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丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賵丕賱乇賯
賰鬲亘 丕賱兀爻鬲丕匕 賳賵丕賮 丕賱賯丿賷賲賷:
兀氐丿乇鬲 丕賱卮亘賰丞 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賱賱兀亘丨丕孬 賵丕賱賳卮乇貙 丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賱賰鬲丕亘 "丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賵丕賱乇賽賾賯" 賱 噩賵賳丕孬丕賳 亘乇丕賵賳
兀爻鬲丕匕 丕賱丨囟丕乇丞 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷丞 亘噩丕賲毓丞 噩賵乇噩鬲丕賵賳. 賵賯丕賲 亘丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 丕賱兀爻鬲丕匕 毓賲乇賵 亘爻賷賵賳賷貙 賵禺乇噩鬲 亘 592 氐賮丨丞.
賵賯丿 兀卮丕乇 丕賱賲鬲乇噩賲 賮賷 賲賯丿賲鬲賴 廿賱賶 兀賳 丕賱賲丐賱賮 毓丕賱噩 賮賷 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賵囟賵毓賻 丕賱乇賯賾 亘氐賵乇丞 丕爻鬲賯乇丕卅賷丞 賵鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 賵丨噩丕噩賷丞貙 賮賷 丌賳賺貙 賲毓 爻賱丕爻丞 賮賷 丕賱兀爻賱賵亘貙 丕賱匕賷 賱丕 賷禺賱賵 賲賳 胤乇丕賮丞貙 賵賵囟賵丨 賵氐乇丕丨丞貙 賯丿 鬲賰賵賳 氐丕丿賲丞賸 賮賷 亘毓囟 丕賱兀丨賷丕賳.
賵賷鬲賳丕賵賱 丕賱賰鬲丕亘購 廿卮賰丕賱賷丞賻 鬲毓乇賷賮 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞貙 賵亘賷丕賳 賲丿賶 爻賷賵賱鬲賴 賵賳賽爻亘賷鬲賴貙 丕賱兀賲乇 丕賱匕賷 爻賷毓賵丿 亘丕賱囟乇賵乇丞 毓賱賶 丕賱丨賰賲 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷 毓賱賶 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞. 孬賲 亘丨孬 丕賱乇賯賽賾 賮賷 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賲賳 丨賷孬 丕賱賳氐賵氐 丕賱兀爻丕爻賷丞 賱賱賵丨賷 賵賳氐賵氐 丕賱賮賯賴 賵丕賱丨丿賷孬貙 孬賲 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱乇賯 賮賷 丕賱丨囟丕乇丞 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷丞 鬲丕乇賷禺賸丕 賵賲賲丕乇爻丞賸貙 賵賴賵 賮氐賱賹 孬乇賷賹賾 噩丿賸賾丕 睾丕氐 賮賷賴 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賮賷 賳氐賵氐 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺 賵丕賱賮賯賴 賵丕賱丨丿賷孬貙 賯丿賷賲賴丕 賵丨丿賷孬賴丕. 孬賲 胤乇丨 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賲卮賰賱丞賻 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賮賷 丕賱賮氐賱 丕賱匕賷 兀爻賲丕賴: 賱睾夭 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞貙 賵賴賵 丕賱匕賷 鬲毓乇賻賾囟 賮賷賴 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賱賱廿卮賰丕賱 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱賲鬲毓賱賯 亘丕賱乇賯貙 賵賴賵 噩賵賴乇 丕賱兀夭賲丞 丕賱鬲賷 賷毓賷卮賴丕 丕賱禺胤丕亘 丕賱丿賷賳賷 賮賷 賲毓丕賱噩鬲賴 賱賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬貙 賲丕 亘毓丿 廿賱睾丕亍 丕賱乇賯貙 丕賱鬲賷 鬲囟毓賴 賮賷 禺丕賳丞 廿賲丕 丕賱賵賮丕亍 賱賳氐賵氐賴 賵賲賵丕噩賴丞 賮丿丕丨丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賵卮乇賴丕 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱匕賴賳賷丞 丕賱丨丿賷孬丞貙 兀賵 禺賷丕賳丞 鬲賱賰 丕賱賳氐賵氐 賵丕賱賯丿賵丕鬲 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 丕賱賰亘賷乇丞 賱丿賷賴 賮賷 爻亘賷賱 廿乇囟丕亍 囟賲賷乇賴 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱乇丕賴賳 賵賴賵 丕賱兀賲乇 丕賱匕賷 賱賳 賷購爻毓丿 亘丿丕賴丞賸 囟賲賷乇賻賴 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 兀賷囟賸丕. 孬賲 亘丨孬 丕賱賲丐賱賮購 丨丿孬賻 廿賱睾丕亍賽 丕賱乇賯 賵丕賱賲毓丕賱噩丕鬲 丕賱賲鬲毓賱賯丞 亘賴 賮賷 丕賱賮賰乇 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷 丕賱丨丿賷孬 賵丕賱賲毓丕氐乇貙 賵兀禺賷乇賸丕 乇丐賷丞 丕賱賲丐賱賮 丕賱賲噩賲賱丞 賱賱賲賵囟賵毓. 孬賲 毓賯丿 丕賱賲丐賱賮購 賮氐賱賸丕 禺丕氐賸賾丕 賱賲賵囟賵毓 賲賽賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳貙 賵賲毓丕卮乇丞 丕賱廿賲丕亍貙 乇賰賻賾夭 賮賷賴丕 毓賱賶 賲賮賴賵賲 丕賱乇囟賶 賵丕賱賲賵丕賮賯丞 賰卮乇胤賺 賱賱毓賱丕賯丕鬲 丕賱噩賳爻賷丞貙 賵亘賷賻賾賳 兀賳 賴賳丕賰 鬲氐賵乇丕鬲賺 兀禺乇賶 賱賱賲賵丕賮賻賯賻丞 睾賷乇 丕賱鬲氐賵乇 丕賱丨丿丕孬賷. 孬賲 兀賱丨賯 亘丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賱丨賯丕鬲賺 賯賷賽賾賲丞 兀賻孬賿乇賻鬲賿 賲賵囟賵毓賻 丕賱賰鬲丕亘.
兀氐丿乇鬲 丕賱卮亘賰丞 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賱賱兀亘丨丕孬 賵丕賱賳卮乇貙 丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 丕賱毓乇亘賷丞 賱賰鬲丕亘 "丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賵丕賱乇賽賾賯" 賱 噩賵賳丕孬丕賳 亘乇丕賵賳
兀爻鬲丕匕 丕賱丨囟丕乇丞 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷丞 亘噩丕賲毓丞 噩賵乇噩鬲丕賵賳. 賵賯丕賲 亘丕賱鬲乇噩賲丞 丕賱兀爻鬲丕匕 毓賲乇賵 亘爻賷賵賳賷貙 賵禺乇噩鬲 亘 592 氐賮丨丞.
賵賯丿 兀卮丕乇 丕賱賲鬲乇噩賲 賮賷 賲賯丿賲鬲賴 廿賱賶 兀賳 丕賱賲丐賱賮 毓丕賱噩 賮賷 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賵囟賵毓賻 丕賱乇賯賾 亘氐賵乇丞 丕爻鬲賯乇丕卅賷丞 賵鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 賵丨噩丕噩賷丞貙 賮賷 丌賳賺貙 賲毓 爻賱丕爻丞 賮賷 丕賱兀爻賱賵亘貙 丕賱匕賷 賱丕 賷禺賱賵 賲賳 胤乇丕賮丞貙 賵賵囟賵丨 賵氐乇丕丨丞貙 賯丿 鬲賰賵賳 氐丕丿賲丞賸 賮賷 亘毓囟 丕賱兀丨賷丕賳.
賵賷鬲賳丕賵賱 丕賱賰鬲丕亘購 廿卮賰丕賱賷丞賻 鬲毓乇賷賮 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞貙 賵亘賷丕賳 賲丿賶 爻賷賵賱鬲賴 賵賳賽爻亘賷鬲賴貙 丕賱兀賲乇 丕賱匕賷 爻賷毓賵丿 亘丕賱囟乇賵乇丞 毓賱賶 丕賱丨賰賲 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷 毓賱賶 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞. 孬賲 亘丨孬 丕賱乇賯賽賾 賮賷 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賲賳 丨賷孬 丕賱賳氐賵氐 丕賱兀爻丕爻賷丞 賱賱賵丨賷 賵賳氐賵氐 丕賱賮賯賴 賵丕賱丨丿賷孬貙 孬賲 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱乇賯 賮賷 丕賱丨囟丕乇丞 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷丞 鬲丕乇賷禺賸丕 賵賲賲丕乇爻丞賸貙 賵賴賵 賮氐賱賹 孬乇賷賹賾 噩丿賸賾丕 睾丕氐 賮賷賴 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賮賷 賳氐賵氐 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺 賵丕賱賮賯賴 賵丕賱丨丿賷孬貙 賯丿賷賲賴丕 賵丨丿賷孬賴丕. 孬賲 胤乇丨 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賲卮賰賱丞賻 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賮賷 丕賱賮氐賱 丕賱匕賷 兀爻賲丕賴: 賱睾夭 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞貙 賵賴賵 丕賱匕賷 鬲毓乇賻賾囟 賮賷賴 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賱賱廿卮賰丕賱 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱賲鬲毓賱賯 亘丕賱乇賯貙 賵賴賵 噩賵賴乇 丕賱兀夭賲丞 丕賱鬲賷 賷毓賷卮賴丕 丕賱禺胤丕亘 丕賱丿賷賳賷 賮賷 賲毓丕賱噩鬲賴 賱賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬貙 賲丕 亘毓丿 廿賱睾丕亍 丕賱乇賯貙 丕賱鬲賷 鬲囟毓賴 賮賷 禺丕賳丞 廿賲丕 丕賱賵賮丕亍 賱賳氐賵氐賴 賵賲賵丕噩賴丞 賮丿丕丨丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賵卮乇賴丕 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱匕賴賳賷丞 丕賱丨丿賷孬丞貙 兀賵 禺賷丕賳丞 鬲賱賰 丕賱賳氐賵氐 賵丕賱賯丿賵丕鬲 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 丕賱賰亘賷乇丞 賱丿賷賴 賮賷 爻亘賷賱 廿乇囟丕亍 囟賲賷乇賴 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱乇丕賴賳 賵賴賵 丕賱兀賲乇 丕賱匕賷 賱賳 賷購爻毓丿 亘丿丕賴丞賸 囟賲賷乇賻賴 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 兀賷囟賸丕. 孬賲 亘丨孬 丕賱賲丐賱賮購 丨丿孬賻 廿賱睾丕亍賽 丕賱乇賯 賵丕賱賲毓丕賱噩丕鬲 丕賱賲鬲毓賱賯丞 亘賴 賮賷 丕賱賮賰乇 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷 丕賱丨丿賷孬 賵丕賱賲毓丕氐乇貙 賵兀禺賷乇賸丕 乇丐賷丞 丕賱賲丐賱賮 丕賱賲噩賲賱丞 賱賱賲賵囟賵毓. 孬賲 毓賯丿 丕賱賲丐賱賮購 賮氐賱賸丕 禺丕氐賸賾丕 賱賲賵囟賵毓 賲賽賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳貙 賵賲毓丕卮乇丞 丕賱廿賲丕亍貙 乇賰賻賾夭 賮賷賴丕 毓賱賶 賲賮賴賵賲 丕賱乇囟賶 賵丕賱賲賵丕賮賯丞 賰卮乇胤賺 賱賱毓賱丕賯丕鬲 丕賱噩賳爻賷丞貙 賵亘賷賻賾賳 兀賳 賴賳丕賰 鬲氐賵乇丕鬲賺 兀禺乇賶 賱賱賲賵丕賮賻賯賻丞 睾賷乇 丕賱鬲氐賵乇 丕賱丨丿丕孬賷. 孬賲 兀賱丨賯 亘丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賱丨賯丕鬲賺 賯賷賽賾賲丞 兀賻孬賿乇賻鬲賿 賲賵囟賵毓賻 丕賱賰鬲丕亘.
592 pages
Published January 1, 2022
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About the author
Jonathan A.C. Brown
16听books418听followersJonathan Andrew Cleveland Brown is an American scholar of Islamic studies. Since 2012, he has been associate professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He holds the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University.
He has authored several books including Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet鈥檚 Legacy, Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction, and The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim. He has also published articles in the fields of Hadith, Islamic law, Salafism, Sufism, and Arabic language.
He has authored several books including Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenges and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet鈥檚 Legacy, Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction, and The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim. He has also published articles in the fields of Hadith, Islamic law, Salafism, Sufism, and Arabic language.
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April 11, 2020
There is a huge problem that should strike anyone interested in pre-Enlightenment religion and philosophy: The most important moral and ethical traditions of mankind originate in a past where life was lived completely differently. In many cases, the practical nature of these differences are not just strange but indeed horrifying. Perhaps the ultimate example of this is the phenomenon of slavery. The existence of slavery was an unremarkable constant during the vast majority of human history. Yet it is something that is so shocking as to be almost incomprehensible today. I鈥檝e always admired Jonathan Brown鈥檚 willingness as a moral philosopher and historian to confront the most controversial subjects head on. Yet again, with this intellectually thrilling book, he does not disappoint.
As someone who is often repulsed at the observed reality of life in inegalitarian societies I am loathe to even imagine what living amid full-blown slavery would be like, or how any decent person could countenance that. I am confident that this sentiment is shared by most people today. But perhaps the only thing that can match the depth of our horror at the idea of slavery is the slim amount of time that people have felt this way.
For the vast majority of history slavery wasn鈥檛 just normal but the idea that it might not even exist was effectively unimaginable. Until the Enlightenment, every philosophical and religious tradition in human history took the existence of slavery as an unfortunate but unremarkable aspect of human society. That some people were slaves was considered analogous to the existence of poverty or disease 鈥� an affliction that one hoped to avoid but which was simply a part of the human condition. The best that a moral person could do was to regulate it and ensure that it was not unduly brutal or unfair. But that it could simply not exist had never been pondered even by our greatest moral exemplars.
Analyzing history dispassionately, it becomes clear that not all slavery in history has been equally alike. Indeed, the existence of slavery as a stable, transhistorical institutional phenomenon doesn鈥檛 seem to be well-founded. In North America there was the particularly cruel chattel slavery of Africans with which we are familiar. But this was not the sum total of what has been called slavery in all times and places. Slavery has not always been racialized and legal slaves and legal freemen have not always been locked into stable roles. Around the world and across history there have also been slave scholars, slave prophets, slave generals and even slave-rulers of empires who had the power of life and death and received taxes from their ostensible 鈥渇ree鈥� subjects. How could this all be subsumed under one category?
The simple answer is that it couldn鈥檛. While slavery was generally considered a misfortune, if we judge based on actual conditions of life without labels it seems that some technical slaves in history had more power and access to the good things of life than other people who were legally considered free. This does not mean that slavery was a neutral phenomenon. What it means was that it did not and does not exist as a consistent category. As it turns out even Spartacus, Bartolome de la Casas and the Iraqi Zanj rebels were not against slavery per se but against the injustice of their own observed conditions. (Although it is not mentioned in the book, to my recollection Toussaint le Ouverture also took slaves during the Haitian Revolution).
Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, the classical Greeks and every other other major religious and philosophical traditions of humanity urged moral reform. But somehow they also all accepted as unremarkable and even inevitable the continued existence of slavery. Great prophets implored people to be kind to slaves, encouraged their manumission and championed their spiritual equality. But for some reason none of them could imagine how slavery could simply not exist. It would be almost like saying that disease should simply not exist.
So what happened? It was once written by none other than Aristotle himself that slavery would exist until the day that 鈥渓ooms turned themselves.鈥� He was more right than he could have ever imagined. It was only during the period of the Industrial Revolution and its replacement of human labor with mechanical labor that people began to consider slavery as something optional that could be not just reformed but abolished altogether. Western Enlightenment philosophy around this time began to echo the message of the machines rather than driving it. A self-reinforcing cycle of material and moral progress was set in motion which led to our present attitudes. Had the Industrial Revolution not occurred, it is likely that we would have continued seeing the moral world as we always had, with hierarchically-enforced labor, whether we called it slavery or not, as a normal part of it.
In the West, the problem of slavery has long been agonized over by Christian and Natural Law philosophers. This book is about Islam in particular and has sections on the legal debates within that tradition about slavery and abolition. For those who take a Sufi-centric view of Islam there is a preexisting understanding that guidance from the past can be spiritual rather than material and our understandings of the true power dynamics of world history might be opposite of what they seem. This book is genuinely relevant to everyone, but for those Muslims who are understandably pained over the issue of slavery in their history there will be some uniquely important insights.
So does Islam oppose slavery? The short answer (for those who urgently need one) is, yes. Muslims had slaves in the past but this was based on circumstances which no longer exist today and social mores that no longer bind us. Slavery in Islam was not mandated but in fact discouraged by incentivizing manumission wherever possible. The real credit for ending slavery belongs to technical science which made it superfluous. But for its part, once it became possible to imagine it not existing, Islam did not object to that. After some initial resistance many Muslims indeed became vocal and eloquent abolitionists alongside the rest of the world as machines began to replace manual labor. Slavery was sometimes racialized in Muslim lands but it was not specifically geared towards sub-Saharan Africans, even if many of them found themselves caught in slave trading networks. In some parts of the Muslim world slaves were predominantly Central Asian, Slavic, South Asian, Turkic or Persian. Racism and slavery are ultimately separate issues, although they have been painfully fused in many places.
Today the vast majority Muslims are viscerally opposed to slavery in all circumstances. From a religious perspective, this is what we would call communal preference, or urf. This is not preference in the way we might consider it as something light and thus malleable, but as a form of hard consensus that binds the laws of society. In addition, over the past two centuries there have been many formal legal agreements by Muslim states banning slavery. These are recognized as having the force of law. Any modern power, most recently the terrorist group the Islamic State, that tries to go against the communal consensus and against these legal agreements banning slavery thus can be said to be violating the tenets of Islam.
Understanding the historically flexible nature of slavery as a category can help us recognize many injustices that we take for granted today by assuming that 鈥渟lavery鈥� was simply abolished and no longer exists. Many technically free people today live worse than others who were legally deemed slaves in the past 鈥� a pressing reality of injustice that cries out for indignation rather than comfortable self-congratulation. Our challenge today is to abolish conditions of cruelty and unhappiness regardless of the label that they hide behind. If you are influenced by Islam or any other religious or philosophical tradition predating the Enlightenment, this book could help assuage angst over reconciling these traditions with the at-times unfathomable practices of the past. Either way, no matter what your background, this is a brave, erudite and heroically researched work worthy of your time and attention.
As someone who is often repulsed at the observed reality of life in inegalitarian societies I am loathe to even imagine what living amid full-blown slavery would be like, or how any decent person could countenance that. I am confident that this sentiment is shared by most people today. But perhaps the only thing that can match the depth of our horror at the idea of slavery is the slim amount of time that people have felt this way.
For the vast majority of history slavery wasn鈥檛 just normal but the idea that it might not even exist was effectively unimaginable. Until the Enlightenment, every philosophical and religious tradition in human history took the existence of slavery as an unfortunate but unremarkable aspect of human society. That some people were slaves was considered analogous to the existence of poverty or disease 鈥� an affliction that one hoped to avoid but which was simply a part of the human condition. The best that a moral person could do was to regulate it and ensure that it was not unduly brutal or unfair. But that it could simply not exist had never been pondered even by our greatest moral exemplars.
Analyzing history dispassionately, it becomes clear that not all slavery in history has been equally alike. Indeed, the existence of slavery as a stable, transhistorical institutional phenomenon doesn鈥檛 seem to be well-founded. In North America there was the particularly cruel chattel slavery of Africans with which we are familiar. But this was not the sum total of what has been called slavery in all times and places. Slavery has not always been racialized and legal slaves and legal freemen have not always been locked into stable roles. Around the world and across history there have also been slave scholars, slave prophets, slave generals and even slave-rulers of empires who had the power of life and death and received taxes from their ostensible 鈥渇ree鈥� subjects. How could this all be subsumed under one category?
The simple answer is that it couldn鈥檛. While slavery was generally considered a misfortune, if we judge based on actual conditions of life without labels it seems that some technical slaves in history had more power and access to the good things of life than other people who were legally considered free. This does not mean that slavery was a neutral phenomenon. What it means was that it did not and does not exist as a consistent category. As it turns out even Spartacus, Bartolome de la Casas and the Iraqi Zanj rebels were not against slavery per se but against the injustice of their own observed conditions. (Although it is not mentioned in the book, to my recollection Toussaint le Ouverture also took slaves during the Haitian Revolution).
Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, the classical Greeks and every other other major religious and philosophical traditions of humanity urged moral reform. But somehow they also all accepted as unremarkable and even inevitable the continued existence of slavery. Great prophets implored people to be kind to slaves, encouraged their manumission and championed their spiritual equality. But for some reason none of them could imagine how slavery could simply not exist. It would be almost like saying that disease should simply not exist.
So what happened? It was once written by none other than Aristotle himself that slavery would exist until the day that 鈥渓ooms turned themselves.鈥� He was more right than he could have ever imagined. It was only during the period of the Industrial Revolution and its replacement of human labor with mechanical labor that people began to consider slavery as something optional that could be not just reformed but abolished altogether. Western Enlightenment philosophy around this time began to echo the message of the machines rather than driving it. A self-reinforcing cycle of material and moral progress was set in motion which led to our present attitudes. Had the Industrial Revolution not occurred, it is likely that we would have continued seeing the moral world as we always had, with hierarchically-enforced labor, whether we called it slavery or not, as a normal part of it.
In the West, the problem of slavery has long been agonized over by Christian and Natural Law philosophers. This book is about Islam in particular and has sections on the legal debates within that tradition about slavery and abolition. For those who take a Sufi-centric view of Islam there is a preexisting understanding that guidance from the past can be spiritual rather than material and our understandings of the true power dynamics of world history might be opposite of what they seem. This book is genuinely relevant to everyone, but for those Muslims who are understandably pained over the issue of slavery in their history there will be some uniquely important insights.
So does Islam oppose slavery? The short answer (for those who urgently need one) is, yes. Muslims had slaves in the past but this was based on circumstances which no longer exist today and social mores that no longer bind us. Slavery in Islam was not mandated but in fact discouraged by incentivizing manumission wherever possible. The real credit for ending slavery belongs to technical science which made it superfluous. But for its part, once it became possible to imagine it not existing, Islam did not object to that. After some initial resistance many Muslims indeed became vocal and eloquent abolitionists alongside the rest of the world as machines began to replace manual labor. Slavery was sometimes racialized in Muslim lands but it was not specifically geared towards sub-Saharan Africans, even if many of them found themselves caught in slave trading networks. In some parts of the Muslim world slaves were predominantly Central Asian, Slavic, South Asian, Turkic or Persian. Racism and slavery are ultimately separate issues, although they have been painfully fused in many places.
Today the vast majority Muslims are viscerally opposed to slavery in all circumstances. From a religious perspective, this is what we would call communal preference, or urf. This is not preference in the way we might consider it as something light and thus malleable, but as a form of hard consensus that binds the laws of society. In addition, over the past two centuries there have been many formal legal agreements by Muslim states banning slavery. These are recognized as having the force of law. Any modern power, most recently the terrorist group the Islamic State, that tries to go against the communal consensus and against these legal agreements banning slavery thus can be said to be violating the tenets of Islam.
Understanding the historically flexible nature of slavery as a category can help us recognize many injustices that we take for granted today by assuming that 鈥渟lavery鈥� was simply abolished and no longer exists. Many technically free people today live worse than others who were legally deemed slaves in the past 鈥� a pressing reality of injustice that cries out for indignation rather than comfortable self-congratulation. Our challenge today is to abolish conditions of cruelty and unhappiness regardless of the label that they hide behind. If you are influenced by Islam or any other religious or philosophical tradition predating the Enlightenment, this book could help assuage angst over reconciling these traditions with the at-times unfathomable practices of the past. Either way, no matter what your background, this is a brave, erudite and heroically researched work worthy of your time and attention.
March 12, 2022
賷亘丨孬 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 "噩賵賳丕孬丕賳 亘乇丕賵賳"貙 賵賴賵 兀賲賷乇賰賷 賲爻賱賲貙 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘賴 賴匕丕 毓賳 丨賱賾 賱賲丕 賷爻賲賾賷賴 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱乇賯賾".
賵乇睾賲 兀賳賾 賴匕賴 丕賱賲毓囟賱丞 鬲賵丕噩賴 賰賱賾 氐丕丨亘 丿賷丕賳丞貙 賵賰匕賱賰 賲賲噩丿賾賷 丕賱賮賱爻賮丞 賵丕賱鬲賳賵賷乇 丕賱兀賵乇賵亘賷貨 廿賱丕 兀賳賾 丕賱鬲賴賲丞- 賮賷 賴匕賴 丕賱兀賷丕賲- 賱丕 鬲賱丕丨賯 廿賱丕 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳.
鬲賰賲賳 賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱乇賯賾 賮賷 兀賳賾賴丕 匕丕鬲 兀囟賱丕毓賺 孬賱丕孬丞貙 廿匕丕 賯亘賱賳丕 亘兀丨丿賴丕 賮廿賳賾賴 賷賯賵丿賳丕 廿賱賶 賳鬲賷噩丞 鬲毓丕賰爻 丕賱匕賷 賷賱賷賴.
賴賱 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 卮乇賾 賲胤賱賯責 賵賴賱 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 噩賵賴乇 賵丕丨丿 賲賴賲丕 丕禺鬲賱賮鬲 氐賵乇賴責 賵賴賱 賷亘賯賶 賱賱丿賷賳 賵丕賱賮賰乇 丕賱匕賷 賯賻亘賽賱 賴匕丕 丕賱禺胤兀 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱亘卮毓 賮賷 丕賱賲丕囟賷 丕丨鬲乇丕賲 兀賵 爻賱胤丞 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 毓賱賷賳丕 丨丕賱賷丕責
賷賲囟賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賮賷 賲丨丕賵賱丞 鬲賮賰賷賰 賴匕賴 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞貙 賵丕賱亘丨孬 毓賳 兀噩賵亘鬲賴丕 賮賷 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 亘賳氐賵氐賴 丕賱兀賵賱賶 兀賵 賰鬲丕亘丕鬲 毓賱賲丕卅賴 丕賱賰賱丕爻賷賰賷丞 賵丕賱賲毓丕氐乇丞. 賵賷賯丕乇賳 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘賷賳 廿噩丕亘丕鬲賳丕 丕賱賲賯鬲乇丨丞 賵廿噩丕亘丕鬲 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷丞 賵丕賱丨丿丕孬賵賷丞. 賵賷賳馗乇 賮賷 賰賱 廿噩丕亘丞貙 丿丕乇爻賸丕 鬲賲丕爻賰賴丕 賵賲賳胤賯賷鬲賴丕.
