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 Topic: Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)

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  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     OP - January 29, 2013, 11:14 AM
    HM, I'm curious, given your background and heritage. Did your parents ever confront the issue of slavery in Islam, how it explicitly sanctions it, and how Muhammad engaged in it, all the 'what your right hand possesses' stuff?

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • What did you think other religions were about before?
     Reply #1 - January 29, 2013, 03:03 PM
    I'm thinking they never knew they needed too billy.

    I was raised as a muslim and believed right up until I left islam, that Islam came to free slaves.

    I mean I knew and had read other things that contradicted that idea, but never really connected the dots, because the predominant reading always centred around Islam freeing slaves.

    The freeing of the black slave Bilal, most famous loved story and name choice of many black converts I knew, really represents how not only slavery was bad, but so was racism.  I used to use that story to argue with my dad about his racism towards black people.

    Now of course, the only reason this slave was freed was because his master wouldn't allow him to practise Islam, and so mohammed intervened.  Slavery I have since learned, was something mohammed was only too happy to dish out to captives who were not muslim.

    I still think those liberating stories of freeing slaves is pretty much what most converts learn about too.  It makes Islam seem like it was against slavery.

    Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit.
  • What did you think other religions were about before?
     Reply #2 - January 29, 2013, 03:58 PM
    @ Billy,

    I think that the way that Islam was (and still is) presented makes it sound so peaceful and humanitarian. Just like Berbs said, the story of Bilal being a freed slave and calling the Athan from on the top of the Ka’bah was a huge thing. (My dad actually changed his name from Bill to Bilal, if that gives you any idea of the impact those kinds of stories had on black Muslims.) I remember we used to have the Farewell Sermon hanging up in our living room. The whole “a black has no superiority over a white nor a white over a black” quote was in bold.

    Muhammad was made to seem like this super benevolent, noble, holy man. He never lied, he never stole, he always spoke softly, he was always humble, blah blah blah…

    Somehow, the whole thing about him beheading entire tribes and capturing women for sexual slavery never really made it into the halaqah discussions.

    Honestly, I think that had I not studied in Madinah, there is a good chance I’d still be a Muslim. Devoting that much of my life to trying to follow in Muhammad’s footsteps-- trying to really get inside his mind and heart and live his words the way he did in his own town—only to discover a side of him that I found completely repulsive. It was really disturbing. Coming back to the states and realizing just how wrong everyone had gotten Muhammad, and watching Muslim Imams completely re-inventing the guy as some liberal champion for ethics and human rights, I knew it was all a sham. 

    It’s funny to me now that black Muslims fell from around Elijah Muhammad like flies after the sex scandal with 16 year old girls, yet defend Muhammad Ibn Abdillah when he had sex with a 9 year old!.(There is a great quote by Malcolm X where he says “Elijah Muhammad has lost his mind, any man who surrounds himself with teenage girls must be insane”—paraphrased, youtube it.)

    They also were so up in arms about the European slave strade while completely ignoring the fact that the Muslim slave trade in Africa was even more extensive and longer lasting. I think religion in general blinds people to the things they don’t want to see.

    Like the Arabic poem goes,

    وعين الرضا عن كل عيب كليلة  ولكن عين السخط تبدي المساويا



  • What did you think other religions were about before?
     Reply #3 - January 29, 2013, 07:26 PM
    Thanks HM. Fascinating. You've got to hand it to them on this slavery thing, they really have pulled a trick. Considering a religion and prophet that sanctioned slavery was sold to descendants of slaves in America so well, you have to consider it one of the most successful con-tricks of the twentieth century.

    By coincidence our twitter account just posted this hadith about Muhammad giving instructions on how to beat and sell a slave girl

    Quote
    Bukhari Volume 8, Book 82, Number 822:
    Narrated Abu Huraira and Said bin Khalid:

    The verdict of Allah's Apostle was sought about an unmarried slave girl guilty of illegal intercourse. He replied, "If she commits illegal sexual intercourse, then flog her (fifty stripes), and if she commits illegal sexual intercourse (after that for the second time), then flog her (fifty stripes), and if she commits illegal sexual intercourse (for the third time), then flog her (fifty stripes) and sell her for even a hair rope." Ibn Shihab said, "I am not sure whether the Prophet ordered that she be sold after the third or fourth time of committing illegal intercourse."


    See, Muhammad didn't just own slaves, he was a slave trader!

    "we can smell traitors and country haters"


    Quote from: arX on May 01, 2011, 03:33 AM
    God is Love.
    Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.

