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Slavery was common when Hazrat Muhammad (SAW) started preaching Islam. As Islam teaches equality of all human beings, the early converters to Islam were mostly the slaves and the poor. Islam does not like slavery. But it was not possible in that society to announce it Haram. However, the Holy Prophet (SAW) commanded the Muslims to treat the slaves kindly, give them the same food which the master eats, don't be cruel to them, preferably set them free. Hazrat Zaid (rau) was a slave set free by Hazrat Muhammad (SAW). Hazrat Bilal (RAU) was also a slave bought and set free by Hazrat Abu Bakr (RAU). Both of them enjoyed more respect than many of the other Companions (RAU).

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10y ago
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  • However, slavery is no longer existing. Islam; per Quran God revelation to prophet Muhammad; started while slavery was a normal trade system in Africa, Europe, the USA, and many countries of the world.
  • Islam rules are encouraging limiting slavery by God rewarding of those who free their slaves in compensation of their sins. The another rule was that if one gets a child through sex with a slave woman, then both the child and his/her mother are set free.
  • Slaves were treated kindly and with tolerance. It is narrated that prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) encouraged treating slaves as human and with kindness, modest, support and cooperation.
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Slavery was a huge and shameful part of Islamic History. This is not to diminish the Ancient Slavemaking practices nor does it diminish the tragedy of the European Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but as those are not contingent on the Spread of Islam, they are not discussed in full.

There was never an endemic Islamic Abolitionist Movement prior to Western Abolitionism in the 19th century. In fact, Saudi Arabia had legalized slavery until the 1960s and illegal slaves exist in Sudan, Mali, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia among others. While the Qur'an notes that freeing a slave is an honorable thing to do, there is no compulsion to actually do it. In the 640s Caliph Omar issued one of the few Anti-Slavery edicts in Islamic history. It freed all Arab slaves and forbade the taking of new Arab slaves. This resulted in a fundamental change in the history of slavery. Prior to this, slaves were either former prisoners of war or civilians inside the state who were not the dominant ethnicity. Muslims now went abroad, hundreds of miles from the countries under their control to find non-Arabs that could be brought back to the Islamic Empires as slaves in order to skirt Omar's edict. This was what led to three types of slavery that coincided with the rise of the Islamic Caliphates: Slavic Slave Trade, Mamluks, and the Trans-Saharan African Slaves.

There was a very profitable trade with the Byzantine Empire and the Slavic Fiefdoms in the Balkans and the Ukraine that brought Slavs to the Islamic Caliphates. This is actually the genesis of the modern world "Slave", as a derivative of "Slav" which were moved and resold in the Islamic World. Slaves would be purchased in slave-markets in Europe and trekked to the Middle East for resale.

Mamluks were Kipchak Turks and Circassians from what is now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. They were captured by Arab soldiers, enslaved, and brought to Baghdad in Iraq. They were converted to Islam and then formed into military units as a literal slave army in the service of the Abbassid Caliph. The Mamluks eventually turned their weapons against the Abbassid establishment and declared their own empires several times from the 11th century onwards.

The Trans-Saharan Slave trade in Islamic Empires was incredibly developed. Islamic States pioneered many of the quintessential parts of what would define the European Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in the 16th-19th centuries. This included long-distance travel between the slave acquisition and the market, the use of large competitive marketplaces in urban centers to auction slaves, the development of legal doctrines about what rights owners had to transfer slaves to other owners, and, contrary to Islamic teachings and modern science, that Blacks had a more bestial nature, making them better-suited to the rigors of hard work and enslavement. It should not be surprising that the Spanish and Portuguese (who had lived under Islamic States for centuries) were the first European States to re-create a complex enslavement system. Unlike the Europeans, though, Arab Muslims saw fit to castrate all of their male African slaves so that they could not form a large Black population in the Arab countries. African female slaves were often sexually abused by their masters.

Islamic Apologists often make that claim that Muslims throughout history opposed slavery, but there was no Caliph (other than Omar) who made a fatwas opposing slavery, the slave trade, or the expansion of slavery within Islamic Empires prior to the 19th centuries. Islam is just as guilty as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism in supporting slavery and giving it legal sanction historically. The difference is that while Christian support for slavery in history is well known, as is Christian-based Abolitionism, the history of slavery and the expansion of the slave trade among other religious groups is not often discussed.

Currently, most Muslims oppose slavery and the Islamic Establishment generally opposes slavery (most of the major Muslim imams would condemn it if asked, but do not talk about it much, just as most Christian priests). However, illegal slavery in African Islamic countries is growing and major Imams are not speaking out against this injustice. Compare how often the repression of the Palestinians is discussed when there are just over 4 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to how often Imams talk about the 200,000 slaves in Mauritania (one-fifth of the Mauritanian population), the 200,000 slaves in Sudan, the 800,000 slaves in Niger, the 200,000 slaves in Mali - including some which had been emancipated and then re-enslaved during the Azawad War, and the innumerable hundreds of thousands in the Chukri slave trade system in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

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Q: How were Muslims supposed to treat slaves according to Islamic law?
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Related questions

Why can't Muslims be slaves?

