Transcript for:
Understanding the History and Reform of Slavery

Our topic today is very interesting, I think it's one that that Sparks a lot of curiosity. There are a lot of people that are deeply interested in this topic but never heard a detailed explanation on the topic of slavery. As this is a very complex issue, and slavery was established wayyy before Islam, actually islam came to find it there and had to deal with it. So it is only fair that we discuss the history of slavery and then go and explain how Islam dealt with it. We can’t jump to answer your questions about slavery in Islam before discussing. we will be talking about the history of slavery we're talking about um you know how it developed we're talking about everything that happened with slavery before Islam will probably we have a little bit of time to talk about it after Islam and then modern manifestations of slavery why number one to just talk about the uh the the the world in which Islam was born into and how it dealt with a very very brutal institution something that was unfortunately universally universally acceptable and how Islam managed to redefine that the second thing you know more than anything else is for us even as Muslims so it's not just necessarily non-muslims for Muslims to sort of come to an understanding when they see these headlines out there about Islam and slavery and when you hear about a group doing something in the name of Islam unfortunately many times it's not just you know non-muslims that would have misconceptions about the faith but it's Muslims as well because we've never really had to study the subject there are certain things you don't talk about much and there's a reason why because you know it's by consensus of the Muslim Scholars there is no need for this institution today there is absolutely no Islamic manifestation of slavery in the first place so there's really not much need for the average Muslim at least before you know recent headlines and things of that sort to really know the ins and outs and the filth of slavery and things of that sort so when we're discussing this topic what I want you guys to keep in mind is that number one you're going to have to understand the uh the institution independent of Islam and you're going to have to constantly remind yourself that we're talking about a world 1400 years ago and of course when we go into the history of slavery before Islam we're talking about the world thousands of years ago a world that would be completely unrecognizable to us so things that we consider just morally Wrong by Nature by our fithra right those things aren't going to be the same in those time periods now when we talk about slavery as well one of the greatest misconceptions that we have of slavery is that this is a thing of the past and there are two types of slavery there's chattel slavery and chattel slavery is you know the traditional form of slavery when you imagine uh people in Chains being sold on and so on so forth and then there are other manifestations of slavery which are simply forms of human bondage and there has been no period in human history where there have been more forms of slavery more manifestations of slavery than today through human trafficking through work conditions you know the type of work conditions and labor conditions institutionalized racism prostitution right all of these are things that exist today child sleep slavery child labor there has never been a point in history where we've had more human slavery than now so we're not talking about something that's come and gone we're talking about things that also exist today and why is that relevant when you're talking about religion whether you're talking about Islam or you're talking about Judaism or you're talking about Christianity or you're talking about Hinduism or Buddhism which you really want to address is the entire religion's approach to human rights right because again slavery is not limited to our traditional understanding from the movies that we've seen and so on so forth but slavery has many many manifestations so you're going to study a religion with its entire human rights record and all of the things that that religion has to say about equality and racism and so on so forth to really get a grasp on uh how we're supposed to approach this subject now one of the other issues that we have with slavery particularly in slavery historiography in the way that the history of slavery is written is that the vast majority of it has been written by Europeans and Americans so it's extremely biased right it's extremely biased and I I guarantee you that many of the misconceptions that we have about slavery so for example you know those of us that have watched movies like Amistad and so on so forth there's this idea that slavery ended because you know uh people felt a collective sense of guilt and they realized that this was immoral and they saw some people screaming in a courtroom that this was immoral and they felt sorry for the slaves and that was the end of slavery poof it was gone but the truth of the matter the fact of the matter is that slavery ended because of slave rebellions and because it was no longer politically and economically viable now one felt bad and ended slavery it wasn't ended because of moral guilt or because of collective guilt and in fact the American Revolution in particular affected the world far less than the French Revolution other forms of Revolution when you're talking about the development of the new world so for example if I was to ask you guys which Revolution really really dented the institution of slavery really damaged the institution of slavery worldwide it was actually the Haitian revolution right it wasn't the American Revolution it was the Haitian revolution because it was a successful slave rebellion all right so a lot of the misconceptions that we have are based on the movies that we've seen and also based upon the fact that the historiography of slavery has been written by Europeans and Americans and in fact there's a scholar a western scholar by the name of Michael Zeus who wrote a research search called historiography and research problems of slavery and the slave trade from a global historical perspective and he said that most of the religious rhetoric in regards to slavery so particularly when we're talking about religion and slavery he says most of the religious rhetoric that stemmed from Western historians has been nothing more than Christian globalist pamphlets directed against Islamic slavery right so it's it's apologetic in its nature it's it's dishonest in its nature right and obviously it feeds on people's ignorance about the history of this topic as a whole but when we talk about slavery now what I want to do is go to you know human history as a whole before we talk about Islam one does slavery you know arise in the world first when do we first recognize this institution in the first place and the fact of the matter is that slavery is as old as human history can be traced all right so the very first the oldest document of law um that we have is Babylonian law and Babylonian law which is you know the 2000 years before Christ two thousand years before Jesus peace be upon him has explicit references to everything that has to do with slavery and concubines so it existed in the in the earliest works of human law and in fact historians they say very interesting interestingly subhanallah slavery became a phenomenon in human history probably about 11 000 years before Christ why because before then human beings tended to be hunters and gatherers but then they became you know into Agriculture and things of that sort and just historically speaking when you have a lot of land and you have a lot of poor people you have a lot of slavery all right you have a lot of land that need needs to be tended to you have a lot of crops you have a lot of cattle sheep whatever it may be and you have a clear lower class then you're going to have conditions that will lead to slavery so you had labor slavery right and that's the origin of slavery which is you know people being brought into to cultivate land and to get things ready and to serve their masters and to and to serve the rich in society and contrary to popular thought it wasn't all Africans in fact you know there was truly a time when Africa was a land of Kings the original slaves were European the word slave comes from the word sloth okay which which you guys think of Yugoslavia Czechoslovakia right because of the amount of slaves that came from that region that came from the region of the Europeans and were circulated amongst the uh the Romans and the Greeks so slavery was not something that was limited in fact it wasn't a phenomenon of the African continent but instead it was something that found itself into Roman and Greek society if you go into Hinduism right you're not going to find a condemnation of slavery in fact you're going to find the caste system which only further enshrines slavery if you go into Buddhism which is generally considered to be a very peaceful uh religion right Buddhism also inherited hinduism's views towards slavery so you're talking about thousands of years before Jesus peace be upon him before Christianity uh in in Buddhism a slave could not become a monk and in fact it wasn't until the 19th century that a certain strand of Buddhism and certain schools of Buddhism allowed for a slave to become a monk so whether it was the Eastern religions or the Western religions you had slavery you know very much so enshrined within the text and within the law um concubinance which is a very sore topic because it's it's it just you know it reeks of of uh of the nasty images that we see around the world today and trafficking and things of that sort concubinance is actually as old as human history as well so where is the origin of it most historians say it's from the ancient Chinese all right so if you look at concubines and this idea of having a consort and having a concubine you actually find these you know full systems of the rankings of concubines from ancient Chinese Emperors and you know when concubines was abolished in China in the 1940s so you actually had concubines in China up until the 1940s in fact there's a fascinating book called The Lost concubine in China right which actually talks about the life story of of uh of this woman that that tries to make her way out of The Emperor's Palace after concubineage was finally abolished by the Communist Party um in China and then you find it in the Roman society and you find it in in Greek society and so on so forth and what I wanted to do was I wanted to sort of transition through the religions before we get to Islam how did Judaism in particular and Christianity in particular view slavery and view concubineage before Islam comes into the picture now obviously for Muslims all of the prophets of Allah all of the prophets of God are infallible so a lot of the actions that are ascribed to Suleiman Ali Islam to King Solomon and to David and to Noah peace be upon them all are things that we categorically reject right but if you're studying it from a historical perspective and you're going to take the Old Testament as it is and the New Testament as it is then you're going to find some very distort disturbing Trends in slavery so particularly when you talk about Judaism you find that there are different sets of laws that govern different types of slaves so for example in Leviticus and this is where I want you guys to really start paying attention in Leviticus in the Old Testament you have a set of laws that govern Hebrew slaves and you have a set of laws that govern the Pagan slaves okay the Hebrew slaves which were the slaves within the Kingdom of Israel within this within bani Islam the Hebrew slaves fell into the category of debt slavery and labor slavery what that means is back in the days if a person wanted to if a person had a huge debt to pay then they would go into slavery until they could pay off that debt or a person would sell their children or put their children into slavery to pay off their own debt okay or if you owed someone money they could actually come to your house and they could take you into slavery if you did not pay your debt by a certain time so Hebrew slaves within Judaism tended to fall within the category of debt slavery whereas when you talk about pagan slaves which are Canaanite slaves okay which is the area of Palestine and and the surrounding areas of Palestine then you find an entirely different set of laws that govern them why because you're talking about conquests and you're talking about captives and you're talking about people that are being brought into the kingdom and so to give you guys a few examples um you know in in Leviticus 44 to 46 it says that how um however you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live amongst you you can also purchase the children of Resident foreigners including those who have been born in your land you may treat them as your property you may pass them on to your children as permanent inheritance you may treat them like this but the people of Israel your relatives must never be treated this way so there's a different set of treatment or a different rule of treatment for the non-israelite slaves and the the Israelite slaves how drastic does it get well when you talk about uh prisoners of War prisoners of War were taken into permanent slavery so there was no way out for them once they're taken into slavery they are permanently subjugated into slavery when they are not Israelite slaves whereas Hebrew slaves within within early Judaism could only be a slave for up to seven years so it says in Exodus 21 verse 2 to 6 if you buy a Hebrew slave he is only to serve for six years you set them free on the seventh year and he will owe you nothing for his freedom if he was single and he became when he became your slave and then he got married afterwards then he will go free in the seventh year but if he was married before he became a slave then his wife will be freed with him if his master gave him a wife while he was a slave and they had children then the man will be free in the seventh year but his family will still remain in captivity okay and that man can decide at that point whether he wants to go back into slavery and stay with his family in slavery or become a free man and if he decided to go back to being a slave with his family then he was going to be permanently a slave as well just like the non-hebrew slaves so you had that set of laws for Hebrew slaves and you had another set of laws for the Pagan slaves you also had this concept of selling your children into slavery okay and in particular into concubineage and this is an exodus as well in the Old Testament 21 verse 7 to 11 when a man sells his his daughter as a slave she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are if she does not please the man who bought her he may be allowed to to buy her back again but he is not allowed to sell her to the pagans or to the foreigners since he is the one who broke the contract with her so you have this entire notion of actually selling your children into slavery and this is something that is still done in many parts of the world in fact um in the Muslim world and not in the Muslim world right and and in the western world as well where a person would sell their children into slavery into begging into prostitution to bring money back to the home so unfortunately that was also something that was enshrined uh within the Old Testament you also had the concept of beating your slaves okay slave beating was also enshrined within the Old Testament so this is also in 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 included in his property so in in that law and Old Testament law if you if a master was to beat his slave and his slave was to not die basically or go unconscious for more than a couple of days then then there was no penalty the penalty was only if you beat your slave to a point that he would be unconscious for several days or he even reached the point of death okay so there are very brutal laws within the Old Testament in regards to slavery uh things that you know and and to be fair to to to Scholars of Judaism they say that you know that as Judaism grew and as time progressed if you see the laws in the talmud and the laws of Judaism towards slavery