40 Hadiths on Social Justice
31 / 41
Hadith #30 – Slavery in Islam
Sh. Omar Suleiman discusses epistemology vs. historical reality when it comes to slavery.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. and online as well. Alhamdulillah, this has been a subject, or this class is now getting into the home stretch. We're finally in the last ten lectures when we're talking about social justice or the 40 hadith on social justice and drawing our own Islamic paradigms on this subject. And last week we also had a special session where we spoke about Bilal ibn Mubah. May Allah be pleased with him in light of the new movie that's hit theaters around the country and the renewed discussion about who Bilal was. So then this question comes up. The question is that how can we celebrate Bilal and celebrate all of these stories of liberation and freedom when there appears to be slavery in Islam. And so sometimes you have very simplistic declarations about slavery and then sometimes you have very nefarious targeted attacks against Islam that try to associate Islam uniquely with slavery. And then sometimes you really have to have this discussion about what it is that Islam allowed and what it did not allow and what is polemical versus what is historical. And that's probably the most important debate that has to take place here. So I have a really long lecture online about slavery in Islam. You can find it on YouTube if you have the time to watch it. Then I do recommend you watch it where I break down some of the technical issues in much detail. But tonight inshallah I want to purposely keep this under 30 minutes. And I'll start off with some questions. These are some questions for you all to entertain. Is slavery wrong? Does Islam condemn slavery? What happened with Libya? If you all saw the recent news about Libya in particular, the disgusting images that came out of Libya where you had slave trades and there was a whole CNN bust on Libya. And how can Islam be a
religion of justice while still seemingly tolerating slavery? So I'm going to make a statement from now inshallah ta'ala. And it is the statement that the lecture is titled by in Islam there is no slavery except to the most high. Can I prove that? I will prove that and I'm going to repeat it one more time. In Islam there is no slavery except to Allah except to the most high. And you might say well that sounds apologetic and that's not grounded in historical reality. So let's back up and force ourselves to not operate in the constructs that have been given to us and force ourselves to not operate in a post Atlantic slave trade western construction of what riqa is in Islam and particularly how that relates to the whole entire question of slavery. And let's go to a hadith of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam that proves that statement and then we'll address the historical issues with that statement and how we reason with that statement. The hadith is narrated by Abu Hurayra radiallahu ta'ala anhu. It's narrated that the messenger of Allah salallahu alayhi wa sallam said and it's a hadith in Sahih Muslim. la yaqulanna ahadukum abdi wa amati kullukum abidullah wa kullu nisaikum imaullah walakin liyakul ghulami wa jariyati wa fataya wa fatati. The hadith is in Sahih Muslim. The Prophet peace be upon him said la yaqulanna ahadukum abdi wa amati. Let not any one of you say my slave, my slave or my slave girl. Let not any one of you say my slave or my slave girl. All of you are the slaves of God. kullukum abidullah. All of you are the slaves of Allah. Instead say that this is my young lady, my young man and the Prophet salallahu alayhi
wa sallam, these are hard terms to describe by the way, jariyati wa fataya wa fatati which would refer to the age or the distinction in terms of age of a young man or a young woman as opposed to the status of a person. The point being the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam says do not say my slave, my slave girl. Instead all of you are the slaves of Allah. Meaning in terms of status there exists no slavery in Islam in the true sense except to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. There are circumstances and then there is your status as it relates to your position. You are standing before Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. So how do we then deal with the concept of rik which is apparent slavery in the Islamic tradition which is a mechanism that dealt with captivity particularly post war and then particularly how to deal with those captives after they came in post war or post battle. Abu Dhar radiallahu ta'ala anhu, he narrates that the Messenger of Allah salallahu alayhi wa sallam said describing quote unquote slaves or people that were brought into that condition that the Prophet peace be upon him said, ikhwanukum ja'alahumullahu fityatan tahta aydikum. faman kana akhuhu tahta yadihi fal yuta'imuhum min ta'amihi wal yulbisuhu min libasihi wala yukallifuhu ma yaglibuhu fa inkallafahu ma yaglibuhu fal yu'inhu. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said that they are merely your brothers that Allah has placed under your care. They are merely your brothers whom Allah has placed under your care. So whoever has a brother of his under his care, whoever has a brother of his under his care, let him feed him what he eats, let him dress him with what he dresses himself and do not burden
