A Civilised Ramble Through Slavery in the Islamic World

It is a peculiarity of modern morality—particularly that brittle alloy of virtue-signalling and historical amnesia—that while slavery is universally abhorred today, its practitioners have not all been consigned equally to the dock of public opprobrium. Some are loudly castigated—Britain, for example, is endlessly flogged at the altar of empire and sugar plantations, its entire history reduced to a BBC montage of chains, collars, and haughty moustaches. Others are quietly forgiven—often on the basis that their crimes were more cultural, more complicated, or somehow committed with a softer touch. And some, most curiously, remain entirely untouched, cloaked in the gauze of reverence and cultural relativism, as if historical scrutiny were a Western indulgence from which certain parts of the world must be gallantly excused.

This selective indictment would be comic, were it not so tragically consequential. We find ourselves in a moral landscape where statues are toppled, street names changed, and syllabuses rewritten—yet vast systems of historical bondage, some of them stretching across a thousand years and millions of human beings, pass beneath the ethical radar with scarcely a murmur. Why? Because they do not fit the preferred template. They cannot be neatly cast in the now-popular roles of European oppressor and colonised victim. They complicate the story. And, as is so often the case in our intellectually indolent age, complexity is inconvenient.

Which brings us, if you will indulge a meander through time and text, to the subject of slavery in the Islamic world—an institution neither peripheral nor anomalous, but central, sacred, and spectacularly long-lived. Here was no fleeting social embarrassment to be tucked away in footnotes, no moral misstep hastily corrected by a new prophet or enlightenment. No, slavery in Islam was a divine affair—codified, sanctified, and lovingly detailed by jurists across the centuries. It was not only permitted; it was perfectly natural.

Whereas the Christian West eventually tied itself in tortured knots—scriptural, philosophical, and political—in order to abolish slavery (and yes, not without blood and hypocrisy), the Islamic tradition approached the issue with a different spirit altogether. It regulated slavery with almost bureaucratic enthusiasm: when it could happen, who could be enslaved, how slaves might be treated, and even when they might be granted a benevolent release. But abolition? That, dear reader, would be to question the divine order.

The difference is not merely academic. It is philosophical. It tells us something profound about how different civilisations confronted the question of human bondage—not only whether it was wrong, but whether it could ever be unthinkable. And, I dare say, it reveals rather a lot about the pick-and-mix ethics of the modern moralist: the great enthusiast for justice who will march against statues in Bristol, but remain utterly mute on the great, unatoned cruelty of the Caliphates.

So let us proceed—with tact, wit, and perhaps a few raised eyebrows—to explore this extraordinary omission in our collective memory. Because if we are to understand slavery, truly and honestly, then we must examine not only those who abolished it, but also those who chose not to.

Slavery by the Book (Quite Literally)

Let us begin, as one must, with the Book. Not a dusty tome of Enlightenment rationalism or a moral treatise from Kant or Mill, but the Qur’an—the central text of Islam, revered by its adherents not merely as inspiration but as revelation, dictated (not merely divinely inspired, mind you) to the Prophet Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel himself. For over a billion Muslims, its verses are not polite recommendations from a benevolent sky-father but immaculate commands, perfect in word and eternal in wisdom.¹

And one might—if one were feeling especially optimistic about the moral arc of the universe—hope to find in such a text an unequivocal denunciation of slavery. Perhaps a thunderous proclamation, as simple and earth-shattering as any delivered atop Sinai: “Thou shalt not own another human being.” A straightforward condemnation of the subjugation of man by man. Something morally elemental.

Alas. Such moral clarity is not to be found.

