Selling Of Slave Women
Who said slavery is categorically evil or reprehensible ? The conditions placed by Islam prohibited Muslims from abusing a slave and ensured equal treatment as far as material needs were concerned. The only way to enslave a person was through war and this too was only applicable on Non-Muslims. The institute of slavery ensured the losing side didn’t perish completely. It also served to reduce the spread of prostitution and other elicit practices which the defeated people were forced to undergo when they suffered a loss in a war. In the present age, people employ maids who have to live away from their children and they only pay a minimum wage. This is worse than slavery in my understanding. As the slave owners fed, clothed, married, provided shelter to the slave they owned. They were also responsible for taking care of the slave’s children. The present day wage slavery, IMF debt induced slavery is million times worse as it destroys an entire nation whereas slavery in the past preserved the defeated tribe from perishing. Look at the history of Muslims, you will find slaves rising to the position of a king and establishing their own empire. The Mamluks provide an excellent example. The Sultanate of Women in the case of Ottoman Empire is another excellent example of slave girls rising to a position of power and influence. We should really examine our bias and see if the world is really a better place right now or not. I have come to the conclusion that the time of the Prophet (pbuh) (his community) was the best of mankind. You should also step back and think for a moment. Morality comes from God and he instilled the sense of good and evil in us. We are in no position to judge the acts of the Prophet (pbuh) or the acts approved by the Prophet (pbuh) and the commands of God by our subjective, changing , historical cultural criteria. Islam was prepared to abolish to institute of slavery if the international community came into an agreement to stop the practice of slavery. Suppose Islam suddenly prohibited slavery, this would be absurd as you would see Muslims being enslaved and yet not being allowed to own slaves themselves. God knew humanity wasn’t prepared to abolish slavery at the time of the Prophet (pbuh) and for this reason, many incentives were placed to encourage freeing of slaves, to ensure good treatment. The trajectory hermeneutics of Islam shows it prepared the mind for the eventual abolishment of slavery.
You missed my point. You need a moral framework to judge what’s right from wrong. Whilst there is an understanding of good and evil in us, it’s often blurred by personal , cultural and historical bias. The rest of my answer which you haven’t quoted explains why your perspective is flawed and why you shouldn’t be surprised by the Prophet (pbuh) not abolishing slavery.
No and No. I don’t even know where to begin. “Your opinion doesn’t matter because we know it for a fact the century we are living in is the best time the mankind has ever experienced. We have made our lives better in many ways. Humans are exploring universe and creating new things on daily basis. The life expectancy has increased. So there is no debate about which time is better.” You clearly love the idea of progress and you can’t think beyond science but the worst of all, you are blinded by materialism. Scientific facts can’t tell you the purpose of life, they don’t address moral questions and they can’t even touch the horizons of religion. Impersonal facts of nature have nothing to do with us individually. Only a few , 1% of mankind is capable of mastering mathematics and science to the point they can understand the universe. It’s pretentious to assume everyone is studying science and is capable of understanding the latest research work being carried out. Most of people don’t have the technical knowledge to tell truth from falsehood in science. I can tell for a fact, you and most people here can’t solve problems in General Relativity or Quantum Electrodynamic. For you, the standard with which we judge a civilization should be restricted to the acquisition of material goods, an ever growing body of scientific knowledge that’s constantly being refuted and unstable, consumerism, destruction of the planet, nuclear weapons and technology prepared to wipe out or enslave mankind. What’s so great about it ? We are suffering greatly after being separated from mother nature. The modern man suffers from alienation, depression and nihilism. People have the most advanced Technology in their hands but they have the emotional maturity of a toddler. Modernity has destroyed the moral fabric of our society and made truth a social construct and every few years, they are constantly reinventing what constitutes truth and straying away from the path of God to every kind of philosophy under the sun, from communism to capitalism, from liberalism to fascism. For me, this world is a temporary place and our relation to God as an individual and as a community takes precedence over everything. The companions of the Prophet (pbuh) established a society that was in conformity with divinely revealed law, human nature, worldly and spiritual needs. In the hadith, Narrated `Abdullah: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “The best people are those of my generation, and then those who will come after them (the next generation), and then those who will come after them (i.e. the next generation), and then after them, there will come people whose witness will precede their oaths, and whose oaths will precede their witness.”