Slavery and Islamic faith

Slavery is a vast subject in Islam; many writings, including Qur‟an, “Hadith,”¹⁷³ talk about it.

“Slaves are mentioned in at least twenty-nine verses of the Qur'an. Most of these verses are Medinan and refer to the legal status of slaves. There are hundreds of Hadith that deal with slavery because Muhammad began to take slaves after he moved from Mecca to Medina in 622.”¹⁷⁴ They were taken in raids on nearby Arab tribes, or wars, either through offensive or defensive actions.¹⁷⁵ Slavery “existed in pre-Islamic times and it was accepted by many ancient legal systems.”¹⁷⁶ For example “Islamic law recognizes slavery as an institution within society, and attempts to regulate and restrict it in various ways.”¹⁷⁷

It “clearly recognizes that slaves are human beings, but it frequently treats slaves as if they are property, laying down regulations covering the buying and selling of slaves.”¹⁷⁸ Finally, it

170 Ibid, p.69.

171 Ibid.

172 Motsoko Pheko, Effect of colonialism on Africa’s past and present, <http://www.pambazuka.org/global- south/effects- colonialism-africas-past-and-present>, 19th July 2016.

173 The Hadith are anecdotes about Muhammad and other founders of Islam. They are considered important source material about religious practice, law, and historical traditions.

174 Silas, Slavery in Islam, < http://answering-islam.org/Silas/slavery.htm>, 26th September 2011.

175 Ibid.

176 Jean Allain, The legal understanding of slavery: From the historical to the contemporary, Oxford University Press, 2012, p.41.

177 Ibid.

178 The Eastern Slave Trade between the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa <

presents universal freedom and human dignity as its ideal society. Its recommendation that slaves be freed is on the same plane as its recommendation that the poor be clothed and the hungry be fed.¹⁷⁹

In Islamic law free Muslims “cannot be made slaves but slaves who convert to Islam are not automatically freed, children born to legally enslaved Muslims are also slaves, and non-Muslims protected by the state called dhimmis.”¹⁸⁰Professor Jean Allain specialist in issue of slavery and human trafficking at Queen‟s University of Belfast wrote that Qur‟an and other Islamic texts exhorted the adoption of an enlightened and emancipatory attitude toward slavery.¹⁸¹ With Islamic law and other regulations, Muslims leaders were supposed to be against slavery but it continued many years after the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in eighteen century.

Muslim slavery was not just economic as it was the case in the western slave trade. There is a distinction because;

Slavery in Islam was not wholly motivated by economics. Although some Muslim slaves were used as productive labour it was not generally on the same mass scale as in the West but in smaller agricultural enterprises, workshops, building, mining and transport. Slaves were also taken for military service, some serving in elite corps essential to the ruler's control of the state, while others joined the equivalent of the civil service. Another category of slavery was sexual slavery in which young women were made concubines.¹⁸²

< http://civics.sites.unc.edu/files/2012/05/EasternSlaveTrade_MiddleEastNorthAfricaEastAfrica.pdf>, 14th March 2016.

179 Ibid, quotation from Jacob Neusner, Tamara Sonn, Comparing Religion through Law: Judaism and Islam, 1999.

180 Ibid.

181 Jean Allain, The legal understanding of slavery: From the historical to the contemporary, Oxford University Press, 2012, p.41.

182 The Eastern Slave Trade between the Middle East, North Africa and East, Ibid.

2.2.1. Slavery in Muslim African countries

John Azumah, a Ghanaian lecturer in Islamic Studies, observes that “slavery in Muslim African countries was not necessarily an indigenous African practice that underwent internal transformation but had deep and independent roots in Islamic tradition”.¹⁸³ It was not a new phenomenon as is mentioned above. “In pre-Islamic times, slavery was well known in the whole of the Mediterranean region and the Arabian Peninsula. Slaves were mainly captured during wars”.¹⁸⁴ “Hard evidence for black slaves outside tropical Africa dates back to about 200 BCE in North Africa, and especially in Egypt.”¹⁸⁵

According to Azumah, slavery persisted for a long time because it is not condemned in either the Qur‟an nor in Hadith.¹⁸⁶ Islam accepted slavery as a practice which was not forbidden by God;

but gave the slaves basic rights in the Muslim society. “What Islam tried to do was to ameliorate the conditions through regulations and exhortations on the treatment of slaves.”¹⁸⁷ The early Muslim collector of Hadith, Bukhari quotes the prophet Muhammad with these words: “your slaves are your brothers. God himself put them under you. Now you have to give them food which you are eating and cloths you are wearing. Do not order them a work to do which is too heavy for them and if you are doing it do yourself the work as well.”¹⁸⁸ Azumah observes that