睾賷乇 兀賳賾賴 賷兀禺匕賳丕 兀賷囟丕 廿賱賶 鬲賱賰 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞 賳賮爻賴丕貙 亘丕丨孬賸丕 賮賷 賵噩丕賴鬲賴丕 賵丿賯賾鬲賴丕.
賰賱 匕賱賰 亘兀爻賱賵亘 賲賲鬲毓貙 賱賲 賷禺賱 賲賳 鬲賰乇丕乇貙 賵亘鬲乇噩賲丞 賲賲鬲丕夭丞 鬲爻鬲丨賯賾 丕賱廿卮丕丿丞.
賷卮賰賱 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 囟乇賵乇丞 賲毓乇賮賷丞 賱賱亘丕丨孬賷賳 毓賳 賲賴乇亘 兀賵 噩賵丕亘 賱鬲賴賲丞 賯亘賵賱 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賱賱乇賯. 賵賴賵 賰匕賱賰 亘丨孬 乇丕賯賺 賮賷 賰賷賮 賷鬲賱賯賶 丕賱賲賮賰乇 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞貙 賵賷亘丨孬 賮賷賴丕 賯亘賱 賯亘賵賱賴丕貙 賵賰賷賮 賷亘賳賷 丕賱廿噩丕亘丕鬲 賵賷禺鬲乇賯 睾賲丕賲丕鬲 丕賱兀丨賰丕賲.
禺鬲丕賲丕貙 賴賱 賵購賮賾賯 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 賮賷 廿噩丕亘鬲賴責 賱爻鬲 賲鬲兀賰丿丕 賲賳 匕賱賰. 賱賰賳賷 毓賱賶 孬賯丞 兀賰亘乇 亘兀賳賴 賵購賮賯 賮賷 胤乇丨 兀賮賰丕乇賴 賵賳賯丿 賲丕 亘賷賳 賷丿賷賴 賲賳 兀爻卅賱丞 賵廿噩丕亘丕鬲 丨丕囟乇丞.
賵乇睾賲 兀賳賾 賴匕賴 丕賱賲毓囟賱丞 鬲賵丕噩賴 賰賱賾 氐丕丨亘 丿賷丕賳丞貙 賵賰匕賱賰 賲賲噩丿賾賷 丕賱賮賱爻賮丞 賵丕賱鬲賳賵賷乇 丕賱兀賵乇賵亘賷貨 廿賱丕 兀賳賾 丕賱鬲賴賲丞- 賮賷 賴匕賴 丕賱兀賷丕賲- 賱丕 鬲賱丕丨賯 廿賱丕 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳.
鬲賰賲賳 賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱乇賯賾 賮賷 兀賳賾賴丕 匕丕鬲 兀囟賱丕毓賺 孬賱丕孬丞貙 廿匕丕 賯亘賱賳丕 亘兀丨丿賴丕 賮廿賳賾賴 賷賯賵丿賳丕 廿賱賶 賳鬲賷噩丞 鬲毓丕賰爻 丕賱匕賷 賷賱賷賴.
賴賱 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 卮乇賾 賲胤賱賯責 賵賴賱 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 噩賵賴乇 賵丕丨丿 賲賴賲丕 丕禺鬲賱賮鬲 氐賵乇賴責 賵賴賱 賷亘賯賶 賱賱丿賷賳 賵丕賱賮賰乇 丕賱匕賷 賯賻亘賽賱 賴匕丕 丕賱禺胤兀 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱亘卮毓 賮賷 丕賱賲丕囟賷 丕丨鬲乇丕賲 兀賵 爻賱胤丞 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 毓賱賷賳丕 丨丕賱賷丕責
賷賲囟賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賮賷 賲丨丕賵賱丞 鬲賮賰賷賰 賴匕賴 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞貙 賵丕賱亘丨孬 毓賳 兀噩賵亘鬲賴丕 賮賷 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 亘賳氐賵氐賴 丕賱兀賵賱賶 兀賵 賰鬲丕亘丕鬲 毓賱賲丕卅賴 丕賱賰賱丕爻賷賰賷丞 賵丕賱賲毓丕氐乇丞. 賵賷賯丕乇賳 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘賷賳 廿噩丕亘丕鬲賳丕 丕賱賲賯鬲乇丨丞 賵廿噩丕亘丕鬲 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷丞 賵丕賱丨丿丕孬賵賷丞. 賵賷賳馗乇 賮賷 賰賱 廿噩丕亘丞貙 丿丕乇爻賸丕 鬲賲丕爻賰賴丕 賵賲賳胤賯賷鬲賴丕.
睾賷乇 兀賳賾賴 賷兀禺匕賳丕 兀賷囟丕 廿賱賶 鬲賱賰 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞 賳賮爻賴丕貙 亘丕丨孬賸丕 賮賷 賵噩丕賴鬲賴丕 賵丿賯賾鬲賴丕.
賰賱 匕賱賰 亘兀爻賱賵亘 賲賲鬲毓貙 賱賲 賷禺賱 賲賳 鬲賰乇丕乇貙 賵亘鬲乇噩賲丞 賲賲鬲丕夭丞 鬲爻鬲丨賯賾 丕賱廿卮丕丿丞.
賷卮賰賱 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 囟乇賵乇丞 賲毓乇賮賷丞 賱賱亘丕丨孬賷賳 毓賳 賲賴乇亘 兀賵 噩賵丕亘 賱鬲賴賲丞 賯亘賵賱 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賱賱乇賯. 賵賴賵 賰匕賱賰 亘丨孬 乇丕賯賺 賮賷 賰賷賮 賷鬲賱賯賶 丕賱賲賮賰乇 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞貙 賵賷亘丨孬 賮賷賴丕 賯亘賱 賯亘賵賱賴丕貙 賵賰賷賮 賷亘賳賷 丕賱廿噩丕亘丕鬲 賵賷禺鬲乇賯 睾賲丕賲丕鬲 丕賱兀丨賰丕賲.
禺鬲丕賲丕貙 賴賱 賵購賮賾賯 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 賮賷 廿噩丕亘鬲賴責 賱爻鬲 賲鬲兀賰丿丕 賲賳 匕賱賰. 賱賰賳賷 毓賱賶 孬賯丞 兀賰亘乇 亘兀賳賴 賵購賮賯 賮賷 胤乇丨 兀賮賰丕乇賴 賵賳賯丿 賲丕 亘賷賳 賷丿賷賴 賲賳 兀爻卅賱丞 賵廿噩丕亘丕鬲 丨丕囟乇丞.
August 11, 2022
兀毓噩亘鬲賳賷 丕賱賲毓丕賱噩丞 丕賱噩丕丿丞 賱賱賲賵囟賵毓 ..
賮賷 賲孬賱 賴賰匕丕 賲賵丕囟賷毓 匕丕鬲 胤亘賷毓丞 丨爻丕爻丞 (丕賱乇賯貙 賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳貙 丨丿 丕賱乇丿丞貙 丕賱鬲毓丿丿貙 丕賱夭賵丕噩 賮賷 毓賲乇 賲亘賰乇..丕賱禺) 賷賰孬乇 丕賱噩丿賱 丕賱爻胤丨賷 賲賳 賰賱 丕賱兀胤乇丕賮 賵鬲睾賷亘 丕賱賲毓丕賱噩丞 丕賱賲鬲夭賳丞 (亘氐乇賮 丕賱賳馗乇 毓賳 賳鬲賷噩鬲賴丕 丕賱賳賴丕卅賷丞) 丕賱鬲賷 鬲丨丕賵賱 兀賳 鬲丿乇爻 兀孬乇 丕賱毓丕賲賱 丕賱爻賷丕爻賷 賵丕賱丕賯鬲氐丕丿賷 賵丕賱丕噩鬲賲丕毓賷 毓賱賶 丕賱賲賵囟賵毓 丕賱賲亘丨賵孬 孬賲 賮賷 丨爻賳 鬲氐賵乇 丕賱賲賵賯賮 丕賱卮乇毓賷 賲賳 賴匕賴 丕賱賯囟丕賷丕貙 賵賴賱 賴賵 賮賷 氐賵乇鬲賴 丕賱鬲賶 丕爻鬲賯乇 毓賱賷賴丕 賲賳 囟賲賳 "丕賱卮乇毓 丕賱賲賳夭賱 兀賲 丕賱賲丐賵賱 兀賲 丕賱賲丨乇賮" 丨爻亘 鬲賯爻賷賲 丕賱卮賷禺 鬲賯賷 丕賱丿賷賳 賵賲賳 孬賲 賲丨丕賵賱丞 鬲賱賲爻 鬲胤丕亘賯 丕賱賵丕賯毓 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷 賲毓 丕賱禺胤丕亘 丕賱卮乇毓賷貙 賴匕賴 丕賱賲毓丕賱噩丞 匕丕鬲 丕賱胤亘賷毓丞 丕賱賲乇賰亘丞 賵丕賱鬲賷 鬲爻丕卅賱 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞 賵鬲賮丨氐 丕賱賲賯丿賲丕鬲 丕賱賲胤賵賷丞 賵鬲乇丕賯亘 丕賱賲賳胤賱賯丕鬲 丕賱賲囟賲乇丞 賮鬲亘丨孬 賲孬賱丕 賮賷 爻亘亘 亘乇賵夭 賴匕丕 丕賱爻丐丕賱 賮賷 賴匕丕 丕賱毓氐乇 賲毓 兀賳 丕賱賯囟賷丞 丕賱賲亘丨賵孬丞 賰丕賳鬲 兀賲乇丕 賲賯亘賵賱丕 賵睾賷乇 賲爻鬲卮賰賱丞 廿賱賶 夭賲賳 賱賷爻 亘亘毓賷丿 賵賱賲丕匕丕 孬丕乇鬲 賴匕賴 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞 賮賷 賴匕丕 丕賱毓氐乇責
噩賵賴乇 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賴賵 毓亘丕乇丞 毓賳 賲丨丕賵賱丞 廿亘乇丕夭 孬賲 賲毓丕賱噩丞 賲丕 賷爻賲賷賴 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞" 賵丕賱鬲賶 鬲鬲乇賰亘 賲賳 孬賱丕孬 丕賮鬲乇丕囟丕鬲 賱丕 賷賲賰賳 丕賱鬲賵賮賷賯 亘賷賳賴丕:
兀- 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 卮乇賹 賲胤賱賯丕 賵禺胤賷卅丞 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞.
亘- 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲乇賮賵囟丞 亘噩賲賷毓 氐賵乇賴丕 賵兀卮賰丕賱賴丕貙 賵兀賷 賲丨丕賵賱丞 賱鬲噩夭卅丞 賴匕丕 丕賱賲賵囟賵毓 賷賮乇睾 丕賱賳賯胤丞 (兀) 賲賳 賲囟賲賵賳賴丕.
噩- 賱賰賱 兀賲丞 乇賲賵夭 賵賲孬賱 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 毓賱賷丕 賷賯鬲丿賶 亘賴賲貙 賵賱賰賳賴賲 -毓賱賶 丕賱兀賯賱- 鬲賯亘賱賵丕 賵噩賵丿 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 廿賳 賱賲 賷賰賵賳賵丕 賲丕乇爻賵賴丕 (賲賳 賮賱丕爻賮丞 丕賱賷賵賳丕賳貙 廿賱賶 丕賱兀賳亘賷丕亍 爻賱丕賲 丕賱賱賴 毓賱賷賴賲貙 廿賱賶 丕賱丌亘丕亍 丕賱賲丐爻爻賷賳 賱兀賲乇賷賰丕).
賵毓賱賷賴 "廿匕丕 賰丕賳鬲 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 卮乇丕 兀禺賱丕賯賷丕 噩賵賴乇賷丕 賵賮丕丿丨丕貨 賮廿賳 兀賷 卮禺氐 兀孬亘鬲賴丕 兀賵 賲丕乇爻賴丕 爻賷賰賵賳 賲丿丕賳丕 亘丕乇鬲賰丕亘 噩乇賷賲丞 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 噩爻賷賲丞貙 賵賲賳 孬賲 賮賴賵 賲氐丿乇賹 睾賷乇 氐丕賱丨 賱賱鬲賵噩賷賴 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 兀賵 丕賱賯丕賳賵賳賷 丕賱賷賵賲"貙 賮賰賷賮 賳鬲毓丕賲賱 賲毓 賴匕賴 丕賱賲毓囟賱丞責 賵丕賱鬲賷 賮賷 丨丕賱丞 丕賱賲爻賱賲 賷賰賵賳 丕賱鬲爻賱賷賲 亘賴匕賴 丕賱賳鬲賷噩丞= 禺乇賵噩賴 毓賳 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲.
兀賲丕 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 賮禺氐氐 丕賱賮氐賱 丕賱兀賵賱 賱賲爻丕亍賱丞 賲氐胤賱丨 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞貙 賵丕賱賮氐賱 丕賱孬丕賳賷 賱亘賷丕賳 丕賱賲賵賯賮 丕賱卮乇毓賷 賲賳 丕賱乇賯貙 賵賮賷 丕賱賮氐賱 丕賱孬丕賱孬 丨丕賵賱 鬲噩賱賷丞 丕賱賲賲丕乇爻丞 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 賱賱乇賯貙 賱賷毓乇噩 賮賷 丕賱賮氐賵賱 丕賱賱丕丨賯丞 賱亘賷丕賳 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞" 亘賳爻禺鬲賴丕 丕賱睾乇亘賷丞/丕賱兀賲乇賷賰賷丞 賵丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷丞 賵丨丕賵賱 丕賱禺賱賵氐 廿賱賶 丨賱 賱賴丕 賱賷氐賱 賮賷 賳賴丕賷丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 廿賱賶 毓賯丿丞 丕賱賲賵囟賵毓 賵丕賱賲鬲賲孬賱 亘賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳 賵丕賱鬲爻乇賷.
丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賲鬲毓 賵賲賮賷丿 賵廿賳 賰丕賳 鬲氐賵乇賷 毓賳 賲賯丕乇亘丞 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱賳賴丕卅賷丞 賱賰賱丕 賲賵囟賵毓賷 丕賱乇賯 賵賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳 兀賳賴丕 鬲丨鬲丕噩 廿賱賶 賲夭賷丿 鬲兀賳 賵亘爻胤.
-- 毓賱賶 丕賱賴丕賲卮 --:
1-卮噩毓賳賷 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 毓賱賶 丕賯鬲賳丕亍 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱匕賷 氐丿乇 賯亘賱賴 賵卮丿賳賷 賰匕賱賰 毓賳賵丕賳 賰鬲丕亘賴 丕賱匕賷 爻賷賳卮乇 丌禺乇 賴匕丕 丕賱毓丕賲 賵丕賱匕賷 兀乇噩賵 兀賳 賷鬲乇噩賲 賯乇賷亘丕.
2- 賱賱賲丐賱賮 賲賯丕胤毓 毓丿賷丿丞 賮賷 丕賱賷賵鬲賷賵亘 賷鬲胤乇賯 賮賷賴丕 賱賲囟賲賵賳 丕賱賰鬲丕亘貙 賱毓賱 賴匕丕 丕賱賲锟斤拷胤毓 賴賵 兀賮囟賱賴丕:
賮賷 賲孬賱 賴賰匕丕 賲賵丕囟賷毓 匕丕鬲 胤亘賷毓丞 丨爻丕爻丞 (丕賱乇賯貙 賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳貙 丨丿 丕賱乇丿丞貙 丕賱鬲毓丿丿貙 丕賱夭賵丕噩 賮賷 毓賲乇 賲亘賰乇..丕賱禺) 賷賰孬乇 丕賱噩丿賱 丕賱爻胤丨賷 賲賳 賰賱 丕賱兀胤乇丕賮 賵鬲睾賷亘 丕賱賲毓丕賱噩丞 丕賱賲鬲夭賳丞 (亘氐乇賮 丕賱賳馗乇 毓賳 賳鬲賷噩鬲賴丕 丕賱賳賴丕卅賷丞) 丕賱鬲賷 鬲丨丕賵賱 兀賳 鬲丿乇爻 兀孬乇 丕賱毓丕賲賱 丕賱爻賷丕爻賷 賵丕賱丕賯鬲氐丕丿賷 賵丕賱丕噩鬲賲丕毓賷 毓賱賶 丕賱賲賵囟賵毓 丕賱賲亘丨賵孬 孬賲 賮賷 丨爻賳 鬲氐賵乇 丕賱賲賵賯賮 丕賱卮乇毓賷 賲賳 賴匕賴 丕賱賯囟丕賷丕貙 賵賴賱 賴賵 賮賷 氐賵乇鬲賴 丕賱鬲賶 丕爻鬲賯乇 毓賱賷賴丕 賲賳 囟賲賳 "丕賱卮乇毓 丕賱賲賳夭賱 兀賲 丕賱賲丐賵賱 兀賲 丕賱賲丨乇賮" 丨爻亘 鬲賯爻賷賲 丕賱卮賷禺 鬲賯賷 丕賱丿賷賳 賵賲賳 孬賲 賲丨丕賵賱丞 鬲賱賲爻 鬲胤丕亘賯 丕賱賵丕賯毓 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷 賲毓 丕賱禺胤丕亘 丕賱卮乇毓賷貙 賴匕賴 丕賱賲毓丕賱噩丞 匕丕鬲 丕賱胤亘賷毓丞 丕賱賲乇賰亘丞 賵丕賱鬲賷 鬲爻丕卅賱 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞 賵鬲賮丨氐 丕賱賲賯丿賲丕鬲 丕賱賲胤賵賷丞 賵鬲乇丕賯亘 丕賱賲賳胤賱賯丕鬲 丕賱賲囟賲乇丞 賮鬲亘丨孬 賲孬賱丕 賮賷 爻亘亘 亘乇賵夭 賴匕丕 丕賱爻丐丕賱 賮賷 賴匕丕 丕賱毓氐乇 賲毓 兀賳 丕賱賯囟賷丞 丕賱賲亘丨賵孬丞 賰丕賳鬲 兀賲乇丕 賲賯亘賵賱丕 賵睾賷乇 賲爻鬲卮賰賱丞 廿賱賶 夭賲賳 賱賷爻 亘亘毓賷丿 賵賱賲丕匕丕 孬丕乇鬲 賴匕賴 丕賱兀爻卅賱丞 賮賷 賴匕丕 丕賱毓氐乇責
噩賵賴乇 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賴賵 毓亘丕乇丞 毓賳 賲丨丕賵賱丞 廿亘乇丕夭 孬賲 賲毓丕賱噩丞 賲丕 賷爻賲賷賴 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞" 賵丕賱鬲賶 鬲鬲乇賰亘 賲賳 孬賱丕孬 丕賮鬲乇丕囟丕鬲 賱丕 賷賲賰賳 丕賱鬲賵賮賷賯 亘賷賳賴丕:
兀- 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 卮乇賹 賲胤賱賯丕 賵禺胤賷卅丞 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞.
亘- 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲乇賮賵囟丞 亘噩賲賷毓 氐賵乇賴丕 賵兀卮賰丕賱賴丕貙 賵兀賷 賲丨丕賵賱丞 賱鬲噩夭卅丞 賴匕丕 丕賱賲賵囟賵毓 賷賮乇睾 丕賱賳賯胤丞 (兀) 賲賳 賲囟賲賵賳賴丕.
噩- 賱賰賱 兀賲丞 乇賲賵夭 賵賲孬賱 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 毓賱賷丕 賷賯鬲丿賶 亘賴賲貙 賵賱賰賳賴賲 -毓賱賶 丕賱兀賯賱- 鬲賯亘賱賵丕 賵噩賵丿 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 廿賳 賱賲 賷賰賵賳賵丕 賲丕乇爻賵賴丕 (賲賳 賮賱丕爻賮丞 丕賱賷賵賳丕賳貙 廿賱賶 丕賱兀賳亘賷丕亍 爻賱丕賲 丕賱賱賴 毓賱賷賴賲貙 廿賱賶 丕賱丌亘丕亍 丕賱賲丐爻爻賷賳 賱兀賲乇賷賰丕).
賵毓賱賷賴 "廿匕丕 賰丕賳鬲 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 卮乇丕 兀禺賱丕賯賷丕 噩賵賴乇賷丕 賵賮丕丿丨丕貨 賮廿賳 兀賷 卮禺氐 兀孬亘鬲賴丕 兀賵 賲丕乇爻賴丕 爻賷賰賵賳 賲丿丕賳丕 亘丕乇鬲賰丕亘 噩乇賷賲丞 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 噩爻賷賲丞貙 賵賲賳 孬賲 賮賴賵 賲氐丿乇賹 睾賷乇 氐丕賱丨 賱賱鬲賵噩賷賴 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 兀賵 丕賱賯丕賳賵賳賷 丕賱賷賵賲"貙 賮賰賷賮 賳鬲毓丕賲賱 賲毓 賴匕賴 丕賱賲毓囟賱丞責 賵丕賱鬲賷 賮賷 丨丕賱丞 丕賱賲爻賱賲 賷賰賵賳 丕賱鬲爻賱賷賲 亘賴匕賴 丕賱賳鬲賷噩丞= 禺乇賵噩賴 毓賳 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲.
兀賲丕 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 賮禺氐氐 丕賱賮氐賱 丕賱兀賵賱 賱賲爻丕亍賱丞 賲氐胤賱丨 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞貙 賵丕賱賮氐賱 丕賱孬丕賳賷 賱亘賷丕賳 丕賱賲賵賯賮 丕賱卮乇毓賷 賲賳 丕賱乇賯貙 賵賮賷 丕賱賮氐賱 丕賱孬丕賱孬 丨丕賵賱 鬲噩賱賷丞 丕賱賲賲丕乇爻丞 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 賱賱乇賯貙 賱賷毓乇噩 賮賷 丕賱賮氐賵賱 丕賱賱丕丨賯丞 賱亘賷丕賳 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞" 亘賳爻禺鬲賴丕 丕賱睾乇亘賷丞/丕賱兀賲乇賷賰賷丞 賵丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷丞 賵丨丕賵賱 丕賱禺賱賵氐 廿賱賶 丨賱 賱賴丕 賱賷氐賱 賮賷 賳賴丕賷丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 廿賱賶 毓賯丿丞 丕賱賲賵囟賵毓 賵丕賱賲鬲賲孬賱 亘賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳 賵丕賱鬲爻乇賷.
丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賲鬲毓 賵賲賮賷丿 賵廿賳 賰丕賳 鬲氐賵乇賷 毓賳 賲賯丕乇亘丞 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱賳賴丕卅賷丞 賱賰賱丕 賲賵囟賵毓賷 丕賱乇賯 賵賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳 兀賳賴丕 鬲丨鬲丕噩 廿賱賶 賲夭賷丿 鬲兀賳 賵亘爻胤.
-- 毓賱賶 丕賱賴丕賲卮 --:
1-卮噩毓賳賷 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 毓賱賶 丕賯鬲賳丕亍 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱匕賷 氐丿乇 賯亘賱賴 賵卮丿賳賷 賰匕賱賰 毓賳賵丕賳 賰鬲丕亘賴 丕賱匕賷 爻賷賳卮乇 丌禺乇 賴匕丕 丕賱毓丕賲 賵丕賱匕賷 兀乇噩賵 兀賳 賷鬲乇噩賲 賯乇賷亘丕.
2- 賱賱賲丐賱賮 賲賯丕胤毓 毓丿賷丿丞 賮賷 丕賱賷賵鬲賷賵亘 賷鬲胤乇賯 賮賷賴丕 賱賲囟賲賵賳 丕賱賰鬲丕亘貙 賱毓賱 賴匕丕 丕賱賲锟斤拷胤毓 賴賵 兀賮囟賱賴丕:
September 27, 2019
This is perhaps the most important Islamic book written in 2019. The author explains in great details the history and legal rules related to slavery in Islam. He also tackles head-on the difficult questions of the moral problem of slavery and concubinage. While many people won't agree with his conclusion, I do agree with it, he offers an unapologetic and clear view of what Islam has to say about these topics.
This book is a must-read!
This book is a must-read!
July 27, 2020
Unfortunately, and as expected, this book goes deep on slavery apologetics. Instead of a critical engagement with the history and theology, it resorts to anecdotal and pop culture references to illustrate why 'Islamic slavery wasn't so bad'. While it does raise useful questions re language (slavery vs servitude) and the difficulties with transhistorical moral assessments (ie how do we use our present-day morality to judge other moments in history?), the author has a poor grasp on the construction of race, and fails to interrogate the structures of power that emerge in the anecdotes he shares (especially between enslaved person and slave-owner).
June 24, 2020
Over time, I have made a few friends on 欧宝娱乐 that live outside of the U.S. I often find myself adding a book on a topic that I probably wouldn't have encountered otherwise, and Slavery and Islam by Jonathan A. C. Brown was one of those. I chose to pick it up now, because the topic seemed particularly relevant given the recent protests, including the pulling down of statues of individuals who don't meet today's standards of morality. Brown actually explicitly mentions these in his book, including this provocative line:
If slavery is a manifest and universal evil, why did no one seem to realize this until relatively recently, and what does that mean about our traditions of moral reasoning or divine guidance? Why do our scriptures condone slavery and why did our prophets practice it? How can we venerate people and texts-- the prophets, Founding Fathers, a scripture or founding document-- that considered slavery valid or normal? And, if we see clear and egregious moral wrongs that those people and texts so conspicuously missed, why are we venerating or honoring them in the first place?