  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #4 - January 29, 2013, 08:04 PM
    I was a pretty ardant Islamic student when I was younger. I remember bringing up the topic of slavery to my parents when I was like 11 or so. Even talked to an iman and mufti...

    The argument I got at the time satisfied me.
    Islam came into a world of slaves. It had to deal with it and improved the lot of slaves.
    They were not really slaves as we understand them in the western world with chains and whips. They were more like well-kept servants.
    I even bought into the argument that they were prisoner's of war... and it was better they be kept as slave-servants than thrown in jail. Which is more moral, they would ask me... and it made a certain sense.

    That argument stayed with me for a long time until I asked myself this question.

    It's all fine and dandy that Islam improved the lot of slaves, but Islam is supposed to be the final morality of man kind... and yet it does not ban slavery.
    This is a religion that goes into detail about what foot I should enter the washroom with, but doesn't tell me slavery is wrong.
    This is a religion that takes a time to gradually phase our alcohol, but won't gradually phase out slavery?

    It was the slavery question that first got me to reject the notion of Islam as final morality. I entered the 'Islam was a religion for its time' but there was nothing final about it.

  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #5 - January 29, 2013, 08:07 PM
    Quote from: happymurtad on January 29, 2013, 03:58 PM

    It’s funny to me now that black Muslims fell from around Elijah Muhammad like flies after the sex scandal with 16 year old girls, yet defend Muhammad Ibn Abdillah when he had sex with a 9 year old!.(There is a great quote by Malcolm X where he says “Elijah Muhammad has lost his mind, any man who surrounds himself with teenage girls must be insane”—paraphrased, youtube it.)


    Nothing odd there.
    Teenage girls = evil.
    They have to be younger, like 9 or 6.

  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #6 - January 29, 2013, 08:58 PM
    http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=11279.msg515111#msg515111

    This states approx 11 million Atlantic Slave Trade, 140 million Islamic Slave Trade

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJhSejBDTPI
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #7 - January 29, 2013, 09:19 PM
    Great video. Thanks for sharing.
  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #8 - January 29, 2013, 09:51 PM
    Quote from: scamper_22 on January 29, 2013, 08:04 PM
    It's all fine and dandy that Islam improved the lot of slaves, but Islam is supposed to be the final morality of man kind... and yet it does not ban slavery.
    This is a religion that goes into detail about what foot I should enter the washroom with, but doesn't tell me slavery is wrong.
    This is a religion that takes a time to gradually phase our alcohol, but won't gradually phase out slavery?


    This is what always bothered me about the slavery issue. I could never get over how being forced to servve someone against your will would be a mercy regardless of whether they were treated nice or not.

    Also this business about phasing out, from the outside now it just looks like Mohammed wanted to slowly impose his control over the populace, drunks fighters are harder to control than sober ones, slaves are great resource for the owners. For Muslims to say Mohammed didn't want/have any personal gain from his 'messengership' after reading Hadiths and Quran really is delusional.
  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #9 - January 30, 2013, 08:08 PM
    Just watched Julian Fellowes on Tele about great houses - had a section about slavery and interviewed a historian.

    Of course, the elephant in the room was not mentioned, that ten times and more were enslaved a lot nearer to Europe for a much longer time, and huge numbers of Europeans were enslaved!

    Sometimes we are so mea culpa about "the West" that we are unaware of who it was who sold the slaves to us!
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #10 - January 31, 2013, 11:27 AM
    The thing about Bilal was replayed throughout all my school years in an Islamic school and I was soooo proud of it. It wasn't until uni when I did a paper on Ottoman slavery that I realised it was systematic. I remember writing about the rules associated with slaves, things like the family has to clothe/feed them and so on, and the official was rule was that once the "master" died, the slave was supposed to be free, but families kept them anyway.
    Quote from: ZooBear 

    • Surah Al-Fil: In an epic game of Angry Birds, Allah uses birds (that drop pebbles) to destroy an army riding elephants whose intentions were to destroy the Kaaba. No one has beaten the high score.

  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #11 - January 31, 2013, 06:42 PM
    Quote
    Ottoman slavery


    Very misleading term!  The Islamic world and the Ottoman Empire are not co-terminus!
    When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.


    A.A. Milne,

    "We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
  • Slavery & Islam (split from What did you think other religions.....thread)
     Reply #12 - January 31, 2013, 06:42 PM
    The ugly truth. Slavery of the mind, thoughts and feelings is bad as well.
    ***~Church is where bad people go to hide~***
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