“the traditional Muslim ideology of slavery is closely linked to the doctrine of military „jihad‟¹⁸⁹. Just as jihad is directed against non-belief in Islam (kufr), so the unbelievers, kuffar captured in a jihad are the legally and religiously enslavable in Muslim society.”¹⁹⁰

188 Johannes Henschel, 19th century, Humans as Merchandise, DeskTop Productions limited, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2011, p.15, quoted Buchari, you slaves are your brothers; in TH.W.Juynvoll:E.J. Brill‟s First Encyclopedia on Islam, Leiden 1987.

189 There are two meanings of Jihad: the first meaning is an effort to practice religion in fighting the evil in your own heart. There Jihad has no link with the war. This form of Jihad was professed between 610 and 622.

The second meaning was acquired during the history of Hijra after 622. Date on what Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina. "It is a fight against infidels named by the Qur‟an and against all those that contravene the law and all Muslims judged rebels.

190 John A. Azumah, Ibid, p.125.

There are other many prescriptions which help to monitor slavery: Alistair Evans, a history and science writer mentions some of them:

Free men could not be enslaved, and those faithful to foreign religions could live as protected persons, „dhimmis‟¹⁹¹, under Muslim rule (as long as they maintained payment of taxes called Kharaj and Jizya). However, the spread of the Islamic Empire resulted in a much harsher interpretation of the law. For example, if a dhimmis was unable to pay the taxes he could be enslaved, and people from outside the borders of the Islamic Empire were considered an acceptable source of slaves.

Although the law required owners to treat slaves well and provide medical treatment, a slave had no right to be heard in court (testimony was forbidden by slaves), had no right to property, could marry only with permission of their owner, and was considered to be a chattel, that is the moveable property of the slave owner.

Conversion to Islam did not automatically give a slave freedom nor did it confer freedom to their children.¹⁹²

In addition the “Qur‟an also instructs Muslims not to force their female slaves into prostitution (24:34), and even allows Muslims to marry slaves if they so desire (4:24), and to free them at times as a penalty for crime or sin (4:92, 5:89, 58:3) and even allows slaves to buy their liberty, if they meet certain of their master's conditions (24:33).”¹⁹³

Azumah notes that, “the black Africa, considered the bastion of unbelief, became a major source of slaves for Muslim lands such as North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey and South Asia, starting as early as the seventh century through the waging of jihad (the main sources of slaves were war), raiding, kidnapping and purchase, reduced millions of traditional African believers into slavery on account of their non-belief in Islam”.¹⁹⁴ He continues in affirming that, another crucial feature of the classical Muslim ideology of enslavement is “that blacks became legitimate slaves by virtue of the colour of their skin. The justification of the early Muslim equation of blackness with servitude was found in the Genesis story popularly called: the curse of Ham, one

191 Dhimmi is an Arabic word referring to non-Muslim citizen of an Islamic state or conquered Islamic land.

192 Alistair Boddy Evans, The role of Islam in African slavery,

<http://africanhistory.about.com/od/slavery/a/IslamRoleSlavery01.htm>, 25th September 2011.

193 Silas, Slavery and Islam, < http://answering-islam.org/Silas/slavery.htm>, 25th September 2011.

194 John A. Azumah, Ibid, p.127.

of Noah‟s sons.”¹⁹⁵ Some trading of slaves continued even into the beginning of 20^th century in popular view.¹⁹⁶According to Arab culture and also to some Christian traditions, the black “are the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, and they were characterized by black color as a curse put upon him by Ham‟s father Noah, which manifested itself in Ham‟s color and the slavery that God inflicted upon his descendants. Concerning this, they have transmitted an account arising from the legends of the story-tellers.”¹⁹⁷ “The children of Ham had dark skin and lived in eastern Africa. The curse of Noah upon his son is there in Torah but there is no reference made there to blackness.¹⁹⁸Unfortunately, some Arabs believe that “black equals slave.”¹⁹⁹ Slaves are considered on the same level with any other kind of commodity, and as such are continually passing from one merchant to another. ²⁰⁰

The legend of the black race cursed since Noah, has no biblical foundation. It was developed in the course of history, relayed by those who wanted to justify their violence against people of a different skin color. This legend has unfortunately affected the blacks themselves, who sometimes begin to see their failures through historical glasses. We cannot rewrite history; we can only become aware of past mistakes, to start on the right foot. And no people on earth is cursed or condemned in advance.²⁰¹

195 Ibid, p.128.

196 John Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powel, The African diaspora in the Mediterranean lands of Islam, Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton, 2007, p.43.