What we encounter instead is something altogether more pragmatic—a sort of divine bureaucratism that treats slavery not as a moral aberration, but as a natural fixture of the human condition, much like rain or inheritance or the occasional bout of plague. The Qur’an does not so much challenge slavery as it organises it. It references slaves dozens of times—not to abolish the practice, but to delineate its boundaries. They are simply there, “those whom your right hands possess” (ma malakat aymanukum)—a phrase as common in Islamic scripture as “thou shalt not steal” is in the Decalogue, and every bit as taken for granted.²

These unfortunates—captives, concubines, and domestic aides—could be bought, sold, inherited, and yes, used sexually without the formalities of marriage. Indeed, one of the more curious features of Islamic jurisprudence is its ability to regulate the violation of consent without ever acknowledging its absence. Female slaves could be shared amongst male relatives (though, of course, one must not harm them—rape is wrong, unless the victim is owned, in which case it becomes something closer to conjugal rights).

And here, one is invited—obliged, even—to appreciate the legal fastidiousness of the medieval Islamic jurists. One might not beat a slave too harshly. One should feed them adequately, clothe them decently, and even offer manumission if they prove particularly pious or useful. All of which is terribly civilised, rather like insisting that your houseplants receive classical music or that your horses be read poetry. Yet at no point is the principle of ownership itself questioned. The problem is not that a human being is chattel, only that they should not be treated like bad chattel.

This is not to say there are no rewards for manumission. Quite the contrary. Freeing a slave is frequently listed as an expiatory act—penance for certain sins, a sort of spiritual cleansing. But—and this is crucial—it is voluntary and transactional, not mandated. A master who chooses to free his slave is pious. A master who does not is still perfectly within his rights. The system is morally intact either way.³

Now, as to the Prophet himself, it would be historically dishonest—though immensely convenient—to pretend he floated above the institution of slavery like some desert-born Mandela. He did not. Muhammad owned slaves, traded them, and accepted them as gifts. Among them were men and women: Bilal the Ethiopian, famously elevated from slavery to the status of muezzin (a gesture both symbolic and functional), Zayd ibn Harithah, adopted and dearly loved, and Maria the Copt, a Christian concubine given to him by the Egyptian governor, who bore him a son. Muhammad did indeed freeslaves, and encouraged humane treatment, but again, within the framework of slavery, not outside or against it.

Regulation—not renunciation—was the spirit of the age. The Qur’an and Hadiths offered no abolitionist doctrine, no mandate for universal emancipation, and certainly no vision of a world where slavery itself might one day be viewed as an abomination. The institution was divinely sanctioned and legally entrenched, nestled comfortably within Islamic law like a cat curled on a sun-drenched windowsill—an unbothered feature of the home.

All of which is to say: the Islamic conception of slavery was not a moral error to be corrected, but a divinely ordained reality to be managed. It was administered, monitored, and spiritually bracketed—but never dismantled. It was seen as part of the natural order, like monarchy or rainfall. And it remained so, not for a century or two, but for well over a millennium.

To suggest otherwise—to project modern sensibilities back onto the past—is a charming but mistaken indulgence. Islamic slavery was not a regrettable side note. It was an integral feature of a religious and legal system that, unlike its Western counterparts, never underwent a theological or philosophical revolution on the matter.

And therein lies the rub: while the West may have sinned grievously in its embrace of slavery, it also tore itself apart in order to end it. The Islamic world, by contrast, managed to keep its conscience clear while keeping its slaves.

That, I’m afraid, is the literal—and literary—truth.

The Jurists Join the Party

If the Qur’an provided the scaffolding, then it was the jurists—those exquisitely erudite minds of the medieval Islamic world—who furnished the edifice of slavery with all its ornate trimmings. Like dutiful civil servants at a divine planning department, they took the bare bones of scripture and fleshed out a legal system so meticulous it would make even the most fastidious Roman blush. You see, once Islam blossomed from a prophetic movement into a full-fledged empire, with caliphs, courts, and contracts, the business of managing the enslaved required standardisation. And so, Shariah-compliant bondage was born.