Wow, that about sums it up. The book comments on the American struggle with slavery, because the Founding Fathers, whom we revere, practiced slavery. But the book's true focus in how Islam is trying to come to grips with its history of slavery. This issue has rocketed to the fore since the founding of ISIS, which has used the Quran and Sharia to justify the re-introduction of slavery. Brown and other Muslims are rightly concerned that this will cause a wave of Islamophobia (it has); how do we show that slavery isn't "in Islam's DNA"? This challenge is even harder for Muslims, because one of their religious tenets is that Mohammed, the founding prophet of Islam, could not sin. So you can't accuse him of a gross moral wrong-- no "he lived in a different time" excuses apply.
I found this book so particularly engaging, because as a Latter-Day Saint, our religious tradition has a similar conundrum. Unlike Islam, Latter-Day saints don't claim prophetic infallibility. But in practice, we act like we do. Even when claiming prophetic infallibility, trying to justify Joseph Smith's polygamy is playing moral gymnastics. And the recent defacing of the statue of Brigham Young on BYU campus directly overlaps with the larger discourse in the US on the legacy of slavery. How can we venerate prophets like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young when some of their faults seem so egregious?
Brown structures his book around what he refers to as the Slavery Conundrum: three axioms that contradict each other:
(1) Slavery is an intrinsic and gross moral evil. (2) Slavery is slavery. (3) Our past has moral authority over us.
Pick two, because you can't have all three. For most of history, the Islamic world-- and the West for that matter-- didn't include (1) and (2). Slavery was an accepted part of life, not a gross moral evil. The Bible doesn't address it directly, other than tangentially-- directing slaves to obey their masters, and masters to treat their slaves well. It doesn't challenge it, doesn't give it a moral dimension. The same applies to the Quran. As for (2), what has gone under the name "slavery" has varied so much from time and place, it's hard to come up with a definition that captures all types. We in America only know our "brand" of slavery defined by the Atlantic slave trade. But the system of slavery in the Islamic world, known as riqq, was a lot different, and changed from time and place. Slaves could earn their way out of bondage, and slaves weren't differentiated by their skin color. You even had very powerful slaves running countries, such as Rustem Pasha, the slave of the sultan, who served as the Grand Vizier.
Brown covers both Christian and Muslim attempts to square the slavery conundrum in modern times. Attempts to justify slavery violate (1) and (2). While many activists today choose to do away with (3), as has been shown by the toppling of statues. Brown saves his own interpretation for the end, which is rather quite jarring. As a Muslim, you cannot violate (3) without taking yourself out of the mainstream of Islam. This leads him to the following conclusions:
If it is not the faculty of human reasoning operating as a mirror for transhistorical moral truths that has led us to our passionate rejection of slavery in the modern period, then what is it? The answer is that it is more localized and contextualized moral reasoning rooted in how modern societies have prioritized various goods and bads, valued the construct of equality over that of hierarchy and favored the categories of both humanity and nation-state identity over religious confession...
To many it may seem demeaning to boil our deeply felt moral condemnation of slavery down to nothing more than 'custom'. But this reaction betrays two unusual, moral tendencies. We trivialize custom as mundane, and we conflate what we 'feel' to be wrong with absolute Moral Wrong identified as either by some perceived grasp of mankind's true nature or by indisputable reason.
The response to this objection is simple, though it may be unsatisfying to many. Simply put, the depth of feeling does not equal a true reflection of a universal morality. And custom is far more powerful than determining what type of gifts we give at weddings.
We feel disgust and revulsion at eating dog in the West. It's custom. Brown puts slavery into this category. By itself, slavery is not a moral wrong, even if you feel strongly about it.
I am assuming many reading this book will strongly disagree with Brown. In fact, when I tried putting Brown's arguments forward to my wife, her reaction was immediate. Slavery is wrong! It was always wrong! It will always be wrong!
I think Brown though is taking on a topic most of us would rather slip under the rug. How would you solve the Slavery Conundrum?
Brown asks for a type of moral humility, or intellectual humility surrounding morals. In our culture today, we are quick to condemn others who live in a different moral world than us. In fact, I couldn't help but reflect on Jonathan Haidt's explanation of different moral priorities on the left and right, the left focusing entirely on fairness and harm, while the right also prioritizes loyalty, authority, and purity. If we can have such strong different moral worlds in America-- that are becoming even more moralistic-- is it such a surprise that others have prioritized values differently that we do? Does that mean that were evil, or less "enlightened" than us? Brown doesn't think so ending on this note:
Yet it would be self-righteous and dangerous to think that we inhabit a moral sphere that has risen completely above the benighted strata of even our recent past. Those relationships and ideas that we profess ourselves too mature to fathom were commonplace for our parents, our grandparents, our presidents, our philosophers, and our prophets. We still speak their language, employ their principles, seek their guidance in their exempla and worship their gods. We value 'freedom', 'consent', 'kindness', 'justice', and 'equality' because they elaborated these ideas-- slaveowners and slaves though they were... It either leaves us in cultural and cognitive dissonance, harshly denouncing a heritage we still venerate. Or it deludes the wealthy and comfortable of the globe today into the fiction that all the darkness is in our past, letting us exploit and oppress while we forget 'that one may smile, and be a villain.'
If slavery is a manifest and universal evil, why did no one seem to realize this until relatively recently, and what does that mean about our traditions of moral reasoning or divine guidance? Why do our scriptures condone slavery and why did our prophets practice it? How can we venerate people and texts-- the prophets, Founding Fathers, a scripture or founding document-- that considered slavery valid or normal? And, if we see clear and egregious moral wrongs that those people and texts so conspicuously missed, why are we venerating or honoring them in the first place?
Wow, that about sums it up. The book comments on the American struggle with slavery, because the Founding Fathers, whom we revere, practiced slavery. But the book's true focus in how Islam is trying to come to grips with its history of slavery. This issue has rocketed to the fore since the founding of ISIS, which has used the Quran and Sharia to justify the re-introduction of slavery. Brown and other Muslims are rightly concerned that this will cause a wave of Islamophobia (it has); how do we show that slavery isn't "in Islam's DNA"? This challenge is even harder for Muslims, because one of their religious tenets is that Mohammed, the founding prophet of Islam, could not sin. So you can't accuse him of a gross moral wrong-- no "he lived in a different time" excuses apply.
I found this book so particularly engaging, because as a Latter-Day Saint, our religious tradition has a similar conundrum. Unlike Islam, Latter-Day saints don't claim prophetic infallibility. But in practice, we act like we do. Even when claiming prophetic infallibility, trying to justify Joseph Smith's polygamy is playing moral gymnastics. And the recent defacing of the statue of Brigham Young on BYU campus directly overlaps with the larger discourse in the US on the legacy of slavery. How can we venerate prophets like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young when some of their faults seem so egregious?
Brown structures his book around what he refers to as the Slavery Conundrum: three axioms that contradict each other:
(1) Slavery is an intrinsic and gross moral evil. (2) Slavery is slavery. (3) Our past has moral authority over us.
Pick two, because you can't have all three. For most of history, the Islamic world-- and the West for that matter-- didn't include (1) and (2). Slavery was an accepted part of life, not a gross moral evil. The Bible doesn't address it directly, other than tangentially-- directing slaves to obey their masters, and masters to treat their slaves well. It doesn't challenge it, doesn't give it a moral dimension. The same applies to the Quran. As for (2), what has gone under the name "slavery" has varied so much from time and place, it's hard to come up with a definition that captures all types. We in America only know our "brand" of slavery defined by the Atlantic slave trade. But the system of slavery in the Islamic world, known as riqq, was a lot different, and changed from time and place. Slaves could earn their way out of bondage, and slaves weren't differentiated by their skin color. You even had very powerful slaves running countries, such as Rustem Pasha, the slave of the sultan, who served as the Grand Vizier.
Brown covers both Christian and Muslim attempts to square the slavery conundrum in modern times. Attempts to justify slavery violate (1) and (2). While many activists today choose to do away with (3), as has been shown by the toppling of statues. Brown saves his own interpretation for the end, which is rather quite jarring. As a Muslim, you cannot violate (3) without taking yourself out of the mainstream of Islam. This leads him to the following conclusions:
If it is not the faculty of human reasoning operating as a mirror for transhistorical moral truths that has led us to our passionate rejection of slavery in the modern period, then what is it? The answer is that it is more localized and contextualized moral reasoning rooted in how modern societies have prioritized various goods and bads, valued the construct of equality over that of hierarchy and favored the categories of both humanity and nation-state identity over religious confession...
To many it may seem demeaning to boil our deeply felt moral condemnation of slavery down to nothing more than 'custom'. But this reaction betrays two unusual, moral tendencies. We trivialize custom as mundane, and we conflate what we 'feel' to be wrong with absolute Moral Wrong identified as either by some perceived grasp of mankind's true nature or by indisputable reason.
The response to this objection is simple, though it may be unsatisfying to many. Simply put, the depth of feeling does not equal a true reflection of a universal morality. And custom is far more powerful than determining what type of gifts we give at weddings.
We feel disgust and revulsion at eating dog in the West. It's custom. Brown puts slavery into this category. By itself, slavery is not a moral wrong, even if you feel strongly about it.
I am assuming many reading this book will strongly disagree with Brown. In fact, when I tried putting Brown's arguments forward to my wife, her reaction was immediate. Slavery is wrong! It was always wrong! It will always be wrong!
I think Brown though is taking on a topic most of us would rather slip under the rug. How would you solve the Slavery Conundrum?
Brown asks for a type of moral humility, or intellectual humility surrounding morals. In our culture today, we are quick to condemn others who live in a different moral world than us. In fact, I couldn't help but reflect on Jonathan Haidt's explanation of different moral priorities on the left and right, the left focusing entirely on fairness and harm, while the right also prioritizes loyalty, authority, and purity. If we can have such strong different moral worlds in America-- that are becoming even more moralistic-- is it such a surprise that others have prioritized values differently that we do? Does that mean that were evil, or less "enlightened" than us? Brown doesn't think so ending on this note:
Yet it would be self-righteous and dangerous to think that we inhabit a moral sphere that has risen completely above the benighted strata of even our recent past. Those relationships and ideas that we profess ourselves too mature to fathom were commonplace for our parents, our grandparents, our presidents, our philosophers, and our prophets. We still speak their language, employ their principles, seek their guidance in their exempla and worship their gods. We value 'freedom', 'consent', 'kindness', 'justice', and 'equality' because they elaborated these ideas-- slaveowners and slaves though they were... It either leaves us in cultural and cognitive dissonance, harshly denouncing a heritage we still venerate. Or it deludes the wealthy and comfortable of the globe today into the fiction that all the darkness is in our past, letting us exploit and oppress while we forget 'that one may smile, and be a villain.'
February 3, 2021
I've admired Jonathan A.C. Brown for years due to his erudition and fair-mindedness. If nothing else, he knows how to wrestle with moral and scriptural conundrums鈥攗p, down, and sideways. This book is about much more than the issue of slavery in Islam, since it considers the entire history of human beings enslaving (with all of its various definitions) their fellow humans (and non-humans!) from ancient times to the present day. The author delves deeply into how Jews, Christians, and Muslims have tried to come to terms with the fact that their scriptures鈥攁nd thus their God, prophets, and apostles鈥攃ondone, tacitly or otherwise, what is widely considered in modern times to be the most evil of practices. This book actually makes me wish that there was such a thing as double-blind book reviews where the reviewers had to read several of the top books on the broad history of slavery and then rank/review them. Indeed, it would be interesting to see how this fine work would fare if readers鈥攂oth right and left, believers and atheists鈥攄idn't know that it was written by a white American convert to Islam who is a professor of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University. I'm confident that the "How dare he write about such a topic!" reviews will start showing up in due time. However, in the mean time, if you're interested in reflecting on an unsettling topic that could very well take you out of your comfort zone, then this book will very likely take you there鈥攕ince it considers the moral problem of slavery from about every possible angle and demonstrates why it's not easily dismissed by those who want to be faithful advocates of scripture while maintaining at least a modicum of intellectual integrity...while trying to please the masses of the 21s century who have groundless, subjective, and even often fluid ethical views.
April 3, 2022
I wanted to write a long response to this book, but unfortunately life took precedence and I have waited far too long since reading it, and have thus forgotten some key things that I wanted to talk about, so forgive the rambling nature of this review 鈥� I may come back and reorganize it better later. In a nutshell, I feel that Brown has done Islamic apologetics a lot of justice, and from both an apologetics point of view, as well as that of an academic interested in exploring the subject, this book was thorough and well done 鈥� except for one glaring point which I feel somewhat undid his effort.
And that is found in this ayat of the Quran: 鈥淭his day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion鈥� (Quran 5:3)
Better known as the ghadir ayat for Shias or the final khutbah ayat for Sunnis, in which Allah proclaims Islam to have been *perfected*. Any modern intellectual effort at reconstructing or reframing Islam as something other than its original 6-7th century values and practices ultimately has to grapple with this notion of finality and *perfection*, which by the way every practicing Muslim or everyone who has been raised Muslim is fully aware of, given that it is always used as the argument against any change in our societies. You cannot escape from it, unless of course if you鈥檙e safely insulated in a western academic bubble, and have a primarily academic minded and somewhat sympathetic audience. This claim of perfection is moral, ethical and legal, and thus to state any practice found within Islam up till this revelation as anything other than a part of that perfection is to not be honest with the effort. Thus narratives which suggest that 鈥業slam always intended X鈥� must always contend with this fact. If Islam truly intended something, why would it not take place before the declaration of perfection and finality?
This is a consistent argument I find with apologetics of Islam: the retroactive re framing of current outcomes as 鈥榓lways having been intended鈥� in the first place. It is also by far the most hollow form of reasoning as it ultimately has to explain how (as in the case of slavery) it took the several centuries for humanity to randomly stumble into anti-slavery positions given the industrial revolution and the desire of the British colonial elite (for theological political economic and ethical reasons) to stamp out slavery from the planet. This is also the argument that current believing practicing Muslims are most likely to default to.
Let us also take two other examples 鈥� the issue of prohibition of prostitution and the issue of divorce. Islam completely forbids the former, and considers the latter 鈥榓cceptable but bad鈥�. For Islam to be perfect in 6-7th century, these two notions were enunciated and ruled upon. Our social norms regarding both have changed over time, and so we look at the same differently today, and will look at both even more differently in a few more decades. If global international politics results in every society accepting the current western liberal ethos on both prostitution and divorce, will we see another back bending effort to claim Islam originally intended to bring us to those conclusions 鈥� despite the passage of 1400 years and social change dictated by global politics? Norms and mores related to divorce have changed in this direction already in Islamic societies, those on the former may change as well. Now replace prostitution or divorce with slavery, and especially sex with slaves captured in war, and you can clearly see how the task setup by believer academics like Brown is impossible to begin with.
Furthermore, the comment on perfection as mandated by theology is also important because the British efforts to end slavery have a basis in theology - that of Quakers. Quaker theology identified slavery as condemnable, as inconsistent with ideas of equality, etc. This is something Islam missed out on. This also weakens the entire set of arguments around 鈥渆veryone was doing it, nobody imagined a future without it, until it became economically infeasible in the 18th Century鈥�. At least one theology did manage to condemn slavery and it has a historical role in ultimately ending it.
Where then does this leave us with the book as is, and the arguments provided therein? I believe Brown has done an incredible job, his writing style is simple, he does not shy away from presenting arguments his detractors would throw at him, and does his best to counter them with examples and counterarguments. He makes readers think and contest notions they may not have before 鈥� for eg he begins with challenging the idea that what we call and condemn as slavery today is something that has historically existed, even if the word used has been the same. This is factually correct, even if not novel. Democracy meant something very different to Athens in 1000BC and the Roman Republic was nothing like a modern republic, even if we use those terms to refer to something very similar today. This is necessary given the current zeitgeist 鈥� given western ascendancy and its efforts to eradicate chattel slavery after creating it in the 17-1800s, us moderns think of slavery along those lines. A Mameluk however was also a slave, but was a part of the ruling elite of Egypt in the Middle Ages.
While this is true, I believe the strain of argument is, for lack of a better term, is pretty much beside the point. For Islam to be absolved of the 鈥榗rime of slavery鈥� we need not address the post Muhammad post Rashidun eras. We also need not take into account variations in the social institution in the years and centuries after. We can take slavery for what it was even then, and still see it as vile. Brown himself stumbles into this, and ultimately is unable to reconcile himself with the notion of 鈥榮ex with slaves captured in war鈥� 鈥� which would have necessarily involved not just an acceptance of rape of girls of any age range captured in war.
All arguments for the benign nature of different forms of slavery, whether or not some outlier scholars over time tried to limit or regulate slavery, pretty much become irrelevant when you realize that Islam declared itself to be complete and perfect whilst accommodating sex/rape of slave girls captured in war. Comparisons with other historical cases 鈥� such as Spartacus rising against Roman slavers but taking slaves himself are also beside the point. They serve the role of an intellectual whataboutism, and that too an inadequate one. This is because the likes of Spartacus etc. never claimed to be perfect for all times to come, and they have no role to play in the lives of billions of people today. Islam claimed perfection, and this flows through in other social and political issues as well.
All in all, this is apologetics done incredibly well, it is just sad that the effort is ultimately doomed, because you cannot reconcile your current 21st century ethos with those of the pre modern past. Brown also stumbles into accepting this in the last chapter or so, which leaves one wondering what if anything was accomplished by the book. Given some of the other reviews, it seems quite clear that Brown ends up pretty much confirming everyone鈥檚 priors with this work 鈥� those wanting to him to rest the case against Islam / slavery seem to think he has managed that, whereas those who, like me, believe the opposite, end up realizing the same.
Rating 4 of 5 stars for the effort, and for documenting and addressing valid data points and questions. Also high marks for beginning the effort with 鈥業 am a white Muslim academic based on the east coast鈥� declaration 鈥� it shows self-awareness regarding identity and modern politics without becoming self-flagellating as they often do so on social media discourse.
And that is found in this ayat of the Quran: 鈥淭his day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion鈥� (Quran 5:3)
Better known as the ghadir ayat for Shias or the final khutbah ayat for Sunnis, in which Allah proclaims Islam to have been *perfected*. Any modern intellectual effort at reconstructing or reframing Islam as something other than its original 6-7th century values and practices ultimately has to grapple with this notion of finality and *perfection*, which by the way every practicing Muslim or everyone who has been raised Muslim is fully aware of, given that it is always used as the argument against any change in our societies. You cannot escape from it, unless of course if you鈥檙e safely insulated in a western academic bubble, and have a primarily academic minded and somewhat sympathetic audience. This claim of perfection is moral, ethical and legal, and thus to state any practice found within Islam up till this revelation as anything other than a part of that perfection is to not be honest with the effort. Thus narratives which suggest that 鈥業slam always intended X鈥� must always contend with this fact. If Islam truly intended something, why would it not take place before the declaration of perfection and finality?
This is a consistent argument I find with apologetics of Islam: the retroactive re framing of current outcomes as 鈥榓lways having been intended鈥� in the first place. It is also by far the most hollow form of reasoning as it ultimately has to explain how (as in the case of slavery) it took the several centuries for humanity to randomly stumble into anti-slavery positions given the industrial revolution and the desire of the British colonial elite (for theological political economic and ethical reasons) to stamp out slavery from the planet. This is also the argument that current believing practicing Muslims are most likely to default to.
Let us also take two other examples 鈥� the issue of prohibition of prostitution and the issue of divorce. Islam completely forbids the former, and considers the latter 鈥榓cceptable but bad鈥�. For Islam to be perfect in 6-7th century, these two notions were enunciated and ruled upon. Our social norms regarding both have changed over time, and so we look at the same differently today, and will look at both even more differently in a few more decades. If global international politics results in every society accepting the current western liberal ethos on both prostitution and divorce, will we see another back bending effort to claim Islam originally intended to bring us to those conclusions 鈥� despite the passage of 1400 years and social change dictated by global politics? Norms and mores related to divorce have changed in this direction already in Islamic societies, those on the former may change as well. Now replace prostitution or divorce with slavery, and especially sex with slaves captured in war, and you can clearly see how the task setup by believer academics like Brown is impossible to begin with.
Furthermore, the comment on perfection as mandated by theology is also important because the British efforts to end slavery have a basis in theology - that of Quakers. Quaker theology identified slavery as condemnable, as inconsistent with ideas of equality, etc. This is something Islam missed out on. This also weakens the entire set of arguments around 鈥渆veryone was doing it, nobody imagined a future without it, until it became economically infeasible in the 18th Century鈥�. At least one theology did manage to condemn slavery and it has a historical role in ultimately ending it.
Where then does this leave us with the book as is, and the arguments provided therein? I believe Brown has done an incredible job, his writing style is simple, he does not shy away from presenting arguments his detractors would throw at him, and does his best to counter them with examples and counterarguments. He makes readers think and contest notions they may not have before 鈥� for eg he begins with challenging the idea that what we call and condemn as slavery today is something that has historically existed, even if the word used has been the same. This is factually correct, even if not novel. Democracy meant something very different to Athens in 1000BC and the Roman Republic was nothing like a modern republic, even if we use those terms to refer to something very similar today. This is necessary given the current zeitgeist 鈥� given western ascendancy and its efforts to eradicate chattel slavery after creating it in the 17-1800s, us moderns think of slavery along those lines. A Mameluk however was also a slave, but was a part of the ruling elite of Egypt in the Middle Ages.
While this is true, I believe the strain of argument is, for lack of a better term, is pretty much beside the point. For Islam to be absolved of the 鈥榗rime of slavery鈥� we need not address the post Muhammad post Rashidun eras. We also need not take into account variations in the social institution in the years and centuries after. We can take slavery for what it was even then, and still see it as vile. Brown himself stumbles into this, and ultimately is unable to reconcile himself with the notion of 鈥榮ex with slaves captured in war鈥� 鈥� which would have necessarily involved not just an acceptance of rape of girls of any age range captured in war.
All arguments for the benign nature of different forms of slavery, whether or not some outlier scholars over time tried to limit or regulate slavery, pretty much become irrelevant when you realize that Islam declared itself to be complete and perfect whilst accommodating sex/rape of slave girls captured in war. Comparisons with other historical cases 鈥� such as Spartacus rising against Roman slavers but taking slaves himself are also beside the point. They serve the role of an intellectual whataboutism, and that too an inadequate one. This is because the likes of Spartacus etc. never claimed to be perfect for all times to come, and they have no role to play in the lives of billions of people today. Islam claimed perfection, and this flows through in other social and political issues as well.
All in all, this is apologetics done incredibly well, it is just sad that the effort is ultimately doomed, because you cannot reconcile your current 21st century ethos with those of the pre modern past. Brown also stumbles into accepting this in the last chapter or so, which leaves one wondering what if anything was accomplished by the book. Given some of the other reviews, it seems quite clear that Brown ends up pretty much confirming everyone鈥檚 priors with this work 鈥� those wanting to him to rest the case against Islam / slavery seem to think he has managed that, whereas those who, like me, believe the opposite, end up realizing the same.
Rating 4 of 5 stars for the effort, and for documenting and addressing valid data points and questions. Also high marks for beginning the effort with 鈥業 am a white Muslim academic based on the east coast鈥� declaration 鈥� it shows self-awareness regarding identity and modern politics without becoming self-flagellating as they often do so on social media discourse.
March 2, 2021
賲卮 賴賰賵賳 亘亘丕賱睾 賱賵 賯賱鬲 廿賳賷 賰丕賳 賳賮爻賷 兀氐丕丿賮 賰鬲丕亘 賲卮丕亘賴 賱丿丕 賲賳 兀賰鬲乇 賲賳 毓卮乇 爻賳賷賳. 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丿丕 噩賲賷賱 噩丿丕 賵 氐毓亘 丕賱鬲賱禺賷氐 亘丕賱匕丕鬲 賮賷 賲賵囟賵毓 氐毓亘 夭賷 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞貙 賵 亘丕賱鬲兀賰賷丿 賴丨胤賴 賮賷 賱爻鬲丞 丕賱賰鬲亘 丕賱賱賷 毓丕賷夭 兀賯乇丕賴丕 鬲丕賳賷.
