Why Did Islam Never Add ‘Slavery’ to Its List of Prohibitions?

Not only was slavery accepted in Islam, but a set of conditions and rules were also codified and defined for it; both in the Quran, in hadith, and in Islamic law. The Prophet of Islam himself owned slaves and bought, sold, exchanged, and freed slaves.

This question can be decisive for a Muslim or someone who today defends the values of Islam, at least from a moral perspective: why and how does Islam, which presents itself as a religion of equality and justice, never place the buying and selling of human beings and slavery on its long list of prohibitions?

This week’s guests on Taboo are Mehdi Jalali Tehrani, a former researcher of Religion and State studies at Columbia University, and Sajjad Nikaiyan, a religion scholar.

We begin with Mr. Nikaiyan. Mr. Nikaiyan, this question can be important for a Muslim: how were both servitude and slavery recognized in Islam?

Sajjad Nikaiyan: What exists in Islam as slavery was neither an institution nor a legislation of slavery nor its creation. The issue was solely about legalizing a tradition that existed anyway. If you look at the prophets as social reformers, social reformers work through prioritization and act based on specific priorities. Engaging with deeply rooted and established social traditions that create tension and destabilize society was not the priority of the prophets, unless the matter was ideological or related to belief in a Creator, which was their mission.

As you can see, this discussion is not just about America. It has existed until very recent centuries—two to three hundred years ago—both in America and in Europe until the seventeenth century. Not only monotheistic and heavenly religions accepted it; human societies themselves accepted it too. Even Abraham Lincoln, when issuing the slavery abolition order, did so not based on humanitarian values, but to weaken the South and Confederate states.

In Islam too, it was a prevalent tradition of that era, but the conditions of keeping slaves and the conditions of treatment toward them [were determined in Islam], and this was aimed at making those conditions more humane—conditions that were not necessarily approved by Islam. You were facing a reality: that slaves were a product of something called war. This point is more important. That is, wars occurred where both sides’ treatment of the other side’s captives was not based on UN law, human rights, and war conventions, but based on the fact that captives of the opposite side were considered slaves. Since war occurred, there was no choice but to find a solution for these war captives, and in Islam, slavery is entirely a product of war…

Regarding this part about war specifically, since I have another question, I ask your permission to discuss it separately later, but before we move to our other guest Mr. Jalali Tehrani, I have a question for you. That is, you say Islam did not institute something but tried to reform a prevalent tradition. Since not all traditions could be addressed by war. Islam, which essentially begins by fighting these traditions, for example, idolatry is also a tradition of the time…

Nikaiyan: I said not all traditions. I said prioritization. If your priority is spreading monotheism, you invest all capital in spreading monotheism. It’s not a package that changes everything all at once [from the beginning]. For example, look at the prohibition of drinking wine. It was implemented over several stages, was it not?

Very well, I continue the discussion with Mr. Jalali Tehrani, our other guest. Of course, our listeners might now have the point that if this is about social reforms, is spreading monotheism more important or preventing the buying and selling of human beings? Allow me to raise this question with Mr. Jalali Tehrani.

Mehdi Jalali Tehrani: Yes, actually I wanted to address the point you made about traditions. I wanted to enter from this angle. Now, apart from the tradition of idolatry, we have structural social traditions that the Prophet of Islam broke. He left his own tribe. He left the city of Mecca and went to Medina, which was also not customary at that time for a person to leave their homeland. Muhammad was certainly a tradition-breaker in many respects.

But regarding the issue of slavery, we see Islam silent. Even if we say there is prioritization, the question becomes: how much effort did you put in and create rulings for it, detailed in Islamic law specifying what should be done with slaves. Well, you could spend one percent of that effort and simply abolish it altogether. If it conflicts with your monotheistic principles. While I believe slavery is actually compatible with monotheistic principles.

Another issue that Mr. Nikaiyan mentioned is that this matter of slavery is not necessarily approved by Islam. Who can determine what is approved by Islam and what is not? Especially for someone who today wants to believe. How can they know what was approved by Islam or not approved by Islam? Overall, monotheism itself is a relationship of servitude in its entirety. A human is not recognized as a free human. A human’s value lies entirely in being a slave. Being a servant of God. Now this servant finds a hierarchy. A person who is not a slave must express their servitude to God and accept His guardianship, but another person who is a slave must accept servitude to this person. This is completely incompatible with today and is entirely servitude in its entirety.

Mr. Nikaiyan! You certainly have a response for Mr. Jalali Tehrani, and I also want to ask you here: perhaps there is a suspicion that slavery anyway had economic, political, and even religious supremacist importance, and we actually see it in the text of religion. For instance, one born Muslim cannot be enslaved. Therefore, perhaps such considerations of interest might be said to exist in supremacy, which you say did not gain priority in Islamic religion to abolish the buying and selling of human beings?

