And yet people did. Look at the history of America and the Caribbean. Most men work to support themselves. Slaves are no different. In fact it is not likely to be hard as there are unlikely to be many old slaves. People do not feed their animals into retirement. I doubt they fed their slaves much past their useful working lives either.
The West managed to abolish it and did so without terrible consequences despite the fact they freed slaves much less able to support themselves - plantation workers who were usually illiterate.
Such statements are a direct insult to those ex-slaves who suffered after the emancipation. Such wishful thinking should be completely avoided in a discussion as it's a logical fallacy.
After Lincon issued the Emancipation proclamation, ex-slaves found it difficult to integrate in to the 'white' society. The white community still regarded the black people as inferior beings who did not deserve the full citizen rights. This is exactly the same mindset that Islam was trying to tackle.
Many states had different laws so not to elongate the post, I will only cite the Louisiana one.
Section 1. Be it ordained by the police jury of the parish of St. Landry, That no negro shall be allowed to pass within the limits of said parish without special permit in writing from his employer. Whoever shall violate this provision shall pay a fine of two dollars and fifty cents, or in default thereof shall be forced to work four days on the public road, or suffer corporeal punishment as provided hereinafter.
Section 3, of the Louisiana Black Code states “No negro shall be permitted to rent or keep a house within said parish.”
Section 9 declares that “No negro shall sell, barter, or exchange any articles of merchandise or traffic within said parish.”
Section 4 of the Louisiana Black Code. “Every negro is required to be in the regular service of some white person, or former owner, who shall be held responsible for the conductor of said negro.”
Section 5, No public meetings or congregations of negroes shall be allowed within said parish after sunset; but such public meetings and congregations may be held between the hours of sunrise and sunset, by the special permission in writing of the captain of patrol, within whose beat such meetings shall take place
Section 6 No negro shall be permitted to preach, exhort, or otherwise declaim to congregations of coloured people, without a special permission in writing from the president of the police jury
Section 7 No negro who is not in the military service shall be allowed to carry fire-arms, or any kind of weapons, within the parish, without the special written permission of his employers, approved and indorsed by the nearest and most convenient chief of patrol.
Section 8 No negro shall sell, barter, or exchange any articles of merchandise or traffic within said parish without the special written permission of his employer, specifying the article of sale, barter or traffic
Many ex-slaves went back to their former masters as they did not know what to do execept work in farms and plantations. This reminds me of what Tocqueville wrote in his book Democracy in America:
The Negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God alone can obliterate the traces of its existence... The moderns, then, after they have abolished slavery, have three prejudices to contend against... the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of the race and the prejudice of colour.
Charles H. Nichols comments on this quote in his book 'Many Thousand Gone: The Ex-Slaves' Account of Their Bondage and Freedom':
It is nearly a century since the Emancipation, and this baleful observation by the author of Democracy in America has, for any informed person, an irrefutable kernel of truth. The vexed question of colon and democracy has just been forced on the agenda, and the western world has at last begun to act on it. Slavery created patterns of life which are still very much in evidence in America. Furthermore, "white supremacy" propagated by the slave-owning mentality has been a cardinal principle in the American creed, little affected by logical argument and statistics on Negro achievement.
Let's not forget the white supremacist groups that sprung up after the emancipation. The "heroic" men -- "The Knights of the White Camellias," the "Ku-Klux-Klan," "The White League," "The Southern Cross" -- began their reign of terror. The cross burning in the night, the beating, shooting and torture of black people, the lynch mob were much in evidence.
Redding quotes one of their speeches in They Came in Chains:
Let every man at the South, through whose veins the unalloyed Caucasian blood courses, who is not a vile adventurer or carpetbagger, forthwith align himself in the rapidly increasing ranks of his species, so that we may the sooner overwhelmingly crush, with one mighty blow, the preposterous wicked dogma of negro equality! We must render this either a white man's government of convert the land into a negro man's cemetery.
One ex-slave said:
"The Ku Klux kept the coloured men scared. They cowed them down so that they wouldn't go to the polls ... They killed many coloured people down there."
Another one declared:
When I was a boy on the Gilmore place the Ku Klux would come along at night a-riding the coloured men like they was goats. Yes sir, they had 'em down on all fours a-crawling, and they would be on their backs. They would carry the coloured men to Turk Creek bridge and make them set up on the banisters of the bridge and then they would shoot 'em offen the banisters into the water.