201 Guerchon Nduwa, Blacks are the descendants of Ham, the cursed?, <http://www.fjn-123.fr/spip.php?article159>, 14th

The curse of Ham served also to justify racial slavery in Europe and America. Even after the abolition of slavery, it continued to provide an argument for segregation, apartheid and other forms of racial discrimination for instance in South Africa.

In history, he was identified to an Egyptian, heretic, sinner, and sodomite, Jew, Muslim, Mongolian, Black, Asian, and African. ²⁰² Today, most research on human variation disagrees with such interpretations, because in the biblical text, Ham himself is not cursed, and race or skin color is never mentioned.²⁰³

2.2.3. Negative stereotypes

In Arab culture many stereotypes have been given to black people “a black is always a slave.”²⁰⁴ Françoise Verges noted that “in 17^th century, words Negro and slave are synonyms in English and French languages. Excluded from humanity, the Negro race can be traded.”²⁰⁵ One Hadith (al-Maydani D 1,124) says that when blacks are hungry they still, when they are satiated, they fornicate. “Mas'udi who died in 956 wrote that black man has a deficient brain, in which comes a lower intelligence.”²⁰⁶ Black men and women walk around almost naked, with a small loincloth to hide their sex! In short, they are immoral people and this is not a sin to wish them God's curse and chase them into their villages, for capturing.²⁰⁷ Ibn Butlan, a Christian physician of Baghdad in the 11^th century gave stereotypical characterizations of women of the various races. Here he refers to “zanj”²⁰⁸ women, female slaves imported from East Africa:

The blacker they are, the uglier they are, the more pointed their teeth are, the less use they are and the more it is to be feared they will harm you. They are generally of bad character, and much given to running away. Their dispositions know no gloom. Dancing and rhythm are inborn in them and natural to them. Because of their inability to speak Arabic correctly, people turned to them for music and

January 2013.

202 Benjamin Braude, Cham et Noe. Race et esclavage entre Judaism, Christianism et Islam, <http://www.persee.fr/doc/ahess_0395-2649_2002_num_57_1_280030,> 11th June 2017.

203 David Whitford, The Curse of Ham in Modern Era,

<http://www.academia.edu/1583913/The_Curse_of_Ham_in_the_Early_Modern_Era> , 12^th June 2017.

204 Malek Chebel, L’esclavage en terre d’Islam, un tabou bien garde, Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2007, p.46.

205 Françoise Verges, Abolir l’esclavage : Une utopie coloniale, Ed. Albin Michel, Paris 2001, p.42.

206 Olivier Petre-Grenouilleau, Ibid., p.37, quoted B.Lewis, Race et esclavage, p.35,36.

207 Jacques Heers, Ibid, p.53, Quoted Ibn Jobayr, pp.104-105.

208 Zanj is an Arabic word which means land of the blacks. It is the origin of Zanzibar.

dancing. It is said that if zanji fell down from heaven to earth he would surely do so to a beat. Their women have the most sparkling front teeth because of the abundance of their saliva produced by their bad digestions. They endure drudgery.

A zanji who has been well fed can stand hard beating without feeling pain. No sexual pleasure is to be had from their women because of their smell armpits and coarse bodies.²⁰⁹

In the thirteenth century, Nasir al-Din Tusi, a Persian writer said that a “zanj” ²¹⁰ differ from animals only because his both hands are up. He adds that many have noticed that a monkey learns more easily than a zanj, and it is more intelligent.²¹¹ The denigration of black people for long time served to “legitimize his slave status.” ²¹² A century later, even Ibn Khaldun did not hesitate to write that the Negro nations are generally docile to slavery, because they inferior humanity and they possess close attributes to stupid animals. ²¹³

2.2.4. Castration of young African boys

The practice of castration is recorded in the Arab slave trade history in East Africa. In more than thirteen centuries of Arab slave trade in Africa, million Africans were enslaved and shipped to the Middle East where “young boys, victims from raids and wars were subjected to the horrid monstrous inhumane process of castration without anesthesia.”²¹⁴ Castration was also practiced by the Gallas peoples in southern Ethiopia on boys from ten to fifteen years, wound were healed with butter.²¹⁵ It caused an inhuman pain and affected the psychology of those who underwent the surgery and also those who saw it. Bornou, Haoussa areas and Soudan were the main producers of eunuchs. Many young peoples died because of infections. The governor of Karthoum considered that one boy mutilated out of 200 who were mutilated, survived and the

209 John Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powel, Ibid, quoted, Yawanis (al-Mukhatar b.al-Hasan b. Abdun al-Baghdadi), generally known as Ibn Butlan, a Christian physician of Bagdad in 11th century; Risala fi shira al –raqiq wa- taqlib al- abid,ed.Abd al-Salam Muhammad Harun in Nawadir al-makhutat, vol.4, Cairo, 1954, p.384.