賴丿賮賷 賲賳 賯乇丕賷丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賰丕賳卮 賲丨丕賵賱丞 丕賱廿噩丕亘丞 毓賳 爻丐丕賱 : 賴賵 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 亘賷賯賵賱 丕賷賴 毓賳 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞責 廿噩丕亘丞 丕賱爻丐丕賱 丿丕 _ 丕賱賳馗乇賷丞 _ 兀丿毓賷 廿賳賷 毓丕乇賮賴丕 亘丿乇噩丞 賲毓賯賵賱丞 賲賳 丕賱鬲賮氐賷賱 賲賳 兀賷丕賲 廿毓丿丕丿賷 兀賵 孬丕賳賵賷 . 丕賱爻丐丕賱 丕賱兀賴賲 亘丕賱賳爻亘丕賱賷 賰丕賳 : 鬲丕乇賷禺賷丕貙 丕賷賴 賰丕賳 賵囟毓 丕賱毓亘賷丿 賮賷 亘賱丕丿 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 毓亘乇 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺責 亘卮賰賱 賲禺鬲賱賮 : 丕賷賴 丕賱毓賱丕賯丞 亘賷賳 丕賱賳馗乇賷丞 賵 丕賱鬲胤亘賷賯 賮賷賲丕 賷鬲毓賱賯 亘丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 責
丕賱丨賯賷賯丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 亘賷丨丕賵賱 賷噩丕賵亘 毓賱賶 丕賱爻丐丕賱 丿丕 亘卮賰賱 賰賵賷爻 噩丿丕貙 賵 亘賷賮乇賯 亘賷賳 鬲賱鬲 丨丕噩丕鬲 賲賴賲賷賳 : (佟) 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賰賳氐賵氐 亘賷賯賵賱 丕賷賴 責 (佗) 丕賱賮賯賴丕亍 賵 丕賱賲丿丕乇爻 丕賱賮賯賴賷丞 毓亘乇 丕賱夭賲賳 亘賷賯賵賱賵丕 丕賷賴 賵丕夭丕賷 丕鬲兀孬乇賵丕 亘賳氐賵氐 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賵 丕夭丕賷 丕鬲兀孬乇賵丕 亘丕賱兀毓乇丕賮 丕賱爻丕卅丿丞 賮賷 丕賱毓丕賱賲 賵 (伲) 丕賱鬲胤亘賷賯 丕賱毓賲賱賷 賰丕賳 丕賷賴 賲賵賯毓賴 賲賳 丕賱賳賯胤鬲賷賳 丕賱爻丕亘賯鬲賷賳 . 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 亘賷毓乇囟 鬲賯丕乇賷乇 鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 賲禺鬲賱賮丞 賲孬賷乇丞 賱賱鬲兀賲賱 _ 爻賱亘丕 賵 廿賷噩丕亘丕 _ 賲賳 兀賲丕賰賳 賰鬲賷乇貙 賲賳賴丕 兀丨賰丕賲 賯囟丕丞 賮賷 賯囟丕賷丕 毓賷賳賷丞 賵 賲賳賴丕 丌乇丕亍 賲匕丕賴亘 賵 賲賳賴丕 賯氐氐 賲乇賵賷丞 賵 賲賳賴丕 兀丨丿丕孬 爻賷丕爻賷丞 ( 賵丕丨丿丞 賲賳 丕賱賲毓賱賵賲丕鬲 丕賱賱賷 兀丿賴卮鬲賳賷 廿賳 賮賷 亘毓囟 丨賯亘 丕賱丿賵賱丞 丕賱毓孬賲丕賳賷丞 賰丕賳 丕賱氐丿乇 丕賱兀毓馗賲 - 鬲丕賳賷 兀賴賲 卮禺氐 賮賷 丕賱丕賲亘乇丕胤賵乇賷丞 賵 兀丨丿 兀睾賳賶 丕賱賳丕爻 賮賷 丕賱毓丕賱賲 - 賲賳 丕賱乇賯賷賯. 卮亘賷賴 賱丿丕 賰丕賳 丨賯亘丞 丕賱賲賲丕賱賷賰 賰賱賴丕 賮賷 賲氐乇)
睾賷乇 賰丿賴 胤亘毓丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 亘賷鬲胤乇賯 賱鬲丕乇賷禺 賵 氐賵乇 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 毓亘乇 丕賱孬賯丕賮丕鬲 賵 丕賱兀丿賷丕賳 賵 丕賱兀夭賲丕賳 丕賱賲禺鬲賱賮丞 貙 賮賷 丕賱氐賷賳 賵 丕賱賴賳丿 賵 丕賵乇賵亘丕 賵 丕賲乇賷賰丕貙 毓賳丿 丕賱乇賵賲丕賳 賵 毓賳丿 丕賱賷賵賳丕賳貙 賮賷 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱賷賴賵丿 賵 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷賷賳 賵 丕賱賵孬賳賷賷賳 賵 丕賱賲丕丿賷賷賳 毓亘乇 丕賱夭賲賳 賵 丨鬲賶 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬. 亘賷賳丕賯卮 丕賱賮乇賯 亘賷賳 毓丕丿丕鬲 毓丿丿 賲賳 丕賱賲噩鬲賲毓丕鬲 丕賱賲毓丕氐乇丞 賱丕賳胤賱丕賯 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賮賷賲丕 賷禺氐 丕賱乇賯 賵 亘賷賳 賲賵賯賮 丕賱卮乇賷毓丞. 丕賷賴 丕賱鬲卮丕亘賴丕鬲 賵 丕賷賴 丕賱丕禺鬲賱丕賮丕鬲責 亘賷賳丕賯卮 亘乇囟賵 賲爻兀賱丞 鬲毓乇賷賮 賲氐胤賱丨 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 亘卮賰賱 賮賱爻賮賷 賵 亘卮賰賱 毓賲賱賷 貙 賴賱 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 鬲鬲噩夭兀責 賴賱 賷氐丨 兀禺賱丕賯賷丕 丕賱丨丿賷孬 毓賳 毓亘賵丿賷丞 兀爻賵兀 賵 毓亘賵丿賷丞 兀賮囟賱責 賵賱丕 丿丕 賷毓鬲亘乇 鬲氐乇賮 丨賯賷乇 賷賴丿賮 賱賱鬲賯賱賷賱 賲賳 賵丨卮賷丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 毓賲賵賲丕責 賴賱 賰賱 氐賵乇 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 毓亘乇 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺 賰丕賳鬲 亘賳賮爻 賯爻賵丞 丕爻鬲毓亘丕丿 丕賱乇噩賱 丕賱兀亘賷囟 賱賱兀賮丕乇賯丞 丕賱爻賵丿責 亘賷賳丕賯卮 賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱賳爻亘賷丞 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷丞貙 亘賷賳丕賯卮 賲爻兀賱丞 賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳 賵 賵囟毓 丕賱"賰賵賳爻鬲" 賮賷 毓賱丕賯丞 夭賷 丿賷. 亘賷賳丕賯卮 鬲噩丕乇丞 丕賱乇賯賷賯 賮賷 賲賳胤賯丞 丕賱亘丨乇 丕賱賲鬲賵爻胤 賵亘賷賳丕賯卮 鬲丕乇賷禺 廿賳賴丕亍 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 亘丕賱鬲賮氐賷賱 (賵 亘丕賱鬲賵丕乇賷禺) 賮賷 丕賱亘賱丕丿 丕賱賲禺鬲賱賮丞 賮賷 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬 .. 亘賷鬲賰賱賲 毓賳 丿丕毓卮 賵 賲丨丕賵賱丕鬲賴丕 賱廿丨賷丕亍 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷 亘毓囟 丕賱賲賳丕胤賯 丕賱賱賷 爻賷胤乇鬲 毓賱賷賴丕貙 亘賷賳丕賯卮 爻丐丕賱 : 賴賱 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 噩丕丿賷賳 賮毓賱丕 賮賷 丕丿毓丕亍 乇睾亘鬲賴賲 賮賷 廿賳賴丕亍 丕賱乇賯 賵賱丕 賴賲 賲噩乇丿 賲爻鬲爻賱賲賷賳 賱賱兀賲乇 丕賱賵丕賯毓 責 亘賷賳丕賯卮 丌乇丕亍 賰鬲賷乇 賲賳 丌乇丕亍 丕賱毓賱賲丕亍 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 賲賳匕 亘丿丕賷丞 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬 賵 賱丨丿 丿賱賵賯鬲賷 賵 亘賷賵氐賱 賱賳丕爻 夭賷 丕賱賯乇囟丕賵賷 賵 丕賱兀賱亘丕賳賷 .. 亘賷鬲爻丕亍賱 丕賷賴 亘丕賱馗亘胤 丕賱賱賷 丨氐賱 賮賷 丕賱毓丕賱賲 賮噩兀丞 禺賱賶 丕賱毓丕賱賲 賷賱睾賷 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 責 賱賷賴 丕賱賳丕爻 氐丨賷鬲 賮噩兀丞 賮賷 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬責 賴賱 廿賳爻丕賳 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬 鬲胤賵乇 毓賱賶 丕賱賲爻鬲賵賶 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 亘卮賰賱 賲賰丕賳卮 賲賵噩賵丿 毓賳丿 兀爻賱丕賮賴 責 賵賱丕 賮賷賴 賲鬲睾賷乇丕鬲 禺丕乇噩賷丞 鬲爻亘亘鬲 賮賷 丿丕 責 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘賷禺鬲丕乇 丕賱丕禺鬲賷丕乇 丕賱鬲丕賳賷貙 賵 亘賷鬲亘賳賶 賮乇囟賷丞 廿賳 丕賱毓丕賲賱 丕賱禺丕乇噩賷 丕賱兀爻丕爻賷 賰丕賳 丕賱孬賵乇丞 丕賱氐賳丕毓賷丞.
丨丕賵賱鬲 賲賰賵賳卮 亘賱禺氐 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賵賱丕 亘賯賵賱 乇兀賷賷 賵 賮賷 賳賮爻 丕賱賵賯鬲 兀賵囟丨 丕賱禺胤賵胤 丕賱毓丕賲丞 丕賱賱賷 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘賷鬲賰賱賲 賮賷賴丕 毓卮丕賳 賱賵 丨丿 賲賴鬲賲 亘丕賱賲賵囟賵毓.
丿賷 鬲丕賳賷 賯乇丕賷丞 賱賷丕 賱噩賵賳丕孬丕賳 亘乇丕賵賳 賵 廿賳 卮丕亍 丕賱賱賴 賲卮 賴鬲賰賵賳 丕賱兀禺賷乇丞. 賱丕 兀賲賱賰 睾賷乇 丕賱廿毓噩丕亘 丕賱卮丿賷丿 亘丕賱賲噩賴賵丿 丕賱卮丿賷丿 丕賱賲亘匕賵賱 賮賷 鬲噩賲賷毓 丕賱賲毓賱賵賲丕鬲 賮賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘
賴丿賮賷 賲賳 賯乇丕賷丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賰丕賳卮 賲丨丕賵賱丞 丕賱廿噩丕亘丞 毓賳 爻丐丕賱 : 賴賵 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 亘賷賯賵賱 丕賷賴 毓賳 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞責 廿噩丕亘丞 丕賱爻丐丕賱 丿丕 _ 丕賱賳馗乇賷丞 _ 兀丿毓賷 廿賳賷 毓丕乇賮賴丕 亘丿乇噩丞 賲毓賯賵賱丞 賲賳 丕賱鬲賮氐賷賱 賲賳 兀賷丕賲 廿毓丿丕丿賷 兀賵 孬丕賳賵賷 . 丕賱爻丐丕賱 丕賱兀賴賲 亘丕賱賳爻亘丕賱賷 賰丕賳 : 鬲丕乇賷禺賷丕貙 丕賷賴 賰丕賳 賵囟毓 丕賱毓亘賷丿 賮賷 亘賱丕丿 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 毓亘乇 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺責 亘卮賰賱 賲禺鬲賱賮 : 丕賷賴 丕賱毓賱丕賯丞 亘賷賳 丕賱賳馗乇賷丞 賵 丕賱鬲胤亘賷賯 賮賷賲丕 賷鬲毓賱賯 亘丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 責
丕賱丨賯賷賯丞 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 亘賷丨丕賵賱 賷噩丕賵亘 毓賱賶 丕賱爻丐丕賱 丿丕 亘卮賰賱 賰賵賷爻 噩丿丕貙 賵 亘賷賮乇賯 亘賷賳 鬲賱鬲 丨丕噩丕鬲 賲賴賲賷賳 : (佟) 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賰賳氐賵氐 亘賷賯賵賱 丕賷賴 責 (佗) 丕賱賮賯賴丕亍 賵 丕賱賲丿丕乇爻 丕賱賮賯賴賷丞 毓亘乇 丕賱夭賲賳 亘賷賯賵賱賵丕 丕賷賴 賵丕夭丕賷 丕鬲兀孬乇賵丕 亘賳氐賵氐 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賵 丕夭丕賷 丕鬲兀孬乇賵丕 亘丕賱兀毓乇丕賮 丕賱爻丕卅丿丞 賮賷 丕賱毓丕賱賲 賵 (伲) 丕賱鬲胤亘賷賯 丕賱毓賲賱賷 賰丕賳 丕賷賴 賲賵賯毓賴 賲賳 丕賱賳賯胤鬲賷賳 丕賱爻丕亘賯鬲賷賳 . 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 亘賷毓乇囟 鬲賯丕乇賷乇 鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 賲禺鬲賱賮丞 賲孬賷乇丞 賱賱鬲兀賲賱 _ 爻賱亘丕 賵 廿賷噩丕亘丕 _ 賲賳 兀賲丕賰賳 賰鬲賷乇貙 賲賳賴丕 兀丨賰丕賲 賯囟丕丞 賮賷 賯囟丕賷丕 毓賷賳賷丞 賵 賲賳賴丕 丌乇丕亍 賲匕丕賴亘 賵 賲賳賴丕 賯氐氐 賲乇賵賷丞 賵 賲賳賴丕 兀丨丿丕孬 爻賷丕爻賷丞 ( 賵丕丨丿丞 賲賳 丕賱賲毓賱賵賲丕鬲 丕賱賱賷 兀丿賴卮鬲賳賷 廿賳 賮賷 亘毓囟 丨賯亘 丕賱丿賵賱丞 丕賱毓孬賲丕賳賷丞 賰丕賳 丕賱氐丿乇 丕賱兀毓馗賲 - 鬲丕賳賷 兀賴賲 卮禺氐 賮賷 丕賱丕賲亘乇丕胤賵乇賷丞 賵 兀丨丿 兀睾賳賶 丕賱賳丕爻 賮賷 丕賱毓丕賱賲 - 賲賳 丕賱乇賯賷賯. 卮亘賷賴 賱丿丕 賰丕賳 丨賯亘丞 丕賱賲賲丕賱賷賰 賰賱賴丕 賮賷 賲氐乇)
睾賷乇 賰丿賴 胤亘毓丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 亘賷鬲胤乇賯 賱鬲丕乇賷禺 賵 氐賵乇 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 毓亘乇 丕賱孬賯丕賮丕鬲 賵 丕賱兀丿賷丕賳 賵 丕賱兀夭賲丕賳 丕賱賲禺鬲賱賮丞 貙 賮賷 丕賱氐賷賳 賵 丕賱賴賳丿 賵 丕賵乇賵亘丕 賵 丕賲乇賷賰丕貙 毓賳丿 丕賱乇賵賲丕賳 賵 毓賳丿 丕賱賷賵賳丕賳貙 賮賷 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱賷賴賵丿 賵 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷賷賳 賵 丕賱賵孬賳賷賷賳 賵 丕賱賲丕丿賷賷賳 毓亘乇 丕賱夭賲賳 賵 丨鬲賶 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬. 亘賷賳丕賯卮 丕賱賮乇賯 亘賷賳 毓丕丿丕鬲 毓丿丿 賲賳 丕賱賲噩鬲賲毓丕鬲 丕賱賲毓丕氐乇丞 賱丕賳胤賱丕賯 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賮賷賲丕 賷禺氐 丕賱乇賯 賵 亘賷賳 賲賵賯賮 丕賱卮乇賷毓丞. 丕賷賴 丕賱鬲卮丕亘賴丕鬲 賵 丕賷賴 丕賱丕禺鬲賱丕賮丕鬲責 亘賷賳丕賯卮 亘乇囟賵 賲爻兀賱丞 鬲毓乇賷賮 賲氐胤賱丨 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 亘卮賰賱 賮賱爻賮賷 賵 亘卮賰賱 毓賲賱賷 貙 賴賱 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 鬲鬲噩夭兀責 賴賱 賷氐丨 兀禺賱丕賯賷丕 丕賱丨丿賷孬 毓賳 毓亘賵丿賷丞 兀爻賵兀 賵 毓亘賵丿賷丞 兀賮囟賱責 賵賱丕 丿丕 賷毓鬲亘乇 鬲氐乇賮 丨賯賷乇 賷賴丿賮 賱賱鬲賯賱賷賱 賲賳 賵丨卮賷丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 毓賲賵賲丕責 賴賱 賰賱 氐賵乇 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 毓亘乇 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺 賰丕賳鬲 亘賳賮爻 賯爻賵丞 丕爻鬲毓亘丕丿 丕賱乇噩賱 丕賱兀亘賷囟 賱賱兀賮丕乇賯丞 丕賱爻賵丿責 亘賷賳丕賯卮 賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱賳爻亘賷丞 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷丞貙 亘賷賳丕賯卮 賲爻兀賱丞 賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳 賵 賵囟毓 丕賱"賰賵賳爻鬲" 賮賷 毓賱丕賯丞 夭賷 丿賷. 亘賷賳丕賯卮 鬲噩丕乇丞 丕賱乇賯賷賯 賮賷 賲賳胤賯丞 丕賱亘丨乇 丕賱賲鬲賵爻胤 賵亘賷賳丕賯卮 鬲丕乇賷禺 廿賳賴丕亍 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 亘丕賱鬲賮氐賷賱 (賵 亘丕賱鬲賵丕乇賷禺) 賮賷 丕賱亘賱丕丿 丕賱賲禺鬲賱賮丞 賮賷 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬 .. 亘賷鬲賰賱賲 毓賳 丿丕毓卮 賵 賲丨丕賵賱丕鬲賴丕 賱廿丨賷丕亍 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷 亘毓囟 丕賱賲賳丕胤賯 丕賱賱賷 爻賷胤乇鬲 毓賱賷賴丕貙 亘賷賳丕賯卮 爻丐丕賱 : 賴賱 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 噩丕丿賷賳 賮毓賱丕 賮賷 丕丿毓丕亍 乇睾亘鬲賴賲 賮賷 廿賳賴丕亍 丕賱乇賯 賵賱丕 賴賲 賲噩乇丿 賲爻鬲爻賱賲賷賳 賱賱兀賲乇 丕賱賵丕賯毓 責 亘賷賳丕賯卮 丌乇丕亍 賰鬲賷乇 賲賳 丌乇丕亍 丕賱毓賱賲丕亍 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 賲賳匕 亘丿丕賷丞 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬 賵 賱丨丿 丿賱賵賯鬲賷 賵 亘賷賵氐賱 賱賳丕爻 夭賷 丕賱賯乇囟丕賵賷 賵 丕賱兀賱亘丕賳賷 .. 亘賷鬲爻丕亍賱 丕賷賴 亘丕賱馗亘胤 丕賱賱賷 丨氐賱 賮賷 丕賱毓丕賱賲 賮噩兀丞 禺賱賶 丕賱毓丕賱賲 賷賱睾賷 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 責 賱賷賴 丕賱賳丕爻 氐丨賷鬲 賮噩兀丞 賮賷 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬責 賴賱 廿賳爻丕賳 丕賱毓氐乇 丕賱丨丿賷孬 鬲胤賵乇 毓賱賶 丕賱賲爻鬲賵賶 丕賱兀禺賱丕賯賷 亘卮賰賱 賲賰丕賳卮 賲賵噩賵丿 毓賳丿 兀爻賱丕賮賴 責 賵賱丕 賮賷賴 賲鬲睾賷乇丕鬲 禺丕乇噩賷丞 鬲爻亘亘鬲 賮賷 丿丕 責 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘賷禺鬲丕乇 丕賱丕禺鬲賷丕乇 丕賱鬲丕賳賷貙 賵 亘賷鬲亘賳賶 賮乇囟賷丞 廿賳 丕賱毓丕賲賱 丕賱禺丕乇噩賷 丕賱兀爻丕爻賷 賰丕賳 丕賱孬賵乇丞 丕賱氐賳丕毓賷丞.
丨丕賵賱鬲 賲賰賵賳卮 亘賱禺氐 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賵賱丕 亘賯賵賱 乇兀賷賷 賵 賮賷 賳賮爻 丕賱賵賯鬲 兀賵囟丨 丕賱禺胤賵胤 丕賱毓丕賲丞 丕賱賱賷 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘賷鬲賰賱賲 賮賷賴丕 毓卮丕賳 賱賵 丨丿 賲賴鬲賲 亘丕賱賲賵囟賵毓.
丿賷 鬲丕賳賷 賯乇丕賷丞 賱賷丕 賱噩賵賳丕孬丕賳 亘乇丕賵賳 賵 廿賳 卮丕亍 丕賱賱賴 賲卮 賴鬲賰賵賳 丕賱兀禺賷乇丞. 賱丕 兀賲賱賰 睾賷乇 丕賱廿毓噩丕亘 丕賱卮丿賷丿 亘丕賱賲噩賴賵丿 丕賱卮丿賷丿 丕賱賲亘匕賵賱 賮賷 鬲噩賲賷毓 丕賱賲毓賱賵賲丕鬲 賮賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘
February 24, 2022
賰賱 賲爻賱賲 毓乇囟鬲 毓賱賷賴 卮亘賴丞 丕賱乇賯 賮賷 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 丕賵 丨丿孬 賳賮爻賴 亘賴丕 賲賳 睾賷乇 丕賳 賷賮氐丨 毓賳賴丕 丕馗賳 丕賳 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賱賴 亘丕賱匕丕鬲貙 賱賳 賷賯鬲賳毓 睾賷乇 丕賱賲爻賱賲 亘丕賱丿賷賳 亘丿丨囟 賲毓囟賱丞 賵丕丨丿丞 丕賱丕 丕賳賴丕 亘丕賱賳爻亘丞 賱賳丕 賰賲丐賲賳賷賳 賲毓丕氐乇賷賳 賲賴賲丞 丕賷賲丕 兀賴賲賷丞貙 賵丕賱爻亘亘 賷卮賷乇 丕賱賷賴 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 毓丿丞 賲乇丕鬲 賮賷 胤賷丕鬲 亘丨孬賴 丕賱賲賲鬲毓 .
賲丕 賷賲賷夭 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 毓賳 亘丕賯賷 丕賱賰鬲亘 丕賵 丕賱賲賯丕賱丕鬲 丕賱鬲賷 賯乇兀鬲賴丕 賱賰鬲丕亘 賲爻賱賲賵賳 丕賳 丕賱亘丨孬 賷爻乇丿 亘氐賵乇丞 氐乇賷丨丞 丕賱賶 丕亘毓丿 丕賱丨丿賵丿 賵賲鬲夭賳丞 賵睾賷乇 丕賳鬲賯丕卅賷丞 賰賱 賲丕 賷噩賵賱 亘禺丕胤乇 丕賱賲丐賲賳 賵丕賱賲卮賰賰 賲賳 丕丨丿丕孬 鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 賵 賲爻丕卅賱 賮賯賴賷丞 賵丕乇丕亍 賲匕賴亘賷丞 賯丿 賷馗賳 賲賳 賷賯乇兀賴丕 賱丕賵賱 賲乇丞 丕賳賴丕 賴噩賵賲賷丞 賵賱賷爻鬲 丿賮丕毓賷丞 賱賱爻乇丿賷丞 丕賱丕爻賱丕賲賷丞. 丕賱丕 丕賳 丕賱賲賮賰乇 丕賱賲賳氐賮 賵丕賱亘丕丨孬 丕賱毓賱賲賷 賱丕 賷亘丕賱賷 亘賲孬賱 賴匕賴 丕賱鬲丨夭亘丕鬲 丕賱毓賯丕卅丿賷丞 賱丿賶 乇噩丕賱 丕賱丿賷賳 賮賷 胤乇丨 賲卮賰賱丞 鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 噩丿丕賱賷丞 賰賴匕賴 毓賱賶 亘爻丕胤 丕賱鬲卮乇賷丨 丕賱毓賱賲賷 丕賱丿賯賷賯. 賵賴匕丕 賲丕 鬲毓賵丿賳丕賴 賲賳 丕賱賲賮賰乇賷賳 丕賱賲鬲夭賳賷賳 丕賱賲賱賲賷賳 亘賲丕 賷賯賵賱賵賳 賲賳 睾賷乇 鬲禺賳丿賯 丕賵 睾賱賵 賮賷 胤乇丨 丕賱賲爻丕卅賱 賱賱賳賯丕卮.
賲丕 賷丨丕噩噩 亘賴 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賮賷 亘丨孬賴 賵賷乇賰夭 毓賱賷賴 賴賵 丕賱賮賴賲 丕賱毓丕賲 賱賱賲亘丕丿卅 丕賱丕禺賱丕賯賷丞 賵賴賱 丕賳 丕丨賰丕賲賳丕 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 丕賱丨丿賷孬丞 毓丕亘乇丞 賱賱夭賲丕賳 賵丕賱賲賰丕賳 賵賳爻鬲胤賷毓 丕賳 賳胤亘賯賴丕 丿賵賳 鬲丨乇噩 毓賱賶 丕賷 賲噩鬲賲毓 賵賮賷 丕賷 毓氐乇 賳乇賷丿.
賵賷卮賷乇 丕賷囟丕 丕賱賶 賲卮賰賱丞 丕賱鬲毓乇賷賮 賵賴賱 賲賳 丕賱賲賲賰賳 鬲毓乇賷賮 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 鬲毓乇賷賮丕 噩丕賲毓丕 賲丕賳毓丕 賱丕 賷賮卮賱 賮賷 賵氐賮 賰賱 丨丕賱丕鬲 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 毓亘乇 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺 賵賷賯丕乇賳 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 亘賲卮賰賱丞 鬲毓乇賷賮 賲氐胤賱丨 丕賱丕乇賴丕亘 丕賱丨丿賷孬 賵賰賷賮 丕賳賴 賲氐胤賱丨 賮囟賮丕囟 賵鬲毓乇賷賮賴 賲毓囟賱.
孬賲 賷丕禺匕賳丕 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘乇丨賱丞 賲賲鬲毓丞 丕賱賶 丕賱賲丕囟賷 亘賲丨胤丕鬲 賲禺鬲賱賮丞 賱賰賷 賷賰卮賮 賱賳丕 丕賱鬲賵賴賲 丕賱丨丕氐賱 賲賳 鬲毓賲賷賲 賮賰乇丞 賵噩毓賱賴丕 賰賵賳賷丞 鬲丨鬲 賰賱 丕賱馗乇賵賮 賵賲丿賶 丕禺鬲賱丕賮 賰賱賲丞 毓亘丿 賮賷 丕賱丨囟丕乇丕鬲 賵 丕賱丕夭賲丕賳 丕賱賲禺鬲賱賮丞.
賱丕 賷賳賰乇 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 賲丕 賱賱亘丨孬 賮賷 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲賳 丨爻丕爻賷丞 賲丨乇噩丞 賱賰賱 賲賳 賷丨丕賵賱 丕賳 賷囟賷賮 賮賴賲丕 賱賴 賮賳丨賳 賳毓乇賮 賲毓乇賮丞 丕賱賷賯賷賳 丕賱匕賷 賱丕 卮賰 賮賷賴 丿賳丕亍丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賵毓丿賲 賲賯亘賵賱賷鬲賴丕 亘丕賱丕胤賱丕賯 賵賱賰賳 賷鬲爻丕卅賱 賴賳丕 賴賱 毓噩夭 丕噩丿丕丿賳丕 毓賳 乇丐賷丞 賴匕丕 丕賱卮乇 丕賱賵丕囟丨 丕賱噩賱賷.