Rayford Logan said in 'The Negro in American Life and Thought' that
two hundred Negroes were killed in the week before the city election of 1874
Charles writes in Many Thousand Gone: The Ex-Slaves' Account of Their Bondage and Freedom:
The civil officers of Mississippi, for example, were empowered to arrest and return to his "master" any Negro who dared to run away from his job. As a matter of fact many of the freed slaves were so desperately poor that they willingly worked for board and keep. Others were forced back into bondage. One ex-slave told a W. P. A. interviewer that he had been subjected to this form of peonage in Mississippi for forty years!
He quotes the account of the ex-slave who said:
I couldn't git away 'cause they watched us with guns all the time. When the levee busted that kinda freed me. Man, they was devils; they wouldn't 'low you to go nowhere -- not even to church. You done good to git something to eat. They wouldn't give you no clothes, and if you got wet you just had to lay down in what you got wet in . . . If you didn't work in a hurry, they would whip you with a strap that had five-six holes in it. I ain't talking 'bout what I heard -- I'm talking 'bout what I done seed . . . I done seen Mack Williams kill folks, and I done seen him have folks killed. One day he told me that if my wife had been good looking, I never would sleep with her again 'cause he'd kill me and take her and raise childrens offen her. They used to take women away from their husbands, and put with some other man to breed just like they would do cattle. They always kept a man penned up, and they used him like a stud hoss. When you didn't do right, Old Mack Williams would shoot you or tie a chain round your neck and throw you in the river ...
He further writes:
Job discrimination against the Negro is, of course, a well known story all over America. In general American employers have hired Negroes in other than unskilled and domestic work only as a last resort. The late Senator Bilbo of Mississippi expressed the sentiments of many southerners when he declared that he would sooner lose the war to Hitler than abolish restrictions against Negro employment or do away with segregation in the army. The discrimination is perpetuated not only by industry, but also by unions and even the Federal government. Myrdal insists that a tradition of human exploitation -- and now not only of Negroes -has remained from slavery as a chief determinant of the entire structure of the South's economic life. The observer is told that a great number of fortunes are achieved by petty exploitation of the poor, a practice sometimes belonging to the type referred to in that region as 'mattressing the niggers'. . . The explanation for the economic backwardness of the South must be carried down to the rigid institutional structure of the economic life of the region which, historically, is derived from slavery and, psychologically, is rooted in the minds of the people.
I could go on quoting the consequences but these above statements will serve as a good example.
Well Islam does, obviously, allow the enslavement of any free person (not just men) who have not waged war themselves, but just live in a country that is waging war on Islam. What would they do with all those slaves? Better to accept them as dhimmis and make them pay taxes. What last resort? The last resort is surely to kill them which, from my reading of Abu'l Hasan al-Mawardi's "Al-Akham as-Sultaniyyah", is permissible if the emir so orders. Perhaps I am wrong - if so please correct me.
Islaam does not allow any enslavement of any free person who doesn't wage war against Islaam.
Abu Bakr (may Allaah be pleased with him) said to Usamah bin Zayd (may Allaah be pleased with him):
See that you avoid treachery. Depart not in any wise from the right. Do not mutilate any one. You should not kill children, women or old men. Do not injure the date palm; do not burn it. Do not cut down any tree wherein there is food for men and beasts. Do not slay the flocks of herds of camels save for needful sustenance. You may eat of the meat that the men of the land may bring to you in their vessels, making mention thereon of the name of Allah. Do not molest the monks in the churches, and leave them to themselves. Now march forward in the name of Allaah. Fulfill the mission entrusted to you. May Allah protect you from sword and pestilence!
If Islaam allowed the enslavement of any individual who lives in the land of the enemy, then Abu Bakr who was the first rightly guided Caliph would have instructed and commanded it. Furthermore, Islaam enslaves the captives as a last resort. I explictly wrote in my last post to cite any Islaamic evidence if you're going to refer to the Islaamic law.
If one wants to the read the ethics of warfare in Islaam, please refer to the article produced by islamtoday where they refer to the views of some of the salaf such as Ibn 'Umar (may Allaah be pleased with him). The governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj, brought a prisoner in irons to Ibn 'Umar and ordered him to come up and kill him. Ibn Umar refused, saying: "This is not the way we do things. Allaah says: 'either generosity or ransom' and He does not say anything about killing them."