Under this benevolent legal architecture, slaves could be acquired in a dazzling variety of ways—captured in war (the most favoured method), purchased at market, or inherited like a set of well-worn rugs. They could be given as gifts to curry political favour, traded between households, or used to settle debts. Female slaves, of course, held a special category all their own. They were concubines—available to their owners not only for labour but for pleasure, no contract, consent, or cleric required. It was all perfectly above board, you understand, provided she wasn’t a Muslim (in which case, a thin veil of protection applied).⁴

The great legal schools of Islam—the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali, and for the Shi’a, the Ja’fari—may have squabbled over this or that ritual nuance, but on slavery they marched in remarkable lockstep. It was lawful, God-sanctioned, and thoroughly woven into the moral fabric of the faith. One could manumit a slave, yes, and be praised for the gesture. Indeed, many acts of penance—missing a fast, breaking an oath, killing a believer by accident—could be offset by the pious act of freeing a soul you happened to own. But note well: manumission was a commendable extra, not a mandated goal.

Abolishing slavery outright? Why, that would be an act of bid‘ah—innovation—the dirtiest word in the Islamic legal lexicon, roughly equivalent to adding pineapple to a centuries-old sacred recipe. Unforgivable.

One might picture, with a certain wistful romanticism, an Islamic Wilberforce, emerging in Baghdad or Cordoba around the twelfth century. A bright-eyed cleric, perhaps, clutching both Qur’an and conscience, announcing before the Ummah that slavery offends the very dignity of man, that no human may rightly own another, and that the Divine—surely—wills freedom above bondage.

One might imagine that. But one would be disappointed.

No such figure appears. Because within the Islamic legal tradition, the idea of abolishing slavery was not just radical—it was heretical. Not a single classical jurist—however bold, devout, or inspired—dared to propose such a thing. To even suggest that slavery ought to be banished would have been to challenge not merely jurisprudence, but Revelation itself. It would be to say, in essence, that the Prophet had erred, that God’s Book had missed the mark.⁵

And so, the institution persisted—like an old chandelier, inconvenient and morally awkward, but too sacred to discard. Even as Europe began to agonise over the moral cost of its own slave economies—spurred on by Christian abolitionists, Enlightenment thinkers, and, yes, economic expediencies—the Islamic world remained largely unbothered. Slavery wasn’t merely tolerated; it was entrenched, with a legal architecture and theological backing that made reform almost impossible.

Indeed, where abolitionists in the West often framed slavery as a sin, Islamic jurists treated it as a right. One could choose to forgo it, of course, just as one might choose to fast an extra day or donate alms beyond the prescribed zakat. But to deny the institution outright? That would be to refute centuries of scholarship, contradict the hadiths, and quite literally rewrite the Word of God.

Thus, the jurists did not merely endorse slavery. They perfected it. They turned it into a system of moral economy—a place where the master’s piety was measured not in his renunciation of ownership, but in how graciously he wielded his power. The bondsman’s fate was sealed not by sin, but by circumstance. And in the grand edifice of Islamic law, this arrangement was just, ordered, and God-approved.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how theology married legality—and slavery got a prenup.

Swords, Ships, and Eunuchs

Now, one hears, occasionally and rather naively, that slavery in the Islamic world was somehow kinder, gentler, more spiritual—dare one say, civilised—than the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade. This, dear reader, is to mistake scented decorum for moral decency, to conflate decorative lampshades with electric light. It is to sip opium through a perfumed veil and believe it a moral argument.

Let us tear the veil aside.

The trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trades were not only immense in scale, but formidable in their brutality. For over a millennium, human cargo—Black Africans from the Sahel, Slavs from the Balkans, Persians, Turks, Georgians, Indians—was ferried across deserts and seas, bound for every corner of the Islamic world. From Marrakesh to Mombasa, Baghdad to Delhi, the machinery of servitude churned with alarming efficiency.⁶

In the bustling slave markets of Cairo, Zanzibar, and Basra, human beings were appraised like fruit—prodded, inspected, and bartered over. The unfortunate souls pressed into domestic service might find themselves in kitchens, gardens, or harems. Others—particularly young African boys—were selected for something far more chilling: castration.

