Bismillah Ar-Rahmaan Ar-Raheem. Alhumdulillah. Peace and blessings on Muhammad (sallalahu alaihi wa sallam), his Noble Companions and Family. Brothers and sisters on our way to Allah… Audio on http://www.islamiccenterdc.com/apps/podcast/podcast/23643 (12-03-2010) SLAVERY PART 2 You and I know that there are subjects/themes that are never discussed in the khutbahs even though we have many ayaat and ahadith that explain these subject matters. One of the issues that have been taken out of the Mimbar or that has been excluded from public thought is the issue of slavery. You will not find a khateeb/public spokesperson in the Masjid or any where else trying to shed some light on this repugnant behaviour. Imagine- we, (meaning humanity), has a history of un-dignifying human beings for whatever they may present to the public. They do have their own arguments for what they do/have done but a calm thought about this matter and we realise that human beings have been subjected to humiliation/degradation/treated like animals/insects by other human beings. And we have of a certainty honoured the descendants of Adam… (Surah Isra' verse 70) So our humanity is honoured. Whatever colour we come in/language we speak/gender we have/ physical characteristics we come in we have is an honour. But in violation of this honour we have history in which Colonialism and some who were in positions of power who are Muslims by tradition/heritage are responsible. Let us say to you something that you have to be a keen observer of the literature to realise: what appears is that when many Muslims speak about rulers, (we're speaking about fourteen centuries of rule after Allah's Prophet), or Islamic military successes they speak about the Khalifah; (but) when the same people speak about the blots/tarnish that is in Islamic history such as rulers having concubines/slaves they speak about them as Salateen/Sultans. Remember, these are the same people. We're not speaking about everyone in this history. We tried to clarify the beginnings of this history when there are bone fide successors to Allah's Prophet and then later on when we had Kings/Monarchs/Dictators/Despots. But this distinction is not made; meaning we have not had enough mental juice to clarify these rulers. How come in one breath/time they speak about a certain Abbasi/Ottoman ruler as a Sultan at one time and then they speak about the same rulers as Khulafa' at another time?! What happened? But this is just a between the lines observation of reading this history but back to the subject of slavery. We Muslims get caught nowadays with the accusation of being the maintainers of slavery. Brothers and sisters- it is an irony that Islam that was meant to liberate humanity/extinguish the institutions of injustice in humanity- primary among them is slavery- after we read the ayaat and ahadith that were meant to dis-institutionalise/destroy this social behaviour we find that now we are on the receiving side i.e. that we Muslims of the world are responsible for the continuation of this slavery. It is truly a disgusting shame that we have among us those who match our religious rituals but who violate everything in the Book of Allah and in the Sunnah of His Messenger when it comes to the issues at this level. Let us take a look first at the ayaat in Allah's Book. A sequence of these ayaat that are towards the end in the semi-short Surahs of the Qur'an- Surah Al Balad/Laa Uqsimu- says And would he/the average person, (you and me), make it through the steep ascension. (Surah Al Balad verse 11) It's like scaling Mount Everest/The And would you know what this, (let's call it), "spiritual It is the freeing of a person in bondage. (Surah Al Balad verse 13) Raqabah literally means neck but because a person who is enslaved/in bondage/has his/her freedom taken away from them is like someone having a choke-hold over their neck so you open up that choking-hold on the neck and you set the person free. Or to give food on a day of hunger. (Surah Al Balad verse 14) To Whom? To an orphan who's next of kin/related to you by blood/distance, (meaning in the neighbourhood). Or a person who is struggling in life/not having ends meet/toiling but still not making it. (Surah Al Balad verse 15-16) Now, you realise at the beginning of all of this that these are social actions. Allah is not speaking about an act of charity of one individual He's speaking of a social movement to do this. We'll let you in here on one of the internal thoughts of the Fuqaha'. The Fuqaha' had a statement that says the legal system/Shara' that we have yearns to freedom. If anyone understands anything about the Islamic legal order (even) if he misses everything else, he doesn't miss the fact that this Shara' longs for freedom. This is in the minds of Fuqaha'/Scholars of Islam who have spent their mental years understanding what Allah has to say. But with the way this Islam of ours began moving 1,400 years ago was in the real world. There's a real world out there. Islam didn't begin in a vacuum. There were military forces/economic interests/social practices going on in the world and one of the things that Islam/Muslims that were in-charge of this Islam had to face was the legality of their times. Basically the first/nearest one was the Byzantines. What were their laws? (In) their laws, what if a person commits a crime/was not able to pay his debt at that time? He would go into slavery. This was a fact of life. What do you do when everyone has agreed to this procedure? Islam had to deal with it. Everyone agrees, wherever the Muslims went- whether it was in North Africa/South-West Asia/ … and we want to