Nikaiyan: Allow me to begin by responding to Mr. Jalali Tehrani before answering your question. When you say the Prophet engaged with many traditions, I say he also did not engage with many traditions. Traditions kept shifting, based on considerations of interest and the societies that Islam entered. Regarding how we determine whether something was approved by Islamic law or not: you can determine this by the evidence, indications, and allusions that exist—look at the issue of slavery and see that with or without occasion, freeing a slave is the atonement for all commands, obligations, and penalties for sins, all of them without exception. If you do not fulfill your vow, it is recommended that you free a slave in atonement for oath-breaking. If someone does not fast during Ramadan, in return we have freeing a slave, and so on…

If it truly was Islam’s intention and Islam’s foundation was to promote the institution of slavery [these would not exist]. Just as it existed until these not-so-distant centuries—two to three hundred years ago—and when they wanted to remove it, they removed it through war and bloodshed. While you see that in Muslim countries, including Iran itself, when they acceded to the slavery abolition convention and the National Consultative Assembly approved it, in Bahman 1307, an urgent bill was passed without any war or bloodshed, and no war occurred, and no jurist issued a fatwa that an essential principle of Islam was lost.

What Mr. Jalali says—that all are servants and they make accepting monotheism the basis of servitude—is a surrealist view of human social relations. If we only consider it this way—that a Muslim is obligated, therefore a slave even without the title of slavery—this is a very romantic and dreamlike view of human issues and human social structures. Yes, toward the modern state I also feel obligated, and merely because I am obligated does not mean I am in servitude.

An important issue we had was war, and to determine the status of war captives, you have no more than two options: either bring them into society and put them in prisons or, as Islam says, bring them into families. In the terminology of those who came during the Safavid period, when slavery was still prevalent in Iran, they described Iran as the paradise of slaves.

The other issue was preventing war. That is, before going to war, they thought that if we go and lose the war, we will lose our freedom. Therefore, they largely avoided war, and it was a preventive factor.

Allow me to return to Mr. Jalali Tehrani. Of course, I asked you a question that we can now discuss the answer to together. Mr. Nikaiyan spoke of freeing slaves as a positive matter. Can, in accordance with today’s moral values, from the fact that you commit a sin and make buying and selling a human being a way to ease your conscience, or even to prevent war? That is, the issue is the freedom of a human being, and I repeat that question with you—it seems slavery had a kind of economic, political, and even religious supremacist dimension. What answer will you give?

Jalali Tehrani: Well, when we look at slavery rulings or slavery laws, we see that the child of a slave is a slave, and this slavery generally applies to Muslims. Therefore, these discriminations exist in it. We need to clarify something here: from what perspective are we looking at Islam? Do we know Islam as a liberating religion that frees humans, as it was presented in early Islam and the Prophet’s era? Justice was altogether the matter at hand. I mentioned this, and Mr. Nikaiyan did not respond.

That generally a person could come out of their tribe and not be in the tribal hierarchy of their own tribe, and tribes would be equal with each other, and relations and marriages between different tribes existed—these were tradition-breaking and establishing new laws done by the Prophet of Islam. How was slavery not prioritized here, and if all humans are equal with each other and the difference is only in their piety—these are general principles that were discussed—then in what way did the Prophet of Islam or those after him resolve this contradiction?

Today when we look at Islam, should we know it as a religion that eternally has a series of valuable and always valid rulings, or can we discard some parts? For example, it was mentioned that in the mid-seventeenth century in Britain and in the nineteenth century in America, slavery was abolished. So can we also discard some rulings in this way?

Before returning to Mr. Nikaiyan, I want to mention the issue of female slaves as well. Female slaves were even used to provide sexual services to their masters, and this has permission in the Quran. What can be said about this?

Jalali Tehrani: I actually wanted to mention this point: when I generalized the discussion of slavery and Mr. Nikaiyan said it was romantic—I don’t have such an understanding—slavery, if it means being owned and being someone’s property and you are their owner, is one discussion. In this area too, you can even generalize to women; not only women in the conventional sense of concubines or in terms of rulings, but entirely in the human concept of someone who is not free and not autonomous and must answer to someone—we see this generally for the female gender in its entirety in Islam.

From today’s perspective, the fact that a woman must be forced to wear a hijab because of her beliefs is a moral vice. I mention this because they say she has chosen the belief herself, therefore is not restricted. I am referring to discussions that moral philosophers and political philosophers raise. For example, Isaiah Berlin in his four essays on liberty says if someone is paranoid, meaning suspicious, they are not free either, even though they have deprived themselves of this freedom themselves.

Nikaiyan: That’s where I say romantic view. Very well, someone who is paranoid. What should we do now? Come and force them to stop? That is, impose something on them? In any case, we have accepted freedom of will and choice, and it is agreed upon. Suppose someone voluntarily decided to impose something on themselves, from your perspective they are a psychologically disturbed or paranoid person. For whatever reason—maybe they have a phobia or some other reason.

Jalali Tehrani: That was just an example, Mr. Nikaiyan…

Nikaiyan: Exactly, the romantic view forms right here. That all humans are the same without regard for average humans. Human relations are far more complex than that to be captured in just one word called freedom, and freedom meaning the twenty-first century’s definition of it, and freedom meaning 2018, and freedom in this very time we are living in [October 31, 2018]. Freedom is constantly evolving in meaning, taboos are being broken daily… We take all of this and time-travel back to Muhammad fourteen hundred years ago, and judge Muhammad’s way with these very modern criteria and think it is universal, timeless, and placeless. [That is what] separates me, a realist, from Mr. Jalali Tehrani, a surrealist, in politics.

