ISLAMIC POLEMICS SERIES • ARTICLE 16

Muhammad and Slavery

The Perfect Moral Example Who Owned, Sold, Traded, and Distributed Human Beings

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① THE ARGUMENT: WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MATTERS

The moral-exemplar claim (Surah 33:21) asks the world to accept Muhammad as the highest standard of human conduct for all time. This article applies that claim to one specific domain: slavery. The question is not whether slavery was common in the seventh century—it was universal. The question is whether the man who claimed to be God’s final messenger and humanity’s eternal moral guide did anything to end it. The answer, documented exhaustively in Islam’s own sources, is that he did not. He regulated it. He participated in it. And the system he built perpetuated it for fourteen centuries.

Muhammad personally owned slaves. He bought and sold slaves. He received slaves as gifts. He gave slaves as gifts. He distributed captured women and children as slaves after military victories. He took female captives as concubines—a practice the Qur’an explicitly authorises under the phrase ma malakat aymanukum (“what your right hand possesses”). He never once commanded the abolition of slavery. No verse of the Qur’an prohibits it. No hadith records Muhammad saying slavery should end. The entire Islamic legal tradition—built on his example—treats slavery as a permanent, regulated institution.

Why it matters: Slavery is not a peripheral moral question. It is the most fundamental test of whether a person recognises the full dignity and equality of every human being. Every major moral tradition in the modern world—secular, religious, philosophical—recognises that owning another human being is intrinsically evil. A moral exemplar who participates in slavery and builds a legal framework that perpetuates it has failed the most basic moral test the modern conscience can apply. And the consequences were not theoretical: the Islamic slave trade, operating under the legal framework Muhammad established, lasted from the seventh century until the twentieth, enslaved an estimated 10–18 million Africans (and millions of others from Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia), and was abolished not from within the Islamic legal tradition but under external pressure from the Western abolitionist movement.

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② THE ISLAMIC DEFENSE

• Islam dramatically improved the condition of slaves and encouraged manumission. Muslim scholars argue that Muhammad transformed the institution of slavery by granting slaves legal protections they had never had: the right to be fed, clothed, and treated humanely (Sahih al-Bukhari 30); the right to a manumission contract (mukatabah, Surah 24:33); the prohibition on separating slave mothers from their children; and the treatment of slave emancipation as one of the most meritorious acts a Muslim can perform. The Qur’an and hadith repeatedly encourage freeing slaves as expiation for sins (kaffarah).

• Muhammad personally freed many slaves and encouraged others to do the same. Bilal ibn Rabah, one of the most honoured early Muslims, was a freed slave. Abu Bakr spent significant personal wealth purchasing and freeing slaves. Muhammad freed his own slave Zayd ibn Harithah, adopted him as a son (before adoption was abolished), and treated him as a close companion. The early Muslim community’s record on manumission was exceptional by the standards of any ancient civilisation.

• Islam was moving toward abolition gradually. The argument from gradual reform holds that Islam’s approach to slavery mirrors its approach to alcohol: rather than banning it outright (which would have caused economic and social collapse in a slave-dependent society), Islam restricted the sources of new slaves, encouraged manumission, and created a moral trajectory that pointed toward eventual abolition. The Prophet laid the groundwork; later generations were meant to complete the work.

• Ma malakat aymanukum (“what your right hand possesses”) was a humanitarian upgrade. In pre-Islamic Arabia, captured women had no status whatsoever. The Qur’anic framework gave them legal recognition, required their captor to provide for them, and gave children born from these unions free status. The concubinage system, while offensive to modern sensibilities, was a significant improvement over the pre-Islamic treatment of female captives.

• Slavery existed in every ancient civilisation, including those that produced the Bible. The Old Testament regulates slavery extensively (Exodus 21, Leviticus 25). The New Testament does not explicitly abolish it; Paul returns the escaped slave Onesimus to Philemon. Christianity did not abolish slavery for 1,800 years. Applying a modern abolitionist standard selectively to Islam while ignoring the same problem in Christianity is intellectually dishonest.

• The word ‘abd (slave/servant) in Islamic usage often implies spiritual servitude to God, not chattel slavery. Some modern scholars argue that the Islamic conception of ‘slavery’ was fundamentally different from the chattel slavery of the Atlantic trade. Islamic ‘slaves’ could own property, hold positions of power (the Mamluks ruled Egypt), marry, and achieve high social status. The comparison with American plantation slavery is misleading.