丕賳 丕賱賳馗丕賲 丕賱丕禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱匕賷 賷賯賵丿賳丕 賮賷 丨賷丕鬲賳丕 丕賱賲毓丕氐乇丞 賴賵 亘丕賱鬲丕賰賷丿 賲丨氐賱丞 鬲賯丕賱賷丿賳丕 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 丕賱賮賰乇賷丞 丕賱賲賰鬲爻亘丞 賲賲賳 爻亘賯賵賳丕 賲賳 丕賱丕賳亘賷丕亍 賵丕賱賮賱丕爻賮丞 賵丕賱賲賮賰乇賷賳 賮賴賱 毓噩夭 賴丐賱丕亍 毓賳 賲賱丕丨馗丞 丕賱禺胤兀 丕賱賮丕丿丨 賵丕賱卮乇 丕賱賲胤賱賯 丕賱賲賵氐賵賮 亘丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 丕賲 丕賳 賴賳丕賰 賮賴賲 丕禺乇 賱賱賲賵囟賵毓, 賴匕丕 賲丕 賷丨丕賵賱 丕賱賲丐賱賮 丕賳 賷噩賷亘 毓賳賴 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘賴 丕賱賰亘賷乇 賳爻亘賷丕 賵丕馗賳賴 賯丿 賵賮賯 丕賱賶 丨丿 賰亘賷乇 賮賷 鬲賵囟賷丨 賲賱丕亘爻丕鬲 賵賲睾丕賱胤丕鬲 毓賳丿 丕賱賲爻賱賲賵賳 賵睾賷乇賴賲 賷噩亘 丕賳 賳賳鬲亘賴 毓賱賷賴丕 毓賳丿 賵氐賮 賵丿乇丕爻丞 丕賱丕賲賵乇 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞.
鬲亘賯賶 賱賷 賲賱丕丨馗丞 丕丨爻亘賴丕 賲賴賲丞 賱賷 賵賱丕賯乇丕賳賷 賲賳 丕賱賯乇丕亍 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 賱丕 賵賴賷 丿乇丕爻丞 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱丕爻賱丕賲賷 賵賲丕 鬲毓乇囟 賱賴 賲賳 鬲卮賵賷賴 賵鬲夭賷賷賮 賰賰賱 鬲賵丕乇賷禺 丕賱丕賲賲 賲賳 賯亘賱 丕氐丨丕亘 丕賱丨賰賲 賵丕賱爻賱胤丞 丕賱丕 丕賳賳丕 賮賷 鬲毓丕賲賱賳丕 賲毓賴 賮乇賷賯 賲賳 丕孬賳丕賳 丕賲丕 賲賯丿爻 賱賴 賵賲夭賷賮 丕賵 賲卮賵賴 賱賴 丨丿 丕賱睾賱賵 賵丕賱胤乇賷賯丕賳 賷爻丿丕賳 毓賱賷賳丕 丕賱賳賮毓 賲賳 丿乇丕爻鬲賴 賵鬲賲丨賷氐賴, 賵丕毓鬲賯丿 丕賳 賴匕賴 丕賱賳賯胤丞 亘丕賱匕丕鬲 賴賷 丕賱鬲賷 爻丕毓丿鬲 賮賷 馗賴賵乇 丕賱卮亘賴丕鬲 丨賵賱 丕賱丿賷賳 賵夭毓夭毓鬲 丕賷賲丕賳 丕賱賳丕爻 賵亘丕賱匕丕鬲 丕賱卮亘丕亘 賲賳賴賲.
丕賱賰鬲丕亘 孬乇賷 亘丕賱賲毓賱賵賲丕鬲 賵賲鬲卮毓亘 賵賱丕 睾賳賶 毓賳 賯乇丕亍鬲賴 賱賲賳 丕乇丕丿 丕賳 賷鬲賵爻毓 亘丕賱賲賵囟賵毓 丕賱賲毓賳賷.
賲丕 賷賲賷夭 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 毓賳 亘丕賯賷 丕賱賰鬲亘 丕賵 丕賱賲賯丕賱丕鬲 丕賱鬲賷 賯乇兀鬲賴丕 賱賰鬲丕亘 賲爻賱賲賵賳 丕賳 丕賱亘丨孬 賷爻乇丿 亘氐賵乇丞 氐乇賷丨丞 丕賱賶 丕亘毓丿 丕賱丨丿賵丿 賵賲鬲夭賳丞 賵睾賷乇 丕賳鬲賯丕卅賷丞 賰賱 賲丕 賷噩賵賱 亘禺丕胤乇 丕賱賲丐賲賳 賵丕賱賲卮賰賰 賲賳 丕丨丿丕孬 鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 賵 賲爻丕卅賱 賮賯賴賷丞 賵丕乇丕亍 賲匕賴亘賷丞 賯丿 賷馗賳 賲賳 賷賯乇兀賴丕 賱丕賵賱 賲乇丞 丕賳賴丕 賴噩賵賲賷丞 賵賱賷爻鬲 丿賮丕毓賷丞 賱賱爻乇丿賷丞 丕賱丕爻賱丕賲賷丞. 丕賱丕 丕賳 丕賱賲賮賰乇 丕賱賲賳氐賮 賵丕賱亘丕丨孬 丕賱毓賱賲賷 賱丕 賷亘丕賱賷 亘賲孬賱 賴匕賴 丕賱鬲丨夭亘丕鬲 丕賱毓賯丕卅丿賷丞 賱丿賶 乇噩丕賱 丕賱丿賷賳 賮賷 胤乇丨 賲卮賰賱丞 鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 噩丿丕賱賷丞 賰賴匕賴 毓賱賶 亘爻丕胤 丕賱鬲卮乇賷丨 丕賱毓賱賲賷 丕賱丿賯賷賯. 賵賴匕丕 賲丕 鬲毓賵丿賳丕賴 賲賳 丕賱賲賮賰乇賷賳 丕賱賲鬲夭賳賷賳 丕賱賲賱賲賷賳 亘賲丕 賷賯賵賱賵賳 賲賳 睾賷乇 鬲禺賳丿賯 丕賵 睾賱賵 賮賷 胤乇丨 丕賱賲爻丕卅賱 賱賱賳賯丕卮.
賲丕 賷丨丕噩噩 亘賴 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賮賷 亘丨孬賴 賵賷乇賰夭 毓賱賷賴 賴賵 丕賱賮賴賲 丕賱毓丕賲 賱賱賲亘丕丿卅 丕賱丕禺賱丕賯賷丞 賵賴賱 丕賳 丕丨賰丕賲賳丕 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 丕賱丨丿賷孬丞 毓丕亘乇丞 賱賱夭賲丕賳 賵丕賱賲賰丕賳 賵賳爻鬲胤賷毓 丕賳 賳胤亘賯賴丕 丿賵賳 鬲丨乇噩 毓賱賶 丕賷 賲噩鬲賲毓 賵賮賷 丕賷 毓氐乇 賳乇賷丿.
賵賷卮賷乇 丕賷囟丕 丕賱賶 賲卮賰賱丞 丕賱鬲毓乇賷賮 賵賴賱 賲賳 丕賱賲賲賰賳 鬲毓乇賷賮 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 鬲毓乇賷賮丕 噩丕賲毓丕 賲丕賳毓丕 賱丕 賷賮卮賱 賮賷 賵氐賮 賰賱 丨丕賱丕鬲 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 毓亘乇 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺 賵賷賯丕乇賳 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 亘賲卮賰賱丞 鬲毓乇賷賮 賲氐胤賱丨 丕賱丕乇賴丕亘 丕賱丨丿賷孬 賵賰賷賮 丕賳賴 賲氐胤賱丨 賮囟賮丕囟 賵鬲毓乇賷賮賴 賲毓囟賱.
孬賲 賷丕禺匕賳丕 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘乇丨賱丞 賲賲鬲毓丞 丕賱賶 丕賱賲丕囟賷 亘賲丨胤丕鬲 賲禺鬲賱賮丞 賱賰賷 賷賰卮賮 賱賳丕 丕賱鬲賵賴賲 丕賱丨丕氐賱 賲賳 鬲毓賲賷賲 賮賰乇丞 賵噩毓賱賴丕 賰賵賳賷丞 鬲丨鬲 賰賱 丕賱馗乇賵賮 賵賲丿賶 丕禺鬲賱丕賮 賰賱賲丞 毓亘丿 賮賷 丕賱丨囟丕乇丕鬲 賵 丕賱丕夭賲丕賳 丕賱賲禺鬲賱賮丞.
賱丕 賷賳賰乇 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 賲丕 賱賱亘丨孬 賮賷 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲賳 丨爻丕爻賷丞 賲丨乇噩丞 賱賰賱 賲賳 賷丨丕賵賱 丕賳 賷囟賷賮 賮賴賲丕 賱賴 賮賳丨賳 賳毓乇賮 賲毓乇賮丞 丕賱賷賯賷賳 丕賱匕賷 賱丕 卮賰 賮賷賴 丿賳丕亍丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賵毓丿賲 賲賯亘賵賱賷鬲賴丕 亘丕賱丕胤賱丕賯 賵賱賰賳 賷鬲爻丕卅賱 賴賳丕 賴賱 毓噩夭 丕噩丿丕丿賳丕 毓賳 乇丐賷丞 賴匕丕 丕賱卮乇 丕賱賵丕囟丨 丕賱噩賱賷.
丕賳 丕賱賳馗丕賲 丕賱丕禺賱丕賯賷 丕賱匕賷 賷賯賵丿賳丕 賮賷 丨賷丕鬲賳丕 丕賱賲毓丕氐乇丞 賴賵 亘丕賱鬲丕賰賷丿 賲丨氐賱丞 鬲賯丕賱賷丿賳丕 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞 丕賱賮賰乇賷丞 丕賱賲賰鬲爻亘丞 賲賲賳 爻亘賯賵賳丕 賲賳 丕賱丕賳亘賷丕亍 賵丕賱賮賱丕爻賮丞 賵丕賱賲賮賰乇賷賳 賮賴賱 毓噩夭 賴丐賱丕亍 毓賳 賲賱丕丨馗丞 丕賱禺胤兀 丕賱賮丕丿丨 賵丕賱卮乇 丕賱賲胤賱賯 丕賱賲賵氐賵賮 亘丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 丕賲 丕賳 賴賳丕賰 賮賴賲 丕禺乇 賱賱賲賵囟賵毓, 賴匕丕 賲丕 賷丨丕賵賱 丕賱賲丐賱賮 丕賳 賷噩賷亘 毓賳賴 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 賮賷 賰鬲丕亘賴 丕賱賰亘賷乇 賳爻亘賷丕 賵丕馗賳賴 賯丿 賵賮賯 丕賱賶 丨丿 賰亘賷乇 賮賷 鬲賵囟賷丨 賲賱丕亘爻丕鬲 賵賲睾丕賱胤丕鬲 毓賳丿 丕賱賲爻賱賲賵賳 賵睾賷乇賴賲 賷噩亘 丕賳 賳賳鬲亘賴 毓賱賷賴丕 毓賳丿 賵氐賮 賵丿乇丕爻丞 丕賱丕賲賵乇 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺賷丞.
鬲亘賯賶 賱賷 賲賱丕丨馗丞 丕丨爻亘賴丕 賲賴賲丞 賱賷 賵賱丕賯乇丕賳賷 賲賳 丕賱賯乇丕亍 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 賱丕 賵賴賷 丿乇丕爻丞 丕賱鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱丕爻賱丕賲賷 賵賲丕 鬲毓乇囟 賱賴 賲賳 鬲卮賵賷賴 賵鬲夭賷賷賮 賰賰賱 鬲賵丕乇賷禺 丕賱丕賲賲 賲賳 賯亘賱 丕氐丨丕亘 丕賱丨賰賲 賵丕賱爻賱胤丞 丕賱丕 丕賳賳丕 賮賷 鬲毓丕賲賱賳丕 賲毓賴 賮乇賷賯 賲賳 丕孬賳丕賳 丕賲丕 賲賯丿爻 賱賴 賵賲夭賷賮 丕賵 賲卮賵賴 賱賴 丨丿 丕賱睾賱賵 賵丕賱胤乇賷賯丕賳 賷爻丿丕賳 毓賱賷賳丕 丕賱賳賮毓 賲賳 丿乇丕爻鬲賴 賵鬲賲丨賷氐賴, 賵丕毓鬲賯丿 丕賳 賴匕賴 丕賱賳賯胤丞 亘丕賱匕丕鬲 賴賷 丕賱鬲賷 爻丕毓丿鬲 賮賷 馗賴賵乇 丕賱卮亘賴丕鬲 丨賵賱 丕賱丿賷賳 賵夭毓夭毓鬲 丕賷賲丕賳 丕賱賳丕爻 賵亘丕賱匕丕鬲 丕賱卮亘丕亘 賲賳賴賲.
丕賱賰鬲丕亘 孬乇賷 亘丕賱賲毓賱賵賲丕鬲 賵賲鬲卮毓亘 賵賱丕 睾賳賶 毓賳 賯乇丕亍鬲賴 賱賲賳 丕乇丕丿 丕賳 賷鬲賵爻毓 亘丕賱賲賵囟賵毓 丕賱賲毓賳賷.
June 29, 2023
A good summary of this entire book is "slavery is halal and cannot be understood due to our uncritical adherence to presentism."
I expected more engagement with the fiqh or at least for Brown to present a picture of what it would have looked like. It's a good read if you want to sleep well at night knowing that Islam and slavery co-existed without violating islam's traditional views on modesty, chastity, and justice.
A good example is show towards the end of the book he covers concubinage and says "The master鈥檚 right to have sex with his female slaves is simply too discordant with modern sensibilities."
That is essentially how the entire book is written; "we don't know."
Gave it two stars because I don't believe he was equipped to write on this topic. There are many sources that have first person accounts of what slavery was like and how it was possible for people to engage with such a system. There are also many evidence's from islamic jurisprudence that could have aided him as well. But you can't expect much from a 21st century western-educated academic who has troubles translating basic arabic sentences.
I expected more engagement with the fiqh or at least for Brown to present a picture of what it would have looked like. It's a good read if you want to sleep well at night knowing that Islam and slavery co-existed without violating islam's traditional views on modesty, chastity, and justice.
A good example is show towards the end of the book he covers concubinage and says "The master鈥檚 right to have sex with his female slaves is simply too discordant with modern sensibilities."
That is essentially how the entire book is written; "we don't know."
Gave it two stars because I don't believe he was equipped to write on this topic. There are many sources that have first person accounts of what slavery was like and how it was possible for people to engage with such a system. There are also many evidence's from islamic jurisprudence that could have aided him as well. But you can't expect much from a 21st century western-educated academic who has troubles translating basic arabic sentences.
October 17, 2020
Pro
It's actually a very handy historical intro to many small positive historical stories about Islamic slavery. Lots of very positive and feel-good stories about how some slaves lived good lives and liked their place in life. Mixed in are harsh realities of primitive life. It's a nice take on such a gloom topic. It's like watching The Great Escape after watching Schindler's List. A refreshing take on the time period and not just negative depictions of the human spirit.
It's also well-written and well-studied. There are a lot of great stories here and great summaries of historical Muslim claims. Slavery was a major part of Islam and is supported by Islam's holy texts and the Quran. The fact that the Quran supports it is why he says that he, as a Muslim, can't attack the practice. And frankly I somewhat accept this endeavour as he doesn't seem to have any evil need or want. It's all just a defense of Islam and no other religion is attacked. Islam does have Jewish and Christian proffets so it makes sense he doesn't have a bone to pick with these religious either. He, as a Muslim, says he needs to defend the Quran. It is what it is. I'm not a fan of such subjective books but I accept them once in a while.
There were many of vastly different slaves in Muslim countries. The slaves themselves could only be non-Muslims and should be captured in battles but these rules were obviously not followed at all times. And the author really tries to depict slavery as something that was needed in pre-modern societies. Slaves did have some protection according to the law. But even that was of course not always followed. Life was not easy or safe even though he tries to make it seem that way at most times. All the negative claims about Muslim slavery are always followed up by positive retellings. It's good that he presents the negative parts but very silly that he never dares to explore them fully without constantly attacking them. When you read a negative claim you can expect the story to stop a few sentences later and be replaced by an overly long subjective claim defending slavery and Islam. His claims are often longer than what they respond to. But it does feel like he dares to present these negative claims. So it's not a book that just hides evidence.
One of his positive claims is that slaves could buy their freedom and as slaves often didn't look much different from the population overall you couldn't just keep slaves in many generations. They seemed to dissipate into the overall population a bit like slaves in Brazil did. And Muslims mostly couldn't be taken as slaves. All of this made slavery extra appealing to Muslims. It's part of their culture but is disappearing today.
Overall it's a very impressive study of Islamic slavery. And even though it's only one single very positive viewpoint it's still impressive how much info there is in this book. Very impressive! These religious scholars study their own history and texts with an extreme passion. And this American academic brings a Western style to it where historical claims are critically looked into. I didn't observe him claiming anything factually wrong. But he had a very strong opinion on everything.
Now, while the Western style is what makes this a stellar historical book it's unfortunately also what makes it fail as a book and not recommended unless you really want to read it.
Con
While the pro part of the book is awesome the con part of the book is unfortunately what brings it down by itself. It's not that the pro part is bad. It's that the book is not just good history. The other half of the book are very loosely made arguments on a very low argument level. Basically your average high school level claims without much to them. That's half of the book! Most of it is just fine and while it's pretty much a waste of my time to read these low level arguments and they often seemed misguided I didn't hate most of them. They didn't seem completely unwarranted. It's fine enough to argue that slavery has a good side to it or that slave concubines may theoretically have had good lives, as Muhammad's slave concubine likely did. It's hazy and opinionated but still fine even though he should have cut 100 pages from the book by getting to the case a tad faster. But unfortunately he takes a step further and makes some claims that are completely unsupported by any data or even clear examples. It's just a very few claims but it's enough to make me rate this book 鈪� instead of 鈪� or even 5/5.
It's because the claims are the very reason the book exists. It's not a history book even though the history in it is great. It's a single book-length argument. And the argument is lousy and something I completely disagree with as he doesn't even make it. He just claims it is so.
His main argument starts with him saying that it's conclusively true that supposedly white people need to pay reparations to black people and American Indians in USA. On the question of Muslims needing to repay for their slavery he says it's not the book to answer that question.
This is the main statement to keep in mind while reading the book. It's his main argument. Slavery in the West was horrible torture and white people, author included, need to pay black people and American Indians for it today. While, according to him, Islamic slavery is complicated and doesn't really warrant any great critique. Even though Muslims also had race slavery it wasn't their main focus so it's not as bad at all.
I don't mind a Muslim defending Islamic slavery. He's fairly transparent about this bias. Where his argument crashes and burns is how he depicts 2 different kinds of slaveries to make a point. One outside and one inside Islam. One evil, one good. That's his argument. Yet while he spends a lot of time going over the positive things of Islamic slavery he never in any way explains Western slavery or why it's bad. He just assumes it's a horrible hell on Earth. But if his main argument is a comparison where one side easily wins out then not presenting the other side means that he doesn't even have an argument here. He wants to have one but he goes nowhere as it's based on nothing at all.
This is unfortunately the constructivist academic debate style. He never feels the need to logically make a case for anything concrete. It's all based on emotional, ideological, progressive arguments. He says Western slavery is horrible without telling us why and we just need to just believe him as he really feels it strongly. Yet Western slavery varied as much as Muslim slavery so it's not clear why it loses this battle. After the Middle Ages Western slavery at its worst was not nearly as bad as the worst Muslim slavery. He of course largely ignores this horrible Muslim slavery while just assuming that the worst things in the West are much worse than depicted in any history book. He constantly attacks USA and Western culture this way. I don't hate the attacks themselves. They are pointless and biased, but not cruel. It's just that it completely destroys his very own argument. Him just ignoring the West would have won me over to his side easily. But if he has a need to use it to make a big claim then deceiving the reader is not the way to do it. You can't freely pick when and how you are critical of claims. You can't assume the out-group is evil without making a case for it. Instead he should have just said Islamic slavery or slavery overall is not that bad and then not made it a competition where he needed to deceive to win it.
Let's go over the constructivism argument. As he starts taking about Muslim slavery his defense is how varied it was. So his main defense is an overly long intro to constructivism and how all words and ideas are cultural constructions.
For example, the book tries to "defend" terrorism by claiming that all term definitions are constructed so we don't actually know what terrorism is. Hence it's just a concept we invented. An example of the made up term of slavery is that a son may be more slavelike than an Islamic slave as the son cannot buy his freedom as some slaves can. I get where he is going with this. Full idea: slavery can mean many things. But spending over 100 pages explaining this by applying modern semi-academic tricks to do so is a waste of the reader's time. I've read such basic constructivism intros 100 times before, I didn't need a huge one yet again. He could have been historically focused and not made any comparisons to Western slavery or constructivism whole saying things directly and I'd agree with him. Slavery can be many things, I know. He shouldn't have used ideological progressive tools to make this point and made it the main argument. Because he doesn't fully explain these logical assumptions so the whole book fails.
For example, the first 3:15 hours of the audiobook have more clear opinions on American slavery than Islamic slavery and neither is explained via examples but mainly via his biased opinions. That's insane. That part has maybe 15 minutes of good info in Islamic slavery which is completely unacceptable for any book with such a title. The book is not a historical overview of Islamic slavery. It's a moral attack on American slavery and a defense of Islamic slavery at the very same time!?! Basically, the first 3:15 hours is mainly a vague social constructivism intro and how it applies to Islamic slavery. A dog is a dog because we define the word. Slavery is horrible as we know it's horrible. But Islamic slavery is not horrible because what does the word slavery even mean? It has no meaning! Gotcha!
Anyone thinking this is a good argument must be very ignorant indeed. It's just him picking whatever point of view he needs to make a claim. It's easy to win all your arguments when you state things you agree with as pure factual claims but then also tell the reader that Islamic slavery is not even as thing as it's a constructed term.
But despite his big failure the idea that Islamic slavery can be non-awful is very much clear and detailed. I don't think readers will disagree with that. His conclusion is very much correct and easy to agree with after just 10 historical pages. It's just his way to his claim that's so perplexing and maddening that it's nonsensical. It's like if I told you that 2+2 is 4 because four has one more letter than two and therefore somehow must be the answer.
Conclusion
Ufffff鈥� so damn close to being a great book. So close. Just remove 15 horrible pages from the book and the rating may even improve 2 full stars. Unfortunately he himself has picked his poison. He himself has a need to make some fine historical claims but then center them around an argument that's not even horrible. It's one step below that. It's not even a clear argument as he doesn't present the other side of the comparison.
It's not rare that I pan a book for a few horrible pages in it. But it rarely happens that the whole book goes from great to bad because of that alone. I've had this experience with some social science textbooks too. Great intro to psychology suddenly ruined by some completely stupid pet theory the author had the need to present while depicting all the counter-evidence, the actual science, as pseudoscience. It's hard to defend a book I know will lead readers to the wrong conclusions.
Besides the main argument I also did think the hundreds of pages about constructivism and the vague moral arguments were pointless and a waste of time. But maybe some high schoolers would need such a step-by-step basic moral argument intro where all his claims need several pages each.
The history in the book is good even though it's very one-sided. It's not really a book about Islamic slavery. For that you'd need to find another book. But it still needs to contain this stuff to support the main claim and it makes it 70% good. I did learn a ton about the topic. And now I'm very eager to learn much more.
If you want a truly magnificent intro to Islamic slavery I very strongly suggest, Skeletons on the Zahara. It's just one story but it's so clear and direct that I learned more from it than from this book. Then there are good documentaries too. I need to seek out specific books Islam now. There are very few English ones it seems, unless it's badly written religious teachings.
/book/show/4...
It's actually a very handy historical intro to many small positive historical stories about Islamic slavery. Lots of very positive and feel-good stories about how some slaves lived good lives and liked their place in life. Mixed in are harsh realities of primitive life. It's a nice take on such a gloom topic. It's like watching The Great Escape after watching Schindler's List. A refreshing take on the time period and not just negative depictions of the human spirit.
It's also well-written and well-studied. There are a lot of great stories here and great summaries of historical Muslim claims. Slavery was a major part of Islam and is supported by Islam's holy texts and the Quran. The fact that the Quran supports it is why he says that he, as a Muslim, can't attack the practice. And frankly I somewhat accept this endeavour as he doesn't seem to have any evil need or want. It's all just a defense of Islam and no other religion is attacked. Islam does have Jewish and Christian proffets so it makes sense he doesn't have a bone to pick with these religious either. He, as a Muslim, says he needs to defend the Quran. It is what it is. I'm not a fan of such subjective books but I accept them once in a while.
There were many of vastly different slaves in Muslim countries. The slaves themselves could only be non-Muslims and should be captured in battles but these rules were obviously not followed at all times. And the author really tries to depict slavery as something that was needed in pre-modern societies. Slaves did have some protection according to the law. But even that was of course not always followed. Life was not easy or safe even though he tries to make it seem that way at most times. All the negative claims about Muslim slavery are always followed up by positive retellings. It's good that he presents the negative parts but very silly that he never dares to explore them fully without constantly attacking them. When you read a negative claim you can expect the story to stop a few sentences later and be replaced by an overly long subjective claim defending slavery and Islam. His claims are often longer than what they respond to. But it does feel like he dares to present these negative claims. So it's not a book that just hides evidence.
One of his positive claims is that slaves could buy their freedom and as slaves often didn't look much different from the population overall you couldn't just keep slaves in many generations. They seemed to dissipate into the overall population a bit like slaves in Brazil did. And Muslims mostly couldn't be taken as slaves. All of this made slavery extra appealing to Muslims. It's part of their culture but is disappearing today.
Overall it's a very impressive study of Islamic slavery. And even though it's only one single very positive viewpoint it's still impressive how much info there is in this book. Very impressive! These religious scholars study their own history and texts with an extreme passion. And this American academic brings a Western style to it where historical claims are critically looked into. I didn't observe him claiming anything factually wrong. But he had a very strong opinion on everything.
Now, while the Western style is what makes this a stellar historical book it's unfortunately also what makes it fail as a book and not recommended unless you really want to read it.