him beyond his scope and if you place upon that person, if you place upon him a duty that he cannot bear, then make sure that you assist him. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam also said whoever kills the one who has been placed under his care, then we will kill him. Whoever kills the one who was placed under his care, then we will kill him. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam also said there is no expiation for hitting the one the raqeeq, the one who has been placed under your care except for expiation, except for freedom. I'm sorry, there is no expiation, there is no kaffarah for hitting the one who has been placed as a raqeeq with you, as under your care in that captivity except for freeing him. And there is a narration of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam where he saw a man that was beating his slave and the Prophet peace be upon him as he saw him beating his slave he said Allah is more capable of doing that to you. Allah is more capable of doing that to you. And then he let him go and the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said to him that had you not freed him, then you would have certainly entered into hellfire. All of this to mention what? Take a step back. When the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said do not say to your servant or to the one who has been placed under you as a raqeeq and I'm going to translate that term inshallah shortly, as a raqeeq, do not say my slave or my slave girl. Did the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam mention that because it's disrespectful or not dignified or because it's not a true representation of that person's state. It's not a true representation of that person's state and in fact how did the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam deal with that? He says because all of you, kullukum abidullah,
you are all the slaves of God. Meaning the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam from a value perspective did he not break down entirely the barrier that would exist between the quote unquote master and the quote unquote slave. Yes or no? You guys don't want to answer the question. The barrier has been broken. So what does this mean? The term slavery, the term abd in particular, which means slave in Islam and by the way that should give you some pause if you use that word to describe a human being in any other context except to describe our relationship collectively with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Islam appealed immediately to the slaves of society, to those that were the most downtrodden. When we went through the lecture of Bidad and if you haven't listened to it then please listen to it. The first seven to show their Islam to publicly come out as Muslims, five of them were slaves, were people that belonged to that class. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam was informed very early on that this is where victory will come from. From these people that have been oppressed by the inequities that existed in their society and the companions understood Islam as a religion that was emancipatory, a religion that was liberating. And how do we have proof of that? Set the scene. Ribi'i ibn Amir, may Allah be pleased with him, shows up in Persia in front of the ruler, Rustam. Ribi'i ibn Amir is the ambassador of Umar ibn Khattab radiyaAllahu ta'ala anhum. And as Ribi'i ibn Amir walks in, and he makes a scene by the way, Rustam says to him, who are you people? The first way he describes himself, innaAllaha abta'athana li nukhrijal ibad min ibadatil ibad. Allah has sent us
that we may take people out of slavery to other slaves, to slavery to the Lord of all slaves. Linookhrijal ibad min ibadatil ibad. Ila ibadatil rabbil ibad. To take people from slavery to other slaves, to slavery to the Lord of all slaves. Wamin dhiqil dunya ila sa'atil akhira. And from the constriction of this world to the expanse of the hereafter. Wamin jawlil adhyan ila adlil islam. And from the injustices of all other systems and ways of life to the justice of the religion of Islam. Did Ribi'i understand something of this faith that was liberating, that was emancipatory, that had now put everyone in the same standing before their creator? Yes or no? Yes. Okay, good. You guys aren't going to answer me, are you? Another hadith. Salman al-Farisi radiallahu ta'ala anhu, as he was describing Salman the Persian, as he was describing his state as he came into Islam. And Abu Huraira radiallahu ta'ala anhu narrates that Salman was describing all of the times that he switched hands in slavery. And Salman described his situation min rabbin ila rabb. From Lord to Lord or Master to Master. And Abu Huraira objected and said that he did not know that the Prophet peace be upon him forbade one from saying about that person, about the slave owner, Master or Rabb or Lord. Instead the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam said min mawla ila mawla. From a mawla, mawla is the one who is in charge, the one who has been entrusted to another one who has been entrusted and another one that is in charge. All of this is to say what? The term slavery is loaded with all sorts of connotations and from an
operating perspective is functionally basically useless. Why? Because America today is probably the biggest slave holder nation in the world. It's just now called mass incarceration and it's not called slavery anymore or chattel slavery anymore. The term is so functionally useless that to project that term on Islam because of the institution that existed in a war context of rizq and to say that that applied to Islam and therefore all of the notions that have been associated with slavery in our minds because of the transatlantic slave trade somehow get projected. There is no way, there is no human way possible for us to separate what we have been exposed to as slavery our entire lives and the term slavery even when it's associated with the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam and his companions. We can't separate between those two things. I could sit here and tell you they were not allowed to be called slaves. You were not allowed to dress them any differently than you dressed yourselves. You were not allowed to hit them. You were not allowed to feed them anything less than what you fed yourself. You had to go into muqataba, some sort of an agreement to free them. You couldn't overburden them. They had access to the state and could complain about. I could go over all of these different things and quote all of the historians that talked about how that institution, how quote unquote slavery existed in the prophetic context and none of it would erase the association in our minds with the transatlantic slave trade and brutality and racialized slavery and everything that comes with that term. So what does that mean? There is a crucial difference and clearly the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam was highlighting something when he objected to the usage of that term. There is obviously first and foremost that we are all slaves to Allah and our worship
