Dare to Speak: Islam vs Free Democracy and Free Enterprise (I)
Section 5 (Continued):
The Koran’s view of Slavery
If you have ever had a conversation with an African American Muslim about the fact that slavery was widely practiced throughout the world from the beginning of history, and that it still goes on in some Islamic African nations today, the response you can expect is that slavery in Africa, particularly in Muslim lands, has always been different from the kind practiced in the U.S.. They will claim that slaves in Africa were treated far more kindly, like members of the family, in fact.
Rather than accept such assertions at face value, it might be worth taking some time to conduct your own investigation, by finding out what the Koran and Hadith have to say on the subject, and then learning how those scriptures have been applied by Muslims throughout history. You will then be in the position to decide for yourself. As mentioned in the Introduction to this series, the University of Southern California hosts a website that contains the entire Koran, in three translations, and a large body of the Hadith. It also contains a search function for all of these texts, to help you find every place where the terms “captives,” “slaves,” “black,” or “Ethiopian” are used. Check out http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/reference.html to start your own investigation.
What follows are some examples of the Koran’s guidance on slavery. Note that the first set of verses comes from the translation by N.J. Dawood, which is written in modern English and is easier to understand. Yusuf Ali’s version is shown in the footnotes: [1]
[23.1-6] DAWOOD: Blessed are the believers, who are humble in their prayers; who avoid profane talk, and give alms to the destitute; who restrain their carnal desires (except with their wives and slave-girls, for these are lawful to them) …
[2.178] PICKTHAL: …Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the murdered; the freeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female.
These verses are particularly opposed to what Westerners normally consider justice. The first set indisputably puts its stamp of approval on raping slave girls, who would have no recourse in a legal system that says their rapes “are lawful.” Verse 2.178 debases slaves even further. It states that if a Muslim kills another person’s slave, then one of that Muslim’s slaves has to die.
Some Muslims interpret verse 2.178 more liberally: instead of killing the slave, the aggrieved slaveholder may instead take a slave from the offender. While less bloody, the slave’s lack of control over his or her own life is nearly as profound.
In a world where slaves are mere property, not human beings, these would sound like reasonable penalties. In fact, this sort of law has a history that precedes Islam by millennia. For example, the Code of Hammurabi, which is the earliest known legal code, [2] prescribes the following:
- Law 229: If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.
- Law 230:
If it kills the son of the owner, the son of that builder shall be put to death.
- Law 231:
If it kills a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave for slave to the owner of the house.
To modern Western eyes, this ancient legal tradition appears barbaric because it requires an innocent person to be killed or removed from everything he or she knows. According to the legal code outlined in the Koran, slaves have no right to their own lives. They can be killed or confiscated to punish their owners for the owners’ crimes.
But what if a free man kills his own slave? Malik’s Muwatta provides the solution:
Malik’s Muwatta
- , Book 43, Number 43.21.15a…Malik said, “There is no retaliation held against a free man by a slave for any injury. The slave is killed for the free man when he intentionally murders him.
The free man is not slain for the slave, even if he murders him intentionally
- …”
The next verse reveals that Infidel slaves fare even worse than Muslim slaves, for while a Muslim slave may be freed under certain circumstances, an Infidel slave is the lowest of the low, with no hope of release except through conversion.
[4.92] YUSUF ALI: Never should a believer kill a believer; but (if it so happens) by mistake, (compensation is due): If one (so) kills a believer, it is ordained that he should free a believing slave, and pay compensation to the deceased’s family, unless they remit it freely. If the deceased belonged to a people at war with you, and he was a believer, the freeing of a believing slave (is enough). If he belonged to a people with whom ye have treaty of mutual alliance, compensation should be paid to his family, and a believing slave be freed…
The Hadith confirms this policy in verses such as: [3]
Malik’s Muwatta
- , Book 38, Number 38.6.9:…
one of the Ansar came to the Messenger of Allah… with a black slave-girl of his.
- He said, “Messenger of Allah,
I must set a slave free who is a mumina. [4]
- If you think that she is mumina, I will free her.”
The Messenger…questioned her, “Do you testify that there is no god but Allah?” She said, “Yes.” “Do you testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah?”
- She said, “Yes.” “Are you certain about the rising after death?” She said, “Yes.”
The Messenger…said, “Free her.”
Further insights into the nature of slavery under Islam come from John Illife’s Africans: the History of a Continent, which provides vivid images of what slavery was like in the ancient Islamic world. If Africans treated their slaves like family, as claimed, then the following reports paint a damning image of African family life:
- One guess is that the Saharan routes (including that from Darfur in the eastern savanna) carried between 4,000 and 7,000 slaves northwards each year at this time [the 1300s]. North African traders said that many died from want and thirst on the two-thousand-kilometre desert crossing and that survivors were worth between five and eight times as much in Tripoli as in Borno…
Most slaves came from non-Islamic
- , often stateless
peoples to the south
- , whom cavalrymen raided each dry season. A song said to honour an eleventh-century ruler of Kanem celebrated his brutality:
[5]
- The best you took (and sent home) as the first fruits of battle:
- The children crying on their mothers you snatched away from their mothers:
- You took the slave wife from a slave, and set them in lands far removed from one another.