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③ THE SOURCES: WHAT ISLAM’S OWN TEXTS DOCUMENT

The following evidence is drawn entirely from the Qur’an, the sahih hadith collections, and the earliest biographical and historical sources.

PART A: MUHAMMAD’S PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT WITH SLAVERY

1. Muhammad owned slaves. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, in Zad al-Ma’ad (Provisions of the Hereafter), lists Muhammad’s slaves by name. Male slaves included Zayd ibn Harithah (later freed), Abu Rafi’, Thawban, Abu Kabsha, Shaqran, Rabah, Yaqsar, Mid’am, and others. Female slaves included Maria al-Qibtiyya (the Coptic concubine who bore his son Ibrahim), Rayhana bint Zayd (Banu Qurayza captive), Umm Ayman (Baraka), and others. The list varies by source; al-Tabari, Ibn Sa’d, and Ibn Qayyim provide overlapping but not identical catalogues.

2. Muhammad bought and sold slaves. Sahih Muslim 1602: Muhammad bought a slave. Sunan Abu Dawud 3358 and other hadith record transactions involving slaves. The commercial exchange of human beings was a normal part of Muhammad’s economic activity as recorded in the sources.

3. Muhammad received slaves as gifts and gave slaves as gifts. Maria al-Qibtiyya was a gift from the governor of Egypt (al-Muqawqis). Muhammad gave slaves as gifts to his companions. The exchange of human beings as gifts was a standard social practice in which Muhammad participated on both ends.

4. Muhammad distributed captured people as slaves after military victories. After the Banu Qurayza massacre, the women and children of the tribe were distributed among the Muslim fighters as slaves (Ibn Ishaq, pp. 466–468, Guillaume). After Khaybar, captives were distributed (Sahih al-Bukhari 4200). After the Battle of Hunayn, thousands of captives from the Hawazin tribe were distributed before some were returned at the tribe’s appeal (Sahih al-Bukhari 2539, 2540). The distribution of human beings as war spoils was a routine feature of Muhammad’s military campaigns.

5. Muhammad took a personal share of slaves from the war spoils. The khums system (Surah 8:41) allocated one-fifth of all war spoils to Muhammad and his household. This included captive humans. Safiyya bint Huyayy was selected by Muhammad from the Khaybar captives as his personal share (Sahih al-Bukhari 4200). Juwayriya was a captive Muhammad chose to marry. The prophet personally selected human beings from among the captives for his own household.

PART B: THE QUR’ANIC FRAMEWORK FOR SLAVERY

6. The Qur’an authorises slavery as a permanent institution. The phrase ma malakat aymanukum (“what your right hand possesses”) appears in approximately 15 Qur’anic verses (4:3, 4:24, 4:25, 4:36, 23:6, 24:31, 24:33, 24:58, 33:50, 33:52, 33:55, 70:30, among others). In every case, the phrase refers to enslaved persons—and the Qur’an treats their existence as a normal, regulated feature of Muslim society. No verse calls for their liberation as a class. No verse prohibits the acquisition of new slaves.

7. The Qur’an explicitly authorises sexual access to enslaved women. Surah 23:5–6: “[Believers are those] who guard their private parts except from their wives or those their right hands possess, for indeed, they will not be blamed.” Surah 4:24: “And [forbidden to you are] all married women except those your right hands possess.” This last verse is particularly significant: it permits sexual access to married captive women—women whose existing marriages are overridden by their enslavement. Sahih Muslim 1456a records that this verse was revealed specifically to address the companions’ hesitation about sleeping with married captives. The Qur’an does not merely tolerate sexual slavery; it explicitly authorises it, including with women who are already married to other men.

8. The Qur’an encourages manumission but never requires it. Freeing a slave is prescribed as expiation (kaffarah) for specific sins: breaking an oath (5:89), accidental killing (4:92), and zihar (58:3). Surah 24:33 encourages masters to grant mukatabah (a manumission contract) to slaves who request it: “And those who seek a contract [for eventual emancipation] from among whom your right hands possess—then make a contract with them if you know there is within them goodness.” But this is an encouragement, not a command. The phrase “if you know there is within them goodness” gives the master discretion to refuse. No verse of the Qur’an makes manumission universally obligatory.