Yes, castration.

A euphemism would be tempting here, but let us not spare the sensibilities of an institution that rarely spared its victims. Boys were taken, often violently, and subjected to an operation whose fatality rate could reach a gruesome 80%. Those who survived became eunuchs—ideal, apparently, for guarding harems, managing palace intrigues, or rising to positions of courtly trust. The Ottoman court alone had entire ranks of Black eunuchs, many of whom served the royal family with terrifying loyalty. Some rose to immense power. But let us not delude ourselves: their ascent did not vindicate the system any more than Frederick Douglass’s oratory justified American slavery.

Indeed, the Islamic world cultivated a curious fondness for slave-soldiers and administrators. Among them, the Mamluks—originally Turkic and Circassian boys enslaved by Arab rulers—were trained in martial arts, Islamic law, and loyalty to the sword. Eventually, these slave-soldiers did something most slaves are not expected to do: they seized power. The Mamluks overthrew their masters and ruled Egypt for centuries, all while perpetuating the very system that birthed them.⁷

Likewise, the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire—Christian boys abducted through the devshirme levy, converted to Islam, and conscripted into elite military service—formed the backbone of one of the world’s most formidable armies. They were disciplined, loyal, and often magnificently attired in feathered caps and brocade—yet they were, at the core, still stolen children, moulded into instruments of empire.⁸

It is one of history’s more sardonic twists that in many Islamic courts, the men whispering in the caliph’s ear, commanding armies, or administering vast provinces were technically slaves. But let us not be seduced by the finery. Power does not erase provenance. These were still human beings bought, sold, and stripped of agency. Their magnificence, if one can call it that, came despite their bondage, not because of it.

To elevate these examples as proof of Islamic slavery’s benevolence is rather like praising Roman crucifixions for offering a good vantage point. Yes, a few soared. Most bled. And all were shackled.

As for the sexual economy of slavery—well, that was brisk business indeed. Female slaves, particularly those of fair skin, were in high demand as concubines, entertainers, and dancers. The Abbasid court was infamous for its harems of Persian and Byzantine women, some of whom bore caliphs and influenced dynasties. But again, let us be clear: this was not romantic dalliance. It was exploitation with a literary flourish. These women were not lovers. They were property, however gilded their cages.

So no, slavery in the Islamic world was not some velvet-lined alternative to transatlantic cruelty. It was a complex, enduring system of human degradation—complete with its own rituals, philosophies, and hierarchies. The fact that it produced poets, generals, and viziers only serves to underline its perverse sophistication. It was not softer. It was simply older, broader, and often better documented.

To suggest otherwise is not historical nuance. It is moral evasion.

Modernity Arrives, Uninvited

Fast-forward, if you please, to the 19th and 20th centuries—those turbulent chapters when modernity came blundering into history like an uninvited guest at a garden party, upending the furniture, knocking over the urns, and daring to suggest that perhaps keeping other human beings in chains was rather unseemly.

The Western world, prodded by a heady cocktail of abolitionist fervour, economic transformation, and late-blooming conscience, began to dismantle the edifice of transatlantic slavery. It was not always pretty. It was not always consistent. But it was, for the most part, genuine. The ghastly machinery of auction blocks and plantations was gradually—but determinedly—shut down.⁹

And then came the moment when, having cleared their own moral decks (and perhaps seeking a little distraction from colonial embarrassments elsewhere), the West turned its gaze eastward. Britain, that self-appointed moral hall monitor of the 19th century, made the abolition of slavery a diplomatic imperative. Governors and consuls were dispatched, treaties drawn up, and sultans—those turbaned titans of the Orient—were gently, and at times not-so-gently, persuaded to reconsider their fondness for human chattel.