Many of the Africans taken to the Americas as slaves were Muslims, so Muslims can be (or at least were) slaves.


Islamic law prohibits Muslims from being slaves?

Yes In addition, Islam, per Quran revelation to prophet Muhammad, when started instructed many rules to limit and free the already present slavery and slaves.


What type of slaves were the Salem slaves?

MUSLIMS


Why did Arabs slave traders never sell Muslims or fellow Arabs into slavery?

This is incorrect. It is common propaganda in the Arab World to say that Muslims never enslaved other Muslims but this is patently untrue. While the majority of slaves were from non-Muslim areas that had been captured by Muslim soldiers as booty, there was a relatively common practice of stealing local children and calling them slaves. This was not an Islamic practice, but a pre-Islamic Arab practice that many Arabs chose not to curtail when Islam brought Arab customs to a much larger population base.


What are the views from the koran on kidnapping?

Kidnapping is always wrong for any reason, but Islam allows non muslims and apostates to be taken and kept in slavery;Muhammad had many female slaves all taken as "booty",and even married one whose husband had just been slaughtered . Muslims engaged in Jihad can take hostages to be held for ransom for the benefit of the umma. Non Muslims are not protected under Islamic sharia unless given special dispensation or are "dhimmi" living under Islamic rule .In these cases the dhimmi are protected from death at the hands of the Islamic state if they pay the Jizya and obey the rules of dhimmitude. According to the Quran all Muslims face the consequences of their actions on the Day of Judgement,the infidel are condemned to hell.


Were slaves from Africa Muslims?

Assuming that you are talking about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (the taking of African Slaves to European Colonies in the Americas) -- roughly 10-20 million people, most of those slaves were Animists whose religions would have resembled Voodoo or Santeria. There were small minorities of Muslims, but most European slave traders, especially the Spaniards and Portuguese, avoided ports in northern Africa where most slaves were Muslim due to their hatred of Muslims.If you are referring to the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (the taking of African Slaves to the Islamic Empires in North Africa, Spain, and the Middle East) -- roughly 5-10 million people, these groups were almost exclusively Non-Muslim, specifically because it was against Islamic Law to enslave fellow Muslims. Again, these people were likely Animists whose religions would have resembled Voodoo or Santeria. However, most of the African Kingdoms from which the Arab Slavers would have purchased these slaves would have been Islamic countries. (This is in contrast to the ports for Europeans which usually put the Europeans in contact with Non-Islamic African Kingdoms.)


On what bases did slavery in the Americas and slavery in the Islamic regions differ?

Slavery in the Americas and slavery in the Islamic regions had many differences. In the Americas, slavery was largely racial, while in the Islamic regions, it was more focused on social class and religion. In the Americas, slaves were taken from Africa and the Caribbean, while in the Islamic world, slaves were drawn from a wide variety of places, including Africa, Asia, and Europe. In terms of legal status, slaves in the Americas were treated as property, while in the Islamic world, slaves had a certain degree of legal protection and could be freed by their owners. Slaves in the Americas were not allowed to own land or property, while in the Islamic world, slaves could own land and property. In terms of labor, slaves in the Americas were used primarily for labor on plantations and in mines, while slaves in the Islamic world could be used for a variety of jobs, including domestic labor, military service, and government service. In terms of religion, slaves in the Americas were denied religious freedom and were forced to convert to Christianity, while in the Islamic world, slaves could practice their own religion. In terms of treatment, slaves in the Americas were subject to horrific abuse and brutality, while in the Islamic world, slaves were generally treated with more respect and kindness. Slaves in the Americas were not allowed to marry or have children, while in the Islamic world, slaves were allowed to marry and have children. Finally, in terms of punishment, slaves in the Americas were subject to the death penalty for minor crimes, while in the Islamic world, punishments were much less severe and certain crimes could be punished with fines.


What was one result of colonization of Islamic world by European powers?

Many black Muslims were captured and sold as slaves. and millions perished in slow agony this was a holocaust with far greater dimensions than killing of the Jews by Nazis


Who were the first Muslims to come to the US and when did they come?

African Slaves


When slaves was liberated?

slaves werent supposed to be literate during slavery so they only became literate when they escape from the south


According to the Dred Scott decision slaves were?

According to the decision, slaves were considered property, not people.


Why is there so many foreign workers in Arabia?

There are two kinds of foreigners in Arabia: 1) those with high technical skills, mainly non-Muslim Westerners, and 2) Muslims from the rest of the Islamic world who will work cheap. It's a tense situation, as the foreign Muslims are considered and treated as little better than slaves and many religious fanatics oppose the presence of "infidels" in their country.