PART C: THE HADITH RECORD

9. Hadith that regulate slavery without abolishing it. Sahih al-Bukhari 30: “Your slaves are your brothers. Allah has placed them under your authority. So whoever has a brother under his authority should feed him what he eats and clothe him with what he wears.” Sahih Muslim 1657: “Whoever frees a Muslim slave, Allah will save all the parts of his body from the Hellfire.” These hadith improve treatment and incentivise manumission—but they operate entirely within a framework that assumes slavery is permanent. “Feed your slave what you eat” assumes you have a slave. “Freeing a slave earns reward” assumes the institution exists and will continue to exist.

10. Hadith documenting Muhammad’s direct slave-trading activity. Sahih Muslim 1602 records Muhammad purchasing a slave. Sunan Abu Dawud 2227 records Muhammad trading two black slaves for one (Arab/non-black) slave—a transaction that involves both slave-trading and a racial valuation differential. Musnad Ahmad and other collections contain additional trade records. The commercial buying and selling of human beings was part of Muhammad’s documented economic life.

11. Hadith on the treatment of runaway slaves. Sahih Muslim 1509: “When a slave runs away and reverts to polytheism, he becomes lawful to kill.” The hadith tradition treats escape from enslavement combined with apostasy as a capital offence. The institution of slavery was not merely tolerated; it was enforced.

PART D: THE HISTORICAL CONSEQUENCES

12. The Islamic slave trade lasted from the seventh century to the twentieth. Operating under the legal framework Muhammad established and the Qur’an authorised, Islamic civilisations conducted one of the largest and longest slave trades in history. The trans-Saharan slave trade, the East African slave trade, and the Indian Ocean slave trade collectively enslaved an estimated 10–18 million Africans (Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East; Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery). Millions more were enslaved from Europe (the Barbary slave trade), Central Asia, and South Asia. Saudi Arabia did not formally abolish slavery until 1962. Mauritania did not criminalise it until 2007. In both cases, abolition was driven by external pressure, not internal Islamic legal reform.

Region/Trade	Duration	Est. Enslaved	Abolished
Trans-Saharan	7th–20th century	~7–10 million Africans	Varies by country
East African / Indian Ocean	7th–20th century	~4–6 million Africans	British pressure 19th c.
Barbary (North African)	16th–19th century	~1–1.25 million Europeans	French conquest 1830
Central / South Asian	7th–19th century	Millions (poorly documented)	Colonial-era reforms
Arabian Peninsula	7th–20th century	~2–4 million (various sources)	Saudi Arabia 1962

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④ ISLAMIC DOCUMENTATION AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE CRITICAL CLAIMS

• Islam was the first civilisation to create a systematic pathway to freedom. The mukatabah (manumission contract), the kaffarah (expiation by freeing a slave), and the moral exhortation to free slaves as an act of piety created a continuous flow of individuals out of slavery. No prior civilisation had institutionalised manumission as a religious virtue to this degree. The result was that slavery in the Islamic world was constantly being replenished because it was constantly being depleted—which demonstrates the system’s built-in abolitionist pressure.

• Islamic slavery was fundamentally different from Atlantic chattel slavery. Slaves in Islamic societies could own property, hold positions of immense power (the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt was literally ruled by former slaves), marry free persons, and achieve social mobility. Islamic slavery was often closer to indentured servitude than to the hereditary racial chattel slavery of the Americas. The comparison is misleading.

• The Qur’anic ma malakat aymanukum provided legal protection, not exploitation. By bringing captive women into a regulated legal framework, the Qur’an ensured they were fed, housed, and their children were born free. In pre-Islamic Arabia, captive women had no protections whatsoever. The Qur’anic framework was a humanitarian advance.

• The gradual-abolition trajectory is supported by the arc of Islamic legal history. Just as the Qur’an gradually prohibited alcohol (first warning, then restricting, then prohibiting), Islam was moving toward the eventual abolition of slavery. The moral trajectory was clear; the completion of the trajectory was left to later generations, just as many social reforms require centuries to complete.

• Christianity took 1,800 years to abolish slavery; Islam should not be judged more harshly. The Christian world practised slavery from the Roman period until the nineteenth century. The transatlantic slave trade was conducted by Christian nations. The Bible was used to justify slavery by Southern American preachers. If Christianity gets credit for eventually abolishing slavery despite 1,800 years of practising it, Islam deserves the same patience.