Muhammad is a child of his own time. I am not saying his rulings should be discarded. In the modern world, look at Lincoln’s slavery abolition declaration—there is no mention of human rights in it at all. [It says] through the Constitution the federal authority will soon… it’s all about federal authority and weakening the Confederate states, the southern states, and there is no humanitarian discussion in it.

In today’s world, according to the definition the Human Trafficking Control Office at the U.S. State Department gives you, we have 45 million 800 thousand slaves in the world, and a concept called modern slavery has formed. Therefore, this tradition is so entrenched that whatever you officially and forcibly remove from paper, in practice it exists underground.

I return to you, Mr. Jalali Tehrani. Among the points Mr. Nikaiyan raised and what we see in the text of Islamic religion is how to treat slaves and respect their rights. Is the issue how to treat slaves, or is the issue altogether how a human allows themselves to enslave another human? In any case, slavery existed in Islamic religion. He also mentioned that it existed in America, for example, and was abolished a hundred years ago. We never see an effort in Islamic law for this to be abolished and be done.

Jalali Tehrani: Yes, I saw at the beginning that Mr. Nikaiyan used a label whose specifications I did not understand—where they introduced themselves as realist and me as a surrealist politician.

There are two or three other points. One is about slavery abolition in America. Yes, slavery abolition in America did not happen because of human rights values and was more about the industrial world where northerners needed workers instead of slaves, but on the other hand, consider that they did not even have such a claim and did not base their path of movement on fixed moral resources.

In Islam we have a fixed moral source, which is Islam itself. Can we refer to this source and reference or does it have no benefit for us? The claim that we compare Abraham Lincoln’s America to the Prophet of Islam is flawed. The next issue is that they spoke of modern slavery. 45 million modern slaves we have. It is not legal. It is illegal. We say the same thing about the death penalty. We say capital punishment is wrong because we are legally killing a human being, but criminals will still kill people. The issue is whether we accept this as a law with a moral basis or not.

And the last issue, which is actually the central focus of discussion with Mr. Nikaiyan, is that he says you cannot compare what happened fourteen hundred years ago with the contemporary world and, say, October 31, 2018. My question is: is he a Muslim on October 31, 2018? How does he view this Islamic jurisprudential, moral, and religious sources? If we are to know Muhammad in his own time and say we recognize him within his time—which is actually a different discussion altogether—how can we then follow Islam? I say that my morality is based on my understanding that changes daily. Ten years ago, I did not recognize something called animal rights. Fifteen years ago, for example, I did not recognize something called LGBTQ rights. How can this issue be resolved? With Islam, which is a fixed source, and all its commands and values were presented from the beginning.

Mr. Nikaiyan, I ask that in your response, please also summarize your discussion.

Nikaiyan: When you say value, you mean an act or action is a moral act. When we say it is a moral act, it means you should act on it. When we say Islamic values are fixed, value is one of those words where I insist we have a surrealist understanding of it—that the value of the twenty-first century and the fourteenth [Islamic calendar] century and the early centuries of the Common Era are all the same, and then whatever has come from Islam and in the collection of Islamic history and jurisprudence are all values; regardless of whether this was a temporary solution.

We do not have anywhere that recommends taking slaves. I take the word value again from Mr. Jalali Tehrani’s words and use it; Muslims did not view it as a value. Just as it happened in America after bloodshed, but in no Islamic country did slavery happen with bloodshed, because it is not a value. It is neither befitting for him nor for me to use labeling, but when we say I did not believe in animal rights ten years ago and now I do, my discussion is the same. Is there anywhere in the Quran that says slavery is an immutable ruling and will never change until eternity? No, there is no such thing. No Muslim considers slavery part of Islam’s core nucleus.

Very well. Mr. Jalali Tehrani, we are at the end of the program. I ask that we also hear your concluding remarks.

Jalali Tehrani: Yes, look, the question arises: we consider ourselves Muslim for what reason? Do we like Islamic rulings, or have we accepted Islamic values as acceptable values and consider salvation for ourselves through them? Naturally, our emphasis is on values. When we accept values, then we come to rulings to see what rulings are imposed on us.

If these values are to change in today’s world—now if in America it was through war and bloodshed—it seems to me to be a value. Regarding women’s rights too, it has been with severe resistance and civil struggles, naturally. If in the Islamic world these things were not abolished through war and bloodshed and were gradually nullified, had other dimensions, that is, the modern slavery we are talking about, and they speak of 45 million, I speak of at least half the Islamic world, which is 600 million or 700 million, and they are the women of the Islamic world when we look at the concept. Forms of slavery change.

Here I found an ijtihad in Mr. Nikaiyan’s remarks. Should we, in the modern world where we live today in the twenty-first century, come and place our value sources where? If we place them in Islam, well, a lot of things have changed, and you say it was not instituted, so therefore there is no reason for us to refer to Islam. There will be nothing for us to want to follow to achieve salvation.

Source: Radio Farda