The Ottoman Empire, facing the dual pressures of military decline and British diplomacy, grudgingly signed agreements to curtail the slave trade. But like a smoker forced to light up behind the bicycle shed, enforcement was patchy, and enthusiasm minimal. The trade slowed. It never stopped.

As for the Saudis, that ever-devout custodian of tradition—they held out with impressive zeal. Slavery was not merely permitted in Wahhabi Islam, it was practically woven into the national DNA. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia did not formally abolish slavery until 1962—not, one hastens to note, out of introspective moral awakening, but under intense pressure from the United States, which found the optics increasingly awkward during the Cold War. One does not, after all, trumpet the cause of freedom while one’s oil-rich ally is merrily bartering Ethiopian concubines in Riyadh.

But here’s the rather uncomfortable bit.

While Western societies—clumsily, contradictorily, and often hypocritically—abolished slavery in law, theology, and public life, no such reformation occurred within Islamic orthodoxy. The Qur’an, with its calm and measured endorsements of slavery, remained untouched. The Hadiths—those vast libraries of prophetic sayings—continued to offer detailed instructions on the acquisition, discipline, and manumission of slaves. And no central Islamic authority, no majlis, no grand mufti, stood up to say, with clarity and finality, “Slavery is un-Islamic.”¹⁰

At best, one encounters the theological equivalent of a bureaucratic shrug: slavery is not practised, we are told, because the conditions for it do not currently exist. It is, in effect, suspended—like a Netflix subscription during Ramadan. Not abolished. Not condemned. Simply… deferred.

The distinction is not academic. It is philosophical, legal, and profoundly moral.

Whereas Western abolitionists, from Wilberforce to Lincoln, sought to place slavery among the ranks of history’s moral abominations—never again, in all circumstances, everywhere—Islamic jurisprudence has, for the most part, simply mothballed the institution. Like a beloved but outdated suit, it’s been tucked away in the attic of orthodoxy, perhaps waiting for an occasion where it might be needed again. Should the caliphate rise anew, with its banners and its swords and its grand proclamations, the jurisprudence is already in place. All the clerics would need to do is dust off the manuals.

Indeed, ISIS—that grotesque pantomime of Islamic revivalism—did precisely that. They cited the Qur’an, the Hadiths, and the rulings of classical jurists to justify their revival of slavery, particularly the enslavement of Yazidi women. And the shocking thing, dear reader, was not that they did so—it was that they could. The legal and theological infrastructure was already there. Waiting.¹¹

Modernity, for all its gadgets and human rights declarations, has yet to be fully invited into the doctrinal house of Islam. It may knock. It may write urgent op-eds. But the door remains, if not locked, then at least awkwardly ajar.

And so we are left with an enduring paradox: in the Islamic world, slavery has not been abolished. It has simply gone out of fashion. Like powdered wigs or bear-baiting. Not wrong, you understand. Just… not done.

For now.

A Disturbing Legacy

The modern mind—particularly that of the earnest liberal or well-meaning interfaith enthusiast—balks at such moral equivocation. We live, or so we are told, in a post-slavery age. The notion of one human being owning another seems not merely repugnant but unfathomable, consigned to the same historical oubliette as phrenology and bloodletting. But history, like a bad habit, has a way of resurfacing—especially when the foundational architecture has never truly been dismantled.

And so, when ISIS rolled its black flags into Iraq and Syria, establishing its grotesque theocratic Disneyland, it did not innovate. It did not reinterpret. It simply revived. With appalling precision and eerie confidence, the so-called Islamic State resurrected the jurisprudence of slavery, and applied it as if the centuries between never existed. Yazidi women and girls were captured, catalogued, sold at slave markets, and distributed among fighters as “concubines”—a euphemism that did little to mask the horror of industrialised rape.