and our unconditional obedience that we worship no partners besides him and that there is absolute tawheed that that monotheism realizes itself in many different ways. But there is a crucial difference between a raqeeq and a abd. Raqeeq is the term that would be used to describe a quote unquote slave within the Islamic context. Abd means slave. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam prohibited that term to be used or did not allow for that term to be used to describe anyone in accordance with their situation and their circumstances instead saying that we are all the slaves of Allah. So again the goal of this lecture is to just first and foremost take a step back and I am going to encourage you to look up a particular author by the name of Rudolph Ware. Professor Rudolph Ware out of the University of Michigan. You can actually just YouTube Islam and Slavery and you will find a short clip of Rudolph Ware. He wrote the walking Quran on abolitionism in Islam. He has written quite frequently about Muslim slaves in Africa. Muslim slaves as they came here to the new world though he is an Africanist. He doesn't focus much on the Muslims here in America but he has written on Muslims that were placed in that situation and particularly in the Gambian context and other contexts. And I will just quote what he said. Basically the point that he makes is that this is a polemical debate not a historical debate. And that 19th and 20th century Western post-enlightenment aims to denigrate African and Muslim society. We see a shift in our historiography in the way that the Muslim world is presented in the United States. The way that Africa is presented in Western post-enlightenment literature is all with the aim of denigrating African and Muslim societies. Why? Because the goal
was to make European liberation synonymous with liberation and the East synonymous with barbaric regressiveness. So the benevolence is all in the West and that's where the conclusion of abolitionism came from and it all came from here and the East is still backwards. And that's why there's a quote as well from the Harriet Tubman Institute that the overwhelming majority of slavery historiography is written by Europeans and Americans. According to Michael Zusk who wrote historiography and research problems of slavery and the slave trade in a global historical perspective said most of the religious rhetoric that has stemmed from Western historians has been nothing more than Christian globalist pamphlets directed against quote unquote Islamic slavery. But then someone says well wait a minute there are two conflicting issues here. One of them is that Islam has found its way into liberation theology for the last several centuries going all the way back to Edward Blyden and Africa to the Garveyites here in the United States to Malcolm X or whatever it may be. Islam was associated with being a slave breaking religion. So then how do you then reckon with what appears to be a contradiction. That's the first thing. Then the second thing is now you have images that come out of Libya. You have images that come out of ISIS putting Yazidis in chains. Boko Haram which I know that a lot of people would like to think that Boko Haram targets non-Muslims but it actually targets primarily Muslims as well as non-Muslims as does ISIS primarily target Muslims and non-Muslims. You say there is a contradiction. So who's really representing Islam? Who's telling the truth about Islam? Is there really a standardized position on Islam? So first fact, people can find inspiration from conventional
Islamic sources against slavery. People can find inspiration from conventional Islamic sources against slavery more so than any other religious text. There is enough in there an explicit anti-racism tradition, enough about how to deal with those conditions. If we focus on exploitation and inequality as opposed to the term itself, there is enough in there to fight against slavery. But then someone says, well what about Muslim countries? Mauritania was one of the last countries to abolish slavery. Saudi Arabia was one of the last countries to abolish slavery. So that must mean Muslims are behind, right? Well Tunisia abolished slavery in 1846, 19 years before the 13th Amendment was ratified here in the United States. So is Tunisia more Islamic or is Mauritania more Islamic or do they both not really represent our tradition in a wholesome sense, period? And is it unfair to associate the practice of Islam with some of these countries and to make that the distinction? The next question, so are you a slavery apologist? There is a difference between saying focus on the conditions, not the term, which has proved functionally useless, to downplay abuse and aggression in the past and saying focus on the condition to recognize the abuse and the aggression in the present. I'm going to say that again. There's a difference between saying you can't use the term slavery because it doesn't make sense or the term has become functionally useless to downplay the past and to downplay abuse and aggression in the past, no matter who did it, and saying the term is functionally useless to highlight what is truly slavery in the present context. To say that there is actually more exploitation, human exploitation and abuse and inequity today than there ever has been in the history
