Life of Muhammad — Page 226
sa 226 In his anxiety to fully safe-guard the interests of the poor and the needy he went so far as to lay down that no charity should ever be bestowed upon his descendants, fearing lest Muslims out of their love for and devotion towards himself should in course of time make his descendants the principal objects of their charity and thus deprive the poor and needy of their due share. On one occasion somebody brought to him a quantity of dates and offered them as charity. His grandson Im a m H asan ra , who was then only two and a half years of age, happened to be sitting with the Prophet sa. He picked up one of the dates and put it into his mouth. The Prophet sa immediately put his finger into the child's mouth and forced the date out of it saying: "We have no right in this. This belongs to the poor among God's creatures" ( Bukh a r i , Kit a bul Kus u f ). TREATMENT OF SLAVES He constantly exhorted those who owned slaves to treat them kindly and well. He had laid down that if the owner of a slave beat his slave or abused him, the only reparation that he could make was to set the slave free ( Muslim, Kit ab ul I m a n ). He devised means for, and encouraged, the freeing of slaves on every pretext. He said: "If a person owning a slave sets him free, God will in recompense save every part of his body corresponding to every part of the slave's body from the torment of Hell. " Again, he laid down that a slave should be asked to perform only such tasks as he could easily accomplish and that when he was set to do a task, his master should help him in performing it so that the slave should experience no feeling of humiliation or degradation ( Muslim ). If a master went on a journey accompanied by a slave, it was his duty to share his mount with the slave either by both riding together or each riding in turn. Ab u Hurair a ra , who used to spend the whole of his time after becoming a Muslim in the