Ginny et al,

It is interesting to note that the author deliberately ignored the role of
Arab (Muslim) slave traders, across the Sahara before and even after the
Western European slave emancipation. It is true that more slave were
transported to the Arab world than the West, and yet there are not many
black Arabs as are American. There is a theory that they were castrated to
prevent any relationship with their 'sacred' wives.
Islam has to take social and political situations in considering, in
formulating rules for mankind, according this author, which I refuse to
accept.
I believe that Islam has been perfectly clear on the brotherhood and
equality of children of Adam, and who ever fails to apply or interpret the
true meaning, is at a loss, and nobody is excused from this test. Not even
the messengers of God! Mohammed (SAW) had no slave, so anybody who ever
treats another like a slave (in effect assuming God's position in relation
to mankind) will be judged according to those actions. It is common
knowledge that slavery is still being practised in the Arab world even
today. Not prisoners of wars, but beccause they are black, period! In
Mauritania, our close neighbour.
We should be brave and read the koran's original texts and weigh them
objectively, and stop our attempts to justify worldly wrongs and the
wrongs of our fore fathers.
Peace be upon everyone of you!

Kejau















> Hello, below is the cut and paste of the article at the link:
>
> http://www.sunnipath.com/resources/Questions/qa00000711.aspx>
>
> Just in case anyone may have had any trouble clicking on the link.
>
>
> Slavery: How is it that Islam, a religion inspired by God for the good
> of humanity, allows slavery?
> Answered by Fethullah Gulen
>
> How is it that Islam, a religion inspired by God for the good of
> humanity, allows slavery?
>
> adview
>
> There are historical, social and psychological dimensions to this
> question, which we must work through patiently, if we are to arrive at
> a satisfactory
> answer.
>
> First of all, it is useful to recall why the institution of slavery is
> thought of or remembered with such revulsion. Images of the brutal
> treatment of slaves,
> especially in ancient Rome and Egypt, provokes sorrow and deep
> disgust. That is why even after so many centuries, our conception of
> slaves is of men and
> women carrying stones to the pyramids and being used up in the
> building process like mortar, or fighting wild animals in public
> arenas for the amusement
> of their owners. We picture slaves wearing shameful yokes and chains
> around their necks.
>
> Nearer modern times there is the practice of slavery on an enormous
> scale by the Western European nations; the barbarity and bestiality of
> this trade beggars
> all description. The trade was principally in Africans who were
> transported across the oceans, packed in specially designed ships,
> thought of and treated
> exactly like livestock. These slaves were forced to change their names
> and abandon their religion and their language, were never entitled to
> hope for freedom,
> and were kept, again like livestock, for hard labouring or for
> breeding purposes-a birth among them was celebrated as if it were a
> death. It is difficult
> to understand how human beings could conceive of fellow human beings
> in such a light, still less treat them thus. But it certainly
> happened: there is much
> documentary evidence that shows, for example, how ship-masters would
> throw their human cargo overboard in order to claim compensation for
> their loss. Slaves
> had no rights in law, only obligations; their owners had absolute
> rights over them to dispose of them as they wished-brothers and
> sisters, parents and
> children, would be separated or allowed to stay together according to
> the owner's mood or his economic convenience.
>
> After centuries of this dreadful practice had made the West European
> nations rich from exploitation of such commodities as sugar, cotton,
> coffee, they abolished
> slavery-they abolished it, with much self-congratulation, first as a
> trade, then altogether. Yet the Muslim regions had also known
> considerable prosperity
> through the exploitation of sugar, cotton, coffee (these words in
> European languages are of Arabic origin), and achieved that prosperity
> without the use
> of slave labour. More important, let us also note, when the Europeans
> abolished slavery, it was the slave-owners who were compensated, not
> the slaves-in
> other words, the attitude to fellow human beings which allowed such
> treatment of them had not changed. It was not many years after the
> abolition of slavery
> that Africa was directly colonized by the Europeans with consequences
> for the Africans no less terrible than slavery itself. Further,
> because the attitude
> to non-Europeans has changed little, if at all, in modern times, their
> social and political condition remains, even where they live amid the
> Europeans
> and their descendants as fellow-citizens, that of despised inferiors.
> It is barely a couple of decades since the anthropological museums in
> the great capitals
> of the Western countries ceased to display, for public entertainment,
> the bones and stuffed bodies of their fellow human beings. And such
> displays were
> not organized by the worst among them, but by the best-the scientists,
> doctors, learned men, humanitarians.