What made this revival all the more ghastly was not merely the act, but the justification. ISIS did not concoct some mad new theology. It did not twist scripture beyond recognition. No, it cited chapter and verse—from the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the venerable tomes of Islamic jurisprudence. It invoked the rulings of Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Mawardi, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya. It quoted the great legal schools verbatim. Its clerics offered footnotes, not inventions. And disturbingly, they were not wrong. Repellent, yes. But within the bounds of classical orthodoxy? Uncomfortably so.¹²

This, then, is the problem. The moral infrastructure of Islamic slavery was never truly torn down—only disused. It has been treated, in modern discourse, like an embarrassing family heirloom: wrapped in cloth, tucked in the attic, and rarely mentioned at dinner. But heirlooms, as we know, can be passed down. And when a group emerges with the necessary cocktail of brutality, theological literacy, and millenarian zeal, that attic can be unlocked. And its contents reactivated.

One must marvel—though not admiringly—at how deftly ISIS tapped into this unbroken legacy. The markets they set up in Raqqa and Mosul were not wild improvisations. They followed, step by step, the prescriptions of classical Islamic law: pricing mechanisms, lineage considerations, even exemptions for pregnant slaves. Their fighters justified rape not with bravado but with fiqh—religious jurisprudence. They saw themselves not as criminals, but as revivalists. And that is what makes it so chilling.

And yet, in the salons of polite multicultural discourse, this subject is tiptoed around like a sleeping dragon. Speak of the transatlantic slave trade, and you shall be lauded. Mention the Arab slave trade, and you might get a polite nod. Raise the spectre of religiously sanctioned slavery in Islam, and you shall be denounced as an Orientalist, an Islamophobe, or worse—a historian.

It is, I’m afraid, a grotesque double standard. The West has rightly been forced to reckon with its sins. Schools debate the legacy of empire, museums issue land acknowledgements, and statues are scrutinised with forensic zeal. But when it comes to the Islamic world’s own centuries of human bondage, the conversation stalls. Perhaps out of fear. Perhaps out of guilt. Perhaps out of that dreadful and self-defeating instinct to patronise by omission.

But facts do not bend to politeness. The legacy of Islamic slavery is not just a matter of historical curiosity—it is a live wire, waiting to be touched. So long as its theological justifications remain intact—neither condemned, nor repudiated, nor reformed—it can be revived. It has been revived. And it will be revived again, unless we have the intellectual honesty and moral courage to confront it.

The challenge is not merely to document the past, but to interrogate the canon. To ask, with unfashionable seriousness: should certain scriptures be re-read, re-contextualised, even—dare one whisper it—rejected? The Christian world was forced to wrestle with its own sacred texts, to admit that not all that is ancient is holy. Islam, too, must undergo this reckoning, however painful it may be.

Because the truth, however uncomfortable, is this: slavery in the Islamic tradition was not a deviation. It was an institution. And unless we reckon with that, honestly and unapologetically, we leave the door ajar for its return.

Comfortably Complicit

It is, of course, deeply unfashionable to say any of this. Not because it is wrong, but because it is impolite. Our age, for all its self-congratulatory moral posturing, is afflicted by a curious malaise: the terror of causing offence. Post-colonial sensitivities, layered with identity politics and lacquered over with the glistening varnish of moral relativism, have made it practically a capital crime to criticise anything that falls under the canopy of the “non-Western.”

Criticise a Western institution, and you are a righteous decoloniser. Criticise an Islamic one, and you are, instantly, an Orientalist, an Islamophobe, a bigot draped in tweed and empire. Such is the asymmetry of our moral discourse. One culture is condemned for crimes it at least attempted to outgrow; the other is indulged, no matter how persistent or grotesque the legacy.

And yet truth—bless its stubborn little boots—remains unmoved. Slavery in Islam was not a moral aberration. It was not some side alley of jurisprudence explored only by eccentrics and extremists. It was a divine institution, sanctified in the Qur’an, embedded in the Hadith, regulated by the finest legal minds of the Muslim world, and practised across continents and centuries with bureaucratic efficiency and religious assurance.

