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“Slavery in Islam” By BBC Team | |||||||||||||||||||
| Published on November 4th, 2008 In Uncategorized, Goals, News, Philosophy, Politics | Views 56 | ||||||||||||||||||||
Slavery in IslamBy BBC Team http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slavery_print.html IntroductionSlavery in Islam
Slavery was common in pre-Islamic times and continued under Islam
Many societies throughout history have practised slavery, and Muslim societies were no exception. It"s thought that as many people were enslaved in the Eastern slave trade as in the Atlantic slave trade. It"s ironic that when the Atlantic slave trade was abolished the Eastern trade expanded, suggesting that for some Africans the abolition of the Atlantic trade didn"t lead to freedom, but merely changed their slave destination. It"s misleading to use phrases such as ‘Islamic slavery" and ‘Muslim slave trade", even though slavery existed in many Muslim cultures at various times, since the Atlantic slave trade is not called the Christian slave trade, even though most of those responsible for it were Christians. Slavery before IslamSlavery was common in pre-Islamic times and accepted by many ancient legal systems and it continued under Islam.
How Islam moderated slaveryIslam"s approach to slavery added the idea that freedom was the natural state of affairs for human beings and in line with this it limited the opportunities to enslave people, commended the freeing of slaves and regulated the way slaves were treated:
But the essential nature of slavery remained the same under Islam, as elsewhere. It involved serious breaches of human rights and however well they were treated the slaves still had restricted freedom, and, when the law was not obeyed their lives could be very unpleasant. The paradoxA poignant paradox of Islamic slavery is that the humanity of the various rules and customs that led to the freeing of slaves created a demand for new slaves that could only be supplied by war, forcing people into slavery or trading slaves. Muslim slavery continued for centuriesThe legality of slavery in Islam, together with the example of the Prophet Muhammad, who himself bought, sold, captured, and owned slaves, may explain why slavery persisted until the 19th century in many places (and later still in some countries). The impetus for the abolition of slavery came largely from colonial powers, although some Muslim thinkers argued strongly for abolition. Slaves came from many placesUnlike the Atlantic slave traders, Muslims enslaved people from many cultures as well as Africa. Other sources included the Balkans, Central Asia and Mediterranean Europe. Slaves could be assimilated into Muslim societyMuhammad"s teaching that slaves were to be regarded as human beings with dignity and rights and not just as property, and that freeing slaves was a virtuous thing to do, may have helped to create a culture in which slaves became much more assimilated into the community than they were in the West. Muslim slaves could achieve statusSlaves in the Islamic world were not always at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Slaves in Muslim societies had a greater range of work, and took on a wider range of responsibilities, than those enslaved in the Atlantic trade. Some slaves earned respectable incomes and achieved considerable power, although even such elite slaves still remained in the power of their owners. Muslim slavery was not just economicUnlike the Western slave trade, slavery in Islam was not wholly motivated by economics. Although some Muslim slaves were used as productive labour it was not generally on the same mass scale as in the West but in smaller agricultural enterprises, workshops, building, mining and transport. Slaves were also taken for military service, some serving in elite corps essential to the ruler"s control of the state, while others joined the equivalent of the civil service. Another category of slavery was sexual slavery in which young women were made concubines, either on a small scale or in large harems of the powerful. Some of these women were able to achieve wealth and power. These harems might be guarded by eunuchs, men who had been enslaved and castrated. Where did the slaves come from?Muslim traders took their slaves from three main areas:
The legality of slavery todayWhile Islamic law does allow slavery under certain conditions, it"s almost inconceivable that those conditions could ever occur in today"s world, and so slavery is effectively illegal in modern Islam. Muslim countries also use secular law to prohibit slavery. News stories do continue to report occasional instances of slavery in a few Muslim countries, but these are usually denied by the authorities concerned. Beyond Belief, 5 March 2007 Slavery and Islamic lawLaw and slavery
ContextIslamic sharia law accepted (and accepts) slavery, as did other legal systems of ancient times such as Roman law, Hebrew law, Byzantine Christian law, African customary law and Hindu law. The world was very different in those days, and practices that seem profoundly unethical to modern minds were common and accepted.