as time progressed then they became a lot more Progressive so for example uh you know they they did away with the distinction between um Hebrew slaves and non-hebrew slaves they did away with the idea of beating your slave and so on so forth so these things tended to grow or they tended to progress after the text had already been enshrined and of course there's no telling how much of this was added later or how much of this was before now as for the racial implications of slavery because this is also something very important to note that most of the time in world history slavery has nothing to do with race slavery is not racialized right the transatlantic slave trade is is the most brutal manifestation of racial slavery okay because they literally take people on the basis of the color of their skin and doom them to that institution but traditionally speaking that's usually not the case okay before the 15th century there was really no idea of of having an entire slave Society on the basis of their race but is there a basis for that in the Bible is there a basis for that in the Old Testament it goes back to the story of Islam the story of Noah peace be upon him and the story is that Noah had three sons and one of his sons was a son by the name of ham or ham in Arabic it's ham and this was the son that disobeyed Noah and when when Noah you know went into a drunken State you know and of course we we don't hold that belief as Muslims but when he went into a drunken State he was the one son that did not try to conceal his father and so Noah Dooms ham and his entire descendants to slavery forever to permanent slavery now though the the Bible doesn't mention you know these people particularly being black people but instead it mentions the descendants of Canaan okay of Canaan almost you know throughout history it was almost always recognized that these were supposedly black people so if you read the early Christian discourse in North America about the slave trade justifying the slave trade they always went back to the story of him and they believed that the entire black race was doomed on the on the basis that they belong to the descendants of him okay and then finally you have concubinance and the idea of having a concubine and within Judaism what they what Jewish Scholars actually write is they say that one of the reasons why Judaism actually encouraged concubinance because it's actually encouraged in the Old Testament was to populate was to was to have more children and some of them said particularly after the great flood of Noah there was this idea that the Jews had to populate and so when you find these staggering numbers that are associated with the prophets about how many concubines that they had so for example Solomon Suleiman who probably lived about a thousand years before Jesus peace be upon Him Solomon in the Bible says that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines okay this is actually biblical and the idea was from a judaic perspective is to populate some of the Jewish Scholars also say that because an Orthodox Judaism you can't convert people to Judaism it's only in the reformed tradition of Judaism that people can actually convert to Judaism so the idea is that this was the only way to preserve the religion was to have as many children as possible so it wasn't just through wives it was also through concubines so you find this idea and you find it particularly with captives so in Deuteronomy and I'm rushing through this to get to the Islamic part so I know that this is just a lot of numbers and a lot of verses but this is really just to give you an introduction before we get into Islam in Deuteronomy chapter 20 verses 10 to 14. it actually says that as you approach a town to attack it first you offer the people peace and if they accept your terms and open the gates for you then all the people inside will serve as forced labor but if they refuse to make peace and they fight you then you attack them and when the Lord your God hands it over to you then you will subject every man to the sword and you will keep for yourself all of the women the children and the livestock and you will enjoy The Spoils of your enemies that the Lord your God has given you so I want you to understand this because this is going to come up later on that the Jewish law the old Jewish law in regards to captives of war in particular in accordance with Deuteronomy was that the men are killed and the women and children are taken as captives okay now by the way and this is just you know if a person was to quote these verses and to tell most Americans that this is Quran most Americans would believe you right you just put this out there and you said this is what Islam says about this and this is what Islam said I've actually tried this I've actually been to universities and I've actually quoted verses of the Old Testament and I've passed it off as verses of the Quran and you can see people going and then I say actually those are from the Bible those are from the Old Testament now why is this significant because as you phase into Christianity the role of Christianity is far different why because Christianity doesn't have to address these types of laws and policies because Christianity doesn't assume a role of authority right so Judaism has that role of authority and and you know uh Wars and so on so forth Christians on the other hand right are basically going to assume whatever laws they go to the lands that they go to so Christianity really doesn't have to address these laws of slavery and that's why when you talk about at least Paul's revision of Christianity you don't have many laws at all right the entire law is abrogated from the Torah from the Old Testament and the only thing that sticks is what love thy neighbor and you know if Jesus came peace be upon him to fulfill the spirit of the law not the letter of the law so the law is in its entirety abrogated from a post-paul Christianity perspective why is that so important because they can argue you know Christians can argue that um that none of these laws that we see in the Old Testament make sense and they don't apply to us but the idea here is that it's the same God that inspired those prophets that inspired the the prophets of the New Testament and that inspired the writing of the New Testament so it's one thing to say that the god of the Old Testament legislated a different set of laws it's another thing to say that God was immoral back then and God suddenly became moral you guys understand why this is important so even though Christianity can argue that we're not subject to these laws from the Old Testament you still have to you know you still have to defend them to an extent right you still have to take you know accountability uh for them to an extent now when Jesus peace be upon him was born this is also just really important to understand from their society half the population of the Romans were actually slaves all right so Rome had like the biggest slave Society in the world at that time so half the population of Rome was slaves and Christianity doesn't have state Rule and of course Christianity assumed the laws of the Roman Empire and it carried on its practices and the Roman Empire had some of the worst laws in regards to slavery and history so for example in in Roman law uh which you know we're talking about post-constantine now when Christianity actually becomes a state religion in Roman law if a slave master if a slave owner is found killed what is Roman law to what what does Roman law dictate that each and every single one of his slaves is killed right out of presumption that one of them might have been guilty for killing their master right when you talk about their laws towards concubines when you're talking about uh when you talk about their their laws towards pagans and so on so forth and people that did not have Roman citizenship they are the most brutal laws that exist and there's a statement here by by Will Durant and will Durant who who wrote uh the history of European morals he said that the church did not condemn slavery Orthodox and heretic Roman and Barbarian alike assumed the institution to be natural and indestructible in fact the only mentions you have in the New Testament about slavery are about the slave being dutiful to his Earthly master okay so you still have to be good to your Earthly Master there is no condemnation whatsoever he said Pagan laws condemned to slavery any free woman who married a slave the laws of Constantine who of course made Christianity the state religion ordered the woman to be executed and the slave to be burned alive and he said uh you know that the emperor decreed that a slave who accused the master of any offense except high treason to the state should be burned alive at once without inquiring into the Justice of the charge so he's actually saying that Christianity assumed fully the Roman approach to slavery and what that meant was brutality in its worst form brutality in ways that we'd never known before now all of that is just to kind of give you an introduction to where Islam is going to fall into the picture and I don't want you to leave this class and I don't want you to come out of this entire program thinking well all religions are terrible when it comes to slavery and all systems were terrible you know I guess Islam just was the the the uh the least of the evils if you will I don't want you to come out with that with that mentality and with that idea if you want to approach history in a linear fashion then you would say that slavery became or or the approach towards slavery became more Progressive over time which is not true okay but if you really want to look at the world that the prophet peace be upon him was born into and how Islam approached slavery you have to understand the way that previous religions previous systems previous secular societies approached it it was universally acceptable number one the institution of slavery and concubinance number two the types of laws that govern slavery and concubines were as regressive as we've seen okay now when the prophet peace be upon Him comes into this and when Islam is born into this world um a question is asked why didn't Islam just abolish slavery altogether why didn't the prophet Muhammad peace be upon Him abolish slavery altogether number one all right this is the first point that's really important to understand Islam was a universally empowering message to everyone specifically the slave community and the downtrodden all right if you listen to the early words of the Prophet peace be upon him and the early words of his companions Islam resonated most with the slaves and with the poor and with the oppressed and with the downtrodden right the very famous statement of to uh to to rustam of Persia to the Emperor of Persia was in Allah that God has sent us Allah has sent us to take people from being slaves to slaves to being slaves to the Lord of all slaves Allah has taken us from the slavery of from being slaves to men from being slaves to the Lord of all slaves right so there was this concept of empowerment and the first people to accept Islam were who were the slaves so the prophet peace be upon him his message resonated most with who with the slave Community which is very unique okay because usually a religion gets picked up by an authority by the elite community and that's the community that it that that um that uh implements it in a way that's friendly towards State and authority and government but you're talking about a religion that grows first and foremost and actually you know not only grows but but uh gains Victory on the backs of people that came from the slave community and if there was anyone that was going to be offended by Islam stance on slavery it would be the slave community right if there was anyone that was going to view these policies or view the religion as being oppressive and being manipulative as as other religions and other systems in the world it would have been them but instead you find the slaves themselves accepting this religion and seeing it as a method of empowerment so you find the bilas of the world right you find the prophet peace be upon himself even before Islam freeing the one slave that he owns which was and taking him as an adopted son and treating him so well that when his family actually found him after years of being abducted right and being put into slavery when his family finally found him after all those years they'd said I'm going to stay with I'm going to stay with Muhammad I'm going to stay with the prophet why because he treats me better than any family is going to treat so the one slave that the prophet peace be upon Him owns was freed and turned into an adopted son and unlike the prophets of of bani Israel unlike the prophets of the Israelites and this is something that historians mentioned the prophet peace be upon Him is a descendant of who of hajjal of Hagar who herself was a concubine she herself was a slave woman and the prophet peace be upon him was born into you know the hands of a slave girl amen he was surrounded his entire life by people from the slave community so the prophet peace be upon him before he even starts his call to Islam he has a certain relationship with this community and when he starts to call to this religion it is those people that feel most empowered by The Message of Islam number two the prophet peace be upon him actually explicitly abolished every form of slavery that could have possibly and practically been abolished in that context without causing a greater harm so for example debt slavery the prophet peace be upon Him abolished it Islam abolishes that slavery not only does Islam abolish that slavery it there are so many a Hadith so many sayings and traditions of the Prophet peace be upon him about the debtor and how he should be kind to the one who owes him money and that one of the people that shaded by The Throne of Allah on the day of judgment is the one who has money that's owed him and he's lenient to the one that owes money to him the prophet peace be upon him said if your brother is in debt then pay off his debt and if you can't pay off his debt then go with him to the to you know go with him to the one that lended him money and try to convince him to be lenient right so there's this entire set of traditions as to how to deal with debtors and how to deal with people that are in debt slavery um number two the most common form of slavery was and kidnapping back then okay so literally you know if you look at the story of Salman Salman just happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time a tribe takes him puts him into slavery and somehow Salman finds himself into slavery right we find that with who ended up in the house of the Prophet peace be upon him that he was just kidnapped he was going out on a trip with his mother one day and this is in in the Arabian society right before the prophet peace be upon him right his mother is walking with him and he's kidnapped and he sold into slavery and his family doesn't see him for tens of years people used to abduct children primarily children because they were the most vulnerable targets and they'd sell them into slavery that was the system not only of the Arabs that was the system of the world and again this you know slobs you know it comes from that terminology if you can catch someone and you can take him by force and you can sell him into slavery that was something that was acceptable the prophet peace be upon him said I will testify on the day of judgment against a man who captures a free man and sells him into slavery I will testify on the day of judgment against a man who captures another man a free man and sells him into slavery so the prophet peace be upon Him abolished that form of slavery also the idea of selling your children into slavery was abolished by Islam labor slavery was abolished in Islam okay in fact not only that because I said that you have to look at a religion's entire human rights record right what did the prophet peace be upon him say about how you treat your labor right the one who's working for you that you have to pay him his wages before his sweat dries you have this entire set of laws that govern now the way that you treat the person that you've given a job to not now before Islam and even in pre-islamic Arabia what you could do is