It was not abolished from within. It was not the object of some thunderous moral awakening. There was no Martin Luther King in Damascus, no Harriet Tubman in Baghdad, no Olaudah Equiano in Cairo. There was only silence—or, at most, hesitant compliance—as the rising power of Western abolitionism and post-war international norms rendered the practice increasingly awkward.

And that matters. It matters not simply as a footnote to history, but as a challenge to the present. Because if slavery was never abolished theologically, merely postponed politically, then its moral infrastructure remains intact. That matters because it reveals how silence becomes complicity. How avoidance masquerades as tolerance. And how our own discomfort with criticism—when directed at cultures we instinctively treat as fragile—can allow genuine cruelty to linger in the shadows, unchallenged.

We are, in short, comfortably complicit. Soothing ourselves with hashtags and hijabs, with TED Talks on “Islamic contributions to science,” while studiously ignoring the darker footnotes of that same civilisation’s sacred texts. For fear of being rude, we excuse the inexcusable. For fear of appearing racist, we abandon the victims of a theology that still, to this day, permits enslavement under “appropriate” conditions.

This is not a call for wholesale denunciation. Let us not be dull or crude. One can respect faith while criticising its failings. Indeed, one must—for what is reverence if it forbids scrutiny? What is love if it tolerates abuse? The Christian world, for all its manifold hypocrisies and historical crimes, has at least undergone public and painful self-examination. Biblical passages once used to justify slavery are now denounced, dissected, and debated. The canon is not immune from critique.

Where is the equivalent reckoning in the Islamic world? Where are the sermons rejecting Qur’anic slavery not just as impractical, but as immoral? Where is the courage to say that divine permission does not equal divine preference—and that sacred texts, like all human constructs, must be engaged with morally, not merely ritually?

Without such courage, the rot remains. And the longer it remains, the more likely it is to bloom again—under different flags, in different deserts, with the same unbroken citations and the same tragic victims.

Because for all our moral grandstanding, our marches, our hashtags, and our declarations of “never again,” we remain perilously selective. We demand apologies from Britain for Bengal, from America for Mississippi, from France for Algiers. But we do not—dare not—demand the same theological reckoning from a civilisation that still recites, daily, texts that legitimised the ownership of human beings.

To challenge this is not hatred. It is not racism. It is not bigotry. It is, in fact, the very definition of moral consistency. And for a species so enamoured with its own conscience, with its books and codes and conventions and courts, to look away from such an enduring stain is not merely hypocritical—it is a tragedy. A tragedy far greater than any ever enacted in the souks of Damascus or the sands of Timbuktu.

Because silence, as history has shown us again and again, is never neutral. It is an endorsement with the volume turned down. And in this case, it leaves the door ajar for slavery not as a memory, but as a possibility.

