Theology matters in debates about slavery and Islam; any argument that can be constructed theologically can also be deconstructed
FOR ANY system of belief that vests ultimate authority in the past, slavery is a big moral problem. That goes for all three of the monotheistic faiths, and even for civil creeds such as traditional American patriotism, which is now wrestling hard with the fact that human equality’s most eloquent advocates, the republic’s founders, were also slave-owners.
Although this lies outside the scope of Mr Brown’s book, present-day discussions about slavery are further complicated by the much broader sense in which the word has come to be used. The term “modern slavery” now encompasses human trafficking, especially for sexual exploitation, as well as the bonded labour imposed for debts, for example in India. The term also covers forced labour mandated by harsh states like North Korea.
That makes it all the more important for scholars to examine the evidence through an objective historical lens, as Mr Brown sets out to do. In truth, he writes, there can be no doubt that Islam’s founding texts accept and assume the existence of slavery. They also strongly encourage masters to free their slaves, as a way of atoning for sin or simply as a disinterested act of piety.
Despite all that, the vast majority of today’s Muslim thinkers share the modern view that slavery is an absolute evil, whose abolition is to be welcomed. As Mr Brown carefully explains, they use many different arguments to reconcile this position with the older texts. Some stress that freedom for all was always the divine purpose, and that God only allowed slavery in the early days of Islam as a concession to the realities of the age.
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