you could literally go up to somebody and you could say I'll be your slave if you give me this much money okay so you're gonna pay me this salary I'll work with you I'll be your slave so that's something that existed before Islam and the prophet peace be upon Him abolished that as well the prophet peace be upon him also said if you have a slave and you give him a hard job that that that's difficult form then you have to ass you have to assist him in that so the concept of Labor slavery was abolished also one thing that was Global at the time was statutory slavery what that means is that if you commit a crime against somebody there were certain crimes that dictated that you became that person's slave okay so it wasn't just that slavery if you killed somebody or if you uh harm someone from someone's family or tribe then you would be taken as a slave to that family or tribe and this is something that was practiced amongst the Romans and it was practiced again amongst the Arabs as well and practiced across the world so the prophet peace be upon Him abolished that also forced marriage many of us don't recognize but forced marriage is actually a form of slavery but in the technical definition to be married without consent is a form of slavery and you cannot find anywhere else in the 7th Century where you have a person that's speaking against forced marriage can you imagine in that Society where you're you know you're talking about the treatment of women in particular a woman comes to the prophet peace be upon him and says I was married against my will the prophet peace be upon Him says you can go free here there's no contract he completely voids the contract so the idea of marrying a girl off without her consent was also abolished by the prophet peace be upon it and that's why Adam Watson he writes and he writes an essay called Muhammad the abolitionist slavery in the Quran he says the existence of slavery is an ancient condition it existed long before the Quran was revealed to Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam starting in 610 he said what is interesting is comparing the depiction of slavery in the Quran to the old and the New Testament in the older Jewish and Christian holy text a specific plan to eliminate the human bondage of our temporal present is never discussed the Quran on the other hand not only recognized the immorality of slavery in the 7th Century but it also sought to end it the plan to do so is both implicit and explicit to recognize this is to respect the Islamic attempt in the name of Allah to destroy an evil custom nearly 13 centuries before America would legally and politically do the same these are non-muslims that are writing about the prophet peace be upon him's approach to slavery and again you can make the arguments that the prophet peace be upon him has abolished every form of slavery except for one which we're going to talk about which is captives of War prisoners of War pows every other form is completely abolished now what about that one stream of slavery prisoners of War in Islam you have a different set of legal Theory you have what's called which means you have things that are required and you have things that are recommended okay so you have followed and you have mustahab right even in your personal practice you have that which is mandatory obligatory and then you have that which is recommended now mustahab the idea of something being recommended that is for people to do you know to express a greater uh appreciation of what Allah has given to them and to express a greater desire for God's mercy to show Greater Mercy and to go the extra mile just by our legal Theory as Muslims that which is recommended is a standard that you can't be held to if you don't do it it's not that you're going to be punished but if you do do it you'll be rewarded and so it's to encourage a certain level of Hassan it's to encourage an added level an added degree of compassion an added degree of diligence and dedication and Devotion to God so everything that falls within the category of mustahab of being recommended and rewardable is clearly from the goals of Islam and that's something that's very important to recognize here it's from the goals of Islam so on an individual level for example praying praying the night prayer is mustahab it's from the goals of Islam that every single Muslim is going to be praying there's going to be praying the night prayer but it's impractical to demand that from every single Muslim to make it a requirement on every single Muslim so that's when you talk about individual acts of worship now when you talk about societal and mustahab and things of that sort Islam requires at the bare minimum a removal of Injustice so what's followed what's obligatory from a societal perspective in Islam's legal theory is that you remove Injustice and you establish justice what is recommended and encouraged is compassion right so for example in Murder you get asked this question all the time does Islam believe in capital punishment it's a hotly debated topic right even in in North America especially with the Pope's visit in recent days and things of that sort and appealing on behalf of someone on death row is Islam for capital punishment or against capital punishment most Muslims don't know how to properly answer that question Islam completely removes capital punishment from the state's Authority and instead gives it to the family of the one that's been killed encourages the family to show compassion and forgive and let it and you know and accept you know a compensation and so on so forth but at the same time if a family demands the death penalty for someone that without Justice killed one of their family members then it has to be granted the state only acts as the executor in that regard but the state doesn't come in and dictate that you know what we're going to kill every single person that committed the act of murder so is Islam for capital punishment not in the TR not not in the Contemporary sense no it's not because Islam encourages Mercy but you can't bound you can't bind the family to that you can't tell the family you have to forgive but you can encourage them and the prophet peace be upon them used to encourage people so the bare minimum is a removal of Injustice what's encouraged is a level of compassion so when it comes to slavery in particular what was required is treating slaves with so much dignity that they're not really technically slaves anymore so those that have come into society as slaves are treated with so much dignity that they're not really slaves in the true sense of the word that's the bare minimum that they're not going to be abused they're not going to be exploited they're not going to be you know they're not going to be subjected to things that are uh that are out of their capacity that's the requirement but what's encouraged is to completely emancipate them is to completely free them is there any other system in the world and this is something this is not just Islamic propaganda here can you find any other system in the world in the time of the Prophet peace be upon him or preceding the prophet peace be upon him or even within 700 800 years after the prophet peace be upon him that even encourages freeing slaves one Bible verse one Christian reformer one Jewish reformer that actually you know codifies a way to emancipate slaves and assigns a reward for it you don't find it which you see with the prophet peace be upon him is you know multiple multiple traditions of the reward of actually freeing a slave altogether so in the Quran let's start with the Quran Allah says so Allah says it is not righteousness or it's not only righteousness that you turn your face to the east or to the West but then Allah identifies or Allah highlights all of the different forms and manifestations of righteousness so one of the things that Allah says is spending your money to free slaves so Allah calls it righteousness to free slaves number one number two Allah says that they free slaves out of an act of showing love to Allah so they feed people and they free slaves freeing slaves is mentioned as an act of love to Allah that out of their love for Allah they will go and they will actually free slaves Allah says what will help you on that steep path what's going to help you get to Paradise what's going to help you escape Hellfire and go through this life the first thing Allah mentions is freeing slaves then Allah mentions and taking care of the orphan feeding the poor and taking care of the orphan so Allah mentions it as the greatest form of Charity you find that and by the way these ayats and these most of them when it comes to emancipating slaves are not specific to Muslims they're actually General so they mean Muslims and non-muslims because we don't restrict in Islam we only expand right we expand within permissible bounds now are there a Hadith are there Traditions that specify Muslim slaves like an added reward for freeing a Muslim slave absolutely so the prophet peace be upon him he said that whoever frees a Muslim slave Allah will free each and every single part of his body from Hellfire just as he freed each and every single part of the body of that slave from captivity so just you know you've taken that person out of slavery and bondage in the Dunya in this world Allah would remove you from slavery and bondage in the Hereafter now why would the prophet peace be upon Him specify Muslims here does that mean cruelty to non-muslims no because Muslims have an even greater right obviously upon you Humanity has a right upon you Muslims have a right upon you your family members have a right upon you so when the prophet peace be upon Him specifies Muslims he's not excluding non-muslims but he's emphasizing something here right it's just like when the prophet peace be upon Him talks about your father he says the only way that you could possibly repay your father is if you were to find your father as a slave and purchase his freedom now the scholars say the prophet peace be upon Him didn't mention the mother because there's no way you can repay your mother but he said the way you repay your father is if you were to find your father so if you ever want to go go to your dad and say I owe you nothing now then you have to you would have had to have found your father a slave and purchased his freedom and enabled him just as he enabled you in this world right so why is the prophet peace be upon him mentioning these things if you notice with these two Traditions the scholars say that freeing a slave in Islam is likened to giving life freeing a slave in Islam is actually likened to given life and that's why the penalty for accidentally killing somebody accidental murder in Islam from the Quran is what freeing the slave because just as you accidentally took the life of one person now you need to give someone else a chance at life that's the penalty um and and we find that you know even for unrelated sins at times or things that that appear to be unrelated sin so for example fasting if you were to break your fast intentionally okay or particularly if a person was to become intimate with their spouse on a day of Ramadan the very first expiation is freeing slaves and the scholars say this is very significant why because fasting is supposed to create a sense of empathy and that's why when you can't fast what do you resort to charity and so when you have disregarded your duty to fast to that extent then the way that you that the way that you you you expiate that the way you compensate for that is you go and you free a Slave which is again the greatest form of Charity Allah directs you to the greatest form of Charity in that regard a broken oath in Islam requires freeing a slave or certain oats require freeing the slave in Islam so there are different things you know within the within the idea of being recommended acts that clearly showed that Islam seeks the eventual emancipation of all slaves the imagine the the eventual depletion of this institution to a point that it no longer exists they call it a sunset clause right it's only meant to exist for a certain period of time and to prove that more than anything else Allah put it in the category of zakah which is mandatory now it's one it's the third pillar of Islam and one of the permanent categories of zakah is to do what is to free slaves now a very simple answer to someone who says that that's nonsense that Islam seeks the eventual end of slavery is that Islam seeks a time when zakah is no longer necessary right and we talk about the coming of Jesus peace be upon him we talk about as a cat collector not being able to find anyone who's worthy of zakah so if there's a permanent dedicated category to freeing slaves then that shows you once again that Islam seeks the end of slavery Islam sought it at a time when not a single person in the world was talking about abolition because it was Impractical at that time I mean the world's economy functioned on slavery Islam was already legislating certain things to eventually end this entire institution and moreover than that you know something and this is just for someone that studies history and you know a lot of you uh you know you've heard me talk about sahaba and Companions and so on so forth and if you go back to any story of any companion you always have something on their resume which is how many slaves they freed in fact if you look at the biographies of the companions from the Seattle it's like it's like the icing on the cake you know and this person by the time they died they freed this many slaves by the time she passed away the wife of the Prophet peace be upon him she freed 67 slaves Umar if you look at the story of Abdullah Umar freed his slave nafir but nafir still stayed with it and became his students and even Omar had a particular Affinity to freeing slaves but which types of slaves did he want to free he wanted to free the religious slaves so naffer says that the slaves used to gather in the Masjid in the first row and they used to act like they were humility in prayer so that IBN Ahmad would see them and feel sorry for them and free them because loved to free Pious slaves in particular so now came them and himself as a former slave and he said they're cheating you and he says that's okay let them cheat me for the sake of Allah you know how many slaves have been Ahmed freed he freed a thousand slaves so it's part of his biography it's part of his accomplishments who is the richest companion of the Prophet peace be upon him one of the greatest accomplishments that's mentioned is that he freed in his own lifetime 30 000 slaves that's an entire country back then right he freed thirty thousand slaves and so when you talk about the realm of that which is recommended and things of that sort there was a culture now where if you wanted to come close to Allah you freed slaves if you wanted to if you wanted to have a great accomplishment life it was actually you know it was actually something to be sought after to actually go earn money so that you could purchase the freedom of slaves um who's from the second generation after the companions from the tabirim you know some people came to him and he himself comes from a family of freed slaves come to him and they tell him that there are too many slaves right now you know you need to give a you need to give a sermon about freeing slaves you know usually when people come up to us and they tell us to give holtzbuzz it's like you need to give a couple about wiping over your socks you need to give a hotel that's usually what people suggest for cultivas people go to Hassan and they say look slavery it's getting out of hand now about slavery there's two there are too many slaves in Iraq about it Imam Hassan tells them okay he agrees two weeks go by he doesn't give a about slavery the third week he gives an entire hotba about the benefits and the rewards of freeing slaves of purchasing the freedom of slaves in the history of Iraq he says that literally you know Iraq became a party because all of the slaves were roaming free in the streets of Iraq all of a sudden and they went to him up Hassan bustling they said you know why did you wait for three weeks you should have given this cultiva three weeks ago right and you know what he said he said because I didn't have enough money to purchase the freedom of a slave