Con
While the pro part of the book is awesome the con part of the book is unfortunately what brings it down by itself. It's not that the pro part is bad. It's that the book is not just good history. The other half of the book are very loosely made arguments on a very low argument level. Basically your average high school level claims without much to them. That's half of the book! Most of it is just fine and while it's pretty much a waste of my time to read these low level arguments and they often seemed misguided I didn't hate most of them. They didn't seem completely unwarranted. It's fine enough to argue that slavery has a good side to it or that slave concubines may theoretically have had good lives, as Muhammad's slave concubine likely did. It's hazy and opinionated but still fine even though he should have cut 100 pages from the book by getting to the case a tad faster. But unfortunately he takes a step further and makes some claims that are completely unsupported by any data or even clear examples. It's just a very few claims but it's enough to make me rate this book 鈪� instead of 鈪� or even 5/5.
It's because the claims are the very reason the book exists. It's not a history book even though the history in it is great. It's a single book-length argument. And the argument is lousy and something I completely disagree with as he doesn't even make it. He just claims it is so.
His main argument starts with him saying that it's conclusively true that supposedly white people need to pay reparations to black people and American Indians in USA. On the question of Muslims needing to repay for their slavery he says it's not the book to answer that question.
This is the main statement to keep in mind while reading the book. It's his main argument. Slavery in the West was horrible torture and white people, author included, need to pay black people and American Indians for it today. While, according to him, Islamic slavery is complicated and doesn't really warrant any great critique. Even though Muslims also had race slavery it wasn't their main focus so it's not as bad at all.
I don't mind a Muslim defending Islamic slavery. He's fairly transparent about this bias. Where his argument crashes and burns is how he depicts 2 different kinds of slaveries to make a point. One outside and one inside Islam. One evil, one good. That's his argument. Yet while he spends a lot of time going over the positive things of Islamic slavery he never in any way explains Western slavery or why it's bad. He just assumes it's a horrible hell on Earth. But if his main argument is a comparison where one side easily wins out then not presenting the other side means that he doesn't even have an argument here. He wants to have one but he goes nowhere as it's based on nothing at all.
This is unfortunately the constructivist academic debate style. He never feels the need to logically make a case for anything concrete. It's all based on emotional, ideological, progressive arguments. He says Western slavery is horrible without telling us why and we just need to just believe him as he really feels it strongly. Yet Western slavery varied as much as Muslim slavery so it's not clear why it loses this battle. After the Middle Ages Western slavery at its worst was not nearly as bad as the worst Muslim slavery. He of course largely ignores this horrible Muslim slavery while just assuming that the worst things in the West are much worse than depicted in any history book. He constantly attacks USA and Western culture this way. I don't hate the attacks themselves. They are pointless and biased, but not cruel. It's just that it completely destroys his very own argument. Him just ignoring the West would have won me over to his side easily. But if he has a need to use it to make a big claim then deceiving the reader is not the way to do it. You can't freely pick when and how you are critical of claims. You can't assume the out-group is evil without making a case for it. Instead he should have just said Islamic slavery or slavery overall is not that bad and then not made it a competition where he needed to deceive to win it.
Let's go over the constructivism argument. As he starts taking about Muslim slavery his defense is how varied it was. So his main defense is an overly long intro to constructivism and how all words and ideas are cultural constructions.
For example, the book tries to "defend" terrorism by claiming that all term definitions are constructed so we don't actually know what terrorism is. Hence it's just a concept we invented. An example of the made up term of slavery is that a son may be more slavelike than an Islamic slave as the son cannot buy his freedom as some slaves can. I get where he is going with this. Full idea: slavery can mean many things. But spending over 100 pages explaining this by applying modern semi-academic tricks to do so is a waste of the reader's time. I've read such basic constructivism intros 100 times before, I didn't need a huge one yet again. He could have been historically focused and not made any comparisons to Western slavery or constructivism whole saying things directly and I'd agree with him. Slavery can be many things, I know. He shouldn't have used ideological progressive tools to make this point and made it the main argument. Because he doesn't fully explain these logical assumptions so the whole book fails.
For example, the first 3:15 hours of the audiobook have more clear opinions on American slavery than Islamic slavery and neither is explained via examples but mainly via his biased opinions. That's insane. That part has maybe 15 minutes of good info in Islamic slavery which is completely unacceptable for any book with such a title. The book is not a historical overview of Islamic slavery. It's a moral attack on American slavery and a defense of Islamic slavery at the very same time!?! Basically, the first 3:15 hours is mainly a vague social constructivism intro and how it applies to Islamic slavery. A dog is a dog because we define the word. Slavery is horrible as we know it's horrible. But Islamic slavery is not horrible because what does the word slavery even mean? It has no meaning! Gotcha!
Anyone thinking this is a good argument must be very ignorant indeed. It's just him picking whatever point of view he needs to make a claim. It's easy to win all your arguments when you state things you agree with as pure factual claims but then also tell the reader that Islamic slavery is not even as thing as it's a constructed term.
But despite his big failure the idea that Islamic slavery can be non-awful is very much clear and detailed. I don't think readers will disagree with that. His conclusion is very much correct and easy to agree with after just 10 historical pages. It's just his way to his claim that's so perplexing and maddening that it's nonsensical. It's like if I told you that 2+2 is 4 because four has one more letter than two and therefore somehow must be the answer.
Conclusion
Ufffff鈥� so damn close to being a great book. So close. Just remove 15 horrible pages from the book and the rating may even improve 2 full stars. Unfortunately he himself has picked his poison. He himself has a need to make some fine historical claims but then center them around an argument that's not even horrible. It's one step below that. It's not even a clear argument as he doesn't present the other side of the comparison.
It's not rare that I pan a book for a few horrible pages in it. But it rarely happens that the whole book goes from great to bad because of that alone. I've had this experience with some social science textbooks too. Great intro to psychology suddenly ruined by some completely stupid pet theory the author had the need to present while depicting all the counter-evidence, the actual science, as pseudoscience. It's hard to defend a book I know will lead readers to the wrong conclusions.
Besides the main argument I also did think the hundreds of pages about constructivism and the vague moral arguments were pointless and a waste of time. But maybe some high schoolers would need such a step-by-step basic moral argument intro where all his claims need several pages each.
The history in the book is good even though it's very one-sided. It's not really a book about Islamic slavery. For that you'd need to find another book. But it still needs to contain this stuff to support the main claim and it makes it 70% good. I did learn a ton about the topic. And now I'm very eager to learn much more.
If you want a truly magnificent intro to Islamic slavery I very strongly suggest, Skeletons on the Zahara. It's just one story but it's so clear and direct that I learned more from it than from this book. Then there are good documentaries too. I need to seek out specific books Islam now. There are very few English ones it seems, unless it's badly written religious teachings.
/book/show/4...
June 23, 2020
The first thing the reader needs to know is that this book could, in principle, be divided up in three distinct parts:
1) a description and explanation of the concept of slavery, or riqq, in Islamic theology and legal theory. This is associated with descriptions of the Prophetic antecedent of owning and manumitting slaves and religiously binding commands from the Prophet to the Muslims regarding treatment of slaves.
2) a description of the actual social, legal and economic conditions of slaves in Islamic society from the early Islamic times to the late abolition of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Egypt, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia in the 20th century. Sensitive and controversial topics such as enslavement of fellow Muslims are discussed, as well as the role of sexual slavery in Islamic civilization.
3) the author鈥檚 attempts at various moral and intellectual arguments that serve two main purposes, namely to hammer home the idea that a) slavery as a transhistorical phenomenon lacks any unifying definition to merit a complete, outright condemnation and b) when attempting to make a moral judgment on the basis of traits of slavery such as unfreedom or inequality the author (despite repeatedly denying it) implements a bald man fallacy argument in order to invalidate arguments that slavery is a deontological/intrinsic or teleological/consequentialist wrong. This is where the book is at its weakest.
To summarize the sort of argumentation the reader will come across one can look at the author describing the pro-slavery side during the abolitionist discussions in Western Europe centuries ago. Page 166 reads: 鈥淒efenders of slavery used the difficulty of defining the term as the opening salvo of their arguments, often followed by trying to draw distinction between 鈥榞ood鈥� and 鈥榖ad鈥� slavery鈥� As the reader will discover, the passage above is bizarrely self-referential and one will come to terms that this author is in fact defending slavery, or at the very least 鈥榯he good鈥� kind. And surely, many of the social conditions of slaves in the Islamic world differed widely from the deplorable conditions of the people of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The underlying problems of the author鈥檚 arguments are how he believes he has achieved the points 3a and 3b as described above. The author erroneously makes references such as at page 189 that 鈥渦ntil the late 1600s effectively no one thought slavery was wrong鈥� and includes among these people all foundational figures of all major religions, including, erroneously, the Buddha at page 268. He bases this off one single entry in the Encyclopedia of Buddhism written by Jonathan A. Silk where Silk describes Buddhist monks holding slaves. While these historical facts are probably true and should not merit too much consternation as Brown correctly has observed that slavery was very wide-spread in the pre-modern world, the problem lies in Brown declaring victory too early. Apannaka Sutta from Majjihima Nikaya of the Buddhist Pal卯 canon makes clear that the Buddha very early condemned and forbade trade of slaves as it is considered a breach of the Buddhist ethic of the eightfold path. Brown makes an argument that no premodern philosopher possessed even the imagination that slavery as an institution could be wrong and uses its widespread practice as a moral defense of the practice. As can be seen, one single footnote from one of the largest Eastern traditions obliterated all old Buddhist sentiments against slavery as something unethical.
An early victory is declared in that slavery cannot be transhistorically defined and the author gives examples of researchers of this topic from different schools of thought who are involved in this definition conundrum. While many of these points are valid from an academic point of view, the reader feels that the author, once again, declares victory too early, as all avenues to a solution have not been traversed. If one lacks a coherent definition that encompasses the slavery of African-Americans, janissaries of the Ottoman Empire or the slaves of Imperial China, how about creating a criteria-based definition? A personal attempt of the reader follows below:
1) A slave is the property of a master, property being understood as a legal, social or economic institution in their society.
2) (Inflicted) restrictions that cannot be influenced by the slave without
2a) adverse effects, such as threat of violence, or
2b) making life outside the institution unlivable (many black slaves who were manumitted in Ottoman Constantinople were reduced to beggary)
3) Expectation of labor, regardless of the slave鈥檚 attitude towards this labor.
4) A degrading component which is considered insensible to the people at the time.
The minimum criteria of slavery could be fulfilled if at least 1, or 2a/2b along with 4 are fulfilled. This is a flawed criteria-system as such, but it serves to show that it could have been attempted by the author before declaring that there is no unified definition of slavery. The reader feels this to have been a too early assessment and it is difficult to look away from the fact that the author has confessional reasons to build this argument. The author points out inconsistency in the epistemological world-view of his American readers who might feel that prisoners working in jails are not doing slave labor, something the author correctly problematizes. One fails to see, however, what this or the author's hinted whataboutist narratives regarding "Western hypocrisy" has to do with the moral reality of the phenomenon.
Which brings us to the the second problem: the moral ambition of the author, which can be considered to be humble if not very unambitious. By simply displaying differences in social conditions, the ills of Islamic slavery are considered mitigated. This will not do. An ethical analysis of slavery includes the master and his/her particular moral faculties as well. One could argue that being a master who takes part in a practice promoting and perpetuating an unequivocally undesirable (even according to Islamic sources, see p. 178, 180-181) and forced state is unethical. More so when the author describes slavehood as a legal handicap similar to that of minors in that their autonomy is limited as they are part of the family of their parents. Turned around, one could ask the author if the ills of slavery would be mitigated if we avoid using the term (which the author considered highly politicized, rightfully so) and call the early slave-raids of the Muslims forced adoptions of adult people and enslavement as infliction of legal handicap to someone formerly capable. Not only is the master condoning this infliction of legal handicap to his human equals, he maintains this status by manumitting the slave only after physical and/or sexual labor has been extracted. If the author fails to see the potentially immoral effects on the slave-masters psychology living in such a society that presupposes such relationships, then it suffices to say that the author is lacking in moral imagination, maybe wilfully so.
While unique to read slavery apologetics in the 21th century, the book has a lot of good content, especially so when the author describes the theology and history of Islamic slavery. This is where the erudition of the author shines through.
1) a description and explanation of the concept of slavery, or riqq, in Islamic theology and legal theory. This is associated with descriptions of the Prophetic antecedent of owning and manumitting slaves and religiously binding commands from the Prophet to the Muslims regarding treatment of slaves.
2) a description of the actual social, legal and economic conditions of slaves in Islamic society from the early Islamic times to the late abolition of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Egypt, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia in the 20th century. Sensitive and controversial topics such as enslavement of fellow Muslims are discussed, as well as the role of sexual slavery in Islamic civilization.
3) the author鈥檚 attempts at various moral and intellectual arguments that serve two main purposes, namely to hammer home the idea that a) slavery as a transhistorical phenomenon lacks any unifying definition to merit a complete, outright condemnation and b) when attempting to make a moral judgment on the basis of traits of slavery such as unfreedom or inequality the author (despite repeatedly denying it) implements a bald man fallacy argument in order to invalidate arguments that slavery is a deontological/intrinsic or teleological/consequentialist wrong. This is where the book is at its weakest.
To summarize the sort of argumentation the reader will come across one can look at the author describing the pro-slavery side during the abolitionist discussions in Western Europe centuries ago. Page 166 reads: 鈥淒efenders of slavery used the difficulty of defining the term as the opening salvo of their arguments, often followed by trying to draw distinction between 鈥榞ood鈥� and 鈥榖ad鈥� slavery鈥� As the reader will discover, the passage above is bizarrely self-referential and one will come to terms that this author is in fact defending slavery, or at the very least 鈥榯he good鈥� kind. And surely, many of the social conditions of slaves in the Islamic world differed widely from the deplorable conditions of the people of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The underlying problems of the author鈥檚 arguments are how he believes he has achieved the points 3a and 3b as described above. The author erroneously makes references such as at page 189 that 鈥渦ntil the late 1600s effectively no one thought slavery was wrong鈥� and includes among these people all foundational figures of all major religions, including, erroneously, the Buddha at page 268. He bases this off one single entry in the Encyclopedia of Buddhism written by Jonathan A. Silk where Silk describes Buddhist monks holding slaves. While these historical facts are probably true and should not merit too much consternation as Brown correctly has observed that slavery was very wide-spread in the pre-modern world, the problem lies in Brown declaring victory too early. Apannaka Sutta from Majjihima Nikaya of the Buddhist Pal卯 canon makes clear that the Buddha very early condemned and forbade trade of slaves as it is considered a breach of the Buddhist ethic of the eightfold path. Brown makes an argument that no premodern philosopher possessed even the imagination that slavery as an institution could be wrong and uses its widespread practice as a moral defense of the practice. As can be seen, one single footnote from one of the largest Eastern traditions obliterated all old Buddhist sentiments against slavery as something unethical.
An early victory is declared in that slavery cannot be transhistorically defined and the author gives examples of researchers of this topic from different schools of thought who are involved in this definition conundrum. While many of these points are valid from an academic point of view, the reader feels that the author, once again, declares victory too early, as all avenues to a solution have not been traversed. If one lacks a coherent definition that encompasses the slavery of African-Americans, janissaries of the Ottoman Empire or the slaves of Imperial China, how about creating a criteria-based definition? A personal attempt of the reader follows below:
1) A slave is the property of a master, property being understood as a legal, social or economic institution in their society.
2) (Inflicted) restrictions that cannot be influenced by the slave without
2a) adverse effects, such as threat of violence, or
2b) making life outside the institution unlivable (many black slaves who were manumitted in Ottoman Constantinople were reduced to beggary)
3) Expectation of labor, regardless of the slave鈥檚 attitude towards this labor.
4) A degrading component which is considered insensible to the people at the time.
The minimum criteria of slavery could be fulfilled if at least 1, or 2a/2b along with 4 are fulfilled. This is a flawed criteria-system as such, but it serves to show that it could have been attempted by the author before declaring that there is no unified definition of slavery. The reader feels this to have been a too early assessment and it is difficult to look away from the fact that the author has confessional reasons to build this argument. The author points out inconsistency in the epistemological world-view of his American readers who might feel that prisoners working in jails are not doing slave labor, something the author correctly problematizes. One fails to see, however, what this or the author's hinted whataboutist narratives regarding "Western hypocrisy" has to do with the moral reality of the phenomenon.
Which brings us to the the second problem: the moral ambition of the author, which can be considered to be humble if not very unambitious. By simply displaying differences in social conditions, the ills of Islamic slavery are considered mitigated. This will not do. An ethical analysis of slavery includes the master and his/her particular moral faculties as well. One could argue that being a master who takes part in a practice promoting and perpetuating an unequivocally undesirable (even according to Islamic sources, see p. 178, 180-181) and forced state is unethical. More so when the author describes slavehood as a legal handicap similar to that of minors in that their autonomy is limited as they are part of the family of their parents. Turned around, one could ask the author if the ills of slavery would be mitigated if we avoid using the term (which the author considered highly politicized, rightfully so) and call the early slave-raids of the Muslims forced adoptions of adult people and enslavement as infliction of legal handicap to someone formerly capable. Not only is the master condoning this infliction of legal handicap to his human equals, he maintains this status by manumitting the slave only after physical and/or sexual labor has been extracted. If the author fails to see the potentially immoral effects on the slave-masters psychology living in such a society that presupposes such relationships, then it suffices to say that the author is lacking in moral imagination, maybe wilfully so.
While unique to read slavery apologetics in the 21th century, the book has a lot of good content, especially so when the author describes the theology and history of Islamic slavery. This is where the erudition of the author shines through.
Want to read
November 24, 2019i gotta say i'm nervous about this one; the last i saw of j. brown speaking on this topic slid into slavery apologetics but i did like misquoting muhammad so. maybe he'll be better in long form!
November 28, 2022
丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賲賵噩賴 -賮賷 丕賱賲賯丕賲 丕賱兀賵賱- 賱睾賷乇 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 賮賷 丕賱睾乇亘貙 廿賱丕 兀賳賴 賷賲賰賳 兀賳 賷賮賷丿 兀賷囟丕 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳 匕賵賷 丕賱孬賯丕賮丞 丕賱睾乇亘賷丞
August 6, 2020
You won't like everything this book stands for and, if you're anything like the average modern person with normative, everyday sensibilities, parts of this book will make you hyperventilate. But if you're a serious reader who cares about moral reasoning and who prefers to struggle through the structural, ethical quandaries of modern life, then this might be a good book for you.
Brown is a professor of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University and a prominent Muslim figure in North America. He also doesn't shy away from addressing the clear gaps between Islamic ethics and today's accepted liberal norms. The controversies are familiar: women's rights, the usage of violence, or a host of political and gender issues, much of which Brown has addressed in his other writings.
But THIS latest book takes an axe to the root, so to speak, as Brown tackles head-on what ought to be the biggest elephant in the room: Islam's perspective on slavery.
Essentially, Brown formulates the core problem as what he calls the "Slavery Conundrum," a moral quandary that arises out of a simple yet disturbing and disorienting reality: that different forms of slavery and human-ownership have existed as a basic human norm throughout what's probably close to 80% of human civilization and history. In fact, just about every major moral figure, along with every tyrant, has treated slavery (in its myriad forms across space/time) as a normal fact of life, period (until about the early 1600s). This includes the Islamic Revelations and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), who had a modified take on the institution of slavery (which Brown analyzes at length), but who also took numerous slaves as well as slave-concubines.
This easily demonstrated fact throws the conundrum into major relief: If all slavery is utterly and trans-historically horrific鈥攁 clearly uncrossable moral redline for any decent and thinking human being鈥攖hen how can any individual (or Muslim) afford to uphold the moral authority/legacy of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, and just about every other major historical and moral figure in history, from Aristotle to Jesus Christ? (If God is Just and all souls are created equal, then How can one person own another person? Why didn't God or Allah simply ban slavery?)
Brown points out that given the sheer severity placed by our modern conscience on slavery as a moral monstrosity, it's totally inadequate for us to explain away the acceptance (or tolerance) of such a huge injustice by history's most luminous figures (figures who remain the fountainheads of sweeping moral traditions) as a minor (re: negligible) mistake that's easily outweighed and overshadowed by their much larger, more venerable achievements. The severity of an ethical blind-spot or sin as ACCEPTING SLAVERY should be enough to sink these figures' legacies and projects, most of which have animated huge swathes of mankind for centuries, if not millennia.
It's an absolutely fascinating body of questions and quandaries, and Brown doesn't disappoint as he dissects each subject with a steady, scholarly scalpel. Some conclusions are more satisfying than others, while some leave you a little winded.
Brown's comprehensive research takes the reader through the Islamic tradition's treatment of slavery (riqq), as well as slavery's panoramic existence throughout Islamic history. Then he delves into the depths of the Slavery Conundrum. His ultimate conclusions are, in short (and I'm erring in generalities here), that slavery can't be boxed into an undifferentiated trans-historical mass, that Islam instituted rules on slavery that prohibited cruel treatment, that the West shouldn't pat itself on the back too much for "coming up with abolition," and that, ultimately, the Quran aimed towards emancipation.
(Incidentally the most thrilling part of the book for me wasn't Brown's systemic unravelling of the Conundrum per se, but his treatment or summary of why the West finally gave up slavery or the slave trade鈥攁 discussion where Brown pokes at comforting notions of natural moral progress and other post-Enlightenment assumptions associated with the West's ever-progressing forms of liberal democracy, usually in contrast to other backward peoples/civilizations...a treatment that many intellectual history aficionados should appreciate)
Dramatically, Brown *ends* the book (literally in its final pages) with his *most controversial and potentially upsetting* arguments, which hone in on Islam's prescriptions for how masters should handle sexual access to female slave concubines (a major point of discussion in the public square since 2014, when ISIS took over Mosul, Iraq). A section usually reserved for soft landings and moderate summaries that facilitate the reader's parting is, in Brown's hands, just enough space for a final blitzkrieg on perhaps the most controversial aspect of all of Islamic slavery.
Agree or disagree, the book makes its case forcefully/clearly, asks all the right questions and, from a layman's perspective anyway, seems to back it all up with large bodies of sources and evidence. The book requires that readers know a bit about Islam's basic parameters. It's also replete with Arabic names and historical facts re: Islamic civilization, so I can't say it's totally devoid of academic language or discourse. But it's just about the right kind of book for the thinking layman (particularly the Western Muslim) who wants to sharpen his moral common sense via addressing major issues that, when rescued from superficial conformity and truisms, reveal themselves to be huge masses of human and ethical ambiguity.
Brown is a professor of Islamic Civilization at Georgetown University and a prominent Muslim figure in North America. He also doesn't shy away from addressing the clear gaps between Islamic ethics and today's accepted liberal norms. The controversies are familiar: women's rights, the usage of violence, or a host of political and gender issues, much of which Brown has addressed in his other writings.
But THIS latest book takes an axe to the root, so to speak, as Brown tackles head-on what ought to be the biggest elephant in the room: Islam's perspective on slavery.
Essentially, Brown formulates the core problem as what he calls the "Slavery Conundrum," a moral quandary that arises out of a simple yet disturbing and disorienting reality: that different forms of slavery and human-ownership have existed as a basic human norm throughout what's probably close to 80% of human civilization and history. In fact, just about every major moral figure, along with every tyrant, has treated slavery (in its myriad forms across space/time) as a normal fact of life, period (until about the early 1600s). This includes the Islamic Revelations and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), who had a modified take on the institution of slavery (which Brown analyzes at length), but who also took numerous slaves as well as slave-concubines.
This easily demonstrated fact throws the conundrum into major relief: If all slavery is utterly and trans-historically horrific鈥攁 clearly uncrossable moral redline for any decent and thinking human being鈥攖hen how can any individual (or Muslim) afford to uphold the moral authority/legacy of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, and just about every other major historical and moral figure in history, from Aristotle to Jesus Christ? (If God is Just and all souls are created equal, then How can one person own another person? Why didn't God or Allah simply ban slavery?)
Brown points out that given the sheer severity placed by our modern conscience on slavery as a moral monstrosity, it's totally inadequate for us to explain away the acceptance (or tolerance) of such a huge injustice by history's most luminous figures (figures who remain the fountainheads of sweeping moral traditions) as a minor (re: negligible) mistake that's easily outweighed and overshadowed by their much larger, more venerable achievements. The severity of an ethical blind-spot or sin as ACCEPTING SLAVERY should be enough to sink these figures' legacies and projects, most of which have animated huge swathes of mankind for centuries, if not millennia.
It's an absolutely fascinating body of questions and quandaries, and Brown doesn't disappoint as he dissects each subject with a steady, scholarly scalpel. Some conclusions are more satisfying than others, while some leave you a little winded.
Brown's comprehensive research takes the reader through the Islamic tradition's treatment of slavery (riqq), as well as slavery's panoramic existence throughout Islamic history. Then he delves into the depths of the Slavery Conundrum. His ultimate conclusions are, in short (and I'm erring in generalities here), that slavery can't be boxed into an undifferentiated trans-historical mass, that Islam instituted rules on slavery that prohibited cruel treatment, that the West shouldn't pat itself on the back too much for "coming up with abolition," and that, ultimately, the Quran aimed towards emancipation.
(Incidentally the most thrilling part of the book for me wasn't Brown's systemic unravelling of the Conundrum per se, but his treatment or summary of why the West finally gave up slavery or the slave trade鈥攁 discussion where Brown pokes at comforting notions of natural moral progress and other post-Enlightenment assumptions associated with the West's ever-progressing forms of liberal democracy, usually in contrast to other backward peoples/civilizations...a treatment that many intellectual history aficionados should appreciate)
Dramatically, Brown *ends* the book (literally in its final pages) with his *most controversial and potentially upsetting* arguments, which hone in on Islam's prescriptions for how masters should handle sexual access to female slave concubines (a major point of discussion in the public square since 2014, when ISIS took over Mosul, Iraq). A section usually reserved for soft landings and moderate summaries that facilitate the reader's parting is, in Brown's hands, just enough space for a final blitzkrieg on perhaps the most controversial aspect of all of Islamic slavery.