Slavery was too fundamental to the structure of Arabian society in the 7th century to be abolished easily. Doing so would have estranged many of the tribes that Muhammad sought to bring together, and severely disrupted the working of society.
But this was a problem, since Islam placed a high value on human dignity and freedom.
So the early Muslims restricted and regulated slavery to remove some of its cruelties, but accepted that it was legal.
Is slavery still legal in Islam?The answer is that slavery is legal under Islamic law but only in theory. Slavery is illegal under the state law of all Muslim countries. Theoretically Islamic law lays down that if a person was captured in a lawful jihad or was the descendent of an unbroken chain of people who had been lawfully enslaved, then it might be legal to enslave them.
In practice, it seems virtually impossible that there will ever again be a jihad that is lawfully declared according to the strict letter of the law, and there are no living descendants of lawful slaves, which means that legal enslavement is unthinkable. The law on slaveryIslamic law recognises slavery as an institution within society, and attempts to regulate and restrict it in various ways. Different Islamic legal schools differ in their interpretation of Islamic law on slavery. Local customs in Muslim lands also affected the way slaves were treated.
Islamic law clearly recognises that slaves are human beings, but it frequently treats slaves as if they are property, laying down regulations covering the buying and selling of slaves. It encourages the freeing of slaves which has the good effect of diminishing the slave population of a culture and paradoxically the bad effect of encouraging those whose livelihood depends on slave labour to find new ways of acquiring slaves. Who can be enslavedUnder Islamic law people can only be legally enslaved in two circumstances:
Other legal systems of the time allowed people to be enslaved in a far wider range of circumstances. The sharia limits were often either ignored or evaded, and many instances of slave trading by Muslims were in fact illegal, but tolerated. The following groups of people cannot be made slaves:
Slave rightsIslamic law gives slaves certain rights:
Slave rights to freedomIslamic law allows slaves to get their freedom under certain circumstances. It divides slaves with the right to freedom into various classes:
Slaves must accept
Restrictions on slavesIslamic law imposes many restrictions on slaves:
Muhammad and slaveryMuhammad and slaveryThe Prophet Muhammad did not try to abolish slavery, and bought, sold, captured, and owned slaves himself. But he insisted that slave owners treat their slaves well and stressed the virtue of freeing slaves. There are two different ways of interpreting this:
Muhammad treated slaves as human beings and clearly held some in the highest esteem. For example, he personally ensured the freedom of Bilal, an African slave who had converted to Islam. Bilal was chosen as the first muezzin of Islam because of his beautiful voice. A muezzin is the person who calls the community to the daily prayers, and is a position of great prominence and responsibility. Zayd was a young boy who had grown up in the household of the Prophet as a slave, and remained with the household, almost as an adopted son, even after he was freed. He was amongst the first four people to adopt Islam. Indeed when Zayd"s father (a wealthy nobleman) tracked his son down and offered to buy his freedom from Muhammad, Muhammad told Zayd that he was free to go with his father with no money changing hands, and to his father"s astonishment Zayd chose to stay with Muhammad. The Prophet also married a Coptic Christian slave girl. In his lifetime the Prophet introduced the following rules about slavery:
There are a number of hadith that show that the Prophet treated slaves well and expected others to do the same…
Compared to the Atlantic slave tradeSlavery in Muslim cultures and the Atlantic slave tradeSlavery in Muslim history lasted much longer than the Atlantic slave trade - although slavery had existed in many cultures long before Islam. The Muslim slave trade from Africa seems to have enslaved roughly similar numbers (estimates vary between 11 and 14 million Africans) to the Atlantic slave trade, and the transportation conditions endured by victims of the Eastern trade were probably just as horrible in their own way as those of the Atlantic slave trade. One poignant fact is that when the Atlantic slave trade was abolished the Eastern trade expanded, suggesting that for some Africans the abolition of the Atlantic trade didn"t lead to freedom, but merely changed their slave destination. Slavery played a significant part in the history of Muslim civilisation, but it was a form of slavery that was inherently different from the "slave trade" in that the Muslim concept of slavery regarded those enslaved as people who had some, albeit fewer, human rights that must be respected.