myself so I waited till I could earn enough money to do so myself then when I had enough money he literally went and worked earned his money freed a slave then he told everyone else to do the same this was a culture that the prophet peace be upon him actually put amongst the Muslims number four and this is very significant slavery is one thing but slavery at the end of the day is a symptom of Greater problems in society the greatest of which is inequality so even if you abolish slavery technically as we see in our modern day in our in our modern day manifestations of slavery even if you technically abolish slavery if you allow inequality to grow in your society and if you institutionalize racism then slavery still exists even if you're not calling it slavery it's still slavery and the prophet peace be upon him instead effectively countered racism and tribalism and inequality in his Society that's what he was fighting against and so we find that the prophet peace be upon him was putting you know people of you know black people Persians and so on so forth in positions of authority to show the people that this was a new era I mean I want you to think about this on the day of the conquest of Mecca could you imagine just today the cat I mean anyone who's done um is still fresh in my memory because I was there a few days ago and I was thinking to myself you know even with the monstrosity of the buildings around the Kaaba those gotham-like towers around the camera could you imagine the power of a Man Standing On Top of the cab like could you imagine doing falaf and looking at a Man Standing On Top of the Kaaba it would completely shake you who did the prophet peace be upon him put in that position Bilal right he puts Bilal on top of the Kaaba to call Adan Bilal a a a person that was born into slavery and subjugated subjugated to slavery his entire life has his feet on top of the cat but calling Allahu Akbar Allah and the prophet peace be upon Him says look if you have a problem with this get used to it this is the new system this is how things work here and so on the day of the fatah on the day of the conquest of Mecca is he said o people verily Allah has removed your slogans from the days of ignorance and it's reverence for its forefathers he said now there are two types of men there is a man who is righteous Pious and honorable in the sight of Allah and there is a man who is wicked and insignificant in the sight of Allah and Allah created everyone from Adam and Adam was created from dirts he's saying this he's making this point when on the day of the conquest of Mecca which is to show you that this is how things are going to be here now this is the change that you're going to witness in your Society if you don't like it get used to it and you know it's very powerful that the prophet peace be upon him he always waited for you know these gatherings you know when people were all gathered together to really address racism and in depth in detail and inequality and detail and so you find in in his last Hajj his farewell speech now anyone that's seen the people it's a very powerful site it truly is you know when you see everyone in there no matter where they came from or what what position they hold in life you can't tell I was sitting next to this Hajj in particular seriously in Minna I was sitting next to someone that's worth over 500 million dollars I had no clue right why isn't it haram everybody's nehran everyone's covered in dust everyone is calling upon Allah unless you're in those super VIP accommodations everyone's covered in dust everyone's tired everyone's hot when does the prophet peace be upon Him address racism and his Farewell Address the people are in and he calls people's attention in the beginning of his last address his farewell address to the people says look around that you you know look around and he says that there is no superiority of a black man to a white man or a white man to a black man or out of over a foreigner or a foreigner over in Arab all of you are from the children of Adam the only way you precede one another is in piety he decides to call people's attention to this in Hajj and the only Hajj that he does so the prophet peace be upon Him is signaling that there is a change that you know that there's a change in system here that it's not just a technical emancipation it's an actual emancipation and the goal of the Prophet peace be upon Him particularly with slaves was to reintegrate them into society and that's the one thing if you're going to forget everything that I've said in the first 40 minutes of verses and things of that sort just remember the goal of the Prophet peace be upon him was to reintegrate Slaves into society so that they wouldn't just be technically free but they would actually live like free men and free women why because guess what we live in North America when when slavery was abolished in North America technically did it actually result in an end of inequality and racism and black people being targeted by the state and lynched and and you know suffering all forms of Injustice and inequality clearly not because we're still seeing it today right we're still seeing it today because you have to address the root causes here you don't just address the technical institution you address the root causes you know there's this this again back to the fantasy of slavery historiography that Abraham Lincoln just felt sorry for slaves and decided to abolish slavery and everything was okay and everyone just suddenly started to hug you know and and it was all good actually the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln did not abolish slavery you know what it did it said that if a slave can manage to get out of the South escape a plantation and come fight on the side of the Union then they're free it's political it doesn't solve root problems it doesn't solve the root cause of inequality and racism and if you don't solve those problems then even if you technically strike down slavery you're still going to have a problem and so bondage is not just physical it's psychological it's emotional it's mental it's in every single form and so the prophet peace be upon him what he does is he introduces rights for slaves that made it undesirable to have them in the first place and basically put them in the position of a member of the household so the first form of dignity obviously is that you're not allowed to abuse them and you know obviously the first thing that comes to your mind when you think slave right and and I'm just going to say the word and I want you to just think what's the first thought that comes to your mind probably the things that you saw even in the promo for this class right you think of a person in Chains you think of a whip you think of beatings you think of you think of brutality the prophet peace be upon him he once saw a man that was beating his slave and he said to him Allah is more capable of doing that to you than you are of doing that to him I freed him the prophet peace be upon him said had you not freed him Allah would have thrown you into Hellfire and the prophet peace be upon himself now just listen to this he said he who slaps a slave and he mentioned the slap he didn't mention closed fist or whips or chains if you slap asleep or physically abuse him the only way to expiate for that or the only expiation is to Grant him freedom meaning if you slap a sleeve in accordance with the law of Islam the only way that you can make up for that is to let him go free you have to let them go free that's just for a slap you imagine the other forms of brutality and actually if you read the early books of silk they say that if a master even showed his slave a whip and the slave complained to the father and said my master has a whip right then that's enough that could be enough grounds to Grant him freedom why because there was a legitimate threat there of violence so there's no violence allowed you're not allowed to abuse uh your slave at that time okay and if you did then you would have to let them go free and by the way this is a culture again once again that the prophet peace be upon him put within the companions as well we find a very uh famous story in the hilatha in the caliphate of um that in Egypt where Ahmed was the governor one of the children of Amir was racing with a Christian slave camel racing with a Christian slave and the copt that you know that he beat him he beat him in the race he didn't actually he beat him in the race so he goes up to him afterwards and he's and he smacks him with a whip and he says that I am a noble man the son of a nobleman that Christian slave goes all the way to Medina to complain to Omar about what happened to him can you imagine he makes the journey from Egypt to Medina knowing that Omar is going to give him Justice Omar summons the governor of Egypt and his son Ahmed didn't do anything he says I want you both to come here he sets this you know he sets this man up with his accommodation and everything like that so the man is waiting literally for over a month for Ahmed and his son to show up from Egypt to get Justice for being hit by a whip and he you know first he he basically Omar confirms that that incident took place then Omar hands this Christian slave a whip and he says lash both of them and he said well why would I lost his father what did um do he said because you were put down in his name subhanallah you were put down in his name so don't just hit him hit his father as well he let him go free and um to his son and he says how can you enslave a man that was born free how can you enslave a man that was born free that's actually in the United Nations Charter it's a saying of um the first person actually where you can trace those words to how can you enslave a man that was born free was the second Khalifa to the prophet peace be upon him so abuse is forbidden Muslim or non-muslim sleep you're not allowed to call them names that they don't like you're not even allowed to call your slave a Slave okay so and and this this by the way this is a very important Point here because can we really say that what exists the system that existed in Islam at the time of the Prophet peace be upon him and up until it was abolished can you really say that it was slavery in Islam probably not the prophet peace be upon Him says the prophet peace be upon him said none of you should say my slave or my slave girl he said instead and he said the slave should not say you know my Lord or you know or you know in in both the masculine or the feminine Sun so the prophet peace be upon Him forbade the master technically the master from saying slave and he forbade the slave from saying master and he said that instead you should say fataya or fatati which means you know my young man my young woman the same way you'd refer to your children that this is a member of my household and the prophet peace be upon him said that the slaves should say and you know that would also be Loosely translated as Master but it's really not master it's it's it's it's more than it's it's just you know it's it's an endearing term like we say about the prophet peace be upon him and so the prophet peace be upon Him says at the end of this all of you are slaves to Allah and Allah is the only master all of you are slaves to Allah and Allah is the only master so the true sense of slavery only belongs to Allah you cannot actually think that you own someone in the absolute sense there is no such concept of that the prophet peace be upon him said so we're moving on to dignity it's not just not abusing them and not calling them names he also wins the extent of saying that you have to give them the same clothes that you wear and you dress your family with and the same food that you and your family have and Abu dhar well he was once seen and he had his best garments his best cloth split in half and he's walking around with his slave right with his servant and they're both wearing the same garment and people were like you know that's really interesting why did you do that and he said that the prophet peace be upon him said that they are nothing except your brothers whom Allah has placed under your care they are nothing but your brothers whom Allah has placed under your care so whoever has his brother under his care let him feed him from his food and let him clothe him from his clothes and let him not give him a task that he cannot bear and if you give him a duty that he cannot bear then assist him so three things number one feed him what you feed yourself clothe him with what you clothe yourself and if you give him a difficult assignment then you need to help him with that you need to actually assist them with that just as you would treat someone in your own family one of my teachers he actually pointed out that the chapter of slave treatment in many books of Hadith in fact actually comes under which is the chapter of Family so slaves were actually considered part of the family they were considered part of the household the same way you establish the ties of kinship and you were to show compassion to your family members you were also to show that same level of compassion towards those slaves now compare that to even the North American slave trade if you notice by the way historically speaking uh within judeo-christian slavery slaves were not allowed to wear shoes okay if you actually see the pictures of slaves even in America they were not allowed to wear shoes why because in Luke 15 22 but the father said to his servants bring forth the best robe and put it on him put a ring on his hand and put shoes on his feet and so the idea was that shoes are a sign of freedom and so you're not even allowed to walk with shoes compare that to what the prophet peace be upon Him is talking about now where are they able to assume positions of leadership and Authority we just mentioned Bilal who was nicknamed our master who was freed by our Master Osama bin Zaid the first commander of the Muslim Army you know the if you guys remember when when uh um I forget his last name was appointed as the Imam of the Haram just a few years ago there was an article that came out that called him the Saudi Obama the first black Imam of the Muslim actually the first Imam of who was from Sudan okay the first Mufti of Mecca the first Imam of the Haram and that's in the in the true sense of the word was actually a black man so no he's not the Saudi Obama all right we didn't have to wait that long to have a black Imam of so were they able to assume positions of authority yes we mentioned he says about nafir was the free slave of Abdullah you know he had a broken Arabic accent had the darkest of skin and he's a freed slave and he said that the that the richest of the companions would gather around him to kiss his hand and to sit with him to learn from the film he's the teacher of Imam Malik so in scholarship they were able to assume positions in leadership they were able to assume positions and Authority uh the prophet peace be upon him said I learned the Quran from four people he says okay is the free slave of who is Salam Salam was the person that the prophet peace be upon Him appointed to lead the companions in Salah the first Masjid so Salim was the Imam in Masjid now why is Salem so significant here because he's not just a scholar he's not just someone that ascends those ranks when Omar was passing away um there are two people two men if either of them were alive I would make them the Khalifa without taking any Surah I wouldn't even consult with people he said was alive I would have made him the Khalifa without Surah and he said if Salem was alive I would have made him the Khalifa without shura meaning the third Khalifa of Islam could have been a freed slave Omar and Omar doesn't just say things just for the heck of it right Omar is saying I wouldn't have even consulted you people I would have just made him the Khalifa This is Omar the proud Arab Umar right he's saying I would have made Salim the Khalifa of the Muslims the third Khalifa of the Muslims without even asking you people had he only been alive and that Culture by the way is that it's you know it shows that Islam put this system in place where freed slaves and their children could actually become Governors could become so if you look in the history of Islam you'll find the mamluk dynasty for example the mamaluk Dynasty