Agree or disagree, the book makes its case forcefully/clearly, asks all the right questions and, from a layman's perspective anyway, seems to back it all up with large bodies of sources and evidence. The book requires that readers know a bit about Islam's basic parameters. It's also replete with Arabic names and historical facts re: Islamic civilization, so I can't say it's totally devoid of academic language or discourse. But it's just about the right kind of book for the thinking layman (particularly the Western Muslim) who wants to sharpen his moral common sense via addressing major issues that, when rescued from superficial conformity and truisms, reveal themselves to be huge masses of human and ethical ambiguity.
November 29, 2022
This is a well-written and well-researched topic. Brown convincingly makes some hard and bold arguments here. Brown clearly writes, as he also admits, from a place of privilege. As a white American Muslim convert male scholar, only he, or someone with his stature, could write and navigate those arguments, histories, traditions the way he did. The author's way of writing is accessible and easy to follow. The issue is more about the content, the histories he unravels, the abstracting of the concept of slavery, the interpretations he makes, and the painful conclusions he reaches as a result of his honest scholarship. I admire his pedagogical strategy in the gradual laying out of the arguments, questions, the level of articulating all the possible questions one might ask, and how he demonstrates his awareness of the complexity of the issues and what's at stake. The book is written intelligently and bravely. Brown risks, if not aims, to provide an exhaustive argumentation on the history of the concept of slavery to a maddening point. If you're a Muslim, be prepared to be taken on a tumultuous journey into an unlearned past that informs our present, and complicates our ideas of who we are as a people in a "post abolition" and a "post-colonial" world. Prepare to be angry, frustrated, and challenged to the core. The most important virtue required for this book is patience and reading with an open heart and mind. Also, one way to prepare for this book is listening to some of the lectures the author gave on the book. That was definitely my experience. Enjoy!
October 5, 2020
賴匕丕 孬丕賳賷 賰鬲丕亘 賱噩賵賳孬丕賳 亘乇丕賵賳 兀賯乇兀賴貙 丕賱兀賵賱 賰丕賳 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱爻賳丞. 賲賴賲丕 賰丕賳 乇兀賷賰 亘丕賱賰鬲丕亘 廿賱丕 兀賳賰 鬲丨賮馗 賱賱賲丐賱賮 爻毓丞 丕胤賱丕毓賴 賵賯丿乇鬲賴 毓賱賶 噩匕亘 丕賱賯丕乇卅 (毓賱賶 丕賱兀賯賱 噩匕亘賳賷 兀賳丕) . 賴賳丕 丕賱賲丐賱賮 賷賳丕賯卮 賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賵賰賷賮 鬲毓丕賲賱 賲毓賴丕 丕賱賳亘賷 毓賱賷賴 丕賱爻賱丕賲 賲賳 賯亘賱 孬賲 賰賷賮 鬲毓丕賲賱 賲毓賴丕 丕賱毓賱賲丕亍 丕賱賲爻賱賲賷賳.
丕賱噩丿賱 丕賱兀爻丕爻賷 賮賷 賴賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賴賵 兀賳 鬲毓乇賷賮 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賷禺鬲賱賮 賲賳 夭賲丕賳 賱夭賲丕賳 賵賲賳 賲賰丕賳 賱賲賰丕賳 賮丕賱賲丐賱賮 賷賯賵賱 兀賳 乇賮囟賳丕 賱賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷 丕賱賵賯鬲 丕賱丨丕囟乇 賲亘賳賷 毓賱賶 毓賲丕賱 丕賱爻禺乇丞 賵丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 丕賱卮乇爻丞 丕賱鬲賷 賰丕賳鬲 賲賳鬲卮乇丞 賮賷 丕賱睾乇亘 賮賷 亘丿丕賷丕鬲 毓氐乇 丕賱賳賴囟丞. 賵賱賰賳 賲毓 兀賳 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賰丕賳鬲 賲賳鬲卮乇丞 賲賳 賯丿賷賲 丕賱夭賲丕賳 賱賲 鬲賰賳 卮乇爻丞 胤賵賱 丕賱賵賯鬲 賵賱賲 鬲賰賳 丿賲賵賷丞 兀賷囟丕貙 丨鬲賶 兀賳 亘毓囟 丕賱毓亘賷丿 賷爻鬲胤賷毓 兀賳 賷毓鬲賯 賳賮爻賴 兀賵 賷鬲賲賱賰 賵賱賰賳賴 賲賯賷丿 丕賱丨乇賷丞 賵賱丕 賷爻鬲胤賷毓 丕賱鬲賵乇賷孬.
丕賱噩丿賱 丕賱兀爻丕爻賷 賮賷 賴賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 賴賵 兀賳 鬲毓乇賷賮 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賷禺鬲賱賮 賲賳 夭賲丕賳 賱夭賲丕賳 賵賲賳 賲賰丕賳 賱賲賰丕賳 賮丕賱賲丐賱賮 賷賯賵賱 兀賳 乇賮囟賳丕 賱賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷 丕賱賵賯鬲 丕賱丨丕囟乇 賲亘賳賷 毓賱賶 毓賲丕賱 丕賱爻禺乇丞 賵丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 丕賱卮乇爻丞 丕賱鬲賷 賰丕賳鬲 賲賳鬲卮乇丞 賮賷 丕賱睾乇亘 賮賷 亘丿丕賷丕鬲 毓氐乇 丕賱賳賴囟丞. 賵賱賰賳 賲毓 兀賳 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賰丕賳鬲 賲賳鬲卮乇丞 賲賳 賯丿賷賲 丕賱夭賲丕賳 賱賲 鬲賰賳 卮乇爻丞 胤賵賱 丕賱賵賯鬲 賵賱賲 鬲賰賳 丿賲賵賷丞 兀賷囟丕貙 丨鬲賶 兀賳 亘毓囟 丕賱毓亘賷丿 賷爻鬲胤賷毓 兀賳 賷毓鬲賯 賳賮爻賴 兀賵 賷鬲賲賱賰 賵賱賰賳賴 賲賯賷丿 丕賱丨乇賷丞 賵賱丕 賷爻鬲胤賷毓 丕賱鬲賵乇賷孬.
February 27, 2022
This book is mainly defending Islamic slavery, by misleading claims that slavery in Islam was great and conditions of slave were very nice.
The biased author focuses on some good stories about Islamic slavery ignoring or quickly passing through the horrible aspects of slaves' lifes
The biased author focuses on some good stories about Islamic slavery ignoring or quickly passing through the horrible aspects of slaves' lifes
May 12, 2022
Another book on slavery by a white piece of shit who doesn't believe slavery is horrible.
June 23, 2022
鈥淵et it would be self-righteous and dangerous to think that we inhabit a moral sphere that has risen completely above the benighted strata of even our recent past. Those relationships and ideas that we profess ourselves too mature to fathom were commonplace for our parents, our grandparents, our presidents, our philosophers and our prophets. We still speak their language, employ their principles, seek guidance in their exempla and worship their gods. We value 'freedom,' 'consent, Kindness, justice and 'equality because they elaborated these ideas - slave owners and slaves though they were. How we value and prioritize these goods has changed with our advances in economy and technology, but to pretend that we have transcended our past is naive. It either leaves us in cultural and cognitive dissonance, harshly denouncing a heritage we still venerate. Or it deludes the wealthy and comfortable of the globe today into the fiction that all the darkness is in our past, letting us exploit and oppress while we forget that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.鈥�
June 14, 2022
Probably the one book you ever need to read on slavery in Islamic scripture & the Islamic world. Johnathon Brown has obviously done a lot of research to bring us this comprehensive look into the world of slavery over the past 1500 years.
It just misses out on 5 stars due to the overly apologetic stance Brown seems to adopt when talking about slavery within Islam.
It just misses out on 5 stars due to the overly apologetic stance Brown seems to adopt when talking about slavery within Islam.
Read
September 2, 2020Living in 21st century it's hard pill to swallow.
August 26, 2024
"Echoes of Bondage: Slavery and Islam Through the Eyes of an Ancient Soul"
I am the spirit of a forgotten slave, wandering through the annals of time, my voice a whisper carried by the winds of history. My body was once bound by chains, my soul tethered to the will of masters who saw me as little more than a tool. I was one of countless souls, my name erased by the passage of years, yet my essence remains鈥攁 testament to the unyielding human spirit.
In the beginning, my existence was shrouded in darkness. I was born into a world where the strong ruled over the weak, where the iron of my shackles defined the limits of my life. My days were filled with toil, my nights with the cold emptiness of despair. I was a mere shadow, moving through a world that saw me as nothing more than property, my humanity buried beneath the weight of my servitude.
But then, in the midst of this darkness, a new light began to shine. It was the light of a faith that spoke of mercy, justice, and the inherent dignity of every human being, even those like me who were bound by chains. This faith, which spread across the sands of ancient lands, brought with it a new kind of master鈥攁 master who, despite the power he held over me, was bound by a higher law.
Islam, the faith of my new masters, was like a beacon in the night, illuminating the path to a different kind of existence. It did not immediately break my chains, but it whispered of something more鈥攁 recognition of my soul, a promise that my suffering was not in vain. My master was no longer free to treat me as he wished; he was bound by a code that demanded he acknowledge my humanity. I was still a slave, but in the eyes of this new faith, I was also a soul鈥攁 soul deserving of dignity, of kindness, of justice.
In this faith, the seeds of something remarkable were sown鈥攖he seeds of my eventual liberation. Islam did not just see me as a slave; it saw me as a human being, worthy of compassion and mercy. And so, within the hearts of its followers, the idea took root that slavery was not an eternal condition, that there was a higher moral calling to which they must aspire.
Over the centuries, I watched as this seed grew, nurtured by the teachings of compassion and justice that flowed from the very heart of Islam. Slowly, the consciousness of the Muslim world began to shift. The chains that had once bound me and countless others began to loosen, as more and more masters chose to free their slaves in acts of piety, seeking the favor of the Divine. The very faith that had once permitted my bondage now became the force that questioned it, challenged it, and ultimately sought to end it.
My chains were heavy, but the hope that Islam brought was a light in my darkness. It promised that my condition was not eternal, that the spark of my humanity could not be extinguished by the bonds of slavery. And so, through the centuries, as the teachings of Islam spread and deepened, the practice of slavery began to fade, driven by the growing realization that every human soul deserved freedom.
I speak to you now, not just as a relic of history, but as a symbol of the enduring struggle for human dignity. My story is one of hope and transformation, a story that echoes through the ages, reminding us all that the path to justice and freedom is long, but it begins with the seeds of compassion and the courage to nurture them. I was once a slave, but through the teachings of Islam, I became a symbol of the human spirit's unbreakable desire for freedom. My story is a myth, a legend, a tale told through the ages, reminding us all that the fight for justice and dignity is never truly over.
I am the spirit of a forgotten slave, wandering through the annals of time, my voice a whisper carried by the winds of history. My body was once bound by chains, my soul tethered to the will of masters who saw me as little more than a tool. I was one of countless souls, my name erased by the passage of years, yet my essence remains鈥攁 testament to the unyielding human spirit.
In the beginning, my existence was shrouded in darkness. I was born into a world where the strong ruled over the weak, where the iron of my shackles defined the limits of my life. My days were filled with toil, my nights with the cold emptiness of despair. I was a mere shadow, moving through a world that saw me as nothing more than property, my humanity buried beneath the weight of my servitude.
But then, in the midst of this darkness, a new light began to shine. It was the light of a faith that spoke of mercy, justice, and the inherent dignity of every human being, even those like me who were bound by chains. This faith, which spread across the sands of ancient lands, brought with it a new kind of master鈥攁 master who, despite the power he held over me, was bound by a higher law.
Islam, the faith of my new masters, was like a beacon in the night, illuminating the path to a different kind of existence. It did not immediately break my chains, but it whispered of something more鈥攁 recognition of my soul, a promise that my suffering was not in vain. My master was no longer free to treat me as he wished; he was bound by a code that demanded he acknowledge my humanity. I was still a slave, but in the eyes of this new faith, I was also a soul鈥攁 soul deserving of dignity, of kindness, of justice.
In this faith, the seeds of something remarkable were sown鈥攖he seeds of my eventual liberation. Islam did not just see me as a slave; it saw me as a human being, worthy of compassion and mercy. And so, within the hearts of its followers, the idea took root that slavery was not an eternal condition, that there was a higher moral calling to which they must aspire.
Over the centuries, I watched as this seed grew, nurtured by the teachings of compassion and justice that flowed from the very heart of Islam. Slowly, the consciousness of the Muslim world began to shift. The chains that had once bound me and countless others began to loosen, as more and more masters chose to free their slaves in acts of piety, seeking the favor of the Divine. The very faith that had once permitted my bondage now became the force that questioned it, challenged it, and ultimately sought to end it.
My chains were heavy, but the hope that Islam brought was a light in my darkness. It promised that my condition was not eternal, that the spark of my humanity could not be extinguished by the bonds of slavery. And so, through the centuries, as the teachings of Islam spread and deepened, the practice of slavery began to fade, driven by the growing realization that every human soul deserved freedom.
I speak to you now, not just as a relic of history, but as a symbol of the enduring struggle for human dignity. My story is one of hope and transformation, a story that echoes through the ages, reminding us all that the path to justice and freedom is long, but it begins with the seeds of compassion and the courage to nurture them. I was once a slave, but through the teachings of Islam, I became a symbol of the human spirit's unbreakable desire for freedom. My story is a myth, a legend, a tale told through the ages, reminding us all that the fight for justice and dignity is never truly over.
Read
September 10, 2019In the wake of carnage left by ISIS there were a number of questions being asked by Muslims as to where and how their (supposed) fellow believers in faith carried out some of the worst atrocities in the name of the same religion they called their own. One such example was the question of slavery, in particular of Yazidi women and children, which ISIS claimed was sanctioned by divine law. Muslims couldn't help but admit that Islam did not really condemn slavery and even the Prophet 锓� kept slaves and concubines, so where did that leave them in terms of the moral outrage that we felt? If our religion, the basis of our morality and life structure condoned behaviour that we find abhorrent, where does that leave us?
Dr Brown discusses and analyses the Islamic position on slavery across different time periods and cultures, as well as make clear the orthodox positions and rulings on keeping slaves. But what he does best is ask epistemological questions on how do we define morality. Who defines it and how? Do morals and ethics change over time, is there such a thing as universal morality, and if so where does that leave historical figures who we look up to and yet engaged in activities we find universally immoral today? He also discusses at length the problems with grouping a wide selection of social structures collectively known as slavery under one word. Some of the things in this book will shock Muslims who have never looked into the subject matter. For some, this only confirms and reiterates things we already knew. But what I like about it is Doc Brown doesn't pull any punches, he tells it like it is and makes clear the positions held by Muslims in the past on things that make us feel uncomfortable today, but then also asks us to reflect on how did we come to our conclusions on what is good and right, and why do we feel disgust at things people in the past didn't bat an eyelid over?
A certain scholar on social media has taken to perpetuating our modern ideas of morals and secularised rationality onto Islamic history, theology and law, and has gathered a large online following of young people looking for answers on how to reconcile their modern sensibilities with their faith. I once made the mistake of getting involved in a discussion. Needless to say there are people who feel their sense of morality applies to Islam in all space and time. To answer people like that works like this are needed. Otherwise we will end up putting our heads in the sand of what our predecessors did in the past and people think they are left with no choice to either leave the faith or adapt a "progressive Muslim" position and eradicate divine law to suit their own whims and sensibilities.
Dr Brown discusses and analyses the Islamic position on slavery across different time periods and cultures, as well as make clear the orthodox positions and rulings on keeping slaves. But what he does best is ask epistemological questions on how do we define morality. Who defines it and how? Do morals and ethics change over time, is there such a thing as universal morality, and if so where does that leave historical figures who we look up to and yet engaged in activities we find universally immoral today? He also discusses at length the problems with grouping a wide selection of social structures collectively known as slavery under one word. Some of the things in this book will shock Muslims who have never looked into the subject matter. For some, this only confirms and reiterates things we already knew. But what I like about it is Doc Brown doesn't pull any punches, he tells it like it is and makes clear the positions held by Muslims in the past on things that make us feel uncomfortable today, but then also asks us to reflect on how did we come to our conclusions on what is good and right, and why do we feel disgust at things people in the past didn't bat an eyelid over?
A certain scholar on social media has taken to perpetuating our modern ideas of morals and secularised rationality onto Islamic history, theology and law, and has gathered a large online following of young people looking for answers on how to reconcile their modern sensibilities with their faith. I once made the mistake of getting involved in a discussion. Needless to say there are people who feel their sense of morality applies to Islam in all space and time. To answer people like that works like this are needed. Otherwise we will end up putting our heads in the sand of what our predecessors did in the past and people think they are left with no choice to either leave the faith or adapt a "progressive Muslim" position and eradicate divine law to suit their own whims and sensibilities.
May 22, 2023
This book discussed the history of the practice of slavery and what were the major religions鈥� position on slavery.
Make no mistakes鈥� the history of all major religions including Judaism and Christianity DID involve a practice of slavery. Our prophets including Prophet Abraham, Prophet Moses, Prophet Jesus and Prophet Muhammad did own slaves and they did NOT explicitly prohibit the practice of slavery. But in Islam, manumission or the freeing of slaves was very much encouraged in the society but again, there was no explicit or absolute prohibition against slavery.
So this raised a lot of questions about the moral and theological problems of slavery鈥� why didn鈥檛 our noble Prophets prohibit slavery at that time? Again, this is not only a moral and theological question in Islam but also in all the major religions of the world, be it Abrahamic religions or non-Abrahamic religions like Hindu and Buddhism. All religions had in one way or another condone the practice of slavery or at least, they did not explicitly prohibit slavery.
So, this book gives me a lot of information on the historical contexts and nuances about slavery that I never knew before. For example, the term 鈥榮lave鈥� itself means differently in practice depending on where you look. The horror of the slavery system in the US plantations in the 1600s to 1800s was not practiced in many other places in the world. You could not find similar horrific treatment of slaves in other places. The treatment of slaves vary from affectionate and mild to severe.
The book explores the idea that slavery may NOT always be an INTRINSIC moral wrong ACROSS SPACE AND TIME. This book asks us, why did essentially EVERYONE in 500 CE think slavery is morally acceptable? This books explores the concept that maybe鈥ust like any other practices 鈥� eg business practice, medical practice, legal practice 鈥� slavery could be right and wrong based on the way you treat your slaves.
In the ancient civilization, slavery was as much a part of life as poverty, disease and war. The existence of slavery was just a fact of life. And just like anything that is a fact of life, things are only right and wrong in the details of how it was practiced.
When you think about it, do we really know how slavery was practiced back then and why all major religions in the world never explicitly condemned the practice? I mean seriously鈥� what exactly do we know about slavery back then? Are we really saying that intelligent, morally upright people back then like Aristotle, Socrates, all the Prophets of the Abrahamic religions, all the outstanding leaders in the past like Augustine, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington鈥re we saying they are all less morally developed than us?
We must be missing something here! Were slaves of the ancient past were as badly treated as the slaves in the US plantation? Because if that was the case, we could not compute how our noble Prophets did not say outright that slavery was wrong!
After reading this book, I understood now why slavery back then was not as problematic as the kind of slavery we understood in this modern age.
For example, I was quite surprised to find out that a slave could rise to the position of an army general and could command the actions of other people who were born free. In fact, some slaves were powerful and wealthy and they themselves had their own slaves. Imagine that! So slaves were not necessarily ostracized and segregated from the society. In fact, they were integrated well into the society and they mixed with other free people who may be poorer than them and less influential than them. Amazing, huh? I certainly did not know that before reading this book.
Some slaves were more beloved to the owner than his/her own family members. Just like how much we love our pets and think of our pets as part of the family and we shelter them and nourish them and find all their antics delightful鈥� slaves were also cared for and pampered by their owners. As I mentioned before, some slaves had their own slaves!
Some slaves cried when they were manumitted (freed) because they would be deprived of the gentle love and care that they had enjoyed all these while when they were in the household of their owners. So, manumission is not necessarily the aim and the ultimate dream of all slaves back then. Imagine that! Before reading this book, I had thought that all slaves wanted to be free no matter how easy their lives might be under the household of their owners. So, I had thought wrong, guys!
Some slaves were entrusted to conduct business transaction on behalf of their owners at market places. These slaves would freely haggle, argue and bargain with other customers who were born free. A slave of a powerful person was more powerful than a free person who was poor. Just like children of powerful people possess all kinds of privileges and perks, slaves of powerful people also enjoyed all kinds of privileges and perks that far surpassed the privileges and perks of free people. Again鈥� these are some of the nuances that I never really knew or thought of before.
And there were socioeconomic reasons behind the need for slavery back then. Back when there was no technology, no industrial revolution, and there was great socioeconomic RELIANCE on slave labour, NOBODY, no matter how ethically upstanding they were, had ever talked about abolishing slavery. The condition back then had made slavery too pervasive and too ingrained in the culture of the people WORLDWIDE to be easily abolished.
Again, slavery was just a fact of life like poverty and war and sickness. None of those things are ideal鈥� but they happen to us, anyway! And just like in any undesirable things that happen in our life, religion guides us in how to manage the undesirable circumstance ethically. How to treat your slaves, how to care for their well-being, what are the laws governing the interaction that you have with slaves, what are the rewards you will gain when you free your slaves, what are the punishment you will get for mistreating your slaves etc etc. According to this book, in Islam, a slave could go to court and complained to the judge against his/her owner and the judge could sentence the owner to prison! Just like a child can complain that he/she is abused by her parents and the parents can be put in prison for abusing their child. This aspect of the law on the practice of slavery was not something we were taught of in our history lessons, was it? Because we were so convinced that all practice of slavery everywhere was the same as how slavery was practiced in the US plantations. So we thought of slavery as a black-or-white issues... not the grey issues that they were once upon a time.
This book is 430 pages thick altogether. But the actual content of the book is around 307 pages only. The rest of the 123 pages further are just bibliography and index, guys! It does reflect how extensive the research was in the writing of this book, doesn鈥檛 it?
I gave this book 1 star for content (facts are discussed thoroughly, counter-ideas and counter narratives are discussed in enough details, contents are quite scholarly), 1 star for clarity of thoughts (powerful and persuasive thought processes are evident) 1 star for language (I had learned a lot of scholarly and academic historical terms while reading this book), 戮 star for credibility of author (he is a top scholar with extensive working experience in the subject matter), 戮 star for subjective enjoyment (entertaining and engaging; deserve a place of honour on my bookshelf!) So altogether, this book has earned 4.5 solid stars! And because I enjoyed it so much, I round it up to 5 stars.
Make no mistakes鈥� the history of all major religions including Judaism and Christianity DID involve a practice of slavery. Our prophets including Prophet Abraham, Prophet Moses, Prophet Jesus and Prophet Muhammad did own slaves and they did NOT explicitly prohibit the practice of slavery. But in Islam, manumission or the freeing of slaves was very much encouraged in the society but again, there was no explicit or absolute prohibition against slavery.
So this raised a lot of questions about the moral and theological problems of slavery鈥� why didn鈥檛 our noble Prophets prohibit slavery at that time? Again, this is not only a moral and theological question in Islam but also in all the major religions of the world, be it Abrahamic religions or non-Abrahamic religions like Hindu and Buddhism. All religions had in one way or another condone the practice of slavery or at least, they did not explicitly prohibit slavery.
So, this book gives me a lot of information on the historical contexts and nuances about slavery that I never knew before. For example, the term 鈥榮lave鈥� itself means differently in practice depending on where you look. The horror of the slavery system in the US plantations in the 1600s to 1800s was not practiced in many other places in the world. You could not find similar horrific treatment of slaves in other places. The treatment of slaves vary from affectionate and mild to severe.
The book explores the idea that slavery may NOT always be an INTRINSIC moral wrong ACROSS SPACE AND TIME. This book asks us, why did essentially EVERYONE in 500 CE think slavery is morally acceptable? This books explores the concept that maybe鈥ust like any other practices 鈥� eg business practice, medical practice, legal practice 鈥� slavery could be right and wrong based on the way you treat your slaves.
In the ancient civilization, slavery was as much a part of life as poverty, disease and war. The existence of slavery was just a fact of life. And just like anything that is a fact of life, things are only right and wrong in the details of how it was practiced.
When you think about it, do we really know how slavery was practiced back then and why all major religions in the world never explicitly condemned the practice? I mean seriously鈥� what exactly do we know about slavery back then? Are we really saying that intelligent, morally upright people back then like Aristotle, Socrates, all the Prophets of the Abrahamic religions, all the outstanding leaders in the past like Augustine, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington鈥re we saying they are all less morally developed than us?
We must be missing something here! Were slaves of the ancient past were as badly treated as the slaves in the US plantation? Because if that was the case, we could not compute how our noble Prophets did not say outright that slavery was wrong!
After reading this book, I understood now why slavery back then was not as problematic as the kind of slavery we understood in this modern age.
For example, I was quite surprised to find out that a slave could rise to the position of an army general and could command the actions of other people who were born free. In fact, some slaves were powerful and wealthy and they themselves had their own slaves. Imagine that! So slaves were not necessarily ostracized and segregated from the society. In fact, they were integrated well into the society and they mixed with other free people who may be poorer than them and less influential than them. Amazing, huh? I certainly did not know that before reading this book.
Some slaves were more beloved to the owner than his/her own family members. Just like how much we love our pets and think of our pets as part of the family and we shelter them and nourish them and find all their antics delightful鈥� slaves were also cared for and pampered by their owners. As I mentioned before, some slaves had their own slaves!
Some slaves cried when they were manumitted (freed) because they would be deprived of the gentle love and care that they had enjoyed all these while when they were in the household of their owners. So, manumission is not necessarily the aim and the ultimate dream of all slaves back then. Imagine that! Before reading this book, I had thought that all slaves wanted to be free no matter how easy their lives might be under the household of their owners. So, I had thought wrong, guys!
Some slaves were entrusted to conduct business transaction on behalf of their owners at market places. These slaves would freely haggle, argue and bargain with other customers who were born free. A slave of a powerful person was more powerful than a free person who was poor. Just like children of powerful people possess all kinds of privileges and perks, slaves of powerful people also enjoyed all kinds of privileges and perks that far surpassed the privileges and perks of free people. Again鈥� these are some of the nuances that I never really knew or thought of before.