>
> In short, it is not only the institution of slavery that causes
> revulsion in the human heart, it is the attitudes of inhumanity which
> sustain it. And the
> truth is, if the institution no longer formally exists but the
> attitudes persist, then humanity has not gained much, if at all. That
> is why colonial exploitation
> replaced slavery, and why the chains of unbearable, unrepayable
> international debt have replaced colonial exploitation: only slavery
> has gone, its structures
> of inhumanity and barbarism are still securely in place. Before we
> turn to the Islamic perspective on slavery, let us recall a name
> famous even among Western
> Europeans, that of Harun al-Rashid, and let us recall that this man
> who enjoyed such authority and power over all Muslims was the son of a
> slave. Nor is
> he the only such example; slaves and their children enjoyed enormous
> prestige, authority, respect and (shall we say it) freedom, within the
> Islamic system,
> in all areas of life, cultural as well as political. How could this
> have come about?
>
> Islam amended and educated the institution of slavery and the
> attitudes of masters to slaves. The Qur'an taught in many verses that
> all human beings are
> descended from a single ancestor, that none has an intrinsic right of
> superiority over another, whatever his race or his nation or his
> social standing.
> And from the Prophet's teaching, upon him be peace, the Muslims learnt
> these principles, which they applied both as laws and as social norms:
>
> Whosoever kills his slave: he shall be killed. Whosoever imprisons his
> slave and starves him, he shall be imprisoned and starved himself, and
> whosoever
> castrates his slave shall himself be castrated. (Abu Dawud, Diyat, 70;
> Tirmidhi, Diyat, 17; Al-Nasa'i, Qasama, 10, 16)
>
> You are sons of Adam and Adam was created from clay. (Tirmidhi,
> Tafsir, 49; Manaqib, 73; Abu Dawud, Adab, 111)
>
> You should know that no Arab is superior over a non-Arab and, no
> non-Arab is superior over any Arab, no white is superior over black
> and no black is superior
> over white. Superiority is by righteousness and God-fearing [alone].
> (Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 411)
>
> Because of this compassionate attitude, those who had lived their
> whole lives as slaves and who are described in ahadith as poor and
> lowly received respect
> from those who enjoyed high social status (Muslim, Birr, 138; Jannat,
> 48; Tirmidhi, Manaqib, 54, 65). 'Umar was expressing his respect in
> this sense when
> he said: 'Master Bilal whom Master Abu Bakr set free' (Bukhari,
> Fada'il al-Sahaba, 23). Islam (unlike other civilizations) requires
> that slaves are thought
> of and treated as within the framework of universal human brotherhood,
> and not as outside it. The Prophet, upon him be peace, said:
>
> Your servants and your slaves are your brothers. Anyone who has slaves
> should give them from what he eats and wears. He should not charge
> them with work
> beyond their capabilities. If you must set them to hard work, in any
> case I advise you to help them. (Bukhari, Iman, 22; Adab, 44; Muslim,
> Iman, 38¨C40;
> Abu Dawud, Adab, 124)
>
> Not one of you should [when introducing someone] say 'This is my
> slave', 'This is my concubine'. He should call them 'my daughter' or
> 'my son' or 'my brother'.
> (Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, 2, 4)
>
> For this reason 'Umar and his servant took it in turns to ride on the
> camel from Madina to Jerusalem on their journey to take control of
> Masjid al-Aqsa.
> While he was the head of the state, 'Uthman had his servant pull his
> own ears in front of the people since he had pulled his. Abu Dharr,
> applying the hadith
> literally, made his servant wear one half of his suit while he himself
> wore the other half. From these instances, it was being demonstrated
> to succeeding
> generations of Muslims, and a pattern of conduct established, that a
> slave is fully a human being, not different from other people in his
> need for respect
> and dignity and justice.
>
> This constructive and positive treatment necessarily had a consequence
> on the attitudes of slaves to their masters. The slave as slave still
> retained his
> humanity and moral dignity and a place beside other members of his
> master's family. When (we shall explain how below) he obtained his
> freedom, he did not
> necessarily want to leave his former master. Starting with Zaid bin
> Harith, this practice became quite common. Although our Prophet, upon
> him be peace,
> had given Zayd his freedom and left him a free choice, Zayd preferred
> to stay with him. Masters and slaves were able to regard each other as
> brothers because
> their faith enabled them to understand that the worldly differences
> between people are a transient situation-a situation justifying
> neither haughtiness
> on the part of some, nor rancour on the part of others. There were, in
> addition, strict principles enforced as law:
>
> Whosoever kills his slave, he shall be killed, whosoever imprisons his
> slave and starves him, he shall be imprisoned and starved himself.
> (Tirmidhi, al-Ayman
> wa l-Nudhur, 13)
>
> Beside such sanctions which made the master behave with care, the
> slave also enjoyed the legal right to earn money and hold property
> independently of his
> master, the right to keep his religion and to have a family and family
> life with the attendant rights and obligations. As well as personal
> dignity and
> a degree of material security, the Islamic laws and norms allowed the
> slave a still more precious opening-the hope and means of freedom.