is probably unprecedented in history literally means owned right the mamluk dynasty from the 1200s to the 1500s for 300 years ruled the ummah these are all the children of slaves right who ascended in the ranks of the army and literally took control of the ummah and uh Napoleon not not Napoleon from The Outlaws Napoleon uh Bonaparte and you know he actually said uh that he was commenting on on slaves within Islam and authority and he says that the slave inherits his master's property and then marries his daughter the majority of the pashas had been slaves many of the grand says vazers wazirs like ministers all of them looks all of them were slaves they began their lives by performing the most simple of services in the houses of their masters and then they were raised in status for their Merit or by favor he said in the West on the contrary the slave has always been below the position of the domestic servants he occupies the lowest rug and he said the Romans even when they emancipated their slaves they never considered them as equal or as Freeborn okay or as equal to those that were born free he says the ideas of the East and the West are so different that it took a long time to make the Egyptians understand that all the Army was not composed of slaves belonging to the sultan al-kabir so even Napoleon is commenting on his admiration of the Muslim world that the system that Islam put in place allowed for people that were actually Born Into Slavery not just the descendants of slaves people that were born slaves to rise and become leaders in the ummah you find one of the most famous people was uh the last Khalifa of the uh of the ayubi dynasty okay Ayub who was he himself was the child of a concubine he himself was born a slave he goes on to become the ayubi sultan and he actually fights and defeats the Crusaders in many different places like there is no system in history that actually puts something in place that would have given slaves a chance to Ascent to that level so the prophet peace be upon Him puts him in that situation and the way to describe the way you know his approach to slavery wasallam overall is that he took many sources of slavery many sources of slavery because again there was Labor slavery there was debt slavery there was uh there was child slavery there was uh you know uh there was uh you know selling your daughter into slavery prostitution things of that sort he takes all of these forms and reduces them into one source which was Prisoners of War captives which we're going to talk about in a minute inshallah and when he reduces them all to One Source not only that but he takes that one source of slavery and he introduces Avenues out of that one source that had never existed before either so there's one source of slavery in which is captives prisoners of war and then there are ways out for the captive that had never previously existed and inshallah because this is the juiciest part of class and I know you guys need a break I'm going to go ahead and give you guys a one to two minute break inshallah to stand up stretch rub your eyes and then we'll talk about captives and we'll talk about the prisoners of war and how and why this form of slavery still exists in the time of the Prophet uh peace be upon him so inshallah we will resume in a minute and uh to two minutes inshallah okay so continuing when we're talking about captives we're talking about this one source of slavery that remains now in jahili in the days of ignorance it's important to point out that the captive had absolutely no right upon the Captor meaning what that if you were taken as a slave or even if someone was killed from your family if your town was ravaged by by someone then you basically had to figure it out yourself so usually what used to happen is that you know people would have to go into begging the women would traditionally have to resort to what they'd have to resort to prostitution naturally why because that was the only way to make a living at that point he says that one of the Strategic points of the incredibly Humane treatments of the Prophet peace be upon him towards prisoners of war is that the enemy would more easily submit you know he said that before if you're if you're fighting in a battle and this is true I mean if you look even in modern history if you're fighting a brutal enemy and you know what he does to his prisoners you know what he does to his captives then you'd rather commit suicide and just fight to death even if you're losing because you know what's what awaits you Imam joini says that because of the treatments that the prophet peace be upon Him showed towards captives and prisoners of War you would find that people would would more easily submit in the battlefield because they knew that they were going to be treated in a certain way they wouldn't commit suicide and so on so forth and when you look at how how strictly the companions complied with the order given by the prophet peace be upon him to treat the the the captive as well one of the the prisoners of Badr who accepted Islam or later he says that I was taken as a captive on the day of Badr and he said that when my captors took me and when the ansar took me in when they had lunch or dinner they used to give me their bread and they used to suffice themselves with a few dates he said I used to wonder why they would eat less than me and why they would clothe me with clothes that were better than me then I realized that they feared disobeying the prophet peace be upon them when he said to treat the captives well again to feed them what you feed yourself and to and to clothe them with what you clothe yourself so what are some of the reforms that were made by the prophet peace be upon him and this is a very tricky subject here and this is where it usually gets blurry in the discussion of slavery everything that I've mentioned before is usually uh more readily available when you're talking about the topic of you know kefara and emancipating slaves and things of that sort but particularly captives one of them the First Reform is that the only time the prophet peace be upon him would take prisoners of war was if the opposing Army would take prisoners of War okay that's number one that's the bear remember we said that there's Justice and then there's esan there's compassion Beyond Justice the only time the prophet peace be upon him would take captives is if the army that he was fighting had that as a condition so if that people were going to do the same thing if they defeated the Muslims then the prophet peace be upon him was also going to take uh captives so for example um they had that condition would take prisoners of War if they won the battle quraish on the other hand did not so enslavement or or taking cap captives from qurais when the prophet peace be upon Him fought against was not even an option why because that wasn't the practice of quraish with quresh the you know the prisoners were either executed or let go there was one of two options but there was no concept of taking captives and leaving them in captivity but the thing about the prophet peace be upon him is that he always wanted to show a greater level right a greater level of compassion so how did he do that because the you know there's this perception that Muslims were captive hungry right you want to go ahead and get as many slaves as you can right you want to bring in as many uh concubines as you can you want to bring that's the perception that's being put out there but even in the battles that the prophet peace be upon him had that opportunity what did he do so for example with uh plan to attack the prophet peace be upon him and he got news of that so he attacked first he caught them off guard so Ben mustalak was defeated heavily or even though they were a powerful tribe and you know they used to take prisoners they used to take captives so the prophet peace be upon him he held them to that condition when the Muslims defeated and the Muslims took the captives the leader of Benin he fled okay now the daughter of al-haareth joyria bintelhareth the princess basically of that tribe she came to the prophet peace be upon him and she complained to the prophet peace be upon him she said o messenger of God you know I am a princess amongst my people this isn't befitting you know let me know what I can do what is it that we can do to get out of this situation and so on and so forth now the prophet peace be upon him he married joydia here's the thing if the prophet peace be upon Him wanted to and this is a very significant point he could have just taken her as a captive if this was as islamophobes will allege right you know just something about attraction and desire on the part of the messenger peace be upon him he would have taken her as a captive because that was her fate anyway she was already a captive and the prophet peace be upon him would have simply taken her that way instead the prophet peace be upon Him is listening to her in front of the captives and there were hundreds of captives from and the prophet peace be upon him said you know I'll give you a choice he said either I can give you the money set you free and you can go back the prophet peace be upon him said or I'll give you another option you can become my wife so she is actually being given a choice to go free or to marry the prophet peace be upon him she chooses to marry the prophet peace be upon him now what was the wisdom of the Prophet peace be upon him in doing so when the prophet peace be upon Him married joeya all the sahaba all the companions who had the captives from they said wait a minute these are the family members of the Prophet peace be upon him now we can't keep these people as captives so they all came out to the prophet peace be upon him and they said we want to free all these captives says that over a thousand households were freed because the prophet peace be upon Him Mary Jo idea and the companion said wait a minute we can't keep them as captives because now they're the family members of the Prophet peace be upon him and she said I don't know of a woman that brought more balaka to her people than joadia her entire her entire tribe you know hundreds of people were freed because of her marriage to the prophet peace be upon him this becomes one of the close tribes to Islam this becomes one of the you know a good tribe in Islam and so on so forth afterwards when he finds out what the prophet peace be upon him did you know so this is very significant here that the prophet peace be upon him even in those battles where he had that chance the Muslims were not captive hungry right they didn't go out there and try to capture as many prisoners as they could another example is the Battle of Hunan in the Battle of Hunan the prophet peace be upon him was sitting after the battle and you have over 600 captives and an old woman comes up to the prophet peace be upon Him disheveled old a Bedouin and she says to the prophet peace be upon him I still have the bite marks on my back from when you were a kid Prophet peace be upon Him says who are you and she says I am a Shema ith was the daughter of Halima the woman who breastfed the prophet peace be upon him so she's the sister of the Prophet peace be upon him and the prophet peace be upon him hasn't seen her for almost 60 years and when they were when the prophet peace be upon him was a baby he used to play around with her she was a few years older and the prophet peace be upon her bit her back when he was a kid so the prophet peace be upon Him says welcome to my sister he kisses her on the forehead he hugs her he Embraces her he starts to cry he walks her overall who says the companions were shocked the prophet took his Buddha he took his cloak off he put it on the ground under a tree sat her down under the shade he himself sits in the dirt starts talking to her about memories how have you been how you know how's the tribe what have you been through and he said they laughed and they cried and they laughed and they cried all the way until Sunset and the companions were just waiting for a resolution like what's going to happen here what's the end of all of this so the prophet peace be upon Him says do you want to stay with me I'll treat you well you'll you'll have everything that you want do you want to go back to your people she said the auto still live kids back there and I want to go back to my people I don't want to leave my people so the prophet peace be upon Him says fine so the prophet peace be upon Him goes and gets her a nice camel and he puts her on the camel he helps her up he starts bringing her stuff and the sahaba see this and they ask the prophet peace be upon him about the captives so what are the prophet and the companions do they free them all send them all back and they send them back with money and possessions and goods this was a battle this was a war and the prophet peace be upon him not only doesn't you know not only does he not take them in and subject them to universal laws of the time he gives them stuff and sends them home in a better situation than when they came to fight against the prophet peace be upon so this is very significant to point out again that the prophet peace be upon him was not actually I said 600 prisoners 6 000 prisoners six thousand captives he was not captive hungry nor were the companions of the Prophet peace be upon him now the most criticized uh you know action of the Prophet peace be upon him from a military sense by islamophobes and by orientalist was how he dealt with Benny why because you know uh committed treason it was a Jewish tribe in Medina that committed treason in the battle of the trench when the Muslims effectively guarded Medina with the tranche benihoraida attacked from inside and in fact they attacked the women and the children they actually tried to attack the women and there is a whole story behind that which I don't have time to get into but they actually tried to attack the women and the prophet peace be upon him he laid Siege to them after that the Muslims basically sniffed them out and they laid seeds to Benny koraida after that and for 25 days was Under Siege and you have to imagine what they're thinking because they know the laws of the world now by all standards by all Universal standards no matter what convention it is we're going to be killed because we commit a treason so in fact was one of Benin he says look we have a few choices he said either will kill our Women and Children First before the Muslims get a hold of them because what they're going to do to them it's going to be crazy why because we tried to attack their women and children or will all commit suicide or will all fake you know Embrace Islam will come out and we say we all Embrace Islam and we'll see how that goes or we'll just rush out and fight to the death which one do you guys want they said let's let's talk to uh let's talk to to uhos which was one of the two main tribes of the ansar AL elsewhere the allies of benicode before Islam so let's talk to an ocean see if they could talk to the prophet peace be upon him for us so they talked to the prophet peace be upon him they said look you know we had an alliance with Benny be gentle with them be merciful with them the prophet peace be upon them allows them to choose their own arbitrator to make a fair judgment upon them think about that for a moment he says let them choose an arbitrator and he will make a fair judgment they chose who's the head of an oath to judge by what law to judge by the law of the Torah to judge by the law of Judaism that they would be subjected to their own law and that was their own law was that the men would be killed and the women and the children would be taken captive that was the law of Judaism not only that but who were the women and the children placed under Abdullah who was the chief Rabbi of Medina before he became Muslim and there are a lot of there's a lot of uh you know and look when you're talking about Benny Florida in general by the way when you're talking about that entire incident the numbers fluctuate like crazy and the and and the details and the accounts of that incident are very politicized obviously so depending on what book you read it's like you're reading an entirely different incident but at the end of the day one thing that we could agree upon by consensus is that the prophet peace be upon Him