Ibn Muflih, the Hanbali jurist, writes:
"The correct position on the matter is that if an enemy soldier is captured, it becomes unlawful to kill him." This is the official position of the Hanbali School of Law. Al-Hasan b. Muhammad al-Tamimi claims that this was an ijma among the Sahabas.
It also discusses that POWs can be killed if they are guilty of crimes that warrant the death penalty.
For more information:
http://www.islamtoday.net/english//showme_weekly_2002.cfm?cat_id=30&sub_cat_id=491
Malise Ruthven writes:
Restrictions were placed on enslavement. It was forbidden to enslave free members of Islamic society, including dhimmis (nonMuslims) residing in dar al-Islam.
Marjorie Kelly writes in Islam: The Religious and Political Life of a World Community:
Because of socioeconomic considerations, however, slavery was not abolished.
John L. Esposito writes in Islam and Politics:
Slavery had long existed among the Arabs. Although the Quran commanded the just and humane treatment of slaves ( 4:40, 16:73) and regarded their emancipation as a meritorious act, the system of slavery was adopted in modified form. Only captives in battle could be taken as slaves. Neither Muslims nor Jews and Christians could be enslaved in early Islam.
Kenneth W. Morgan writes in Islam- The Straight Path: Islam Interpreted by Muslims
Slavery was customary at the time that Islam was revealed, but Islam prepared the grounds for its elimination. It encourages the emancipation of slaves by giving them the possibility of purchasing their freedom, it urges that part of zakat be given to slaves to help them free themselves, and it offers the possibility of atonement for certain sins, such as having sexual intercourse during fasting days, by releasing slaves.
Sure, no one is denying this - ultimately, when the entire world is Muslim, when there are no more kafirs to enslave. You can argue that there is some ultimate theoretical horizon there, but it is so extended that it is meaningless. So to ask the question again - can you point me to a single Islamic author or philosopher who doubted the morality of slavery and called for the institution to be banned before the West banned it? You will notice I am asking for something different.
Your premise from that statement is indeed flawed. It's based on the presumption that the Khilafah will continous defend themselves from agression and enslave every POW that they obtain. This is fallacious. Enslavement of a captive is based on the third option and the scenario whilst the first two options are to free them generously or or ransom them, respectively. As for the last point, read my previous response.
I take it we are in agreement that there was no sign of slavery being abolished in the Islamic world before 1800. How exactly would it have disappeared gradually? Surely it would depend on one thing - as long as the rate of freeing slaves out-paced the rate of enslavement and births to slave women. Can you see why that is unlikely to have happened?
Not quite.
1. It made freeing slaves a highly desirable act
2. Freeing slaves by paying expiations. For examples:
2.a When a person kills somebody by mistake, he has to free a slave.
2.b When a person makes DHIHAR on his wife, i.e., comparing the wife to the mother's back by saying to her: You are to me like the back of my mother, (i.e., unlawful for me to approach).
2.c When one makes sexual intercourse in the day of Ramadan.
2.d When a person breaks his oath, he has to free a slave.
3. Granting emancipating through al-Mukataba ((the slave buys himself from his master by paying instalments)
4. Granting freedom through the state welfare.
5. Freeing any woman with a child from her master as soon as the latter dies.
6. Freeing any slave who was beaten unfairly.
So many different ways of manumission and only one way of acquiring slaves (prisoners of war) and enslavement of POWS is still the last resort. The Prophet (Peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), after the fall of Makkah, said to its inhabitants: "You may go, for I give you your freedom."
Highly unlikely? I think not.
They obviously were a commercial commodity. There were slave markets in most big towns. Islamic literature is replete with references to them. Slaves were drawn from the Caucasus mountains for serve as, among other things, mamluks. This was a purely commercial operation. I do not know how else you sell slaves - perhaps you might like to expand on what you mean. There are not shortage of accounts of them being sold by auction. What sort of evidence do you want? You tell me what you need in terms of proof and I will provide it.
I clearly said "Slaves in the post-Islaamic era (during the era of the Prophet and his companions) were not a commercial commodity." and you responded to that by citing the examples of the later generations? Could you list examples where the sahabas enslaved free individuals and sold them like products?