of the world. It's all, you know, if you think about trafficking, human trafficking, I hate to break it to you, Texas, we always lead in horrible things, alright? So almost a third of human trafficking in the United States takes place here in Texas, almost a third of it. So we have an extraordinary amount of slavery here in Texas, okay? We're just talking about trafficking, something that would easily fall into the categories of slavery. And we talk about the conditions as opposed to the term and how it's used. And how functionally useless the term has become. Watch the movie 13th. I'm serious about that, by the way. That should be like mandatory homework for everyone to watch the movie 13th, which talks about mass incarceration as a tool of slavery here in the United States. We have more prisoners in this country than any other nation in the world, possibly in the history of the world, than any civilized nation in the history of the world. And how do you deal with the religious references and the texts? Well, first and foremost, let's admit that there is a double standard, that no other religion or religious figure is treated like Islam and the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, in this discussion. That we don't scrutinize Leviticus 25, 44 to 46, which says, however you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you, you may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. Or Exodus 21, verses 20 to 21, when a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. Does this mean that we now have to tear up the Bible
and say, the Bible's regressive and we've been messing with Islam the whole time, let's focus on Christianity. No, that means there's an obvious double standard. That the Quran and the Sunnah are being held to a wildly different standard, and it's ironic considering that there is not a single verse in the Quran that encourages slave trading. Or a single Hadith of the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, that encourages slave trading. At the most, at the most, you could say, that Islam did not outright abolish slavery, but you cannot question that it made great reforms to the institution as it existed around the world. But there is a double standard, and you should point out that double standard. Not say that this is a problem in everything. The only thing the Quran says, from a, as far as the institution is concerned, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la says, wa ma adraaka mal-aqaba fak-ku raqaba. Shall I not tell you what the straight path is? It is to free the neck of a slave. That is what the Quran says, as far as encouragement is concerned, and things of that sort. So point out the double standard. That Islam is treated unlike any other religion. Our scripture is treated unlike any other scripture. That the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, who died having freed every slave he ever owned, is treated differently than the patriarch, Abraham, Ibrahim, alayhi wa sallam, and King Solomon, Suleiman, alayhi wa sallam, and all of the prophets throughout the Old Testament. Somehow he gets blamed, alayhi wa sallam, though he died having freed every human being that ever came into his home. But somehow he can be vilified, while we can still openly praise other prophets and say this is where the problem actually lies. And then modern day Islamophobia continuing to play to the same tune that tries to associate Muslim and Muslimness with backwardness, and everything Western with progress. Very easy example to point out the double standard. When the images came out of Libya
that made me sick to my stomach and anyone sick to their stomach of slave trade. This is not some Islamic group, this is slave trade that's historically taken place in Libya, it's racialized. One thing you might have noticed is that many of the slaves were actually reading Quran. Not because their masters were forcing them to do so, but because they're Muslims that are in those slave trades as well. But here's the thing. When that's put out there, and what you hear on CNN or whatever it is, that it was a CNN report, which by the way was a good report because it exposes a tragedy in Libya and we should be fighting that slavery in Libya. I just wanna make a point here. When you hear Arabic being spoken to the Western ear, there they go again, the Muslims and slave trade. But you ignore the pygmy population in Congo, which is born into slavery just because they're pygmies. You see the point? So Libya gets a hashtag, the pygmies in Congo, unheard of. Why, because it doesn't serve the Islamophobic machine which tries to make Islam and Muslims uniquely slave oriented when there is nothing that has ever surpassed the transatlantic slave trade in terms of brutality, and there is nothing to prove anything unique about Muslims and Islam in regards to this slavery. So the relevance of this to the religious lens is that religions would also have to be examined, or they have to be examined for their overall views on human rights and exploitation to gain a complete picture of the subject because there is no way possible to really come to an actual description of slavery because the term is so problematic because it covers up so much in terms of modern day slavery, over 30 million people living in modern day slavery and trafficking and the sweatshops and mass incarceration and forced marriages and whatever they may be, debt slavery, all of these things that are explicitly prohibited in Islam.