subjected them to their own law by their own choice they chose their arbitrator and that arbitrator judged them by the by the law of their text and that was the way of the Prophet peace be upon him that's Justice that's Justice he didn't go any uh further Beyond them and so there you know that is a principle amongst the Muslims it's a culture of generosity and you know we find that even when salahuddin conquered Jerusalem when he came back to Jerusalem right this isn't just something that was limited to the time of the Prophet peace be upon him once Allah comes back to Jerusalem you know the Crusaders after the stuff they pulled on the Muslims and not just the Muslims but the Eastern Christians and the Jews and Jerusalem they thought that the Muslims were going to do all kinds of things to them I mean they ate dead children the Crusaders they actually roasted and ate children these were the most brutal people that I've ever lived subhanallah I mean you're talking about disgusting human beings they filled Jerusalem to with blood to their knees you know and so you can imagine salahuddin is coming back now what did they start to do you know many people committed suicide the women started to mutilate themselves they shaved their heads and they started to mutilate themselves because they thought they were all going to be raped because that's what they did to the Muslim women so they thought that was their fate right I mean that's what they thought was going to happen what did salahuddin do instead right he keeps on repeating the Hadith of the Prophet peace be upon him when the prophet peace be upon Him entered into Mecca it's amazing subhanallah he's going through all of the words of the Prophet peace be upon him and the actions of the Prophet peace be upon and he treats them so well that you actually find from the from the Crusaders themselves at least the fair ones when they wrote about the way they were treated by the Muslims by the Frankish troops after uh the Crusades so you'll find oliverus and I know I'm going to butcher this name I usually try to make it a point to learn the proper pronunciation but Olivia's oliverus scholasticus oliverus and I didn't make that up he's actually one of the Crusaders and he was defeated by al-malikal so the the successor and he wrote he said who could doubt that such goodness friendship and charity came from God men whose parents Sons and Daughters brothers and sisters died in agony at our hands we took their lands we drove them naked from their homes and instead they revived us with their own food when we were dying with hunger and showered us with kindness even when we were under their control that's how they responded to us this is a culture this is something that the prophet peace be upon Him teaches and preaches so that's number one the way you know there's a culture of generosity the way that you treat the captives the way that you treat the prisoners of war is isan at the you know compassion at the bare minimum it's Justice number two what is Allah say that you know in Surat Muhammad that after the battle is over after you've engaged in this fierce battle foreign either you show generosity or you Ransom them either you show generosity or you Ransom them and what that means is either you let them go free and you you know and embed it what did the prophet peace be upon him do you teach 10 companions how to read you go free right either you come up with it with an option to just let them go free or you allow them to Ransom themselves and that Ransom cannot be unfair it can't be too heavy it can't be a burden that's insurmountable it actually has to be something they're capable of right and and prisoners and slaves actually had access to the judges of the time to the Quran to say that the ransom that was set for them was too high can you lower it because it could be a form of Injustice and this is the whole system by the way which is known as for slaves in general mokataba means to to Ransom yourself to make a contract between the slave and the master now why is this significant because one of the one of the technical uh definitions of slavery is that it's a unilateral bondage that the slave has no choice in his affair but here if a slave says katip I want to make a contract to get myself out of slavery the master will then draw up a contract of manumission with the slave to get him out so it's literally like working extra hours okay so you're gonna have to do this much and you earn this much money and when you pay off this then you'll go free and it's something that should be reasonable and the master should help the slave come to a reasonable agreement and the prophet peace be upon him he used to help the companions in mukato right he told us just go ask your master tell them how much he wants we'll make it happen hundreds of palm trees you've got it gold you've got it the prophet peace be upon himself plants the palm trees for some is a system now within Islam that is very much so unique within Islam and uh you know you'll find that that when the slave asks for Freedom the scholars debated you know and they're a very elaborate laws here and nuances here at what point does the slave Go free when he makes the agreement when he pays half of it three quarters when he pays the full thing right at what point does the slave Go free they also you know and this is something very significant that Scholars point out that the chapter of mokataba the chapter of a slave man emitting themselves whether it's a prisoner of war or a person that came through some other form right before Islam or was born into slavery or so on so forth the process is so detailed the the laws that govern mokataba are so detailed that it's often one of the thickest chapters in the books of why because it's very easy to exploit people right it's very easy to find loopholes so literally all of the what ifs and and you know what if this happens and what if the master dies and what if the master changes his mind the master is not allowed to change his mind he's not a lot if he gets into a fight with a slave he can't say you know what I was going to let you go for 200 now I want 500. if the master tries to sell the slave he's Bound by the mukato nope you can't sell the slave you've got to make it happen right there is no way you can change the conditions there's no way you can exploit it so if you look in the water for example Imam going through all of the different what ifs all of this was to do what was to protect who just to protect that person to protect you know people that were subjugated right it wasn't to protect the master it was to protect the slave because just generally speaking if a person is in a vulnerable situation it's more likely that they would be exploited than they would have their rights uh protected and by the way the smokato you'll actually find some of the the slaves that came to North America the Muslim slaves going into mukato agreements with their North American Masters so there's a very famous um uh he's referenced in certain in certain uh places Prince Abdul Aziz Tanzania who was actually a Quran teacher and he was a slave he was brought here to North America and he enters into a mukata agreement with his master his master's like what is that he's like look I'm a prince I can pay myself off not only that but I'll pay my I'll Ransom myself and I'll Ransom my children so they draw up a contract of mokataba a North American slave owner and Abdel Aziz from Tanzania and he actually goes home and he reclaims his status and he does what he has to do and he starts freeing his children as well so he starts buying drawing up mokataba agreements for other slaves as well as we said Salman was also he was also someone that was in that situation now one of the most underestimated uh you know or undervalued portions of this is that Allah doesn't just say to draw up a contract of manumission and emancipate your sleep and Allah says that you know don't send them back into society vulnerable give them from the money that was given to you so you know what don't just say okay now you're free to go now go figure it out Allah says be generous when you send these prisoners these you know back into society and you send these slaves back into society as freemen be generous give them some money to stand on their own two feet while they try to figure it out like can you think can you imagine this is seventh century Arabia and this stuff is being implemented and the stuff is being um executed now you can imagine with this much kindness though many slaves would prefer not to leave the homes of their masters also something very unique to the Oma you know I'm not going to say which country I was in but I was in a country where if the Nationals or if the if the citizens of that country are arrested for their offenses the prisons that they went to they had like satellite TVs and they you know three uh three course meals breakfast lunch and dinner they were taken care of and I remember meeting a guy that went to one of those prisons for a traffic offense again he was a citizen of that country and you know who you are right now and you're watching but he said I didn't even want to leave he said I got treated better over there than I get treated at home right that's very rare all right that's very rare okay now with slaves and people that were in this situation you have a phenomenon in the ummah of mawali and these were people that were freed but they wanted to stay in the homes of their master and they basically became parts of the family Umar became the Khalif and Omar was a very rich man he had many many servants Omar decided to set them all free you know they said that there was never a night that they heard more crying from a household the people thought Omar died because all of those free all of those servants were crying and begging Omar not to let them go because they became part of the family and he said look but I can't take care of you guys anymore right and that was that was fine they they stuck to it because they became members of the family not fair right he's not a slave he is a Freed Man but you know what he's staying with Abdullah right many of these people were actually very close there you know you read it's one of the most beautiful relationships that you can read about they didn't want to leave so they actually became members and parts of the household and you know they were able to grow and function that way and they became Scholars and so on so forth okay another thing another reform that the prophet peace be upon Him introduces which is very significant the prophet peace be upon him makes it illegal to separate families one of the most tragic things when you read about the transatlantic slave trade right and you read and just slavery in general it's obviously a very ugly reality is that families are usually separated mothers are taken from their children siblings and so on so forth the prophet peace be upon him said may Allah curse the one who separates a mother from her child or a brother or sister from their sibling he actually cursed them you know to for the prophet peace be upon him to invoke learner upon them may Allah curse those people that separate families so when captives were taken in then it was illegal to separate them if there was a family they had to be kept together so they would go into the house of a family and they would they would go through the process together but they were not to be separated because that often is more traumatic you know if you read about some of the journals and the Diaries of slaves in North America and I really wish I had the time maybe it'll be like a black and Noble part two or something like that inshallah one day but to talk about even Muslim slaves in in the transatlantic slave trade but you know people would would be willing to die to go on journeys of death why to be reunited with their children right they try to escape their plantations to go to another Plantation they know they're going to get beaten almost to death if not killed but you know what it's worth it to do what to be reunited with your children that's the most tragic of all the prophet peace be upon him he bans them now obviously the most controversial Topic in this entire discussion and I said that I'm not going to cut corners and I'm going to be very direct and explicit the most controversial Topic in this entire discussion is the topic of what's your right hands possessed the concept of concubinance in Islam okay number one as we said to reiterate that the prophet peace be upon him did not introduce an institution he reformed an institution right he reformed it and actually depleted this institution to an extent that it almost ceased to exist okay so when you talk about concubinance and when you talk about concubines in general because maame is actually more specific than concubineage but concubines in general this was very much so a global practice it was a universal practice in fact even until the 20th century in Europe and you know and in Asia as we mentioned it was a global practice until today it's still underground but it's still a practice now with the prophet peace be upon him he limits this number one the concept of what your right hands possessed it's limited to who to captives why is that in the days of ignorance when women were captured one of two things used to happen either they used to escape and become prostitutes and and you know try to earn whatever in whatever way they could and that was the most reasonable way for them to earn that's the only thing that they that they could do is just go out there and try to fetch in these societies that they didn't know in that way or even worse than that their captors would take them and they would force them into that situation of prostitution it's a very ugly reality there is also no restriction on partners and things of that sort so a person you know had no rights they could be abused in every way possible what does Allah revealed Allah says first and foremost don't compel these women into prostitution don't compel them into that into immodesty and and you know into things that they don't want to do why did Allah reveal this because and others literally they would take these captives these women as captives and they'd not only you know subject them to all sorts of sexual abuse they'd send them out to earn as prostitutes and they complain to the prophet peace be upon him and Allah revealed not to compel these women into a sense of prostitution now we said that in Islam in the legal theory of Islam there is the ideal there's the recommended and there's the bare minimum the bare minimum as we said is removal of Injustice that's what's mandatory what is the mustahab here what did we say the goal of the Prophet peace be upon him was with slavery with the slaves was to reintegrate them to bring them back into society in a dignified way right so what is the mustahab here the prophet peace be upon Him says this Hadith is actually in al-bukhari narrated by Abu Musa the prophet saws says he who has a female captive and he educates her and treats her with kindness and then he frees her and then he marries her he will have double reward from Allah so the prophet encouraged people because that's the ideal is to free them first treat them kindly treat them nicely free them and then marry them that is the ultimate form of reintegration in a society right you come in just as you know you're you're married again you're you're in a reasonable situation and things of that sort uh in a Strange Land in a strange Society so that's number one Allah says this is a second ideal situation second was to have Allah says and marry the unmarried amongst you and the righteous amongst your male slaves and female slaves if they are poor Allah will enrich them from his Bounty so to marry them off okay so to actually set up marriages for them to actually try to find spouses for them all right the male and the female captives that's reintegration to an extreme you act as a guardian for them okay help them find good spouses right and one thing that's very significant here is they even as they were captives they still had full consent as to who they wanted to marry and who they didn't want to marry so you can't force them into that either and there's a very there's a it's funny but it's also sad who is the free slave of