But even though slavery under Islam could be significantly less harsh that that of the Atlantic slave trade, both involved serious breaches of human rights and restricted liberty. However well they were treated the slaves still had restricted freedom, and when the law was not obeyed their lives could be very unpleasant.
Here are some of the main differences between Muslim slavery and the Atlantic slave trade:
Economic slaveryEconomic slavery in IslamWestern slavery was motivated by economics - people were enslaved to provide a cheap and disposable workforce on plantations. Muslims historically did not use slaves as an engine of economic production on the same scale as the West, although some Muslims profited from the actual trading of slaves.
The 9th century slave rebellion in Iraq may have deterred Muslims from the industrial use of slaves by showing the danger of having a very large slave community in any one place. Apart from 9th century Iraq, the largest scale slave use outside the military was on the clove plantations of Zanzibar. Nonetheless, as William Gervase Clarence-Smith writes, slaves did play a large part in Muslim economies:
Slaves were also used for domestic work, military service, sexual slavery and civil administration. The slave tradeMuslims did play a significant role in the slave trade itself as providers of slaves to others. Elite slaveryElite slaverySomething particular to Islamic slave systems was the creation of a slave elite in some Muslim societies that allowed individuals to achieve considerable status, and even power and wealth, while still remaining in some form of ‘enslavement". The slave elite had enormous value to their Muslim masters because they were a military and administrative group made up of ‘outsiders" who didn"t have tribal and family allegiances that could conflict with their loyalty to their masters.
The paradox of elite slaveryElite slavery is something of a paradox: how can a person have power and hold high office and yet still keep the status of a slave? One answer is that the slave gets authority and high office because they are dependant on the person who gives them their authority and status and who could remove that status if they chose. Thus elite slaves must give total loyalty and obedience to their master in order to maintain their privileges. Another view is that the slave who achieves elite status is no longer really a slave, and is able to use their position and power to free themselves of many of the limitations of slavery. This is less convincing since even elite slaves are at risk of losing their privileged status until they break free completely. The dependency was not all one way - the masters in many ways relied on their elite slaves, because those slaves were the only people they could really trust. And there was another reason why elite slaves were valuable - precisely because they were slaves, the elite slaves were free of some of the restrictions that limited free people, and this allowed them to do things for their masters that their masters could not otherwise achieve. Examples of elite slaveryTwo examples of elite slavery were the Mamluks and the Devshirme system. The Mamluks
An Ottoman Mamluk, by Carle Vernet, 1810 The Mamluk system became firmly established in the Abbasid Empire during the 9th century. The Mamluks were "slave soldiers" who eventually came to rule Egypt for over two centuries from 1250 until overthrown by the Ottomans in the 16th century. After a brief period of oppression the Mamluks were able, once again, to play a significant role in running the country. Mamluks were originally soldiers captured in Central Asia, but later boys aged 12-14 were specifically taken or bought to be trained as slave soldiers. Their slave status was shown by the name ‘Mamluk" which means ‘owned". Although the Mamluks were not free men (they could not, for example, pass anything on to their children) they were elite slaves who were held in high regard as professional soldiers loyal to their Islamic masters.
In 13th century Egypt loyalty to the masters dissolved and the Mamluks established themselves as the ruling dynasty. Once the Mamluks had successfully revolted against their masters they were, of course, no longer slaves. They remained in power for the period 1250-1517.