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Notes

1. The Qur’an is believed by Muslims to be the literal word of God, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel over a period of 23 years. See The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr (New York: HarperOne, 2015), xxi–xxiii. See also A. J. Droge, The Qur’an: A New Annotated Translation (Sheffield: Equinox, 2013). ↩︎
2. The phrase “those whom your right hands possess” (mā malakat aymānukum) appears frequently in the Qur’an to refer to slaves, including in Surahs 4:3, 4:24, 16:71, 23:6, and 33:50. See M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur’an: A New Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 50–53, 214–15. For broader analysis, see Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 203–210. ↩︎
3. ​​The Qur’an prescribes the manumission of slaves as a form of expiation for various misdeeds, such as breaking an oath (5:89), accidental homicide (4:92), or ẓihār (58:3). However, manumission is never framed as an obligatory dismantling of the institution of slavery itself, but rather as an individual act of piety. See Jonathan E. Brockopp, “Early Islamic Law and Society: Slave Manumission and the Islamic State,” Islamic Law and Society 5, no. 3 (1998): 420–448; and Kecia Ali, Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 45–50. ↩︎
4. The Qur’an explicitly permits sexual relations with female slaves—ma malakat aymanukum—in several verses, including 4:3, 4:24, 23:6, 33:50, and 70:30, with no requirement for marriage or consent. Jurists codified concubinage as a legitimate expression of ownership, provided the woman was not a free Muslim. For detailed treatment, see Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006), 27–49; and Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 209–211. ↩︎
5. As historian Jonathan A.C. Brown notes, “There was no pre-modern Islamic abolitionist movement. Jurists did not regard slavery as an evil to be eradicated, but as a morally legitimate institution embedded in divine law.” Brown, Slavery and Islam (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2019), 320–322. Likewise, Bernard Lewis observed that “the idea of abolition… was not entertained” in Islamic thought until external Western pressures forced reconsideration. Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 78–80. ↩︎
6. Paul E. Lovejoy notes that the trans-Saharan slave trade transported an estimated 10–12 million Africans over more than 1,000 years, often in conditions as lethal as those of the Atlantic trade. Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 55–59. Similarly, Ronald Segal highlights the breadth of the Indian Ocean and Red Sea routes, which linked East Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, and India. Ronald Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 24–29. Also see Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 73–75. ↩︎
7. David Ayalon provides a comprehensive account of the Mamluk phenomenon, noting that they were purchased as young boys, converted to Islam, and given elite military training. They ultimately established the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt, which lasted from 1250 to 1517. See David Ayalon, The Mamluk Military Society (London: Variorum Reprints, 1979), 1–22. Also see Amalia Levanoni, A Turning Point in Mamluk History: The Third Reign of al-Nasir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 3–5. For a broader overview, see Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 44–47. ↩︎
8. The devshirme system, implemented from the 14th century onwards, involved the forcible recruitment of Christian boys from the Balkans, primarily from Greek, Albanian, Serbian, and Bulgarian communities. These boys were converted to Islam and trained for administrative or military service, especially within the Janissary corps. See Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 101–105; and Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 64–67. Also consult Molly Greene, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 44–46. ↩︎
9. The abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in the Western world occurred in stages, driven by a mix of moral campaigning, religious conviction, and shifting economic interests. Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833, largely influenced by the activism of figures such as William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect. See Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 223–259; and David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), 469–502. ↩︎
10. Classical Islamic jurisprudence across the major Sunni and Shia schools maintained legal provisions for slavery well into the modern period, with the Qur’an referencing slavery in multiple verses (e.g., Q4:24; Q23:6; Q24:33). The Hadith literature offers further operational details regarding the treatment of slaves. No consensus movement or reformation emerged within mainstream Islamic thought to abolish slavery doctrinally. See Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 74–99; and Jonathan E. Brockopp, “Slavery,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law, ed. Anver Emon and Rumee Ahmed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 552–568. ↩︎
11. The Islamic State’s justification for slavery drew heavily from classical Islamic sources, including verses from the Qur’an (e.g., Q4:3, Q33:50), Hadith traditions on concubinage, and medieval legal commentaries. ISIS explicitly published a theological justification for the enslavement of Yazidi women in its magazine Dabiq, Issue 4, October 2014, pp. 14–17, citing precedents from Hanbali and Shafi’i jurisprudence. See also Kecia Ali, Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith and Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2016), 77–91. ↩︎
12. ISIS’s legal arguments rested squarely on the foundations of classical Islamic law. Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328) permitted the enslavement of non-Muslim captives in jihad, a view reinforced by later jurists like Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), who elaborated on the legal status and rights of slaves, including female captives. Al-Mawardi (d. 1058), a key Shafi’i jurist, codified the role of slavery in governance and war. For analysis, see Bernard Haykel, “ISIS and Al-Qaeda—What Are They Thinking?” in The Princeton Guide to Islamist Movements, ed. A. Hamid (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 134–45; and Jonathan A.C. Brown, Slavery and Islam (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2020), 205–230. ↩︎