Islam and Slavery — Page 30
WHY WERE NOT ALL SLAVES FREED AT ONCE?. WHEN Islam came with a message of freedom for the slaves, why did not the Prophet give orders for the immediate release of all slaves?. The brief and simple answer to this, question is that the Holy Prophet did not do so because he was a true friend of the slaves and what he aimed at was real. reform and not mere display. He did not take any step which might outwardly appear to be friendly to the slaves, but which was really harmful to them and detrimental to the welfare and advancement of the country. . Every sensible man can easily see that to liberate immediately hundreds of thousands of slaves under the conditions then prevailing in the country was to send them adrift in the land utterly helpless and unprotected, and this was dangerous to them and to the country in more ways than one. The result of this revolutionary and universal emancipation would have been that whereas a part of the freed slaves would have turned paupers and died of starvation the rest would have been driven by unemployment to adopt a life of crime and, becoming moral wrecks, would have turned into a source of seething unrest for the country and its people. Revolutionary steps may appeal to our sentiments and appear attractive, but in most cases they do not prove useful. Nay, in some cases they exercise a very pernicious influence on the 1