>
> Human freedom is by God, that is, it is the natural and proper
> condition which must be regarded as the norm. Thus, to restore a human
> life, wholly or partly,
> to this condition is one of the highest virtues. To set free half of a
> slave's body has been considered equal to saving half of one's own
> from wrath in
> the next world. In the same way to set free a slave's whole body is
> considered equal to assurance of one's whole body. Seeking freedom for
> enslaved people
> is one of the causes for which the banner of war may be raised in
> Islam. Muslims were encouraged by their faith to enter into agreements
> and contracts
> which enabled slaves to earn or be granted their freedom at the expiry
> of a certain term or, most typically, on the death of the owner.
> Unconditional emancipation
> was, naturally, regarded as the most meritorious kind, and worthiest
> of recognition in the life hereafter. There were occasions when whole
> groups of people,
> acting together, would buy and set free large numbers of slaves in
> order to obtain thereby the favour of God.
>
> Emancipation of a slave was also the legally required expiation for
> certain sins or failures in religious duties, for example, the
> breaking of an oath or
> the breaking of a fast: a good deed to balance or wipe out a lapse.
> The Qur'an commands that he who has killed a believer by mistake must
> set free a believing
> slave and pay the blood-money to the family of the slain (al-Nisa',
> 4.92). A killing has repercussions for both society and the victim's
> family. The blood-money
> is a partial compensation to the family of the victim. Similarly, the
> emancipation of a slave is a bill paid to the community-from the point
> of view of
> gaining a free person for that community. To set free a living person
> in return for a death was considered like bringing someone back to
> life. Both personal
> and public wealth were expended to obtain the freedom of slaves: the
> examples of the Prophet, upon him be peace, and of Abu Bakr are well
> known; later,
> especially during the rule of 'Umar bin 'Abd al-'Aziz, public zakat
> funds were used for this purpose.
>
> Alas, there are, even among Muslims themselves, people who feel the
> need to somehow 'disprove' the worth of Islam, especially on
> socio-political issues.
> In reality they feel this need because they have been more or less
> seduced by Western values, even though these values are only formal,
> theoretical utterances
> of law and principle and not, not by any means, lived realities. Such
> people do not go among the wretched and poor of the so-called 'third
> world' and ask
> them about the merits of Western values as they are practised. Rather,
> they listen to an account such as we have given of the practised
> reality of Islamic
> values and claim, on purely theoretical grounds, that Islam is lacking
> in the best principles. This is what they say:
>
> 'It is true that Islam has commended humanity in the treatment of
> slaves, and encouraged most forcefully their emancipation. We can see
> from the history
> of many different peoples in the Islamic world that slaves quickly
> integrated into the main society and achieved positions of great
> prestige and power,
> some even before they gained their freedom. And yet, if Islam regards
> slavery as a social evil, why did the Qur'an or the Prophet not ban it
> outright?
> There are, after all, other social evils which pre-existed Islam, and
> which Islam sought to abolish altogether-for example, the consumption
> of alcohol,
> or gambling, or usury, or prostitution. Why does Islam, by not
> abolishing slavery, appear to condone it?'
>
> Until the evil of the European trade in black slaves, slavery was
> largely a by-product of wars between nations, the conquered peoples
> becoming the slaves
> of their conquerors. In the formative years of Islam, no reliable
> system existed of exchanging prisoners of war. The available means of
> dealing with them
> were either (i) to put them all to the sword; or (ii) to hold them and
> attend to their care in prison; or (iii) to allow them to return to
> their own people;
> or (iv) to distribute them among the Muslims as part of the spoils of war.
>
> The first option must be ruled out on the grounds of its barbarity.
> The second is practicable only for small numbers for a limited period
> of time if resources
> permit-and it was, of course, practised-prisoners being held in this
> way against ransom, many so content with their treatment that they
> became Muslims
> and changed sides in the fighting. The third option is imprudent in
> time of war. This leaves, as a rule for general practice, only the
> fourth option, whence
> followed the humane laws and norms instituted by Islam for what is, in
> effect, the rehabilitation of prisoners of war.
>
> The slave in every Muslim house had the opportunity to see at close
> quarters the truth of Islam in practice. His heart would be won over
> by kind treatment
> and the humanity of Islam in general, especially by the access the
> slave had to many of the legal rights enjoyed by Muslims, and,
> ultimately, by getting
> his freedom. In this way, many thousands of the very best people have
> swelled the numbers of the great and famous in Islam, whose own
> example has then
> become a sunna, a norm, for the Muslims who succeeded them-imams such
> as Nafi', Imam Malik's sheikh, and Tawus bin Qaisan, to name only two.
