Alsiraj Official Website
Answering lies about Islam and Prophet Muhammad
Did Islam Ignore Slavery and legalize its existence?
Why didn’t Islam Prohibit Slavery directly
To be able to limit a certain social habit you have to have a clear strategy to be able to limit it without making any social disturbance in the society. To limit slavery Islam followed a very simple but very efficient long term strategy which can be represented by two main targets:
1- Limit its resources
2- Increase its outlets
Before Islam the sources of slavery were numerous whereas it had only one outlet.
The abrupt prohibition of slavery in societies where slavery was a social habit that people considered natural is totally unwise as these societies were not ready to accept such a change and the slaves themselves were not ready to start a life to their own.
The superficial vision of dealing with people as if they were things on which you can force a sudden change in their social fabric can have disastrous consequences. Even the slaves themselves who were accustomed to the lifestyle of slavery would suffer from this sudden tremendous change in their life if they were just dismissed to bear the responsibility of living on their own, feeding themselves and finding jobs. Consequently sudden forceful change in the social fabric clearly has serious social, psychological and of course economic consequences.
As a practical example for the effect of sudden freeing of slaves is what happened in Egypt during the era of the Khedive Ismail.
Due to the pressure exerted by the public opinion in England to prohibit slavery, the British government pressured the Khedive Ismail to sign a treaty in which he would specify a time duration after which slave trade would be totally prohibited in Egypt and Sudan.
Four offices were launched in Cairo, Alexandria, The Delta and Upper Egypt to register the freed slaves and provide them with job opportunities, offer education for them and their kids. Unfortunately these governmental efforts were not successful due to the society’s resistance to them as Dr. Kamal Yahia says. Also lots of money was invested in owning male and female slaves by different social standards and so it is not strange that these people would stop at nothing to evade applying that law.
Social refusal to abandon the luxury of having slaves was not the only ordeal that this society had to endure as this society, and for a whole twenty years period, was not ready to absorb the amount of employment that suddenly appeared. The freed female slaves, having no jobs and no husbands had to turn to prostitution to stay alive. Male slaves were not more fortunate as they were often left without care, education or provision of a suitable job. That’s why many of them turned back to their masters to live the same slavery environment again while some became gangsters or bandits which caused more agony to the society.
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