty created them.
Muhammad Husayn Fadlullah (1935-2010)
The Qur’an has talked about slavery and slaves, and we note that Islam, in its experiments in dealing with the issue of slavery, was able in a peaceful way to end the issue of slavery in the entire Islamic world, and if there are some Islamic countries that deal with slavery realistically, Islamic ijtihad when it examines these phenomena, which exist, for example, in Sudan or in Mauritania, considers that this slavery that exists in reality has no legitimacy.
Saeed Akhtar Rizvi (1927-2002)
Islam’s objective was in time to create a society free from this pernicious institution.
Muhammad Husayn Fadlullah (1935-2010)
Slavery no longer has any reality, and no one can enslave the other, but it was in an earlier time when non-Muslims were enslaved in wars, so Islam used to enslave infidel combatants out of reciprocity; however, it freed slaves with the aim of eradicating this institution.
Mostafa Mohaghegh-Damad (b. 1945)
In the engagements which took place at the time of the rise of Islam, slavery was considered permissible. This was because of the necessity of retaliation or, in the terminology of international law, balance of power. Each side would take slaves. If a Muslim were taken prisoner, the enemy would enslave him and he could be bought and sold. Islam was not able at that time to abolish slavery; had it done so unilaterally, it would have made itself weaker in relation to those who sought to destroy it. (One should also take note of the fact that even when slavery was a common feature of warfare it was only permissible [ja’iz] to enslave others; it was not a religious duty [wajib] or ruling principle of Islam.) The times have now changed. Society has evolved and the international community has agreed to abolish slavery; the institution of slavery has disappeared. It is now necessary to conclude that slavery is also forbidden by Islamic law, for the basis of application of the law of slavery has changed. The jurist cannot claim that since in the past prisoners of war were enslaved, they must be enslaved today. Islamic countries have readily signed the international conventions on slavery, and the abolition of slavery is not in any way inconsistent with Islamic law.
Liyakat Ali Takim (b. 1957)
The selling and purchase of humans is unethical and an affront to human values. However, in a world where slavery was rampant and Muslims were often enslaved, Muslims could not be prohibited from capturing slaves who could be used to ransom Muslim ones. The Qur’anic endorsement of slavery cannot be extended to modern times when the institution has been abolished. Texts that argue for the acceptance of slavery today should be rejected, since the permission to enslave was temporary. This is especially so because the Qur’an encourages and even requires manumission of slaves in many verses. Hence, although contemporary judicial manuals still discuss the topic, slavery-related edicts should not be seen as part of normative Islam. Rather than merely omitting the discussion of slavery in their texts, jurists should unreservedly prohibit the institution.
Bernard K. Freamon (b. 1947)
It is arguable that an ijma‘ or juristic consensus on the abolition of slavery now exists among Islamic jurists… no self-respecting mujtahid would disagree with the conclusion that it is impossible to legally purchase a slave in any open market in the world today and that slavery and slave trading should remain illegal.
Bernard K. Freamon (b. 1947)
Muslim slave trading produced widespread death, great and prolonged suffering, the wholesale destruction of many communities, and the uprooting of families and social relationships in societies stretching from East to West Africa to India and Southeast Asia. This event might be described as a “holocaust,” in the same way that the transatlantic slave trade and the extermination of the Jews and other minorities in Nazi Germany have similarly been described.
Bernard K. Freamon (b. 1947)
Muhammad and his early followers interpreted this worldview to emphatically reject the domination of any person by other persons or by any class or group of oppressors…. The text of the Qur’an argued vigorously that worldly distinctions between human beings based on tribe, ethnicity, language, class, caste, wealth, lineage, or national origin should be abolished…. the new Islamic message attacking hierarchy and privilege immediately attracted slaves, former slaves, women, the poor, and disenfranchised members of weak and discredited clans among the Meccan tribes. What emerges from this history is an ideal stressing that an egalitarian emancipatory piety is an important behavioral criterion in the Islamic worldview.
Bernard K. Freamon (b. 1947)
Muslims and scholars of Islam around the world have a special Qur’anic responsibility to educate Muslims about the history of slavery and slave trading in their communities and to engage the partisans, jurists, and ideologues supporting the reestablishment of slavery and slave trading in fierce dialogue on this point, questioning both their view of the historical facts supporting their claims and their understanding of the role of Islamic law in contemporary Muslim societies.
Mohsen Kadivar (b. 1959)
The way of reasonable people (which of necessity is just and rational) abrogates practices that are considered irrational and unjust, and promote corruption, and which are based on specific commands that endorse outdated customs such as wife-beating, polygamy, slavery, etc. which “traditional Islam” holds to be eternal And unchanging.
Khaled Abou El Fadl (b. 1963)
The right to mukatabah is commanded by the Qur’an in surat al-Nur 33. Per the mukatabah procedure, a slave buys his/her own freedom from his/her master. It is clear that the Qur’an makes such a right mandatory, but Muslim jurists debated whether the slave owner has the power to refuse the mukatabah option. Numerous Muslim jurists held that the public treasury is obligated to assist slaves in buying their freedom from their owners. This money can come from the zakat collected by the state. Many jurists held that judges can and should order slave owners to enter into mukatabah contracts where a fair price is set, and the slave purchases his freedom through his labor or through public funds. The abduction of people for the purpose of enslaving them was considered a major sin (kabirah min al-kaba’ir). Moreover, buying or selling slaves is considered haram. The only legal venue for obtaining slaves was prisoners of war. So if the state made the moral decision not to enslave prisoners of war, there would be no slavery. Jonathan Brown seems incapable of understanding this point.