Allah was married to marief they were both slaves and burrito was was uh was freed so barira has a choice whether to stay married to her husband who's a Slave or to go free decides to dissolve the marriage and literally murith chases around the streets begging her to stay with him all the time was walking in the streets and this poor guy is behind her begging her to to take him back and the prophet saws is sitting with Abu Bakr and he's looking at that and the prophet saws isn't it amazing how much murith loves her and how much she hates him isn't that amazing like as much as he's like begging her please come back and she's like not she's she's completely ignoring him so the prophet saws says I'm going to go talk to her so the prophet saws goes to bedina she's a freed slave and the prophet saws says you know why don't you give another tense you know what says you think about the nerve of a freed slave she says is this a command from you or are you just interceding on behalf of belief Prophet saws said no I'm just suggesting I'm not commanding you to do anything she said if that's the case will lie I want to stay away from him said fine the point is you talk about empowerment and reintegration in a society like this woman is talking to the prophet saws that way like you know look I'm if if you're telling me I have to then I will because you're the messenger of Allah but otherwise I'm going to decide to stay away from belief I'm going to decide to keep that marriage dissolved so their choices were respected there is consent now when you talk about concubines throughout history in particular were they treated with respect the very definition of a concubine is no because concubine comes from the Latin word concubino which is to lie with it's a mistress in the house basically right so that's the idea of a concubine they're not going to be given rights they're not going to be treated with respect they literally will will be there to fulfill that one purpose and that one purpose alone so what are the conditions of being intimate with MAO malachite number one Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does not mention in a single verse nor does the prophet peace be upon Him mention any reward for that intimacy because we said and I want you guys to realize this in Judaism and in that thought it was praiseworthy to be intimate with concubines why to have more believing children all right and the very early Scholars of Islam they said that the maksud that what is desired through that is not more children so that is because there is isn't there a general rule in Islam or isn't there an encouragement to have children yes the prophet saws says that you know have as many children as you can because I will be proud of your number on the day of judgment and Muslims took that command uh pretty seriously masha'allah right because we have a lot of kids you know especially the Palestinians Masha Allah they keep killing us and we keep out birthing them right but you know it is what it is you know so the prophet saws he has that but did the prophet saws see that institution the institution of malikum as a means of growing the ummah no the early Scholars of Islam okay wrote that that was not one of that was not of the makasid of that institution now what are the conditions that one can become intimate and and this is a very I know it's a disturbing topic and again I want you to realize we're talking about 1400 years ago in the context of War we're not talking about an ideal situation we're talking about a solution that has to deal with a very ugly reality and Islam is grounded in that reality and finding the ideal solution to ugly realities not presenting Solutions or proposing Solutions in idealism because it's not an ideal situation ideally everyone will free them and marry them and they'll all be reintegrated but you can't put that expectation on everybody so what are the conditions that one can become intimate with number one if her husband is alive she remains with him and it's impermissible to be intimate with her all right even if her husband was taken as a captive they cannot be separated and you cannot be intimate with a woman whose husband was still alive that's number one number two she would have to have been Muslim or from the people of the book according to the majority of Scholars why is that significant you know if you look at recent headlines why that's significant okay actually of the Hadith is explanations that those who aren't Muslims or people of the book it's impermissible to be intimate with them until they accept Islam all right so that's number two number three there was a there was a waiting period for that woman because again the ideas that we have in our head are very sick and twisted is that they're going they're taking off the battlefield they're still mourning and they're forced into this very unpleasant situation there's actually so she actually passes a cycle okay which gives her a chance to mourn obviously at whatever it is that that's been lost in the situation and to also be clean and purified and you know to establish that there is no child because protecting lineage is one of them a positive Sharia it's one of the goals of Islam is to protect the lineage to protect the name of the child to know where the child came from and so on so forth right so you establish that through that um number four only one person can be Intimates with her and it has to be known why is that significant that was unheard of before Islam not just in in Arabia all around the world when a woman is brought into the house as a captive as a prisoner unfortunately throughout history she was fair game for the entire household right we're even talking about Europe I mean we're talking about you know we're talking about very recent history Islam restricted it one person could be intimate with that woman and it would have to be known who it is number five she can't already be in a state of mokataba if she's already negotiated her release she's already made a contract with someone to be released and so on so forth she can't be put in that situation that's number five number six and this is perhaps one of the dirtiest accusations against Islam which unfortunately Muslims themselves cannot refute and it disturbs me is consent necessary or not is rape Allowed no it is absolutely not allowed consent was necessary for this woman that comes into the household in that way even though she's a prisoner of war even though she comes in as a quote-unquote concubine which again is unheard of her consent was absolutely necessary what is the proof of that first of all common sense if the prophet saws said that if you do this you have to expiate a Slave then rape is far greater of an abuse than that right it's Common Sense number one number two there are narrations of the sahaba punishing men who raped women that came in that fashion so it was actually a punishable offense now someone might say well you know is there anything clear is this and this is one of the problems honestly is that a lot of the material out there is either you know very brief and and shies away from discussing these topics or it's it's apologetic and you don't know what to make out of it you don't know if it's if it's just defensive if it's authentic or not and this is something that I want to share with you all is there anything explicit in Islamic law that prohibits it because I I forget now because but the the article that that came out in the New York Times something about the Theology of rape or whatever it is is there anything explicit an Islamic law that forbade raping female prisoners of war and female captives one of the earliest books of Islamic law if not the earliest was kitabel um this is the earth of the earliest books an Islamic legal Theory and Islamic law and I'm going to read it in Arabic what Imam he said so that there could be no ambiguity and no doubt about what he says he says foreign if a man acquires a Slave Girl by force and then he forces himself on her and that slave girl uh and he's you know and that could be that he's he's either someone who's uh you know he's Muslim or so on so forth so he's subject to the law of Islam so he's not from the people outside of Islam or he's not someone who's not someone who's crazy right number one she's free the woman goes free number two the punishment of adultery is applied to him not her it's applied to him and he must pay her something so there has to be a fine or there has to be something so she goes free and you know and this man is killed or this man is is taken care of in accordance with whatever he has done subhanallah so the next time someone asks you you know what what's going on in the Middle East and what's going on over there with these people and you're talking about the rape of these yazidi girls and so on so forth is that something that's permissible absolutely not it's impermissible on so many fronts but here in particular consent was established and it's probably the only system which actually explicitly said that a woman even in that situation would have to consent now if you became intimate with this woman from one who was multimed someone who came into the house as a captive she now enjoys the Privileges and the rights of a wife she's promoted to a situation where she's now in the state of a wife what does that mean she can't be touched by anyone else she can't be sold she can't be she she is treated as a member of the household and she has all of the rights of a wife if she has a child and that's then that child number one is not born into slavery you know one of the tragedies of human history is that usually when people had concubines and they became and they had children from those concubines their children were not considered their children they were considered their slaves can you imagine they were fathers of their you know their children but their children were not considered their children they were considered they're slaves so if a child is born as a result of that interaction then the child is born free the woman is called umuela the mother of his child and when he dies when when that person passes away she goes free by default and in most situations she goes free even before that so the child would end up freeing her anyway or she goes free when the man passes away anyway and this was the first time in history that the child of a concubine would by standard practice be recognized as a legitimate child the first time in history okay up until just to give you guys some frame of reference up until uh the 20th century um you know you have what's known as Morgan attic marriage Morgan attic marriage Morgan attic marriage is a practice from the Romans it continued into Europe up until the 20th century and up until now in some customs Morgan attic marriage Morgan attic literally means the morning gift and subhanallah you know uh I'm probably going to have Norman work on this work on this or someone in tough seat because this really is interesting because Morgan attic marriages uh the way that you would signify it basically what it means is the only thing you give is a morning gift and that person has no other right upon you this concubine has no other right upon you and it's not just limited to a prisoner of war by the way this is just a woman in general extramarital relationship and the way that you would signify that this was not a wife is that you would hold her by the left hand what is the last point I say my malakat a Manukau what the right hands possess and so by holding they're literally Morgan attic marriages were called in slang left-hand marriages because you hold by the left hand which means you have no right upon me if you have children they're illegitimate children they're slaves as well you all remain slaves the only thing you get is a morning gift okay I'm from Louisiana so there was a if you read about the history of free people of color and um and uh you know the Creoles and so on so forth you had a system called placach and the police it's spelled p-l-a-c-a-g-e but it's French so placage was a woman that was from a lower social status which meant that she was a people of she was a person of color and if a white man wanted to marry a woman of color then she couldn't actually be his wife so instead she was in this state of placage so she's not actually a wife because she's relegated to a lower social status so it's you know and this is something subhanallah historically speaking if you look at Augustus III of Poland for example and this is interesting Augustus III of Poland and this is in the 18th century he had over 300 children that were considered his slaves we're not talking about Isis in the Middle East here we're talking about you know a few hundred years ago in Europe and what's known as the Civilized world so this is a tragic system and subhanallah reversed it to that to that uh to that situation where she's given the rights of a wife the child is born free and that child can free the mother or when that man passes away then uh then she goes free as well and I know I'm running out of time so Paula let me go through one of the major criticisms of this of monkey mean as well and this concept of is that you know what does this mean for the man that the man is is in a situation where the man uh can can be intimate with more than four wives in that situation and this is something by the way once again Islam is about solving real problems it's not about idealism he said societies welfare always takes precedence over the individual's welfare okay and you know what that means is the the outrage over a man having been able to be intimate with more than one woman or more than four women unfortunately you know goes over the outrage or it supersedes the outrage of a woman the very realistic possibility that a woman in that situation had that option not been there would have most likely been put in a situation of prostitution and most likely been relegated to a very very disturbing status in society as was the practice of the world okay so there's the individual welfare and there's the society's welfare and again if it's a matter of um you know if if the outrage is over polygamy as a whole at that time which again that's also something that was universally practiced at that time then what's the difference between four or five or six or seven right so this was to solve a real problem it was not a desirable situation it was not something that was introduced by Islam and it was something that was reformed to an extent that a woman had rights in that situation that that she would not have had in any other situation even in modern history as a concubine number two here by the way a woman could stipulate in her marriage contract that a man could not be intimate with so it could actually be stipulated in a marriage contract that if a prisoner of war was to come in if a woman was to come in in that situation that you could not be intimate with her number three due to the new restrictions of Islam as as far as the source was concerned as far as how many women could come in as concubines as prisoners as captives it wasn't like people were able to have tens of concubines anymore so you're you know you're you're you know a lot of people start going to all sorts of places and they were thinking that again due to the the modern day deviations and due to you know what we what just comes to our head we start to think of all of these hundreds of women and so on so forth and you start thinking about Hollywood and all these different things and that's not the way that it was Islam did not encourage intimacy with concubines with prisoners of war in any single Ayah any Hadith any understanding of the scholars and with all of that just to show you the justice of Islam because that woman is still vulnerable in many situations right with all of that with the fact that she was given consent with the fact that she could only be married or she could only be in that situation with one person in the household with the fact that she would have to be dressed the same way and fed the same way and clothed the same way and that her children would be free and that they would inherit and she had all of those rights still due to the vulnerability that a woman is in in that situation Allah says that the punishment if they resort to Zina is half the punishment of a