• Muhammad’s personal manumissions demonstrate his moral direction. Muhammad freed Zayd ibn Harithah, elevated Bilal ibn Rabah (a former slave) to one of the most honoured positions in the community, and stated: “There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, nor of a non-Arab over an Arab...except by piety” (Musnad Ahmad 23489). His personal conduct showed that he valued human equality, even if the full legal implementation required time.

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⑤ THE PROBLEM WITH THE ISLAMIC RESPONSE

The “improved conditions” defense concedes the fundamental point. Improving the conditions of slavery is not the same as recognising that slavery is wrong. A slave who is well-fed is still a slave. A slave who can own property is still a slave. A slave who can negotiate a manumission contract with her master’s permission is still a slave until that permission is granted. Every defense that begins with “Islam improved the treatment of slaves” has already conceded that Islam maintained the institution of slavery. The question is not whether Muhammad made slavery more humane. The question is whether the perfect moral example for all of humanity should have recognised that owning human beings is inherently wrong—and he did not.

The gradual-abolition argument has no textual foundation. The alcohol analogy is frequently cited but does not hold. The Qur’an’s treatment of alcohol followed a clear, documented trajectory: initial permission (16:67), then a warning that harm outweighs benefit (2:219), then prohibition during prayer (4:43), and finally total prohibition (5:90–91). There is no parallel trajectory for slavery. The Qur’an never warns that slavery’s harm outweighs its benefit. It never restricts slavery during certain times. It never moves toward prohibition. The final Qur’anic statements about slavery (in the Medinan surahs, the last revealed) continue to regulate it without any indication that it should eventually end. If Allah intended a gradual trajectory toward abolition, He followed the pattern with alcohol and abandoned it with slavery. The trajectory simply does not exist in the text.

Ma malakat aymanukum is not humanitarian protection—it is the legal authorisation of sexual slavery. Surah 4:24 permits Muslim men to have sexual access to married captive women—women whose existing marriages are voided by their enslavement. Surah 23:5–6 places “what your right hand possesses” alongside wives as legitimate sexual partners. This is not protection. It is the divine authorisation of the sexual use of captive human beings. Calling it “a humanitarian upgrade over pre-Islamic practices” does not change what it is. A legal system in which a man can capture a married woman in war and have sex with her because the Qur’an authorises it is a legal system that sanctions rape—regardless of what the system replaced.

The “Islamic slavery was different from Atlantic slavery” argument is partially true and entirely beside the point. Islamic slavery was structurally different from American chattel slavery in important respects: it was not racially exclusive, it permitted social mobility, and it was not always hereditary. These distinctions are historically real. But they do not make the ownership of human beings morally acceptable. A slave who can own property but cannot leave is still a slave. A slave who holds political power but can be sold is still a slave. The Mamluk example—former slaves ruling Egypt—is remarkable, but the Mamluks were enslaved as children, taken from their families, and forcibly trained. Their eventual power does not justify their initial enslavement. The question is not whether Islamic slavery was “better” than Atlantic slavery. The question is whether any form of owning human beings is compatible with the moral standard for all humanity.

The Christianity comparison strengthens the polemic rather than weakening it. The Christian tradition’s complicity in slavery is real, documented, and damning. Southern preachers used the Bible to defend slavery. The transatlantic slave trade was conducted by baptised Christians. These are facts. But the relevant comparison is not between Christian civilisation and Islamic civilisation—it is between Jesus and Muhammad. Jesus owned no slaves. Jesus never traded a human being. Jesus never received a captive woman as a concubine. Jesus never distributed human beings as war spoils. Jesus said: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). Muhammad owned slaves, traded slaves, and received a divine revelation authorising sexual access to captive women. The failure of Christian civilisations to live up to Jesus’ standard is an indictment of those civilisations. But the standard itself—Jesus’ own conduct—is unimpeachable on this question. Muhammad’s is not.

The two-for-one slave trade hadith reveals a racial dimension the defence must address. Sunan Abu Dawud 2227 records Muhammad trading two black slaves for one non-black slave. This is not an isolated report; the practice of racial valuation in slave markets is well-documented in classical Islamic jurisprudence and in the historical record of Islamic slave trades. Muhammad’s farewell sermon includes the declaration that “there is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab.” But his recorded commercial activity included a transaction that valued human beings differently based on race. The declaration of equality and the practice of racial slave-trading coexist in the same sources.