But to distract from all of that, you focus on this. And it throws Muslims into a faith crisis when the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wasallam, made it very clear in those ahadith. And by the way, I was having this conversation with Imam Zaid Shaker, may Allah bless him. You know, we were talking, and we were saying, why even use the term, why even use the term to describe riq, if that association has become so strong, why not focus on the conditions, focus on exploitation as a means, again, not of whitewashing the past, but of dealing honestly with the present. In the Muslim world today, you see the way foreign workers are treated in Saudi Arabia and in many different places, right next to the haramein. I don't care if Saudi Arabia officially abolished slavery. That's slavery, that's a problem. We have to deal with that with the same dedication and vigilance that we would deal with anything, whether it's whatever country it may be. That's right next to the haram, right next to the Kaaba, the way that foreign workers are treated, and they are enslaved, truly. And I have to deal with mass incarceration in the United States, with the same dedication as if people were still being held in quote unquote slavery today. And by the way, there was an article, subhanallah, just in the Washington Post yesterday, because if Jim Crow is not slavery, and if the current conditions in the United States are not slavery, then the Washington Post put out an article yesterday, and I quote the title, no progress for African Americans on home ownership, unemployment, and incarceration in 50 years. No progress for African Americans on home ownership, unemployment, and incarceration in 50 years. It's a telling article, it is empirical data, that when we talk about post-racial America, and we talk about post-civil rights movement, and think that we've made progress, in many ways we've actually regressed. And mass incarceration is at the top of that list,
and we have to deal with that honestly. We have to talk about technical emancipation versus true emancipation, and what that actually means. Now, just lastly here, on modern day slavery, particularly when it comes to Islam, and when it comes to ISIS. ISIS is uniquely deviant in many different ways. Uniquely deviant in many different ways. They're so extreme and violent that Al-Qaeda had to write stuff about them. Like Al-Qaeda says about ISIS, you guys are too crazy for us, okay? So that's how crazy they are. They are uniquely deviant in many different ways. But here's the thing, no other Islamic movement in the world with political undertones, no matter where it falls on the spectrum of orthodoxy, has called for a return to slavery pre-ISIS. No one. So if you talk about Hizb ut-Tahrir, which actually has been calling for khilafah and the establishment of the khilafah. If you read in Shakhsiya Islamiya, Taqiuddin Nabhani says, so there does not remain even one situation in which enslaving occurs. Therefore, Islam has abolished slavery, and there are no situations where slavery would return in a future khilafah. So Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is talking about the return of khilafah, never envisioned bringing back slavery, and in fact, has an entire section within Shakhsiya Islamiya. Sayyid Qutub, who obviously is one of the founders of the Ikhwan, of the Muslim Brotherhood, wrote that, and concerning slavery, that was when slavery was a worldwide structure, and which was conducted amongst Muslims and their enemies in the form of enslaving of prisoners of war. And it was necessary for Islam to adopt a similar line of practice until the world devised a new code of practice during war other than enslavement. And he goes on to point out that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam never even took captives unless the opposing army took captives, that captives would not even be taken unless it was the practice of the opposing army to take captives. So lastly, there is a consensus among scholars, Islamic scholars, against the perpetuation of slavery
and against its reappearance in the present day. And this was, of course, the 2014 letter to Baghdadi, which was written by Muslim, which was signed by Muslim scholars around the world. It says, no scholar of Islam disputes that one of Islam's aims is to abolish slavery. For over a century, Muslims, and indeed the entire world, have been united in the prohibition and criminalization of slavery, which was a milestone in human history when it was finally achieved. After a century of Muslim consensus on the prohibition of slavery, you have boiled this. You have resurrected something that the Sharia has worked tirelessly to undo and has been considered forbidden by consensus for over a century. Indeed, all the Muslim countries in the world are signatories of anti-slavery conventions. So this was signed by Muslim scholars from around the world in the letter to Baghdadi in 2014. By the way, Mississippi did not ratify the 13th Amendment until 2013. Just letting you guys know. So talking about conditions, talking about trafficking, dealing with these things honestly as they exist today, not allowing our outrage to be directed, not allowing by media or by agenda-driven politics, not allowing ourselves to fall victim to epistemology rather than historical reality, and our present-day reality is extremely important when we're talking about these things. Ethical consumerism is also a Muslim issue as well. And all of these things are socioeconomic motivations rather than religious motivations, and we have to deal with them as such, b'idhnillahi ta'ala. So again, I have a long lecture online on slavery. There are a lot of authors that have written on slavery. We have papers at Yaqeen on slavery, on the terminology of slavery, as well as I think one of the most beautiful papers that we've had by Sister Margarita Rosa on du'as of the enslaved. How slaves in this country, our heritage as Muslims in this country, our collective heritage as Muslims in this country
are the 30-plus percent slaves that were brought to these shores that built this country, and that privately memorized the Quran and circulated zakah amongst themselves, even though it wasn't obligated. And subhanallah, some of the research we've been doing at Yaqeen, actually finding some of those documents of their written prayers and their written supplications. Those are our ancestors here in this country. So we have to look at it, inshallah ta'ala, from that lens and focus on exploitation, all of, and inequality, and abuse and oppression, all of which operates outside of the Western epistemology on this subject. So I tried to speak really fast so I could get that out of the way.
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