[6]
As mentioned before, slavery is not merely a matter of history in the House of Islam; it is being practiced today, in places like Mauritania and Sudan. According to a University of Pennsylvania summary of one of its recent publications, called War and Slavery in Sudan, by Jok Maduk Jok, a Dinka tribe member whose people are targeted by Arab slave traders: [7]
- Slavery has been endemic in Sudan for thousands of years. Today the Sudanese slave trade persists as a complex network of buyers, sellers, and middlemen that operates most actively when times are favorable to the practice…the present day is one such time,
as the Sudanese civil war
- that resumed in 1983
rages on between the Arab north and the black south.
- Permitted and even encouraged by
the Arab-dominated Khartoum government
- , the state military
has captured countless women and children from the south and sold them into slavery
- in the north to become concubines, domestic servants, farm laborers, or even soldiers trained to fight against their own people. Also instigated by the Khartoum government, Arab herding groups routinely take and sell the Nilotic peoples of Dinka and Nuer.
- For Arab traders “the nation of the blacks,” or Bilad Al-Sudan, has traditionally been the source of slaves. When the slave trade developed into corporate enterprise in the nineteenth century, the slave-takers articulated distinctions based on race, ethnicity, and religion that marked the black, infidel southerners as indisputably inferior and therefore “natural” slaves. Such distinctions have survived…even during those periods when slavery has not been authorized by the government. When it is authorized,
as it is today (due to the implementation of Shari’ah)
- , slavery then becomes the extreme form of this systemic oppression.
At this point, Islam’s perspective of black enslavement should also be clear.
While Free Democracy has brought about the end of slavery in the West, Islam tends to reinvigorate it by making it morally acceptable. In fact, Muslims are beginning to re-import the practice of slavery back into the United States, one hundred and forty years after it was outlawed, as the following article reveals:
Egyptian pair gets prison for enslaving girl
Associated Press, The Herald (Monterey County, CA), Oct. 24, 2006
SANTA ANA (AP)
- – An Egyptian man and his ex-wife were sentenced Monday for enslaving a girl from their home country for two years while forcing her to work under harsh conditions for no pay.
- Abdel Nasser Youssef Ibrahim, 45, was sentenced to three years in prison, and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd El Motelib, 43, received a 22-month sentence. U.S. District Judge James V. Selna ordered the pair to pay restitution of $76,173 to the girl.
- Ibrahim and Motelib each pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy, holding a person in involuntary servitude through force or coercion, obtaining labor through unlawful force or coercion and harboring an illegal alien.
- Prosecutors said the two will serve their sentences before being deported to Egypt for overstaying their visas.
- The pair brought the girl into the United States in August 2000 when she was 10, and ordered her to clean their Orange County home and take care of their five children while she lived in squalid conditions
- …
- “The young victim in this case was subject to inhumane conditions that included both physical and verbal abuse.” United States Attorney Debra Wong Yang said in statement.
- Prosecutors said the girl received no compensation during the nearly two years that she worked for the couple. They said she was forced to sleep in the garage, had her passport taken away and wasn’t allowed to play outside.
- …
- The girl will be allowed to remain in the United States.
Slaves are like family in the Islamic world? Some family!
Is Islam a Religion of Peace?
We have already seen how Westerners misunderstand Islam’s use of the term “religious toleration.” Another important misunderstanding comes from the claim that “Islam means peace.” According to Understanding Islam and the Muslims, published by The Islamic Affairs Department of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Washington DC:
- The Arabic word
“Islam”
- simply means “submission,” and derives from a word (salaam) meaning ‘peace.’ In a religious context it
means complete submission to the will of God [Allah].
This definition of Islam is quite different from what is frequently broadcasted by the popular press. Marmaduke Pickthal, in his translation of the Koran, probably provides the most accurate definition when he translates Islam as “the Surrender,” which agrees well with the Saudi embassy’s “submission.”
While Muslims, Christians, and Jews would all agree that submission, or surrender, to the will of God brings peace, a quick review of the Koran’s guidance regarding non-Muslims, and the methods it prescribes to defend itself, leads to the conclusion that Islam’s use of “surrender” is more military than spiritual. It has as much to do with peace as George Orwell’s Ministry of Love[8] had to do with Love.
What is the basis of Islam’s predatory philosophy? It is the belief that Jihad against Infidels, while bloody itself, will bring about world peace under Islam. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Those who have studied Hitler’s career know that his plan to exterminate the Jews and other “inferior races” was not simply an act of sadism. He honestly believed that it was an unpleasant necessity that would ultimately bring about a better world.