Abolition came from outside, not inside, the Islamic legal tradition. If Islam was on a trajectory toward abolition, the abolition should have originated from within Islamic legal scholarship. It did not. Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from the international community. Mauritania criminalised it in 2007 under international pressure. The Ottoman Empire abolished the slave trade in stages during the nineteenth century under British pressure. In no Muslim-majority country was slavery abolished because Islamic scholars concluded, on the basis of the Qur’an and Sunnah, that it was morally impermissible. The abolition was imposed from outside the tradition—because the tradition, built on Muhammad’s example and the Qur’an’s legislation, contained no internal mechanism for reaching that conclusion.

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⑥ KEYS TO ADDRESS THIS IN A CONVERSATION

1. Start with the Qur’anic text, not the historical slave trade. If you begin with the trans-Saharan slave trade, the conversation will immediately become defensive: “What about the Atlantic slave trade?” Instead, begin with the Qur’an: “Surah 23:5–6 lists two categories of people Muslim men can have sexual relations with: wives and ‘what your right hand possesses.’ What does that second category mean?” Let the Qur’an’s own language start the conversation.

2. Ask the simple question: “Is there a verse that prohibits slavery?” This is the single most effective question in the entire discussion. The answer is no. The Qur’an encourages manumission but never prohibits slavery. Once this fact is established, every subsequent defense is operating within a framework that concedes the institution’s permanence.

3. Use Muhammad’s personal slave ownership, not abstractions. “Did you know that Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya lists Muhammad’s slaves by name? He owned them. He bought and sold them. He received Maria al-Qibtiyya as a gift—a human being given as a present. Is that consistent with the moral example for all time?” Personal specifics are harder to dismiss than systemic arguments.

4. Handle the “Christianity did it too” response honestly. Do not deny or minimise Christian complicity. Say: “You’re right. Christian civilisations practised slavery for centuries. Southern preachers used the Bible to defend it. That’s a genuine moral failure. But there’s a critical difference: Jesus himself never owned a slave, never traded a human being, and never authorised sexual access to captives. The Christian failure was failing to live up to Jesus’ standard. Muhammad’s standard is the problem, because his own conduct included owning slaves.”

5. Press the gradual-abolition argument gently. “Islam gradually banned alcohol—I can see the trajectory in the Qur’an. Can you show me the same trajectory for slavery? A first verse that warns about it? A second that restricts it? A third that prohibits it?” The trajectory exists for alcohol. It does not exist for slavery. Asking for it reveals the absence.

6. Raise Surah 4:24 with care. This is the most sensitive verse in the discussion. It permits sexual access to married captive women. Do not be inflammatory. Simply read it and ask: “This verse says that married women who are captured become lawful. Their existing marriage is overridden. Is that consent? Is that the moral standard for all time?” The verse speaks for itself.

7. End with the question of who abolished it. “Saudi Arabia abolished slavery in 1962—not because Islamic scholars concluded it was wrong, but because the international community pressured them. If Islam was moving toward abolition, why did abolition come from outside? Why couldn’t the tradition Muhammad built reach the conclusion that owning people is wrong?” This is the question that connects Muhammad’s personal conduct to the civilisational consequence.

Sources and Further Reading

All primary sources are from the Islamic tradition. Qur’an: Surah 2:219, 4:3, 4:24, 4:25, 4:36, 4:43, 4:92, 5:89, 5:90–91, 8:41, 16:67, 23:5–6, 24:31, 24:33, 24:58, 33:50, 33:52, 33:55, 58:3, 70:30 (Sahih International). Hadith: Sahih al-Bukhari 30, 2539, 2540, 4200; Sahih Muslim 1456a, 1509, 1602, 1657; Sunan Abu Dawud 2227, 3358; Musnad Ahmad 23489. Biography: Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, trans. A. Guillaume (Oxford, 1955); Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Zad al-Ma’ad (Provisions of the Hereafter), vol. 1; Ibn Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, vol. 1. For the Islamic slave trade: Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (Oxford, 1990); Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 3rd ed. 2012); Ronald Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001); John Wright, The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (Routledge, 2007). For Islamic legal treatment: Jonathan A.C. Brown, Slavery and Islam (Oneworld, 2019)—note this is a sympathetic Muslim academic treatment; William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (Oxford, 2006). For Christian engagement: David Wood, “Muhammad: The White Prophet with Black Slaves” (Acts17Apologetics).

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