Slavery and Religion - Islam

Islam

Main articles: Islam and slavery and Arab slave trade See also: Muhammad's slaves

In certain circumstances, Islam allows for slavery. Such slaves are to be able to purchase or acquire their freedom in various ways. The prophet Muhammad had several slaves himself. He himself said one of the best deeds is to free a slave. In total his household and friends freed 39,237 slaves. One of them bore him a son, who died as an infant. The slavery endorsed by the Qur'an limited the source of slaves to the children of two slave parents and non-Muslims captured in war. The Qur'an provides for emancipation of a slave as a means (or in one case, a requirement of) demonstrating remorse for the commission of certain sins. Proclamations of emancipation and repudiations of participation in slave trafficking did not occur in Muslim lands until after the Christian-European Colonial era - as late as 1962 in Saudi Arabia, 1970 in Oman and Yemen, and 1981 in Mauritania.

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Famous quotes containing the word islam:

    “Sooner or later we must absorb Islam if our own culture is not to die of anemia.”
    —Basil Bunting (1900–1985)

    “Awareness of the stars and their light pervades the Koran, which reflects the brightness of the heavenly bodies in many verses. The blossoming of mathematics and astronomy was a natural consequence of this awareness. Understanding the cosmos and the movements of the stars means understanding the marvels created by Allah. There would be no persecuted Galileo in Islam, because Islam, unlike Christianity, did not force people to believe in a “fixed” heaven.”
    —Fatima Mernissi, Moroccan sociologist. Islam and Democracy, ch. 9, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. (Trans. 1992)

    “During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
    —Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)