210 Zanj is an Arabic word which means land of the blacks. It is the origin of Zanzibar.

211 Olivier Petre-Grenouilleau, Ibid.

212 Ibid, p.38.

213 Ibid, p.83.

214 Alik Shahadan, The History of Arab slavery in Africa, <http://www.arabslavetrade.com/>, 14th March 2016.

215 Jacques Heers, Ibid, p.199.

price of one eunuch was very high.²¹⁶ The latter method provided the majority of slaves, and at the borders of the Islamic Empire vast numbers of new slaves were castrated, ready for sale.

Because the Islamic law did not allow mutilation of slaves, the castration was done before they crossed the border into Islamic countries.²¹⁷

One Hadith concerning the castration says that a man came to complain at the Prophet about his celibacy and asked him do I castrate myself? The Prophet answered to him: "The one who castrates and the one who lets himself castrate doesn't belong to us, they are not Muslims. For him who castrates slaves must be also castrate. But even if the castration is forbidden in Islam, the first “muezzin”²¹⁸ of Islam called Bilal Ibn Ribah from Ethiopia was a eunuch.²¹⁹ Castrated men were given and received as valuable gifts among the wealthy. They were regarded as unusually trustworthy, and were employed not only to guard harems, but also as administrators and family stewards. In holy cities of Hejaz, they formed special elite to guard mosques and other religious sites.²²⁰ “The holiest city of Islam, Mecca, became one of the centres of the slave-trade in the world and remained so well into the twentieth century; from there slaves captured and brought from East Africa and Sudan were distributed to all parts of Arabia and Muslim world.”²²¹

2.2.5. Details of the operation²²²

The details of castration are brutal. The operator seized the penis, the scrotal sacs and the testicles and tied them together tightly with a thin but tough cord. Then, with a single razor stroke, he cut off everything below the ligature. The huge wound was then covered with ashes to stop the bleeding, the boiling oil was poured on it and finally, if the first two methods had proved ineffective, it was cauterized with a red-hot iron. This having been done, a crude probe of metal,

216 Bernard Lugan, Histoire de l’Afrique, des origines à nos jours, Ellipses Editions, Paris, 2009, p. 376.

217 Alistair Boddy Evans, The role Islam in African slavery,Ibid.

218 Is a caller man for prayer(salat) through the minaret five daily times. He is chosen at the mosque.

219 Castration, eunichisme en terre d’Islam, <http://prophetie-biblique.com/forum-religion/islam/castration- eunichisme-terre-islam-t2424.html>, 04th October 2011.

220 Alastair Hazell, The last slave market, Constable and Robinson, London, 2011.p.136.

221 Ibid, p. 146, quoted G.E. Dejong, Slavery in Arabia, the Muslim world, vol.24 (1934), p.134.

222 John Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powel, Ibid, pp.100-101.

usually of lead, was inserted in the urethra right up to the bladder to facilitate the flow of urine.

This probe was held in place until healing was complete.

When all these measures had been taken, the patient was immersed to the waist in the muddy silt of the Nile and left there for five or six days to help the formation of scar tissue. The Nile was a supreme god that was thought to heal all ills. These details are horrible, but true. Therefore, I have no fear of exposing them in all their hideousness and fearfulness.

General appearance of eunuchs after operation.

This is the appearance most generally presented by the genitals, or rather their place, after the operation: a huge broad scar of very irregular shape, with raised edges, the scar tissue being of a lighter colour than the surrounding skin, full of folds and wrinkles. There was purulent discharge, mixed for a long time, often several months, with a great deal of matter tinged with blood. There is almost continuous pain in the perineum, sharp and stabbing at first, later dull.

Then come loss of appetite, nostalgia, strange dreams, terrible nightmares; the brain became empty, ideas fled, thought was wiped out. The eunuch turned into brute. The humanity had

Then come loss of appetite, nostalgia, strange dreams, terrible nightmares; the brain became empty, ideas fled, thought was wiped out. The eunuch turned into brute. The humanity had