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The abolition of the evils underlying slavery by Islam

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 28 July 2023

“And they sold him for a small price, a few pieces of silver, and they showed no desire for him. And the Egyptian who bought him said to his wife: Make his stay honourable. Maybe he will be useful to us, or we may adopt him as a son. And thus We established Joseph in the land, and that We might teach him the interpretation of sayings. And Allah has full control over His affair, but most people do not know.” — ch. 12, v. 20–21

وَ شَرَوۡہُ بِثَمَنٍۭ بَخۡسٍ دَرَاہِمَ مَعۡدُوۡدَۃٍ ۚ وَ کَانُوۡا فِیۡہِ مِنَ الزَّاہِدِیۡنَ ﴿٪۲۰﴾ وَ قَالَ الَّذِی اشۡتَرٰىہُ مِنۡ مِّصۡرَ لِامۡرَاَتِہٖۤ اَکۡرِمِیۡ مَثۡوٰىہُ عَسٰۤی اَنۡ یَّنۡفَعَنَاۤ اَوۡ نَتَّخِذَہٗ وَلَدًا ؕوَ کَذٰلِکَ مَکَّنَّا لِیُوۡسُفَ فِی الۡاَرۡضِ ۫ وَ لِنُعَلِّمَہٗ مِنۡ تَاۡوِیۡلِ الۡاَحَادِیۡثِ ؕ وَ اللّٰہُ غَالِبٌ عَلٰۤی اَمۡرِہٖ وَ لٰکِنَّ اَکۡثَرَ النَّاسِ لَا یَعۡلَمُوۡنَ ﴿۲۱﴾

These verses occur in Surah Yusuf, or chapter ‘Joseph’, of the Quran while relating the earlier part of the life of Joseph. His father Jacob, Ya‘qūb (alai-his-salām), was a prophet and had a great liking for Joseph, who was the eleventh of his twelve sons. The ten sons who were older than Joseph became jealous of him, and schemed to abandon the boy, who was under seventeen years of age at the time, at the bottom of a pit in the wilderness and tell the father that he had been eaten by a wolf, so that Joseph would be lost forever from the family. Joseph was picked up by some passing travellers who took him to the neighbouring country of Egypt. The above verses I have recited continue the story from this point.

They sold Joseph into slavery, as they had no need to keep him for their use. This was about 3600 years ago, about 2200 years before the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. Buying and selling of human beings as slaves is a very old institution. It had existed everywhere in the world since long before Islam came into the world. It was only abolished by law in Western countries in the 1800s, less than 200 years ago. That abolition didn’t bring matters to an end, so that it could be said that slavery has now come to an end and everything related to it is over and finished. In fact, it has left a toxic legacy of resentment which persists today in full force. That legacy is due to the cruel and unjust ill-treatment of slaves during slavery, particularly on the American continent, which to a large extent continued even after slavery was abolished and its victims were no longer slaves officially. Islam did not abolish slavery; it was impossible to do so at that time. But if its teachings on the treatment of slaves were followed, then a time would come when slavery could be abolished, and without leaving a bitter legacy.

In the above verse, after purchasing Joseph, the man who bought him says to his wife: “Make his stay honourable. Maybe he will be useful to us, or we may adopt him as a son”. He wants the purchased slave to be treated with dignity and raises the possibility that one day he may even become a member of the family. If he is to be useful to them, he should be treated well. Unfortunately, those who purchased slaves in the American continent two or three centuries ago, had the opposite attitude, that the slaves should be beaten into submission, and demeaned and dehumanised in every way, in order to work on the owners’ plantations. All that brutal maltreatment could not be forgotten by the victims and their descendants. And even after the abolition of slavery, the former slave owners retained their mental outlook of scornfully looking down upon the former enslaved races as inferior beings. Hence the bitter and toxic legacy of that slavery continuing today, which I mentioned above. The Egyptian owner of Joseph, who lived more than 3000 years earlier, had a far more advanced and humane attitude than that displayed in modern Western civilisation.

The Quran and the Holy Prophet Muhammad adopted many measures for obtaining freedom of slaves, and in addition for their good treatment while they remained in slavery. In a very early revelation, the Quran declared the freeing of slaves to be one of the acts of goodness which a person must strive hard to undertake, and it calls these acts of goodness as “the uphill road” because it says that people are reluctant to attempt that road (90:11–13). There is a later revelation, of the middle period of the Holy Prophet’s mission, in which the fundamentals of Islam are listed as regards the beliefs, good deeds, and good qualities required for a person in order to become righteous (2:177). It is a well known verse beginning with the words: “It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards the East and the West, but righteous is the one who …”. Here the verse first mentions the beliefs that are required of a righteous person, and then the next requirement in the verse is that the righteous should spend wealth on good causes. One of these good causes given in the verse is the freeing of slaves. This verse places the spending of money to obtain freedom of slaves among the fundamentals of Islam, such as belief in Allah and the Quran and the prophets, saying prayers and giving zakāt.

