Slavery in Islamic Law: Difference between revisions
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{{Quote|{{Quran|2|89-90}}| | {{Quote|{{Quran|2|89-90}}| | ||
وَلَمَّا جَاءهُمْ كِتَابٌ مِّنْ عِندِ اللّهِ مُصَدِّقٌ لِّمَا مَعَهُمْ وَكَانُواْ مِن قَبْلُ يَسْتَفْتِحُونَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ فَلَمَّا جَاءهُم مَّا عَرَفُواْ كَفَرُواْ بِهِ فَلَعْنَةُ اللَّه عَلَى الْكَافِرِينَ | وَلَمَّا جَاءهُمْ كِتَابٌ مِّنْ عِندِ اللّهِ مُصَدِّقٌ لِّمَا مَعَهُمْ وَكَانُواْ مِن قَبْلُ يَسْتَفْتِحُونَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ فَلَمَّا جَاءهُم مَّا عَرَفُواْ كَفَرُواْ بِهِ فَلَعْنَةُ اللَّه عَلَى الْكَافِرِينَ بِئْسَمَا اشْتَرَوْاْ بِهِ أَنفُسَهُمْ أَن يَكْفُرُواْ بِمَا أنَزَلَ اللّهُ بَغْياً أَن يُنَزِّلُ اللّهُ مِن فَضْلِهِ عَلَى مَن يَشَاءُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ فَبَآؤُواْ بِغَضَبٍ عَلَى غَضَبٍ وَلِلْكَافِرِينَ عَذَابٌ مُّهِينٌ | ||
And when there cometh unto them a scripture from Allah, confirming that in their possession - though before that they were asking for a signal triumph over those who disbelieved - and when there cometh unto them that which they know (to be the truth) they disbelieve therein. The curse of Allah is on disbelievers.<br><sup>90</sup>Evil is that for which they sell their souls: that they should disbelieve in that which Allah hath revealed, grudging that Allah should reveal of His bounty unto whom He will of His slaves. They have incurred anger upon anger. For disbelievers is a shameful doom. }} | And when there cometh unto them a scripture from Allah, confirming that in their possession - though before that they were asking for a signal triumph over those who disbelieved - and when there cometh unto them that which they know (to be the truth) they disbelieve therein. The curse of Allah is on disbelievers.<br><sup>90</sup>Evil is that for which they sell their souls: that they should disbelieve in that which Allah hath revealed, grudging that Allah should reveal of His bounty unto whom He will of His slaves. They have incurred anger upon anger. For disbelievers is a shameful doom. }} |
Revision as of 01:26, 25 October 2021
Islamic law or Sharia permits raiding, kidnapping and enslaving non-Muslims from Dar al Harb.[1] South Asian scholars ruled that jihad was not needed to seize non-Muslims nor was it necessary to invite them to Islam before seizing them. Raiders were free to take and enslave any non-Muslim.[2] However, Islamic jurists held that non-Muslims who lived in areas which had formal pacts with Muslims were to be protected from enslavement.[3]
Non-Muslim residents of an Islamic state who fail to pay jizya or break their contract with the state can also be enslaved.[4][5]
Among other things (see Qur'an, Hadith and Scholars:Muhammad and Booty), Booty included slaves who were originally free non-Muslims who were captured in battle.[6][7] The entire population of a conquered territory can be enslaved, thus providing women who are otherwise rare on the battlefield. This paves the path for concubinage.[8] The Muslim military commander is allowed to choose between unconditionally releasing, ransoming or enslaving war captives.[9] If a person converted to Islam after being enslaved, their emancipation would be considered a pious act but not obligatory.[10] Islamic law does not allow enslavement of free-born Muslims.[11]
Pickthall's translation of two verses from the Qur'an about revealing Islam to slaves:
وَلَمَّا جَاءهُمْ كِتَابٌ مِّنْ عِندِ اللّهِ مُصَدِّقٌ لِّمَا مَعَهُمْ وَكَانُواْ مِن قَبْلُ يَسْتَفْتِحُونَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ فَلَمَّا جَاءهُم مَّا عَرَفُواْ كَفَرُواْ بِهِ فَلَعْنَةُ اللَّه عَلَى الْكَافِرِينَ بِئْسَمَا اشْتَرَوْاْ بِهِ أَنفُسَهُمْ أَن يَكْفُرُواْ بِمَا أنَزَلَ اللّهُ بَغْياً أَن يُنَزِّلُ اللّهُ مِن فَضْلِهِ عَلَى مَن يَشَاءُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ فَبَآؤُواْ بِغَضَبٍ عَلَى غَضَبٍ وَلِلْكَافِرِينَ عَذَابٌ مُّهِينٌAnd when there cometh unto them a scripture from Allah, confirming that in their possession - though before that they were asking for a signal triumph over those who disbelieved - and when there cometh unto them that which they know (to be the truth) they disbelieve therein. The curse of Allah is on disbelievers.