have them firm in the affairs of this world and the inheritors/heirs in the affairs of this world. (Surah Al Qassas verse 5) This is an ayah from Surah Al Qassas. Of course, this was too much for the masters of Islam also came to face another aspect of worldwide conventions i.e. the laws of war. In wars that were fought at that time a soldier either got killed/was taken prisoner and these prisoners of war were channelled into slavery. What do you do? This is the way the world behaves. What are you going to do with a world that behaves like this? Are you going to convince it with an ayah that this is wrong behaviour? They're not going to listen to you. They don't believe in you. They're not going to listen to what you have to say. The ayah of the Qur'an says in enduring this concern for those whose freedoms have been robbed from them in Surah Al Insaan If we give you of the food that we have/feed you for the sake of Allah we don't want any compensation from you not thanks. (Surah Al Insaan verse 9) Who are these that we are feeding? A miskin/slogging person who inspite of his labour still cannot have ends meet, an orphan and a prisoner… (Surah Al Insaan verse 8) Prisoners who have lost their freedoms and have becomes slaves have been put in the ranks of orphans/toiling labourer. The Prophet of Allah says you visit a person who is sick, feed a person who is hungry and you free a person who is in bondage. Because of the other sides who were not convinced of these standards/values… You can't convince your enemy not to have a prisoner of war! Even up to today- 1,400 years/centuries after this was revealed/meanings were disclosed- there's still something called prisoners of war. Not because Islam condones/endorses it but because that's the way these anti-Muslims run their military affairs. What are Muslims to do here? The enemies have Muslim prisoners of war and Muslims have enemy prisoners of war. What do we do? Do we set there prisoners of war free or we treat them in a likewise manner? If they take Muslim prisoners of war who may become slaves we take their combatants prisoners of war but with the difference here that Muslims have to endure their treatment. (Take a), look at what's happening in today's world. They have this thing called Guantanamo/Bagram and other things here and there- black sites/renditions/detention centres, you name it- what do you do when they are thinking of Muslims that way? Reluctantly, Muslims are going to have to give them a taste of their own medicine and therefore we do have prisoners of war; not because there's any ayah in the Qur'an or any ahadith that encourage/authorise as a policy/initiative to have prisoners of war. No! Nothing of the like exists. But because of their policies/procedures of warfare they have prisoners of war that we have prisoners of war. But when we have prisoners of war how do we treat them? Unlike them, the ayah says O Prophet: Say to those of the prisoners of war that you are responsible for: If Allah knows that there is any good in your/prisoners of war's hearts Allah will reciprocate that good with something better than it... (Surah Al Anfaal verse 70) Meaning that if you are good people in the heart-of-your-hearts and you have been misled to this war and now you've fallen prisoners of war then what was taken from you i.e. your freedom will be returned to you. … in addition to that Allah is going to forgive you/amnesty your past crimes. (Surah Al Anfaal verse 70) He's going to forgive you for your killing/ war against the Muslims. There's a word here - yaghfir. You know we use the words maghfirah/rahmah- yarham/yaghfir, maghfirah/rahmah, Ghafoor/ Rahim. These two words: ghafara is for a mistake/crime that has taken place in the past. Yarham is an expression of grace for things to come. Maghfirah in the past; rahma in the future. Then Allah say, and He created these human beings and He knows their internal thoughts and how they And if these prisoners of war want to betray you then they have betrayed Allah before. . (Surah Al Anfaal verse 71) (Do you) see that there are two inclinations in people who have become prisoners/whose freedoms have been taken away from them. Some of them are good at heart and they will confess to their true nature and the others want to trick/lie to the Muslims. Anyone who's a prisoner of war can say "oh- I've become a Muslim- Ash'hadu an laa Ilaha illa Allah wa ash'hadu anna Muhammad Rasulullah" and he wants to do that to escape from the detention that he is in. Allah is opening the eyes of the Muslims to this type of nature. The Prophet of Allah may have set the prime example in all of this when he liberated Makkah. These people were fighting against him for twenty-two/twenty-three years. Every type of agony/torture/persecution/warfare they launched against the Allah's Prophet. On the day of the liberation of Makkah what did he say to them? His words now that Makkah is liberated and all these Mushriks are in front of him/gathered there, (let's say in the public square), and he stands in front of them and he says to them today, what do you think I'm going to do to you? Listen to how these people (with) twenty-three years of hostility and belligerence against Allah's Prophet after Badr/Uhud/Khandaq/Al Ahzaab (and) scores of Islamic military encounters with them answered him. They said but you're a brother/nephew of ours. You're on of us. (Do you) see how human nature works? So did Allah's Prophet take them prisoners of war? Did he think about reducing them as slaves as was the case with all other military forces in the world and still continues to be the case today? He said you are free