The devshirme systemThe devshirme system introduced in the 14th century compelled non-Muslims in parts of the Ottoman Empire to hand over some of their children to be converted to Islam and work as slaves. Some writers say that between half a million to one million people were enslaved in this way over the centuries. Conquered Christian communities, especially in the Balkans, had to surrender twenty percent of their male children to the state. Some of these were trained for government service, where they were able to reach very high ranks, even that of Grand Vezir. Many of the others served in the elite military corps of the Ottoman Empire, called the Janissaries, which was almost exclusively made up of forced converts from Christianity. The devshirme played a key role in Sultan Mehmet"s conquest of Constantinople, and from then on regularly held very senior posts in the imperial administration.
Mehmet II commands ships at the siege of Constantinople Although members of the devshirme class were technically slaves, they were of great importance to the Sultan because they owed him their absolute loyalty and became vital to his power. This status enabled some of the "slaves" to become both powerful and wealthy. Their status remained restricted, and their children were not permitted to inherit their wealth or follow in their footsteps. Not all writers agree that the devshirme system was beneficial as well as oppressive, and point out that many Christian families were hostile and resentful about it - which is perhaps underlined by the use of force to impose the system. The devshirme system continued until the end of the seventeenth century. EunuchsMale slaves who had had their sexual organs removed were called eunuchs, and played an important part in some Muslim societies (as they did in some other cultures). They had the advantage for their masters of not being subject to sexual influence, and as they were unlikely to marry, they had no family ties to hinder their devotion to duty. Eunuch slavery involved compulsory mutilation, which usually took place between the ages of 8 and 12. Without modern medical skills and anaesthetics this was painful, and often led to fatal complications, and sometimes to physical or psychological problems for those who survived the operation. Eunuchs had a particular role as guardians of the harem and were the main way in which the women of the harem had contact with the world outside. In the Ottoman Empire eunuchs from Africa held considerable power from the mid sixteenth century to the eighteenth. It"s recorded that the Ottoman family owned 194 eunuchs as late as 1903, of whom 35 ‘bore a title of some seniority". Eunuchs could also play important military roles. Sexual slaverySexual slavery - the harem
Muslim cultures are thought to have had more female slaves than male slaves. Enslaved women were given many tasks and one of the most common was working as a domestic servant. But some female slaves were forced to become sex workers: not prostitutes, as this is forbidden in Islam, but concubines. Concubines were women who were sexually available to their master, but not married to him. A Muslim man could have as many concubines as he could afford. Concubinage was not unique to Islam; the Bible records that King Solomon and King David both had concubines, and it is recorded in other cultures too. Being a concubine did have some benefits: if a slave woman gave birth to her owner"s child, her status improved dramatically - she could not be sold or given away, and when her owner died she became free. The child was also free and would inherit from their father as any other children. Concubinage was not prostitution in the commercial sense both because that was explicitly forbidden and because only the owner could legitimately have sex with a female slave; anyone else who had sex with her was guilty of fornication. The haremConcubines lived in the harem, an area of the household where women lived separately from men. The nature of Ottoman harems is described by Ehud R Toledano:
The nature of concubinageWriters disagree over the nature of concubinage and the harem:
A balanced view might be to say that sexual slavery in this context was a very bad thing, but that it was possible for some of the more fortunate victims to gain benefits that provided some degree of compensation. The political role of concubinesConcubines could play an important political role and have considerable direct political influence on the policy of the state.