And there were socioeconomic reasons behind the need for slavery back then. Back when there was no technology, no industrial revolution, and there was great socioeconomic RELIANCE on slave labour, NOBODY, no matter how ethically upstanding they were, had ever talked about abolishing slavery. The condition back then had made slavery too pervasive and too ingrained in the culture of the people WORLDWIDE to be easily abolished.
Again, slavery was just a fact of life like poverty and war and sickness. None of those things are ideal鈥� but they happen to us, anyway! And just like in any undesirable things that happen in our life, religion guides us in how to manage the undesirable circumstance ethically. How to treat your slaves, how to care for their well-being, what are the laws governing the interaction that you have with slaves, what are the rewards you will gain when you free your slaves, what are the punishment you will get for mistreating your slaves etc etc. According to this book, in Islam, a slave could go to court and complained to the judge against his/her owner and the judge could sentence the owner to prison! Just like a child can complain that he/she is abused by her parents and the parents can be put in prison for abusing their child. This aspect of the law on the practice of slavery was not something we were taught of in our history lessons, was it? Because we were so convinced that all practice of slavery everywhere was the same as how slavery was practiced in the US plantations. So we thought of slavery as a black-or-white issues... not the grey issues that they were once upon a time.
This book is 430 pages thick altogether. But the actual content of the book is around 307 pages only. The rest of the 123 pages further are just bibliography and index, guys! It does reflect how extensive the research was in the writing of this book, doesn鈥檛 it?
I gave this book 1 star for content (facts are discussed thoroughly, counter-ideas and counter narratives are discussed in enough details, contents are quite scholarly), 1 star for clarity of thoughts (powerful and persuasive thought processes are evident) 1 star for language (I had learned a lot of scholarly and academic historical terms while reading this book), 戮 star for credibility of author (he is a top scholar with extensive working experience in the subject matter), 戮 star for subjective enjoyment (entertaining and engaging; deserve a place of honour on my bookshelf!) So altogether, this book has earned 4.5 solid stars! And because I enjoyed it so much, I round it up to 5 stars.
June 4, 2021
丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賵丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 ... 賱噩賵賳丕孬丕賳 兀.賰 亘乇丕賵賳
賱賽賲賻 賱賲 賷丨乇賾賲 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 亘賲丕 兀賳賳丕 賳賳馗乇 廿賱賷賴丕 丕賱丌賳 賰賵丕丨丿丞 賲賳 兀爻賵兀 丕賱馗賵丕賴乇 賮賷 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱亘卮乇賷丞 丕賱賰賱賷責 賰賷賮 賰丕賳鬲 賳馗乇丞 丕賱鬲卮乇賷毓 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷 賵丕賱賲噩鬲賲毓丕鬲 丕賱賲爻賱賲丞 賱馗丕賴乇丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲賳匕 賳卮兀丞 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲責 賰賷賮 賷賲賰賳 賱賳丕 賰賲爻賱賲賷賳 兀賳 賳賳馗乇 賮賷 丕賱賯乇賳 丕賱丨丕丿賷 賵丕賱毓卮乇賷賳 賱賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲賳 賲賳馗賵乇 卮乇毓賷責 賱賲 丕賳胤賱賯鬲 丨乇賰丞 廿賱睾丕亍 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲賳 丕賱睾乇亘 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷 -賲鬲兀禺乇丕 噩丿丕 兀賷囟丕- 賵賱賲 鬲賳胤賱賯 賲賳 丕賱毓丕賱賲 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷貙 禺氐賵氐丕 賲毓 丕賱賲丨丕噩噩丞 丕賱賲毓丕氐乇丞 兀賳 鬲丨乇賷乇 丕賱毓亘賷丿 賰丕賳 賲賯丕氐丿 丕賱卮乇賷毓丞責 賰賷賮 賱賳丕 兀賳 賳賳馗乇 賱丕賲鬲賱丕賰 丕賱兀賳亘賷丕亍 賵賲賳賴賲 賳亘賷 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賵丕賱氐丨丕亘丞 賵丕賱鬲丕亘毓賷賳 賱賱毓亘賷丿責 賰賷賮 賱賳丕 兀賳 賳賳馗乇 亘丕賱匕丕鬲 賱賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱賲毓丕卮乇丞 丕賱噩賳爻賷丞 賱賭"賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳"責
賷爻賱胤 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱囟賵亍 毓賱賶 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞" 賲賳 賲賳馗賵乇 兀賲乇賷賰賷 賵廿爻賱丕賲賷貙 亘丕賱匕丕鬲 亘毓丿 賰丕乇孬丞 廿丨賷丕亍 丿丕毓卮 賱賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷 丕賱毓乇丕賯 賵爻賵乇賷丕 賵爻亘賷賴丕 賱賱毓丿賷丿 賲賳 兀胤賮丕賱 賵賳爻丕亍 丕賱兀賷夭賷丿賷賷賳 禺賱丕賱 賮鬲乇丞 丨賰賲賴丕貙 廿囟丕賮丞 廿賱賶 賮賵夭 鬲乇賲亘 賮賷 2016 賵氐毓賵丿 兀氐賵丕鬲 丕賱賷賲賷賳 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷 丕賱賲鬲胤乇賮.
賴匕丕 賰鬲丕亘 賲賴賲 賵賲賴賲 噩丿丕貙 亘賱 毓賱賶 丕賱兀睾賱亘 爻賷賰賵賳 賲乇噩毓丕 乇卅賷爻賷丕 賮賷 賯丕丿賲 丕賱爻賳賷賳貙 賷爻亘乇 賮賷賴 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘賰賱 氐乇丕賲丞 賲丕 爻賲丕賴 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞" 賮賷 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 亘卮賰賱 禺丕氐 賵丕賱兀丿賷丕賳 丕賱廿亘乇丕賴賷賲賷丞 亘卮賰賱 毓丕賲. 賷賯丿賲 賮賷賴 鬲兀氐賷賱丕 賳丕丿乇丕 賱賰丕賮丞 丕賱丌乇丕亍 丕賱卮乇毓賷丞 丕賱賲鬲毓賱賯丞 亘丕賱毓亘賷丿 賵丨丕賱鬲賴賲 丕賱賯丕賳賵賳賷丞 賵兀丨賵丕賱賴賲 丕賱賲毓賷卮賷丞 賵兀賵囟丕毓賴賲 丕賱丕噩鬲賲丕毓賷丞貙 賵賷賯丕乇賳 匕賱賰 亘兀賵囟丕毓 丕賱毓亘賷丿 毓賱賶 兀乇囟 丕賱賵丕賯毓 賮賷 丕賱毓丿賷丿 賲賳 亘賱丕丿 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲.
丕賱賯乇丕亍丞 賰丕賳鬲 孬賯賷賱丞 毓賱賶 丕賱賯賱亘 賮賷 賮氐賵賱 賰丕賲賱丞 賲賳 丕賱賰鬲丕亘. 賲賵囟賵毓 氐毓亘 賵賲睾孬 賱賱賳賮爻 廿賱丕 兀賳 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱賮匕 鬲賲賰賳 賲賳 鬲賯丿賷賲 賵丕丨丿 賲賳 兀賳賮爻 丕賱賰鬲亘 丕賱鬲賷 毓丕賱噩鬲 賴匕丕 丕賱賲賵囟賵毓.
"賵賱賯丿 賰乇賲賳丕 亘賳賷 丌丿賲"
賱賽賲賻 賱賲 賷丨乇賾賲 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 亘賲丕 兀賳賳丕 賳賳馗乇 廿賱賷賴丕 丕賱丌賳 賰賵丕丨丿丞 賲賳 兀爻賵兀 丕賱馗賵丕賴乇 賮賷 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱亘卮乇賷丞 丕賱賰賱賷責 賰賷賮 賰丕賳鬲 賳馗乇丞 丕賱鬲卮乇賷毓 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷 賵丕賱賲噩鬲賲毓丕鬲 丕賱賲爻賱賲丞 賱馗丕賴乇丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲賳匕 賳卮兀丞 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲責 賰賷賮 賷賲賰賳 賱賳丕 賰賲爻賱賲賷賳 兀賳 賳賳馗乇 賮賷 丕賱賯乇賳 丕賱丨丕丿賷 賵丕賱毓卮乇賷賳 賱賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲賳 賲賳馗賵乇 卮乇毓賷責 賱賲 丕賳胤賱賯鬲 丨乇賰丞 廿賱睾丕亍 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賲賳 丕賱睾乇亘 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷 -賲鬲兀禺乇丕 噩丿丕 兀賷囟丕- 賵賱賲 鬲賳胤賱賯 賲賳 丕賱毓丕賱賲 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷貙 禺氐賵氐丕 賲毓 丕賱賲丨丕噩噩丞 丕賱賲毓丕氐乇丞 兀賳 鬲丨乇賷乇 丕賱毓亘賷丿 賰丕賳 賲賯丕氐丿 丕賱卮乇賷毓丞責 賰賷賮 賱賳丕 兀賳 賳賳馗乇 賱丕賲鬲賱丕賰 丕賱兀賳亘賷丕亍 賵賲賳賴賲 賳亘賷 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賵丕賱氐丨丕亘丞 賵丕賱鬲丕亘毓賷賳 賱賱毓亘賷丿責 賰賷賮 賱賳丕 兀賳 賳賳馗乇 亘丕賱匕丕鬲 賱賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱賲毓丕卮乇丞 丕賱噩賳爻賷丞 賱賭"賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳"責
賷爻賱胤 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱囟賵亍 毓賱賶 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞" 賲賳 賲賳馗賵乇 兀賲乇賷賰賷 賵廿爻賱丕賲賷貙 亘丕賱匕丕鬲 亘毓丿 賰丕乇孬丞 廿丨賷丕亍 丿丕毓卮 賱賱毓亘賵丿賷丞 賮賷 丕賱毓乇丕賯 賵爻賵乇賷丕 賵爻亘賷賴丕 賱賱毓丿賷丿 賲賳 兀胤賮丕賱 賵賳爻丕亍 丕賱兀賷夭賷丿賷賷賳 禺賱丕賱 賮鬲乇丞 丨賰賲賴丕貙 廿囟丕賮丞 廿賱賶 賮賵夭 鬲乇賲亘 賮賷 2016 賵氐毓賵丿 兀氐賵丕鬲 丕賱賷賲賷賳 丕賱賲爻賷丨賷 丕賱賲鬲胤乇賮.
賴匕丕 賰鬲丕亘 賲賴賲 賵賲賴賲 噩丿丕貙 亘賱 毓賱賶 丕賱兀睾賱亘 爻賷賰賵賳 賲乇噩毓丕 乇卅賷爻賷丕 賮賷 賯丕丿賲 丕賱爻賳賷賳貙 賷爻亘乇 賮賷賴 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 亘賰賱 氐乇丕賲丞 賲丕 爻賲丕賴 "賲毓囟賱丞 丕賱毓亘賵丿賷丞" 賮賷 鬲丕乇賷禺 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 亘卮賰賱 禺丕氐 賵丕賱兀丿賷丕賳 丕賱廿亘乇丕賴賷賲賷丞 亘卮賰賱 毓丕賲. 賷賯丿賲 賮賷賴 鬲兀氐賷賱丕 賳丕丿乇丕 賱賰丕賮丞 丕賱丌乇丕亍 丕賱卮乇毓賷丞 丕賱賲鬲毓賱賯丞 亘丕賱毓亘賷丿 賵丨丕賱鬲賴賲 丕賱賯丕賳賵賳賷丞 賵兀丨賵丕賱賴賲 丕賱賲毓賷卮賷丞 賵兀賵囟丕毓賴賲 丕賱丕噩鬲賲丕毓賷丞貙 賵賷賯丕乇賳 匕賱賰 亘兀賵囟丕毓 丕賱毓亘賷丿 毓賱賶 兀乇囟 丕賱賵丕賯毓 賮賷 丕賱毓丿賷丿 賲賳 亘賱丕丿 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲.
丕賱賯乇丕亍丞 賰丕賳鬲 孬賯賷賱丞 毓賱賶 丕賱賯賱亘 賮賷 賮氐賵賱 賰丕賲賱丞 賲賳 丕賱賰鬲丕亘. 賲賵囟賵毓 氐毓亘 賵賲睾孬 賱賱賳賮爻 廿賱丕 兀賳 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 丕賱賮匕 鬲賲賰賳 賲賳 鬲賯丿賷賲 賵丕丨丿 賲賳 兀賳賮爻 丕賱賰鬲亘 丕賱鬲賷 毓丕賱噩鬲 賴匕丕 丕賱賲賵囟賵毓.
"賵賱賯丿 賰乇賲賳丕 亘賳賷 丌丿賲"
January 22, 2023
Appreciation and congratulations for writing an excellent book on slavery a very sensitive topic. It provides me with a lot of new information which I was unaware of before. This book provides how the notion of slavery differed across time and place. The conclusion you reached on abolishment and consent of concubines provided a realistic portrayal of history with its norms and customs. Nonetheless, in my view (though I am not a scholar) the early Muslims should have done more. I would like to put some of my thoughts as follows:
Even though Riqq has been conducted within the limits/boundaries and stipulations of sharia still there are negative consequences that would arise.
1) The child born out of a slave mother and slave father would be a slave (including Muslims). One could justify if the parents were prisoners of war, they deserved to be slaves, but a child born out of the marriage, just because he or she was born out of slavery he/she must live as a slave. Islam doesn鈥檛 support the notion of original sin but if the child born out of that situation would still be a slave. That鈥檚 harmful. One could argue that鈥檚 the need for the economy and customary norms, but I don鈥檛 know how much weight that argument could carry. A child will lose its freedom in his or her birth itself. Some Hanafi scholars considered slavery as equal to 鈥渓egal death鈥�, as the riqq practiced in Muslim lands was not benign. Therefore, manumission was considered as saving a life. And as the book clearly points out Islamic riqq truly consumed the masses. No issues with enslaving prisoners of the wars (armed people) as this was the norm. But children born out of the slave mother and father would naturally become slaves. That's something which would deprive the birth right of freedom to a newborn.
2) The routine way female slaves were purchased was as if in a narration about Ibn Umar (ra). This book has quoted other manuals which say that women from the household of the slaver should accompany him, but the former one was the routine way. Muslims give great priority to head scarf , modesty especially for women. The Quran emphasizes the importance of modesty. But in the slave market the exact opposite had happened. She might be a pow or she is a slave by birth. I don't think in this place Muslims emphasized the importance of modesty. The early Muslims preferred different dress codes for slave women and free women. For ex: Caliph Umar (ra) asked female slaves to uncover heads as this was the norm to differentiate free and slave, but the way the slave markets functioned was quite contrary to the model of modesty set by Islam. And the way the slave market functions I mean pressing the buttocks, belly, and breast before buying a slave that seems something extreme. Muslims label the modern-day bikini beauty shows as meat inspection in meat markets. If we are brutally honest to ourselves then we must admit that the same had happened in the slave markets.
3) And the early Muslims reversed the slave concubinage trend in the near middle east and took it to the maxims. This book has pointed out that the child born out of concubine had equal status (If this had been followed in US children of Sally Hemmings would have reached the top echelon of US ). Years ago, in one of the author's tweets the author said slave women also have sexual desires, so the master must satisfy that. That鈥檚 a logical argument . But even for the medieval Jews and Christians the sexual relationship Muslims had with concubines was something outrageous, even by the medieval standard even though slavery was not controversial for them. Ronald Segal talks about the 2:1 ratio of female slaves exported to Eastern Muslim lands. I think the book avoided quoting his book. He was an anti -apartheid activist from South Africa. He wrote a book called Islam鈥檚 black slaves. I don't think it is anything other than exploitation. And I don鈥檛 think the argument that elite slavery is good carries much weight though the book didn鈥檛 say this explicitly.
Another point is it is sure that the Muslims of the past wouldn鈥檛 have followed the proper stipulations of shariah all the time. Need not to explain the Arab chauvinism and racism. Wansharisi talks about castration of slaves by masters to keep the price of the slaves high. But I think the author didn鈥檛 mention this in this book. I am a believer, and the Quran emphasized the importance of manumission and nowhere it says go, raid and enslave others. However, we could criticize the early tradition and Muslims that they should have done more, and the tradition is not infallible. I believe traditional Islam is the orthodox Islam (progressive liberal Islam is a tradition without soul and spirit of Islam) but it is not infallible. I would say Muslims should have done more as human suffering is a big moral issue. As the author clearly says how the Quran was obsessed with freeing slaves in the early Meccan period - the verses which are preaching the highest standard of human ethics. The term 鈥渙bsession鈥� has been used by the author and mentioned about reviewing that spirit. The author preferred this argument above the other two reasons such as public welfare and norm. So, the author鈥檚 conclusion emphasized the importance of moral reading of the scripture. And the Prophet himself freed all his slaves before his death. I do think the very primary goal or the structure of the Islamic (Quranic) riqq is to deal with the pows and integrate them into Muslim society and free them.
The Quran says
鈥渁nd what shall teach thee what is the steep; Freeing a neck鈥�
As a believer I could say my scripture and sunnah never said go, raid, enslave, put them in the market and press their body parts. But I think we could criticize the Muslims that they should have done more, and the tradition is not infallible.
"What does a man gain from his wisdom if he pines not at others' pain as his own"?
- Thirukkural, an ancient humanistic literature, couplet number 315
Even though Riqq has been conducted within the limits/boundaries and stipulations of sharia still there are negative consequences that would arise.
1) The child born out of a slave mother and slave father would be a slave (including Muslims). One could justify if the parents were prisoners of war, they deserved to be slaves, but a child born out of the marriage, just because he or she was born out of slavery he/she must live as a slave. Islam doesn鈥檛 support the notion of original sin but if the child born out of that situation would still be a slave. That鈥檚 harmful. One could argue that鈥檚 the need for the economy and customary norms, but I don鈥檛 know how much weight that argument could carry. A child will lose its freedom in his or her birth itself. Some Hanafi scholars considered slavery as equal to 鈥渓egal death鈥�, as the riqq practiced in Muslim lands was not benign. Therefore, manumission was considered as saving a life. And as the book clearly points out Islamic riqq truly consumed the masses. No issues with enslaving prisoners of the wars (armed people) as this was the norm. But children born out of the slave mother and father would naturally become slaves. That's something which would deprive the birth right of freedom to a newborn.
2) The routine way female slaves were purchased was as if in a narration about Ibn Umar (ra). This book has quoted other manuals which say that women from the household of the slaver should accompany him, but the former one was the routine way. Muslims give great priority to head scarf , modesty especially for women. The Quran emphasizes the importance of modesty. But in the slave market the exact opposite had happened. She might be a pow or she is a slave by birth. I don't think in this place Muslims emphasized the importance of modesty. The early Muslims preferred different dress codes for slave women and free women. For ex: Caliph Umar (ra) asked female slaves to uncover heads as this was the norm to differentiate free and slave, but the way the slave markets functioned was quite contrary to the model of modesty set by Islam. And the way the slave market functions I mean pressing the buttocks, belly, and breast before buying a slave that seems something extreme. Muslims label the modern-day bikini beauty shows as meat inspection in meat markets. If we are brutally honest to ourselves then we must admit that the same had happened in the slave markets.
3) And the early Muslims reversed the slave concubinage trend in the near middle east and took it to the maxims. This book has pointed out that the child born out of concubine had equal status (If this had been followed in US children of Sally Hemmings would have reached the top echelon of US ). Years ago, in one of the author's tweets the author said slave women also have sexual desires, so the master must satisfy that. That鈥檚 a logical argument . But even for the medieval Jews and Christians the sexual relationship Muslims had with concubines was something outrageous, even by the medieval standard even though slavery was not controversial for them. Ronald Segal talks about the 2:1 ratio of female slaves exported to Eastern Muslim lands. I think the book avoided quoting his book. He was an anti -apartheid activist from South Africa. He wrote a book called Islam鈥檚 black slaves. I don't think it is anything other than exploitation. And I don鈥檛 think the argument that elite slavery is good carries much weight though the book didn鈥檛 say this explicitly.
Another point is it is sure that the Muslims of the past wouldn鈥檛 have followed the proper stipulations of shariah all the time. Need not to explain the Arab chauvinism and racism. Wansharisi talks about castration of slaves by masters to keep the price of the slaves high. But I think the author didn鈥檛 mention this in this book. I am a believer, and the Quran emphasized the importance of manumission and nowhere it says go, raid and enslave others. However, we could criticize the early tradition and Muslims that they should have done more, and the tradition is not infallible. I believe traditional Islam is the orthodox Islam (progressive liberal Islam is a tradition without soul and spirit of Islam) but it is not infallible. I would say Muslims should have done more as human suffering is a big moral issue. As the author clearly says how the Quran was obsessed with freeing slaves in the early Meccan period - the verses which are preaching the highest standard of human ethics. The term 鈥渙bsession鈥� has been used by the author and mentioned about reviewing that spirit. The author preferred this argument above the other two reasons such as public welfare and norm. So, the author鈥檚 conclusion emphasized the importance of moral reading of the scripture. And the Prophet himself freed all his slaves before his death. I do think the very primary goal or the structure of the Islamic (Quranic) riqq is to deal with the pows and integrate them into Muslim society and free them.
The Quran says
鈥渁nd what shall teach thee what is the steep; Freeing a neck鈥�
As a believer I could say my scripture and sunnah never said go, raid, enslave, put them in the market and press their body parts. But I think we could criticize the Muslims that they should have done more, and the tradition is not infallible.
"What does a man gain from his wisdom if he pines not at others' pain as his own"?
- Thirukkural, an ancient humanistic literature, couplet number 315
October 27, 2019
Een interessant boek, erg goed geschreven, maar een moeilijk onderwerp. De schrijver is een tot de Islam bekeerde Amerikaan. Het boek bevat vnl. filosofische en juridische discussies van het slavernijprobleem. Al de definitie van slavernij is niet zo eenvoudig als het lijkt. Dan heeft slavernij natuurlijk altijd al bestaan, ook in de Bijbel wordt het normaal gevonden. Brown laat zien hoe ook in de islamitische wereld de ideeen over slavernij zijn veranderd en gemoderniseerd. Hij probeert dit alemaal te rijmen met wat in de Koran, de Hadith en de Sharia staat. Dat lukt niet altijd. Het zijn vaak "circulaire" redeneringen. Wel knap, dat hij dit moeilijke onderwep zo goed leesbaar heeft verwoord. Ik ben het niet eens met zijn slotconclusies, maar ik ben dan ook geen gelovige (van wat voor religie dan ook).
February 20, 2022
賰鬲丕亘 噩賲賷賱 賷毓丕賱噩 賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱乇賯 亘廿爻賴丕亘.
賷毓乇囟 丕賱賲丐賱賮 鬲毓乇賷賮 丕賱乇賯 賵賷胤賳亘 賮賷 匕賰乇 鬲毓乇賷賮丕鬲賴 毓亘乇 丕賱毓氐賵乇. 孬賲 賷賳丕賯卮 賲丿賶 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 丕賱乇賯 賮賷 丕賱兀丿賷丕賳 賵丕賱丌乇丕亍 丕賱賲禺鬲賱賮丞. 賵賮賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 乇氐丿 鬲丕乇賷禺賷 賱賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱乇賯 賮賷 丕賱丨囟丕乇丞 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷丞. 賷賳丕賯卮 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 兀賷囟丕 丌乇丕亍 丕賱賯丕卅賱賷賳 亘廿賱睾丕亍 丕賱乇賯 毓丕乇囟丕 丿賱丕卅賱賴賲 賵丨噩噩賴賲. 賵賮賷 丌禺乇賴 賲賱丨賯丕鬲 賲賮賷丿丞 賲賳 兀賴賲賴丕 鬲賱賰 丕賱鬲賷 鬲鬲毓賱賯 亘賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳.
賲賳 賱丿賷賴 鬲爻丕丐賱丕鬲 丨賵賱 賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱乇賯 賵賲丕 賲賵賯賮 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賲賳賴貙 賷賲賰賳賴 賲乇丕噩毓丞 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱賲賲鬲毓.
賵賮賷賴 賲賯丿賲丞 孬乇賷丞 賱賱兀爻鬲丕匕 毓賲乇賵 亘爻賷賵賳賷 兀胤丕賱 丕賱賱賴 毓賲乇賴.
賷毓乇囟 丕賱賲丐賱賮 鬲毓乇賷賮 丕賱乇賯 賵賷胤賳亘 賮賷 匕賰乇 鬲毓乇賷賮丕鬲賴 毓亘乇 丕賱毓氐賵乇. 孬賲 賷賳丕賯卮 賲丿賶 兀禺賱丕賯賷丞 丕賱乇賯 賮賷 丕賱兀丿賷丕賳 賵丕賱丌乇丕亍 丕賱賲禺鬲賱賮丞. 賵賮賷 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 乇氐丿 鬲丕乇賷禺賷 賱賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱乇賯 賮賷 丕賱丨囟丕乇丞 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲賷丞. 賷賳丕賯卮 丕賱賰丕鬲亘 兀賷囟丕 丌乇丕亍 丕賱賯丕卅賱賷賳 亘廿賱睾丕亍 丕賱乇賯 毓丕乇囟丕 丿賱丕卅賱賴賲 賵丨噩噩賴賲. 賵賮賷 丌禺乇賴 賲賱丨賯丕鬲 賲賮賷丿丞 賲賳 兀賴賲賴丕 鬲賱賰 丕賱鬲賷 鬲鬲毓賱賯 亘賲賱賰 丕賱賷賲賷賳.
賲賳 賱丿賷賴 鬲爻丕丐賱丕鬲 丨賵賱 賲爻兀賱丞 丕賱乇賯 賵賲丕 賲賵賯賮 丕賱廿爻賱丕賲 賲賳賴貙 賷賲賰賳賴 賲乇丕噩毓丞 賴匕丕 丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱賲賲鬲毓.
賵賮賷賴 賲賯丿賲丞 孬乇賷丞 賱賱兀爻鬲丕匕 毓賲乇賵 亘爻賷賵賳賷 兀胤丕賱 丕賱賱賴 毓賲乇賴.
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