Slavery in Islam
A Doctrine of Chains, Rape, and Righteous Oppression
Welcome to the truth—uncut, unfiltered, and untamed.
Let’s skip the sugar and dive straight into the rot: Islam did not reluctantly tolerate slavery. It codified it. It sanctified it. It built an empire on it.
Forget every “Islam is the religion of peace” pamphlet. Forget the apologetics trying to paint slavery as “spiritual servitude” or “progressive for its time.” That’s not history—it’s revisionist bedtime stories for the willfully blind.
This is your wake-up call.
📜 Qur’an: Divine License to Enslave
Let’s begin with the sacred source—the Qur’an. If there were ever a moment for God to outlaw human ownership, it was in His final revelation. Spoiler: He didn’t.
Instead, He wove it in:
“And those who guard their private parts, except from their wives or those their right hands possess...”
— Qur’an 23:5–6 (also 70:29–30)
That’s not poetic language. That’s a legal loophole for sex with slave women. No consent. No marriage. Just ownership.
More?
“[Forbidden to you are] married women, except those your right hands possess.”
— Qur’an 4:24
You read that right. Even married women, captured in war, could be used. Their husbands? Irrelevant. Allah just overrode the sanctity of their marriage — with divine permission for rape.
This isn’t God tolerating an evil until reform. This is God blessing the evil with holy exemption clauses.
🧕 Muhammad and Slavery: A Prophet of Chains
Let’s torch the myth that Muhammad abolished slavery. In fact, he:
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Owned slaves personally, including male and female.
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Traded and gifted slaves.
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Took female war captives as concubines, including:
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Rayhana – enslaved after the mass execution of her tribe.
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Safiyya bint Huyayy – taken the night her family was slaughtered.
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Sahih Muslim 3371: “The Prophet took a woman as his share from the captives.”
Sahih al-Bukhari 254: “The Prophet took a slave girl from the fifth (of war booty) and kept her for himself.”
If this were any other historical figure, we’d call him a warlord sex trafficker. But slap a halo on him, and suddenly it’s “divinely guided conduct.”
Apologists, take a seat.
⚖️ Sharia Law: The Jurisprudence of Ownership
Slavery wasn’t an unfortunate side note in Islam. It was a pillar of Sharia, institutionalized by every major Islamic school of law.
The rules? Crystal clear:
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Slaves could be bought, sold, gifted, inherited.
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Female slaves could be raped by their owners.
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Children born to slave women became the master’s property.
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Slaves could be beaten, with punishment levels differing from free people.
📚 Al-Muwatta (Maliki school): Includes instructions for disciplining slaves, treating them as property unless manumitted.
📚 Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller): Explicitly legitimizes slavery under the Shafi’i school.
The system lasted over 1,300 years. Not fringe. Not rare. Central.
🗣️ Myth-Roasting: Apologetics in Ashes
Time to incinerate the top excuses:
❌ "Islam was better than other slave systems!"
So what? Being the “least cruel” oppressor doesn’t make you moral. Upgrading chains to velvet doesn’t make slavery righteous.
❌ "Muhammad encouraged freeing slaves!"
Yes, as an act of piety—the same way Catholics used indulgences. It wasn’t abolition; it was divine brownie points for a system the Prophet himself expanded.
❌ "That was the culture at the time!"
Culture isn’t a divine excuse. If God mimics the norms of 7th-century Arabia, He’s not eternal — He’s an opportunist.
❌ "Islam eventually outlawed slavery!"
Not in the Qur’an. Not in Hadith. Not in the four schools of Sunni law. Slavery was outlawed by secular pressure, often with Islamic clerics resisting it.
🌍 Race and the Arab Slave Trade: Islam’s Dirty Secret
Think Islam’s slavery was race-blind? Think again.
From the 7th century to the 20th, Arab Muslim traders enslaved millions of Africans — far outlasting the transatlantic slave trade.
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Zanj Rebellion (869–883 CE): African slaves rose up in what is now Iraq, after centuries of exploitation in salt mines.
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Castration of Black male slaves was common practice.
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In many Arab cultures, the word for slave, ‘abd’, became synonymous with Black — a racial legacy still in use today.
Islamic slavery didn’t transcend racism. It helped codify it.
🔍 Logical Faceplant: Theology Implodes
Let’s apply pure logic:
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God is perfectly moral.
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Islam is God’s final moral system.
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Islam permits slavery and sexual slavery.
→ Therefore, either:
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God’s morality includes rape and human ownership, or
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Islam isn’t from God.
Pick one. You can’t have it both ways. The doctrine self-destructs under its own weight.
📣 Scholarship Speaks (Whether You Like It or Not)
Even Muslim and secular scholars aren’t playing apologist anymore:
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Jonathan A.C. Brown (Slavery and Islam):
“There is no denying that slavery is part of the Sharia.” -
Kecia Ali (Sexual Ethics and Islam):
“The Prophet’s sexual relationships with concubines are not simply historical… they shape Islamic ethics.” -
Bernard Lewis (Race and Slavery in the Middle East):
“The institution of slavery was sanctioned and regulated by the Qur’an and Islamic law.”
This isn’t Islamophobia. It’s Islamology.
⛓️ Modern Denial: The Chains Are Now Mental
Islamic slavery was only outlawed when modern secular governments forced the issue:
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Saudi Arabia: 1962 (under Western pressure)
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Mauritania: 1981
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Slavery criminalized in Mauritania: 2007 — and still ignored in tribal Islamic areas.
Meanwhile, clerics in Yemen, Sudan, Nigeria, and ISIS-controlled zones still cite scripture to justify modern slavery. Because it's there. In black and white.
💥 Final Verdict: Slavery in Islam Is Not a Myth. It’s a Monument.
Islam didn’t fight slavery. It institutionalized it.
Islam didn’t abolish slavery. It protected it.
And Islam didn’t “just go with the times.” It dragged those times into eternity and called it revelation.
Slavery wasn’t a cultural byproduct. It was an ideological mandate.
This isn’t hate. This is history. And if your religion needs a PR campaign to bury its holy endorsement of rape, human ownership, and generational servitude, then the problem isn’t with critics.
It’s with your theology.
⚠️ Disclaimer
This post critiques Islam as an ideology, doctrine, and historical system—not Muslims as individuals. Every human deserves dignity. Beliefs do not. Truth-telling is not hate. Silence is.
📚 Bibliography & Sources
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Qur’an, multiple translations: Sahih International, Pickthall
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Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim – via sunnah.com
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Jonathan A.C. Brown, Slavery and Islam, Oneworld Publications, 2019
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Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam, Oneworld Publications, 2006
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Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Oxford University Press, 1990
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Ronald Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves, FSG, 2001
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The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd Edition, Brill
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Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller) – Shafi’i jurisprudence
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Al-Risalah, Maliki fiqh manual
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Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, Harvard University Archive
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Zanj Rebellion records, Journal of African History
⚠️ Disclaimer
This post critiques Islam as an ideology, doctrine, and historical system — not Muslims as individuals. Every human deserves respect; beliefs do not. Criticizing harmful ideas is not hate — it is responsibility.
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