free woman now usually enslaved societies when a slave commits a crime is their punishment less or more than a free person it's more right the prophet saws says in the time of Benny Israel if a weak person was to steal then they would happily you know punish them whereas if a royal person was to steal then they would easily make an excuse for them Allah is legislating that if a woman found herself due to her vulnerability because that was the norm of society at that time if she committed zinna her punishment would be half the punishment of a free woman and you know I think in Solitaire just to to sort of summarize moving on on on from here the prophet saws even as he was passing away what did the prophet saws that hold take guard your prayers and take care of those that were placed under your possession be kind to them take care of them and so the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam puts these these mechanisms in place for these people to eventually gain absolute freedom whether they were men or women or children and there is no doubt that Islam thought that and what I want to you know what's really important to point out here will Durant um he actually he in his book The Story of civilization will Durant he says about Muhammad he says he handled them with such a genuine Humanity that made their lot no worse perhaps better and more secure than that of a factory worker in 19th century Europe the way that slaves were treated this is again in the words of a non-muslim historian the way that slaves were treated by the prophet Saws and by the Muslims okay in the early generations of Islam we're more we're we're better conditions than a 19th century factory worker in Europe why is that important because you don't find slave raids being a part of Islam within the first few hundred years of Islam yes you find in the 15th century uh you find the Arab slave trade you find that the Mongols who by the way before becoming Muslim the Mongols also ravaged the Muslim worlds and wreaked havoc on the Muslim world but also unprecedented history the Conqueror accepted the religion of the conquered so the Mongols became Muslim but they carried out their Pro They carried out uh their destruction and their havoc in the world so yes the Mongols continue to wreak havoc on the world despite being Muslim now and yes they took European and Christian slaves and yes the Arab slave trade was brutal and disgusting and it was very far from the Sunnah of the Prophet saws and as Muslims we don't have to answer for the ethics of the Arab slave trade they practiced castration they practice all kinds of brutal practices that are not found in the Quran and the son of the Prophet saws but when you look at the Atlantic slave trade and what happens after that and this is I think probably the most important uh Point here with the transatlantic slave trade and I plan inshallah hopefully to get a chance to actually address some of the Muslims that came to North America in the transatlantic slave trade Christian abolitionists when Christians argued against slavery here in North America they could not argue based on specific injunctions in the Bible because they knew that that was against them so instead the first abolitionists were the Quakers because the Quakers were a mystical sect and they said the general compassion the light of Jesus peace be upon him supersedes the specific laws of the Bible so the Quakers were the ones that led the Abolitionist Movement in this country because the pastors and the priests and the Christian Scholars by and large were writing for slavery they actually considered it to be religiously sanctioned the practices of North American slavery European slavery were actually religiously sanctioned the brutality was because these were the doomed children of ham and they deserve to be treated that way and they deserve to be subjugated because they were a subjugated race this is actually something that was religiously sanctioned and validated and what you find is that Muslims on the other hand Muslims were a part of the slave rebellions that took place around the world so you'll find the wafika of uthman Dan fodio Usman which was basically uh you know a call for the slaves to rebel and to revolt in the Caribbeans particularly in Jamaica and again when you look at the Mandingo Muslims of Trinidad all right they were known for revolting and you re you know some of you might have seen the movie Prince among slaves it's a beautiful movie you should watch that right uh it's a documentary you read about Ayub in Suleiman the Muslim slaves were notorious for Rebellion okay they were notorious for revolting because Islam is empowering and Islam you know we have specific texts that we can quote against slavery as opposed to Christian abolitionists that could only refer to the general uh precepts the foundations of Christianity which are uh compassion and mercy and so on so forth now modern day slavery and conclusion unfortunately yes the Muslim world was the last to abolish slavery in our time that's not from the sin of the prophet's license Saudi Arabia didn't abolish slavery until 1962. Mauritania in 1980. the Catholic Church did not issue an official verdict against slavery until 1965. um and you know we find that slavery was not made a statutory offense in the UK until 2010. Mississippi you know when I'm from Louisiana Louisiana Mississippi we always compete over number 50. number 49. in education and all kinds of stuff right it's always between Louisiana and Mississippi in Mississippi Mississippi did not ratify the 13th Amendment of the Constitution which abolished slavery until 2013. Okay so yes it's disgusting yes there are still hints of slavery and there are still you know the racism and the inequality that festers till today that that caused for racialized slavery to be practiced it still exists but now I want to address Islamic slavery what makes isis's call particularly uniquely deviants and I'm going to use those words uniquely deviants when it comes to slavery is that not a single one of the Revival movements political Islamic movements in the last 100 years has ever called for a return to slavery who gets blamed for everything bad that happens in the Muslim world all right he wrote he said and concerning slavery he says that was when slavery was a worldwide structure which was conducted amongst Muslims and their enemies in the form of enslaving 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 then slavery is a Boston Islam so the Muslim Brotherhood and and the political strands of Islam that are like the Muslim Brotherhood they called against they you know they did not call for a return to slavery in fact even the khilafa movements right which is a an explicit movement a call to the restoration of khilafa in the earliest texts right so it doesn't matter what form of Orthodoxy any of these groups are on right it doesn't matter where in the mainstream they fall anyone that was calling for a you know a political a politicized form of Islam and a restoration of Islam from the earliest texts of Hezbollah they said slavery would never be restored so what makes isis's call and Boko harams call uniquely deviant is that they're calling for something literally that has not been called for by any Islamic movement in any level of Orthodoxy in history and as we said in conclusion modern day slavery dear brothers and sisters um we have more slaves today than we've ever had in history you know Nike has slaves too not just Isis all right sweatshops are also slavery they don't need to be brutalized in that fashion so that you see in called slaves to actually be slaves and so when we talk about an estimated 30 million people in modern slavery today and you know the the amount of human trafficking that takes place and India particularly by the way which is the world's largest democracy technically speaking um has 14 million people that that fall under the definition of slavery today right so the world has not solved these problems of slavery and when you talk about trafficking and you talk about over 20 million adults and children that are sold particularly into sex trafficking then these are things that we also need to counter and these are things that we also need to work against and so we should as Muslims be at the Forefront of talking about human rights not just eliminating not just defending ourselves from isis's uh deviant calls and things of that sort and saying that's not us but we also should be talking about sweatshops and we should be talking about ethical consumerism and we should be at the Forefront of the war against trafficking and so on so forth and actually you could search there's actually a group called Muslims against human trafficking you could search them up in and you know this is something that's also part of our call you know we find the Burmese Muslims one of the the recent videos that came out was by husseini you could look it up on YouTube it's called humans for sale where he talks about the Burmese citizens that are being subjected to slavery and trafficking now when a country eventually lets them in in Thailand the way the Burmese are being treated is almost unprecedented right they're literally being subjugated to the worst forms of conditions and the worst forms of slavery so these are also things that we have to take into consideration whether it's something that's called slavery or not these are all conditions that the prophet saws fought against and that Islam sought to combat some of this discussion today was academic value some of it was absolutely necessary for us to understand obviously where we stand today as Muslims in regards to the fight against slavery I ask Allah to support the oppressed wherever they are and to place us on a path of justice and compassion and to make us the people that always strive for the protection of people and not the exploitation of people whether they're Muslims or non-muslims ask Allah to place Us in the cause of Allah the cause of the weak and the downtrodden and to allow us to to continue in that message of the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam um and and in that call and in that Spirit of the messenger and all of the prophets before Allah I mean I'm going to uh go through just the questions really quick that were sent here inshallah some of them were already answered so number one how do we respond to non-muslims when they say Islam allows married men to have intercourse with their slave women we already answered that number two how can the average person carry the conversation outside this platform how can I free a slave to date again when you when you fight against improper labor conditions when you fight for the people that are being oppressed when you try to help refugees people that are in Practical slavery though it's not technical slavery then you are in the cause of your brother and Allah is in your cause so there are different manifestations of it and you don't have to think of where can I go today and actually purchase the freedom of a slave you don't have to go to the Ivory Coast and ask where the slaves are so you can free them right just work for people and be a part of these movements inshallah for good how does the average person carry the conversation outside this platform I'm I'm pretty sure you guys probably shut off your mind's probably shut off about 30 minutes before the end of the discussion but seriously try to try to understand all you know I wanted to make this as comprehensive as possible so that whatever aspect you're asked about you're able to answer inshallah um please set some light on the slavery of debt for college students and how can we stay away from it but still be able to get an education to benefit the Omaha who chose that question um well you can't there's no such thing as debt slavery anymore in the technical sense but it does exist especially for Med students right um that's a whole discussion of uh of why Allah and the prophet saws hated that so much and how as Muslims we should try to stay away from debt as much as we can and not Place ourselves in those vulnerable situations and the prophet's Islam used to seek refuge and Allah from Dutton he used to seek refuge and Allah from being at the mercy of a human being the simple answer to that is that it's not black and white and you need to ask someone for your unique situation to see what's necessary for you to achieve a reasonable education and what that what that area of necessity will open up for you um why didn't Allah and slavery completely why wasn't slavery why slavery wasn't forbidden as alcohol and pork how can people buy and sell human beings I think we already answered that it would have been you know if number one there was no such thing as a call for abolition number two if that one source of slavery captives of War prisoners of War if that was to be eliminated um at that time then you know what would end up happening what's the alternative and again it's grounded in realism not in idealism it's grounded in a sense of realism this was the most ideal solution to a real situation however Allah again put legislation in place and the messenger slice and put legislation in place to eventually end the institution altogether the institution is depleted and that's also a form of ending slavery as we said sometimes technically ending things doesn't end anything just like we're in North America and I you know and and the the technical call to end slavery and racism did not necessarily do so number five with servants in the Gulf whose passports are held are abused and subjugated be considered as slaves how do we help them yes they are that is slavery that's probably worse than slavery and I I tell people this all the time institutionalize racism whether it's in a Muslim country or a non-muslim country those are forms of slavery where a person is subjugated to that extent where um they are literally at the mercy of their owner okay where if they make a single mistake their rights are taken away from them they're barely paid they're overworked all of that these are all conditions of slavery um and we should be at the Forefront of trying to end those as well some verses of Quran seem to show that female slaves are at the mercy of their masters and endure all kinds of exploitation I think we already answered that as well um one thing I want to end with here inshallah alhamdulillah I mean some of you might have seen a class called Black and Noble so I actually taught this class black and Noble uh for the first time some of you might have seen it on YouTube where you saw it on your own flicks and alhamdulillah I mean we talk about not only you know the the way that the prophet saws ended racism but the way that the prophet saws you know treated uh you know black people in particular and the way that Islam treated it when it came to uh the ambiat when it came to prophets when it came to Roland society when it came to countering anti-black racism the black Companions of the Prophet saws the black tabirin and so on so forth and that class is one of my favorite classes to teach alhamdulillah I mean we recently re-recorded it for being in a TV and it's an HD quality and it has some new kicks to it inshallah it has some updated information and it's been released now on billionaire TV Insha'Allah and that class is truly enlightening and if you've and if you enjoyed today inshaallah then you would you would definitely enjoy that class A lot more there's a lot more stories there and a lot more to keep you uh you know engaged insha Allah but it really shows you the way the prophet saws countered attitudes and how the religion was put in place to counter the very root causes of slavery which were inequality and racism so inshallah please do if you're not registered as well you know if you're not already registered go ahead and register sign up for bayana.tv inshallah and you know recommend it to people and make sure that you attend that class or you you watch those recordings as soon as you can Zach malachite unto everyone for attending today in person and online I ask Allah to make this beneficial for all of us for Muslims and non-muslims and I ask Allah to forgive me if I said anything wrong and I ask Allah to place this on a path that is pleasing to him and to gather us with the prophet sallallahu I mean foreign