Then there is a very late revelation, which the Holy Prophet received towards the end of his life, about the deserving people on whom the government of Islam should spend the zakāt that it collects (9:60). In that list of deserving people, beginning with the poor and the needy, it mentions the freeing of slaves. These three revelations, ranging from the beginning to the end of the Holy Prophet Muhammad’s mission, make it a moral and a legal requirement, on Muslim individuals as well as the Muslim state, to set slaves free by purchasing their freedom.

The Quran also gave the instruction to those who owned slaves that a slave had the right to enter into a contract of freedom with the owner, and the owner could not refuse to enter into the contract if the slave was capable of earning his livelihood independently. In that verse the Quran also recommended that the owner should give money to the slave, that is to say, to set him up for his life of freedom.

The Holy Prophet Muhammad never kept a slave. In those days, people used to give slaves as gifts to others. Any such slave given to the Holy Prophet was freed by him. One of them was Zaid ibn Haritha. When he was a boy, living with his family far from Makkah, he was kidnapped by robbers and was lost to his family. The kidnappers sold him to someone in Makkah as a slave. That person gave him as a gift to Hazrat Khadijah. When she married the Holy Prophet, she gave him Zaid as a gift. The Holy Prophet liberated Zaid and he became so attached to Zaid that he called him the beloved. Some years later Zaid’s family discovered that he was living in Makkah. His father and uncle came to fetch him and told the Holy Prophet that they would pay him anything to get him back. The Holy Prophet told them that Zaid should decide whether to go with his family or not, and that if he chose to go with them, the Holy Prophet would not take any payment from them. Zaid was called and he told his father and uncle that he could not leave the Holy Prophet because of love for him. At this, the Holy Prophet declared Zaid as his adopted son. This was in the pre-prophethood days of the Holy Prophet.

Later on, when the Holy Prophet was appointed by Allah as His Messenger, Zaid was one of the first persons to accept Islam. From being a slave, Zaid became known as “son of Muhammad”, and some years later the Holy Prophet married him to his cousin Zainab (although the marriage ended in divorce after a year). As we can see, when this slave was freed he chose to remain with his former owner because he loved him due to the way he had treated him. There was no legacy of bitterness. Zaid’s son Usama was also close to the Holy Prophet, who appointed him as commander of a military expedition to Syria. That expedition took place shortly after the Holy Prophet’s death at the beginning of the khilafat of Hazrat Abu Bakr and was successful. Muslims have always been, since then till the present day, been grateful for the services of this slave and his son.

I will now quote from a well known and fundamental hadith report. It is in Sahih Bukhari, near the beginning in the section dealing with the basic beliefs of Islam (hadith 30). A man says that he came across Abu Dharr, who was a Companion of the Holy Prophet. He noticed that Abu Dharr had a slave with him who was wearing the same clothes as Abu Dharr. The man was surprised at this equality, and asked Abu Dharr how that came to be the situation. Abu Dharr gave this explanation:

“I once abused a man, calling him by a bad name because of his mother. The Prophet ﷺ said to me: Abu Dharr! You called him by a bad name because of his mother. Surely you are a man in whom is ignorance (jāhiliyyah). Your slaves are your brothers. Allah has placed them in your charge. So whoever has his brother in his charge, he should feed him with what he himself eats, clothe him with what he himself wears. And do not burden them with work which overwhelms them. If you burden them (with such work), then help them in doing it.”

It is said that the man whom Abu Dharr abused was Bilal and he had called him the son of a black woman. The Holy Prophet told Abu Dharr that he was behaving as the pre-Islamic Arabs did. The word jāhiliyyah not only means ignorance in a general sense but in Islamic terminology it refers to the period in Arabia before Islam.

It is true that Islam did not abolish slavery in the legal sense and Western countries abolished it in the 1800s in the legal sense. But Islam abolished it in the moral and underlying sense, so that when it would be legally abolished there would be no legacy of bitter resentment lasting for generations.

So may Allah enable us to see the deep wisdom of the religion of Islam which is above just superficial tinkering, ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk