What was Islamic Slavery like?

Answer 1

Answer 1

There is nothing called Islamic slavery. Islam called for limiting slavery and freeing slaves for Muslims to be rewarded and forgiven by Allah (or God and same God in Christianity and Judaism).

Answer 2

Islamic Slavery is not a homogenous institution and is not a past institution. It is a growing and changing institution across the Islamic World (currently with nearly 2-5 million slaves across the Islamic World) and has been a part of the Islamic World from the days of Mohammed to the present. Due to prohibitions on enslaving Arabs made by Caliph Omar, slaves were often brought from outside of the Islamic Empire to perform requisite tasks. Whether or not such slavery is in accord with the values of Islam is something for theologians to decide (just as is the case for other religions), but the slaves do exist and the history of slavery in the Islamic World should not be ignored. Additionally, there is no Qur'anic verse that limits or seeks to abolish slavery on its own merits. Please see the Related Question below for more of the theological details.

For the sake of clarity, all of the categories of slaves refer to individuals who are not compensated financially for the work that they perform and who are compelled to work on fear of pain or death. This does not refer to individuals who make small wages, insignificant wages, or who are compensated through some sort of assistance agreement. It also does not refer to individuals who work abroad and send home remittances. It does not refer to domestic servants or other financially compensated personal assistants. And finally, it does not refer to people who voluntarily overwork themselves to earn extra money or while earning money to gain favor of a boss or a client.

There have historically been four general categories into which slaves have served in the Islamic World: military slaves, domestic slaves, labor slaves, and sexual slaves.

Military enslavement is less common now than historically. The Mamluks were the first major corps of slaves in this general type of enslavement. They were male Kipchak Türks 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. During their time under the Abbassid yoke, they went to war numerous times on behalf of the Caliphate's wars against neighboring Islamic, Christian, and Polytheist enemies. Many Mamluks died for their masters. Today, this continues in the form of abductions, most commonly in Northern Africa, of young men who are then compelled to serve as mercenaries, such as the mercenaries who defended Libyan Dictator Gadhafi during the recent Arab Spring War in Libya.

Domestic Slaves were much more common and remain the majority of current slaves in the Islamic World. A domestic slave was usually female and her duties would be very similar to what we would expect of a domestic servant who is paid. However, the slave was given no compensation, minimal amounts of food to eat, no protection from the abuse that her master might bring upon her, and no right to leave her master. Often, domestic slaves were raped and their children became additional slaves in the master's property or the master chose to raise them as his own child without the domestic slave's involvement. Historically, the slaves came from various different regions, but most commonly from the Slavic areas of the southeastern Europe and the northern parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Today, most domestic slaves are internally displaced persons who are kidnapped from their towns of birth and sold to families who live hundreds of miles away with no idea of how to get home.

Labor slaves were never as popular in the Islamic World as they were in the New World, but the job was roughly the same. Men from Sub-Saharan Africa, primarily, were put through the rigors of hard work and enslavement. They were (and Africans today remain) the subject of racist treatment while they were slaves. 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. Today, labor slavery is prevalent in some areas of southern Egypt and northern Sudan where government oversight is minimal and the field production (for cotton or grain) needs to be high. In Uzbekistan, there is a corvée labor system that compels all young men to harvest cotton for no pay during the harvest season. There is also an increasing use of labor slaves in factories, with the garment sector being reserved for enslaved women and more physical production for enslaved men. (It is worth noting that most factory workers are not slaves, just individuals with very low compensation, but there is an increasing minority of unpaid workers or bonded workers which should be considered labor slaves.)

Sexual slaves have become increasingly popular as the legal prohibitions on slavery made domestic slaves more difficult to have in the large cities. Sexual slavery is when women are forced into prostitution, either through abduction or being sold by family members. Some women have as many as ten "jobs" per day, but most service fewer clients. They are mistreated by their masters and denied medical care or protection. Sexual prostitution is popular in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India (a Non-Muslim neighbor) under the Chukri System whereby a master will loan someone money or property at an extraordinary interest rate and then take a woman into prostitution as collateral. Since the debt is effectively unpayable, the woman is perpetually a slave. While having illicit sexual relations is forbidden in Islam, this does not stop innumerable Muslims from engaging in the enterprise.

To read more on Islamic Slavery, please see the Related Links below, including details on the situation in Egypt and the number of slaves worldwide.

Answer 3 (Hints on Answer 2 above)One should be aware of the definition slavery before going into details. Slavery means:

1. The state of one bound in servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household.

2. The condition of being subject or addicted to a specified influence.

3. A condition of hard work and subjection

According to the above definition of slavery,

• If an enterprise owner in an Islamic country hires foreign labor to run his/her enterprise, this could not be called labor slaves. Those hired people are given wages, paid to visit their home country, and allowed to transfer money to their home country. They are not labor slaves. What is mentioned under the statistics of "The Global Slavery Index" doesn't take into account the low standards of living in many Asian and African countries and consider the law paid labor as slaves; compared to labor working in Scandinavian and other European countries; which is completely wrong methodology.
• Those who are hired to run a house and take care of children in the house could not be called domestic slaves, they are called master house. Again, they are given wages, paid to visit their home country, and allowed to transfer money to their home country.
• sexual slavery is not related to Islamic world. It is strictly forbidden; by law; in any Islamic country to practice sex outside licit marriage. In some South Eastern countries, they provide this service to Westerners in return of money in special prostitution houses. This has no relation to what claimed as sexual slaves as claimed Islamic slavery.
• Regarding military slaves, this is; as mentioned above; is historical and was available only when slavery was widely spread as a trade slavery allover the world including the American and European countries. It is currently not existing in any Islamic country.
• Regarding labor slaves who work on cotton fields in Egypt, it is a matter of social solidarity that the school pupils; during their vacation; work together in supporting their parents and farmers in collecting the cotton for only two or three weeks annually. It is by no means slavery.
• One more point, the Caliph Omar prohibited enslaving of any human (Arab or non Arab; Muslim or non Muslim); per Qur'an and prophet Muhammad teachings; and he didn't prohibit enslaving of only Arabs as mentioned above.
• I wonder which authentic reference that mentioned the information given above as "It is a growing and changing institution across the Islamic World (currently with nearly 2-5 million slaves across the Islamic World) and has been a part of the Islamic World from the days of Mohammed to the present". I am very curious to know the distribution of this 2.5 million slaves in Islamic countries.
• I wonder from where the information above that "Today, labor slavery is prevalent in some areas of southern Egypt and northern Sudan". I am Egyptian and never have in Egypt this labor slavery. So, from where it was got this false information mentioned in Answer 2. Kindly, spreading lies is not accepted in this site. Evidences on the above mentioned information need be presented. These evidences should be based on authenticated resources not biased ones.
• From the above, it is very clear that there is nothing called Islamic slavery. It is a Propaganda encouraged by suspicious centers through media to wage falsified impressions against Islam religion per Quran God revelation to prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).