90Evil is that for which they sell their souls: that they should disbelieve in that which Allah hath revealed, grudging that Allah should reveal of His bounty unto whom He will of His slaves. They have incurred anger upon anger. For disbelievers is a shameful doom.
Consent
The consent of a slave girl for sex, for withdrawal before ejaculation (azl) or to marry her off to someone else was not considered necessary, historically.[12]
Muhammad has intercourse with his slave girl Maria bint Sham'un
Muhammad had a child with a slave girl of his, known as Maria the Copt, who was a gift to him from the Governor of Alexandria. In a hadith from Sahih Muslim, a phrase translated as "slave girl" is, in the orignal Arabic, umm walad (أُمِّ وَلَدِ) (literally: "mother of the child") and is the title given to a slave concubine who bore her master a child.
The following hadith is graded Sahih by Dar-us-Salam:
Tafsir al-Jalalayn says of the verse referred to in this hadith:
An alternate, or additional circumstance for this verse has also been narrated in multiple sahih hadiths (in yet another version Sahih Muslim 9:3497, Muhammad ate honey at Hafsa's house instead of Zainab's).
"Honey" was also a sexual euphemism and an explicit example of its usage in this sense is found in a hadith in Abu Dawud:
Sean Anthony and Catherine Bronson have noted that "Modern scholars have been inclined to regard the more scandalous story involving the slave girl as the earlier one given that it appears in the earliest sources, and despite the fact that the honey story has a superior pedigree in the eyes of the ḥadīth scholars. These modern scholars reason that, if the story of Ḥafṣah’s jealousy after seeing the Prophet with his slave-girl predates the honey story, then exegetes likely contrived the honey narrative at a later date in order to provide an alternative to the unflattering portrayal of the Prophet and his wives in the former story. Furthermore, while the honey story may provide a somewhat plausible explanation for Q 66:1–2, its explanatory force greatly diminishes when applied to the remainder of the pericope. The gravity of Q 66:5–6, which threatens divorce as a penalty for plotting against the Prophet, makes a poor match for the trifles of the honey story."[13]
Ali rapes an underage ward of the state
Another relevant hadith is one which concerns an incident which led to the famous event of Ghadir Khumm, which is much disputed between Sunnis and Shias. Both Sunni and Shia sources agree that Muhammad received complaints about 'Ali taking a slave-girl from the Khums (the fifth of all booty allotted for the state[14]) to which those complaining felt that no private party was entitled.
The Arabic of the Sunni hadith below mentions 'Ali taking a Ghusl bath (which is mandatory after sexual contact or ejaculation), implying sexual activity. Later, at a place called Ghadir Khumm, Muhammad tried to pacify those who were upset with 'Ali by declaring Ali to be his Mawla. Mawla is an honorific meaning something between "follower", "ally", and "leader", which the Shia interpret to mean "successor of Muhammad". Thus, in some sense, Ali's having raped an underage captive becomes the immediate cause of what the Shi'a insist was the the announcement of Ali's succession. The emergent Sunni polemic here casts some doubt on the historical reliability of the hadith, yet, as a hadith included in Sahih Bukhari, it more than meets the Sunni requirements for authenticity.