Abdulaziz Bayindir (b. 1951)
It is against the rulings of the Qur’an to enslave male or female war captives and to have sexual relations with them without marriage. Although the verses about this subject are clear, by distorting the meanings of words, a false perception was created, and it has been turned into the common view of all sects including Sunni and Shia that captives can be enslaved, and female captives can also be used as concubines…
Scholars of all sects, including both Sunni and Shia… only know the fictions about the Book, not the Book itself. They only make assumptions about it. In their opinion, the scholars of their sects do not make mistakes; they don’t say anything that opposes the rulings of the Qur’an or the example of the Prophet. Especially if there is… consensus of Islamic scholars on a subject, then that opinion cannot be possibly wrong. Therefore, these people who obey the previous scholars without questioning think that they are experts in Islam. The books they write serve for nothing but reiterating and transferring the wrong assumptions to the next generations.
These scholars may be forgiven by God because they don’t know it. But the ones who have written those books and attributed their own false decrees to the Qur’an by means of perception management … will most probably not be saved…. I would like to call out to them with the following words of Jesus: “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!”
Ahmed Subhy Mansour (b. 1949)
After Muhammad’s death, the Quraysh tribe committed the crime of Arab conquests in Egypt, Iraq, the Levant, etc., and such aggressive fights were for the sake of the devils as Arabs scrambled for loot and invasions to settle elsewhere away from Arabian deserts, as they coveted riches of other neighboring countries. Thus, the Quraysh tribesmen established a vast empire that they called “caliphate.” Such terrible error led most Arabs to reject the Qur’an (the only and true celestial source of Islam) and its legislations, to eventually establish the earthly, man-made, fabricated religions to replace Islam. Such man-made creeds had ample room to express and realize whims and desires of people inside the so-called caliphate. Such devilish, aggressive Arab conquests included many features of grave injustice, including enslavement. This led to the fact that Arabs at the time and in later eras overlooked the Qur’anic legislations to alleviate, remedy, and solve the problem of slavery, as these Qur’anic legislations were replaced by the Sunnite legislations that endorse and allow enslavement by virtue of fabricated oral hadiths traditions ascribed wrongly and falsely to Muhammad decades after his death and written down later on in the Abbasid era, more than one century after his decease. Among such falsehoods ascribed to Muhammad, there is a biography of lies that portrays and sketches his character in a corrupt, distorted way that contradicts his character features mentioned in the Qur’an. Consequently, enslavement is a legacy, imposed on Islam that has been confiscated and distorted by Arab conquerors, bequeathed to us within conquests and the caliphate ruling system. Such legacy of enslavement derived from Sunnite religion has been revived recently in our modern age by the Wahabi-Sunnite terrorists of ISIS.
Fadel Abdullah
Everything in Islam in relation to slavery was intended to eliminate an existing, disagreeable, and deep-rooted institution.
Ayesha S. Chaudhry
Ayesha S. Chaudhry points out that “looking at the past is always a selective act.”. If we are to follow an example from the Prophet Muhammad, she stresses, it would be freeing Bilal, a black slave, and placing him in a position of prominence. “The other alternative,” she notes, “is to look at what living Muslims are doing. There are 1.6 or 1.7 billion Muslims living in the world today, and their practice also has an authoritative status.” “Slavery is an institution,” notes Chaudhry, “and Muslims as an overwhelming majority believe that slavery is illegal and immoral. So, Jack Brown arguing that it is not a moral evil stands in contrast with what the majority of Muslims believe.”
Edip Yüksel (b. 1957)
The Qur’an considers slavery to be polytheism (4:3,25,92; 5:89; 8:67; 24:32-33; 58:3; 90:13; 2:286; 12:39-42; 79:24) (89),
The Qur’an categorically rejects slavery, and considers it to be the greatest sin (3:79; 4:25,92; 5:89; 8:67; 24:32-33; 58:3; 90:13; 2:286; 12:39-42; 79:24).
Slavery was an evil practice of Pharoah and other polytheists.
Slavery is prohibited by the Qur’an (122; see also 153, 237, 347-348).
Edip Yüksel (b. 1957)
The widely practiced slavery was abolished by the Qur’an (3:79, 4:3,25,92, 5:89, 8:67, 24:32-33, 58:3-4, 90:13, 2:286, 12:39-42, 79:24). The Qur’an rejects slavery not as one of the big sins, but as the greatest sin and crime, equivalent of setting up partners to God, which is an unforgivable sin if maintained until death. The Qur’an unequivocally rejects accepting other than God as lord/master (rabb). Claiming to be the lord/master of someone is tantamount to claiming to be God (12:39-40, 3:64, 9:31).
Verse 16:75-76 compares a slave with a free person and emphasizes the importance of being a free person. No wonder the Qur’an condemns Pharaoh for his claim of being the lord and master of other people (79:15-26). God saved the Jews from slavery and reminded them that their freedom was more important than the variety of foods they were missing (2:57-61). The Qur’an warns Muhammad not to capture and imprison his enemies during peacetime and gives him permission for such only as a measure against those who participate in war (8:67). The Qur’an acknowledges the fact that those who set up partners with God had slaves (24:32, 16:75) and freeing them is considered an activity and a quality of Muslims (90:13).
Chouki El Hamel
The Qur’an legalized manumission and did not institutionalize slavery.
Chouki El Hamel
The Qur’an, the primary and fundamental sources of Islam and Islamic law, does not authorize or formalize using slaves as concubines
Chouki El Hamel
The Qur’an places a high priority on manumitting slaves with the ultimate goal of abolishing slavery.
Chouki El Hamel
No single verse of the Qur’an calls for the acceptance of slavery as a social practice. The Qur’an contains no word on the treatment of slaves to indicate that it condones slavery’s existence and continuity.