The benefit to the state, or at least to the ruling dynasty, of having the ruling line born through concubines rather than wives was that only one family was involved - the family of a concubine was irrelevant, but the family of a wife would expect to gain power and influence through their relationship to the mother of the son. These conflicting interests could threaten the succession and weaken the ruling family. (This didn"t eliminate conflict between heirs and families altogether, but it probably reduced it.) Concubines as well as wives also played an important role in strengthening cohesion, stability, and continuity at household level too, as this remark about 18th century Cairo demonstrates:
And later in the same article the writer describes the inevitable tension inherent in the status of harem women in that society:
In the Ottoman Empire the sale of woman as slaves continued until 1908. AbolitionMuslims and the abolition of slaverySlavery remained part of the fabric of Islam for over 1200 years (although the Druze, a group that sprung from Muslim roots, abolished it in the 11th century). While slavery was in theory greatly limited by Islamic law, in practice it persisted on a large scale in Muslim lands. During the 20th century attitudes to slavery changed radically and in 1990 The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam stated that:
The Declaration also includes a number of other articles that are incompatible with slavery, although “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari"ah". Since slavery is permitted by Islamic law, Muslim countries have used secular law to ban it. Some countries outlawed slavery only comparatively recently:
Early opponents
Mughal painting of Akbar as a boy, circa 1557 The idea that slavery should be abandoned began to be seriously discussed in the 16th century. The Mughal Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) banned the slave trade in his Indian territory. The Muslim leader and reformer Nasr al-Din denounced slavery to the people of Senegal in the 1670s and banned the sale of slaves to Christians there, undermining the French trade in slaves. In some countries, slaves who held high rank demonstrated that slaves were perfectly capable of playing any role in society if they were freed. Egypt had even been ruled by a slave dynasty for more than a century. These traditions slowly changed some Muslim thinking about slavery, and gradually created a climate in which the pressure for abolition could build. But serious abolition for the Muslim world had to wait until the 19th century. Attacking the slave tradeBecause slavery was accepted by Islamic law it would have been difficult or impossible to forbid slavery itself, so the abolition pressure was concentrated on the transportation of slaves, including the slave markets, which was where the worst cruelties were to be found. Islam forbade raids to gain slaves, making a slave out of a free person and other cruelties. So Muslim abolitionists focused on showing slave trading was illegal under Islamic law, knowing that if they could stop the trade in slaves, slavery itself would slowly die out from lack of supply. For the same reason, colonial powers attacked the trade in slaves as much as the institution of slavery. The slave trade in Muslim societies ended not so much through a single act of abolition but by withering away as the result of external and internal pressure. The outside pressure came from colonial powers that had only recently abandoned slavery themselves:
Internal pressure came from a variety of Muslim sources:
Muslim abolitionists were influenced by factors like these:
The result of these forces was to shrink the slave trade, and put pressure on slavery itself.
AbolitionThe Ottoman Empire was the major Muslim slave society of the abolition period, and it abolished the slave trade in stages. Although the Ottomans never abolished slavery itself, their policy of restricting the slave trade and increasing opportunities for slaves to get their freedom greatly reduced the number of slaves in its territories:
Slavery was harder to outlaw in areas far from central government where tribal traditions had been less influenced by the factors above, and where the military power of the centre was much weaker. The slavers retreated into these areas, and moved their slaves to market more secretly. Quite a few of the anti-slavery military initiatives ended in victory for the slavers rather than the forces of abolition. Some other Muslim countries passed laws allowing for the prosecution not only of the sellers of slaves but the buyers too. The Indian Slavery Act of 1844 made slavery illegal there, and Egypt in 1896 implemented laws with very severe penalties for slaving activities. British colonial power played a major role, enforcing treaties that prohibited slaving. The British felt that they had a mission to do this - as can be seen from this Foreign Office document of 1861:
The British action did not gain universal support. The Sultan of Zanzibar wrote to the British Consul:
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Published on BBC Religion " Ethics: 2007-01-25 This article can be found on the Internet at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slavery_1.shtml © British Broadcasting Corporation BBC Religion " Ethics |
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Posted on November 4th, 2008
Christianity equally allowed SLAVERY.
St.Paul tells how Slaves must behave with Masters etc.,
And till 20th Century Christianity used Slaves.
BBC must also do on Slavery from Christian side.
Photos have not come, may be links are not proper.