>
> The reality is that in Islam it is overwhelmingly the case that being
> a slave was a temporary condition. Unlike Western civilisation, whose
> values are so
> much in fashion, slavery was not passed down, generation after
> generation in a deepening spiral of degradation and despair, with no
> hope for the slaves
> to escape their condition or their status. On the contrary, regarded
> as fundamentally equal, the slaves in Muslim society could and did
> live in secure
> possession of their dignity as creatures of the same Creator, and had
> steady access to the mainstream of Islamic culture and civilisation-to
> which, as
> we have noted, they contributed greatly. In the Western societies
> where slavery was widespread, particularly in North and South America,
> the children of
> the slaves, generations after their formal emancipation, remain for
> the most part on the fringes of society, as a sub-culture or
> anti-culture-which is
> only sometimes tolerated, and mostly despised, by the still dominant
> community.
>
> But why, our critics will ask, when the Muslims were secure in their
> conquests did they not grant emancipation wholesale to former captives
> or slaves? The
> answer has, again, to do with realities not theories. Those former
> captives or slaves would not have either the personal, psychological
> resources or the
> economic resources needed to establish a secure, dignified
> independence. Those who doubt this would do well to examine the
> consequences upon the slaves
> in the former European or American colonies of their sudden
> emancipation-many were abruptly reduced to destitution, rendered
> homeless and resourceless
> by owners who (themselves compensated for their loss of property) no
> longer accepted any kind of responsibility for their former slaves. We
> have already
> noted the failure of these ex-slaves to enter upon or make a mark in
> the wider society from which they had been so long excluded by law.
>
> By contrast, every good Muslim who embraced his slave as a brother,
> encouraged him to work for his freedom, observed all his rights,
> helped him to support
> a family, to find a place in the society before emancipating him,
> might well be pleased with an institution that opened to him a means
> of pleasing God.
> The example that comes first to mind: Zayd bin Harith who was brought
> up in the Prophet's own household and set free, who married a
> noblewoman, who was
> appointed as the commander of a Muslim army which included many of
> noble birth. But one might swell the list of examples to many
> thousands if one had the
> space.
>
> Ah yes, our critics will say, it may be so, but now there are
> exchanges of prisoners if there are wars, now the institution of
> slavery does not exist, so
> are not the Islamic injunctions, however good, an irrelevance? No,
> indeed. There is nothing in Islam whose origin is in the commands and
> guidance of the
> Qur'an which can ever become irrelevant. Rather, we would say to these
> critics: open your eyes, study by what subtle means wars are now
> conducted, by what
> cunning devices whole nations are now conquered; how they are reduced
> to a state of absolute slavery (which is yet not called slavery) and
> made to devote
> their whole energies, indeed to dedicate the lives of their children
> for generations to come, to sustain their masters (who are yet not
> called masters)
> in a lifestyle of unbelievable affluence. We say, study how national
> currencies are bought and sold, how impossible sums of money are lent
> on terms of
> extraordinary brutality, not in order to help the poor nations, but in
> order to permanently entrap them in a state of dependence. To those
> who say, now
> there is no slavery, we say look into the faces of the earth's poor
> peasants, striving to grow (in an increasingly barren soil)
> commodities which are not
> food for themselves but luxuries for the rich, and only if they have
> grown enough of these, have they some hope of buying something to
> eat-but there are
> still millions of others too poor to be poor peasants, who live upon
> mountains of urban rubbish, earn from it, eat from it. If you study
> the expressions
> of such people, locked in endless, fruitless toil, you will understand
> that slavery is not an evil that Western civilisation has eradicated,
> rather one
> which Western civilization has ably disguised and distanced from itself.
>
> Let no person, at least let no Muslim, claim that mankind has nothing
> now to learn from Islamic values about how to deal with the problem of
> slavery. On
> the contrary, we have everything to learn. How urgent, then, is our
> need to pray for guidance of God lest we persist in error, for His
> forbearance lest
> we persist in arrogance, for His help in finding a sure way to end the
> domination of those who do not know compassion except as a
> fine-sounding word.
>
> (c) Author, 2002-2004. Except for fair usage, no part of this
> publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
> transmitted in any form or by
> any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
> otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright owner. Fair
> usage is defined as
> sharing printed or electronic copy with others through email or
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>
> On 7/31/05, Ginny Quick <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Ginny Quick saw this page on SunniPath and thought you should see it.
>>
>> *** Message ***
>>
>>
>>
>> *** Slavery: How is it that Islam, a religion inspired by God for the
>> good of humanity, allows slavery? ***
>>
>> <http://www.sunnipath.com/resources/Questions/qa00000711.aspx>
>>
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