now. You are free from what otherwise would have been the punishment that is due to you. There were no prisoners of war. Many of these people were at the war front/fought against him/have records of hostility/ bloodshed against Allah's Prophet and the committed Muslims with him. Let it be known- if this issue of slavery ever comes your way some of these points should remain in your mind i.e. how Muslims have their psychology/legality set on exterminating this institution/ human relation from existence. One-eighth of the Muslim zakaah goes to freeing those who are in bondage. Let's say we have an Islamic Government/society/economy- whatever Zakaah we collect- let's say we collect, (to make the math easy), $8 million, (or dinars/dirhams or whatever you want to call it), $1 million of it out of that $8 million will go to freeing those who are in bondage/slaves/ who don't have their freedom. Now you tell us- let's (take a) look at the budget of the If a person mistakenly kills another person … if a Muslim kills another Muslim by mistake/inadvertently his responsibility to avoid the consequences of that is to free a person who doesn't have freedom... (Surah An Nisa' verse 92) Another issue is what is called in Islamic fiqh is ad dhihaar. A husband says to his wife: you now are like my mother to me. Meaning there's no longer any sexual relationship between me and you. He says this our of anger/a nervous breakdown or for whatever reason he says this to her and it appears he has no basis for saying this much less doing what he says he wants to do then to get himself out of this jam that he placed himself in … he has to free a person in bondage… (Surah Al Mujadilah verse 3) How does a person who expresses a solid oath/al aymaan and he breaks that solemn oath pay for it? By freeing a person out of bondage/slavery. How does a person who does not fast the month of Ramadhan get himself out of that? He does so by freeing a person that is in bondage. The Prophet of Allah has stated for us many ahadith that tell us that if it is the case and we do have, in a transit sense, a Muslim society and we have to deal with people that don't have the total freedom that is due to them, then they have to be treated equally- meaning that the person who is in-charge of them has to feed them from the same food that he has. He has to clothe them with the same clothes that he wears. (There's) much difference between the way people are treated today when they are denied freedom and when we are supposed to have them gain their freedom. We will skip the other ahadith, (and there are several of them), and come to the last days of Allah's Prophet. Five days before he passed away Allah's Prophet said observe/be conscious of Allah towards those who have the dignity of you being in-charge of them. (Do) you see: mulk al yameen is translated as "the possession of the right hand." Now even though this translation is technically correct, what's lost in this translation is the inference of it; which means that there's a dignity relationship between someone who's in-charge and someone who's in his/her service. The Prophet of Allah says observe/be conscious of Allah towards those who have the dignity of you being in-charge of them and then he says concerning these people who don't have the total freedoms that are due to them satisfy their stomachs… meaning give them food so that they don't feel hunger … and have them dressed…. They can't be lacking in dress. If it's cold they should have coats. … And when you speak to them you speak to them gently. Then it is reported that the last words that Allah's Prophet said upon departing from this worldly life (were) observe as salaah/honour what as salaah means and be observant/conscious of those who you are in-charge of. Brothers and sisters, committed Muslims… If only we could understand these ayaat and ahadith, (and there's much more. We've just taken a some of them and expressed their meanings), in today's world. Who are the people in today's world who treat other people like chattel/slaves? There's a sophisticated treatment coming from people who are in power and wealth in the more advanced countries. What we have in Imperialism is an enslavement of populations. They're no longer interested in enslaving persons/individuals. They're no longer interested in retail slavery. They've gone from retail to wholesale! We have Imperialist/Racist powers in the world who enslave populations. But here we have Muslims- meaning those who have Islamic names/lips who are still behind?! They enslave individuals/ families. They're not capable of enslaving populations?! Here we have it… We mentioned to you previously that in the same land that these ayaat and ahadith were expressed first and before everything else we have people who are treated like they are junk/not even human beings. An Indonesian Muslim woman in her early twenties being beaten so badly was admitted to a hospital and had to under-go some corrected surgery/stitches to her face. What is this? (In) one of the hadiths, (that we didn't mention), whoever strikes/slaps/hits a person who is in bondage that may cause him to suffer the agony of the fire or it will come back to cause him to suffer the agony of those consequences on the day of accountability. We have seen things that the average human being can't tolerate. After we expressed that in the khutbah, during that week another news item comes and says "another person from the same Muslim land i.e. This khutbah was presented by Imam Mohammad Al Asi on the occasion of Jum'ah on 3 December 2010 on the sidewalk of |
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