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (d. 1449), one of the most famous Hadith scholars of all time, points out in his seminal Fath al-Bari (the still-standard commentary on Sahih Bukhari) what several scholars before him noted: that in accounts of this event, Ali does not observe the required iddah (waiting) period to determine whether or not the girl was pregnant. Al-Asqalani quotes al-Khattabi who summarizes the possibilities: "she was either a virgin [strongly implying a young age in a culture where women married young], had not yet reached maturity, or Ali's ijtihad [independent reasoning] led him to not adhere to the waiting period in her case."[15]
References
- ↑ William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, p=27–28. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-522151-0, 2006, https://archive.org/details/islamabolitionof0000clar
- ↑ William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, p=28. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-522151-0, 2006, https://archive.org/details/islamabolitionof0000clar
- ↑ William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, p=27-28. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-522151-0, 2006, https://archive.org/details/islamabolitionof0000clar
- ↑ Y. Erdem (20 November 1996), Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise 1800-1909, p=26. Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 978-0-230-37297-9, https://books.google.com/books?id=dyZ-DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA52
- ↑ Jarbel Rodriguez (2015), Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: A Reader, p=2. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-0066-9, https://books.google.com/books?id=z3VoBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA2
- ↑ Salma Saad, The legal and social status of women in the Hadith literature (PDF), p. 242, 1990, http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/508/1/uk_bl_ethos_443314.pdf
- ↑ Nesrine Badawi (1 October 2019). p.17. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-41062-6, Islamic Jurisprudence on the Regulation of Armed Conflict: Text and Context, https://books.google.com/books?id=6MC0DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA17
- ↑ William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, p. 27. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-522151-0, 2006, https://archive.org/details/islamabolitionof0000clar
- ↑ Malik Mufti (1 October 2019), The Art of Jihad: Realism in Islamic Political Thought, SUNY Press. p.5. ISBN 978-1-4384-7638-4, https://books.google.com/books?id=l0SyDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA5
- ↑ William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, p. 22. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-522151-0, 2006, https://archive.org/details/islamabolitionof0000clar
- ↑ Robert Gleave (14 April 2015), Violence in Islamic Thought from the Qur'an to the Mongols, p.142. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-9424-2
- ↑ Ali, Kecia, "Concubinage and Consent", Cambridge University Press, January 20, 2017, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/concubinage-and-consent/F8E807073C33F403A91C1ACA0CFA47FD.
- ↑ Sean Anthony and Catherine Bronson (2016) "Did Ḥafṣah edit the Qurʾān? A response with notes on the codices of the Prophet's wives" Journal of the Interational Quranic Studies Association 1(2016) pp.93-125 (p.102)
- ↑ Quran 8:41
- ↑ لِاحْتِمَالِ أَنْ تَكُونَ عَذْرَاءَ أَوْ دُونَ الْبُلُوغِ أَوْ أَدَّاهُ اجْتِهَادُهُ أَنْ لَا اسْتِبْرَاءَ فِيهَا
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Fath al-Bari, 9, Dar Taybah, p. 487, https://www.google.com/books/edition/%D9%81%D8%AA%D8%AD_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A_%D8%AC_9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%BA%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%8A/YzZJCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%D9%84%D9%90%D8%A7%D8%AD%D9%92%D8%AA%D9%90%D9%85%D9%8E%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%90%20%D8%A3%D9%8E%D9%86%D9%92%20%D8%AA%D9%8E%D9%83%D9%8F%D9%88%D9%86%D9%8E%20%D8%B9%D9%8E%D8%B0%D9%92%D8%B1%D9%8E%D8%A7%D8%A1%D9%8E%20%D8%A3%D9%8E%D9%88%D9%92%20%D8%AF%D9%8F%D9%88%D9%86%D9%8E%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%92%D8%A8%D9%8F%D9%84%D9%8F%D9%88%D8%BA%D9%90%20%D8%A3%D9%8E%D9%88%D9%92%20%D8%A3%D9%8E%D8%AF%D9%91%D9%8E%D8%A7%D9%87%D9%8F%20%D8%A7%D8%AC%D9%92%D8%AA%D9%90%D9%87%D9%8E%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%8F%D9%87%D9%8F%20%D8%A3%D9%8E%D9%86%D9%92%20%D9%84%D9%8E%D8%A7%20%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%92%D8%AA%D9%90%D8%A8%D9%92%D8%B1%D9%8E%D8%A7%D8%A1%D9%8E%20%D9%81%D9%90%D9%8A%D9%87%D9%8E