His Attitudes and Pronouncements Regarding Slavery
The circumstances where Muhammad reproved the beating of a slave who had transgressed against his or her master were those where the beating itself nullified the benefit to the master of the slave's punished independent charitable deed or otherwise because it created the circumstances of a blasphemy, not because of inherent abhorrence of aggression per se or of its effect upon the recipient. He condemned unjustified cruelty toward slaves even to the extent that for a master to slap her or his slave without just cause could only be atoned by freeing the slave. However, to his view the permission to beat a slave, still was broader than the analogous permission afforded to men with respect to free women under their authority. Generally he exhorted muslim believers to treat slaves with equanimity, and he commended the spirit of the act of manumission by a master equally to the degree that he damned the initiative of slave who might take their own freedom. To his very end he affirmed divine sanction for the authority of masters over slaves and he urged obedience to authorities - be they even peculiar foreign slaves - exercising Islamic rule.
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