Sure. Alcohol was a major industry in the pre-Islamic world. It still is in the non-Islamic world. Banning it put people out of work. What provisions were made to find those people other work or were they left to starve?
Such question doesn't even deserve an answer. I am propelled by the illogical questions that you seem to be asking. Alcohol was indeed prominent in the days of Ignorance. Those who engaged in the sale of alcohol were usually wealthy business men as opposed to poor individuals. Furthermore, not many people engaged in the selling of alcohol. Allaah (Exalted is He) gradually prohibited alcohol in 3 stages during the course of 3 years. Compare that to slavery where every household had at least one slave. This also proves my point that alcohol which was actually a minor social evil was abolished over a course of years and slavery which was a large-scale problem was given more time.
I did not say they did not kill people, I said they did not aim to do so. I like it that you quote Crone. I notice that Crone does not say they did kill the men, just that they prized their ability to do so if they wanted. I can trivially find other scholars that support me. From Philip K. Hitti, "History of the Arabs",
What Hitti is referring are the sports raids between the pastoral tribes while the quote that I have stated refers the sedentary tribes, who were larger than the pastoral tribes. An example that comes in my mind are the pagan tribes of Khazraj and the Aus who had been fighting and raiding each other for four decades.
As for the battle of Ahzab, the tribes were exhausted, not bored. It was winter, and the supply of food and water and forage was becoming more and more scarce every. Furthermore, Nu'aim bin Masood (May Allaah be pleased with him) who worked as a spy caused divisions between the besiegers. A severe windstorm accompanied by thunder and lightning hit the besiegers' camp which added cold and darkness. This put them in disarray which caused them to return to their homes. Boredom? Certainly not.
I am not interested in arguing the justification. I am merely pointing out that there was another option available. Muslims did, as it happen, destroy entire tribes and sell all the women and children into slavery.
Why did you think I cited banu Quraydha? It was the only tribe that was subjected to slavery and not to mention the fact that it was based on the Jewish Law since they wouldn't accept the Islaamic Law. Tell me, which other tribe was enslaved apart from Quraydha.
Hostile Banu Al-Mustaliq - taken captives and freed later and as a result, embraced Islaam. Banu Hawazin taken captive, and then freed.
Tell me, which tribes did the sahabas [destroy] and sell them into slavery?
I notice you have appended the word "capitalist" to that. It will take me a little while to find evidence of it, but it is not a matter of historical dispute. It is not a fictitious claim.
I am still waiting for this so-called evidence. The reason why I added the word captalist is that the plantation system in the Americas was an unique which imposed many hardship to the slaves.
Funny that. My English is perhaps not as good as it should be, but that looks like a direct comparison of Abu Ghraib with Islamic treatment.
Re-read what I wrote. I never introduced 'Christian treatment', rahter I used the phrase 'modern treatment'.
As for going round and round, I think we have clearly established that the Muslims took women as slaves. They did not fight and they were previously free.
Muslims did not enslave women that did not wage war against Islaam. For that you have to provide evidence. I will ignore your unsubstained assertions next time.
Moreover there is ample evidence that the Muslims attacked people who were not fighting for instance,
This reveals your lack of knowledge in Islamic history while you continually search for hadeeths without inquiring what it means. Not only that, but it shows your bias and total lack of analyzing the hadeeth.
Banu Al-Mustaliq was a tribe who were planning an invasion of Madinah and kill the Prophet (Peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him). The Prophet thereupon led a Muslim force and confronted them, he gave them the option to submit or chose to fight. There was a duel and after that, the tribe lost the will to fight. The Prophet captivated them and freed them which result them to enter Islaam with honour. The hadeeth you quoted explictly said imprisoned (captivated). Please tell me where it says they were enslaved.
Obviously I did not say he did. This is a book published by an Orientalist in 1912. It represents an Arab story.
It's an authentic story otherwise Leeder wouldn't have reported it.
I am not in a position to judge whether people interpret the Quran correctly or not. So I do not make that claim. What I say is that Muslims came to Africa and raided the non-Muslims for slaves and in doing so did so in the belief that what they were doing was permissible in Islam.
Concentrating on the few bad applies while negating what Islaam did for Africa is a frequently employed tactic by those who wish to attack Islaam.