To help Muhammad bring about his utopian vision, he rewarded his Muslim foot-soldiers with special exemptions from eternal consequences. Numerous hadiths tell how these exemptions gave Muslims free license to steal, rape, and kill:
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 54, Number 445: [9]…The Prophet said, “[The angel] Gabriel said to me, ‘Whoever amongst your followers die without having worshipped others besides Allah, will enter Paradise (or will not enter the (Hell) Fire).’” The Prophet [was] asked, “Even if he has committed illegal sexual intercourse or theft?” He replied, “Even then.”
Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 80i: [10]…Allah’s Apostle said, “Allah welcomes two men with a smile; one of whom kills the other and both of them enter Paradise. One fights in Allah’s Cause and gets killed. Later on Allah forgives the killer who also gets martyred (In Allah’s Cause).”
Muhammad went beyond rewarding his martyrs; he actually condemned to Hell those Muslims who manage to preserve themselves from martyrdom:
Sahih Bukhari
- , Volume 8, Book 76, Number 428:…The Prophet said,
“Allah will not accept the excuse of any person whose instant of death is delayed till he is sixty years of age.”
A curious similarity between Muhammad and the terrorist leaders of today is that, while he called others to martyrdom, he himself practiced self-preservation. Muhammad lived until age 63, which, according to this hadith, would imply that Allah would not accept him. However, as this book will show repeatedly, Muhammad’s rules only applied to others, not to himself.
One of the lasting lessons from the awful days of Nazi Germany was that utopian ends do not justify their cruel means. Leaders with utopian visions often find it easy to shed the blood of those who stand in their way, and substitute loyalty for ethics as their source of power.
One can reach a deeper understanding of Islam’s true nature by studying the character of Muhammad. In Pickthal’s introduction to The Glorious Koran, he states: [11]
- …The number of campaigns which he [Muhammad] led in person…is twenty-seven, in nine of which there was hard fighting. The number of the expeditions which he planned and sent out under other leaders is thirty-eight.
This was quite an impressive military achievement for someone whose rein lasted only eleven years (from 622 to 632), and whose votaries claim that Islam is a religion of peace.
Pickthal goes on to relate a long and somewhat exaggerated list of accomplishments, including “raised woman from the status of chattel to complete legal equality with man,” and “made universal human brotherhood a fact and principle of common law.”
What is this universal human brotherhood built on? A hadith from Malik’s Muwatta tells us:
Malik’s Muwatta
- , Book 15, Number 15.7.24:…“Shall I not tell you the best of your deeds,…better for you than giving gold and silver, and
better for you than meeting your enemy and striking their necks?”
- They said, “Of course.” He said, “
Remembrance…of Allah.
- ”
While an objective student of Islamic history might be skeptical of Pickthal’s panegyrics, his facts come from the ancient Islamic historians themselves. The historical record confirms that Muhammad was a great warrior, conqueror, lawgiver, and absolute dictator. As Pickthal says, [12]
- [Muhammad] personally controlled every detail of organization, judged every case and was accessible to every suppliant.
While Muslims may claim that Muhammad believed in mutual consultation with others, [13] he remained the ultimate authority for all decisions within his state. Whenever he was faced with a particular challenge, a revelation would happily provide the answer. Once this answer was provided, Muhammad’s followers faced a choice: comply with it, or be accused of Hypocrisy or Apostasy, a Hudd crime punishable by death.
Islam is clearly not a religion of peace. It is a framework for establishing power and conquest.
REFERENCES FOR SECTION 5 (Continuation):
[1] [23.1] YUSUF ALI: The believers must (eventually) win through, –
…
[23.5] [those] who abstain from sex,
[23.6] except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess, – for (in their case) they are free from blame,
[2] Written approximately 2500 B.C.
[3] Similar hadiths can be found in Malik’s Muwatta, Book 38, Numbers 38.6.8, 38.6.10, 38.6.11, & 38.6.12.
[4] Feminine form of mumin, the Arabic term for Believer (in Islam). Also referred to as mu’mina.
[5] Africans: the history of a continent, by John Iliffe, Cambridge University Press, 1995, Chapter 5, pages 76.
[6] Ibid, but this quote itself comes from H.J. Fisher in CHA, vol. III, page 273.
[7] War and Slavery in Sudan by Jok Maduk Jok, 2004, University of Pennsylvania Press (summary found at www.upenn.edu/pennpress)
[8] 1984, by George Orwell, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1949, page 1.
[9] Similar hadiths can be found in Sahih Bukhari, Volume 2, Book 23, Number 329, Volume 3, Book 41, Number 573, Volume 7, Book 72, Number 717, Volume 8, Book 74, Number 285, Volume 8, Book 76, Numbers 450 & 451, and Volume 9, Book 93, Number 579.
[10] Similar hadiths can be found in Sahih Bukhari, Book 20, Numbers 4658, 4659, and 4660.
[11] The Glorious Koran (London, 1930), by Muhammad Marmaduke William Pickthal, Introduction, page xxvi.
[12] Ibid.
[13] This principle is known as shura or sura.
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