If you talk to most Muslims today, they are scarcely aware of the centrality that slavery played in the development of the shari'a, because most Muslims today abhor the very institution of slavery in perfect keeping with the consensus of civilized peoples everywhere.  Yet the matter is in fact important, and worth greater introspection on the part of Muslims, because I think it reveals much respecting the authority of the classical scholars, or lack thereof, that currently slips below the radar because of the inattention given to the subject.

If I had to summarize modern views on slavery in Islam among modern Muslims who know something of the subject, it would go something like this:

Slavery was a deeply abhorrent practice, a repulsive one fundamentally at odds with basic principles of justice and fairness brought by the Divine.  But it is also a practice that predominated in human civilizations prior to modernity, and its prevalence caused Islam not to ban the practice outright, but to regard it with deep distaste, to mitigate its effects and humanize it to the extent possible, and most importantly of all to set the seeds of its own destruction, so that it would not last in the Muslim world.  We did all of that, and so not only is slavery gone, but even when it existed, it was better than Western slavery.

Now let's be clear before proceeding to the important parts worth discussing. Some of this is apologetic nonsense, and should be dispensed as such quickly.  The Arab slave trade killed about as many Africans as the Western slave trade, and we are talking in the tens of millions.  Nothing "better" about that as a historical matter.   Besides, the notion of reforming an institution and seeking to end an institution lie at some tension with one another. If you, as I do, tend to regard slavery as abhorrent and repulsive and you pray for its end, you don't seek to reform it, and you don't seek to trumpet how much better you've made it than some other culture did.  You have reduced a human being to the status of livestock, you have claimed a right to buy and sell her, and when you do so, you steal her humanity.  You want to reform drug laws, fine, but you can't reform slavery. 

So I want to leave aside that piece of it and concentrate on the other piece.  Effectively, this Islamic argument indicates you have to accept Lincoln's bargain.  You may as a modern Muslim say slavery is a wrong, a deep and fundamental one.  You can say not only is it and should it be criminal, but it should be prosecuted severely.  But when and where it is prevalent and widespread as it was in Lincoln's South and in Muhammad's Medina, you won't quite ban it.  You won't encourage it, you won't even be neutral towards it, you'll hate it and discourgage so much that you won't even say it is sanctioned. (Qur'an never does, all is implication).  But what you'll do is neutralize its effect as much as you can through liberal manumission rules, stop its spread (Islamic rules on enslavement are restrictive, as was the American ban on the slave trade) completely and totally, and wait for it to  die out.   

To some, that's a small step, to me a gargantuan one, one that is hard to take.  It's one thing to say that in a different place and time people got married at 15 and that was normal, or even polygamy in 9th century Abyssinia was what it was who are you to judge, or whatever, but slavery?  Even this small step, just some sort of recognition that in some place and some time, it has to be, not encouraged, in fact discouraged, but tolerated is tough.  That said, it was Lincoln's position before the War.  Still, my heart lies more with John Brown.  

In any event, there it is, but is it compatible with Islamic doctrine?  Yes, with one important caveat.  You can claim the Qur'an regards slavery as Lincoln did in 1858 as per above, you can make that argument quite plausibly, but you have to piss all over the classical law to do it. because the fiqh of the classical jurists does no such thing.  I don't mean to suggest that a ban on slavery is incompatible with classical doctrine, you can make it compatible. But the meta ethical position that this is an abhorrent, repulsive, disgusting practice and we're going to make it die is not a even close to a fair reflection of the fiqh.  Perhaps the classical jurists would never have countenanced the tributary relationships that did develop in the Arab slave trade over East Africa, actually surely they didn't.  Freamon says the rules were "spectacularly" ignored.  They were.  But could you buy a slave girl and condition her virginity, because you want to rape a virgin?  For the most part, yes, and you don't see much by way of concern by the classical doctors respecting this.

But then, the question arises, if you're willing to declare the classical doctors engaged in profound and fundamental error on this point, if you're willing to argue that this was a fundamental and total breach of their function as interpreters of the Word, as betrayal of their human instincts, a gutting of deep and fundamental principle, a figurative spitting in the eye of the very purposes for which God broke the veil separating humanity from the Divine, well if you'll do that for slavery, the central example often used throughout the rules on sale under classical Islamic doctrine, then just how much deference should you afford the jurists on other questions.  It's worth a thought anyway.

HAH