Reverend Bosworth-Smith says:
“Nor as to the effects of Islam when first embraced by a Negro tribe, can there, when viewed as a whole, be any reasonable doubt. Polytheism disappears almost instantaneously; sorcery, with its attendant evils, gradually dies away; human sacrifice becomes a thing of the past. The general moral elevation is most marked; the natives begin for the first time in their history to dress, and that neatly. Squalid filth is replaced by some approach to personal cleanliness; hospitality becomes a religious duty; drunkenness, instead of the rule becomes a comparatively rare exception. Though polygamy is allowed by the Koran, it is not common in practice, and, beyond the limits laid down by the Prophet, incontinence is rare; chastity is looked upon as one of the highest, and becomes, in fact, one of the commoner virtues. It is idleness henceforth that degrades, and industry that elevates, instead of the reverse. Offences are henceforth measured by a written code instead of the arbitrary caprice of a chieftain-a step, as every one will admit, of vast importance in the progress of a tribe.”
He adds:
“Truly if the question must be put, whether it is Mohammadan or Christian nations that have done most for Africa, the answer must be that it is not the Christian. Christian travelers, with every wish to think otherwise have remarked that the Negro who accepts Mohammadanism acquires at once a sense of dignity of human nature not commonly found even among those who have been brought to accept Christianity. Here we find in central Africa, the use of decent clothing, the arts of reading and writing and, what is more, which had forbidden and to a great extent, has abolished immodest dancing and gambling and drinking, which inculcated upon the whole a pure morality, and sets forth a sublime and at the same time, a simple theology, is surely deserving of other feelings than the hatred and the contempt which some portions of our religion’s press habitually pour onto it."
Lancelot Lawton writes:
“As a religion the Mohammadan religion, it must be confessed, is more suited to Africa than is the Christian religion; indeed, I would even say that it is suited to the world as a whole.”
Islamic sites tend to take a rather restrictive view of what is or is not acceptable. Banning is inevitable. However if I argued with a Muslim about whether the early Muslims assumed that to become a Muslim meant becoming an Arab, I think the whole process would be speeded up.
Substantial criticism is one thing but repeating assertions is another thing. If you want to have a fruitful discussion with a Muslim, you have to present your argument in a factual manner. I have witnessed several non-Muslims coming on the forum and repeating the same old allegation without providing any evidence and then question why they are banned. This is not a bash and run forum, this is a factual discussion forum.
Well I am happy with that. I do not agree with all of it, but I have no problems with it as it does not contradict what I said. Clearly a freed slaves has fewer and lesser rights than free man. He has a relationship with a man who will inherit part of his estate. A lesser right. Few rights. In Islamic law, a freed man is not the same as a free man.
It totally contradicts what you have stated. I provided an explanation where it opposed your argument that they do not have the same rights. If the previous owner has to provide for the freed slave, doesn't that indicate he be his patron (wala) and inherit when he dies. It's called justice. I am still waiting for the "few rights" that you claimed in a couple posts back. A freed man is the same as a free man.
You have also ignored the discourse that I posted between two Muslims where a freed slave ruled an entire government.
I am not talking about illigitimate child but a foundling. And perhaps my words were not chosen well, but his status was not that of a free man but a freed man. Another case with a wala. It is an interesting text but no more.
An illegitimate child or a foundling, they all came under the same category and that is that the Muslim society has to provide for them. Where does it state that he becomes a freed slave? I have already provided the fiqh on foundlings and their status.
And yet we have established that a freed man does not have the same rights in inheritance as a free man. No one is disputing that. Justice is one thing. But we all agree on the lack of equality except in a general religious sense. We can all agree that in the eyes of God a man is a man is a man whether slave or not. But as a matter of law, a freedman is not the same as a free one.
I will quote myself:
This only based on the condition that the Muslim frees him/her. If the slave buys his own freedom, if he was tortured and becomes a free man or many other reason apart from a willingly manumission, then the al-wala does not apply. In addion, the word al-wala also encompasses the fact that the one who freed the slave has to provide financial support which means that he was the patron of the free slave.
So a slave who bought his freedom and is classified as a freed slave, does the wala apply? Then why seem to take the term freed man so strict as brush all freed slaves regardless how they obtained their freedom as the same. If you can't see the justice in that, then I clearly want to know your [definition] of justice.
Truth_Seeker,