The Seal of Prophets - His Personality and Character — Page 27
The Seal of Prophets 27 wedded to his sense of justice in the most beautiful and well poised way, which is indeed a pleasure to watch. The Holy Prophet sa was also very kind to his servants and slaves. The question of slavery is a much-misunderstood concept in the West. I will not touch upon this in any detail but I assure you that there is only one permissible way mentioned in the Holy Qur’an, by which slaves can be en-slaved. This is in Chapter Al-Anfaal, verse sixty-eight. It reads that the only way of making human beings slaves is after a very severe battle, not just a skirmish. In those days there was no system of prisoner of war camps, so the prisoners would be distributed to different homes. We also see that the Holy Qur’an goes on to suggest numerous routes for liberation of the slaves. There are so many verses on this subject, that after going through these, it is surprising how slavery could ever be conceived by the present day Muslims as validated perpetually. According to the Holy Qur’an, if a slave is not liberated by ransom paid by his relatives, and has no other means of getting liberated, he can demand his liberation from a Muslim court. All he has to do is to appeal to the court, asking immediate release, on the condition that he will earn and pay back on small easy instalments whatever cost is considered to be his value. These injunctions were very strictly imposed in the days of the Holy Prophet sa. Sometimes thousands of slaves were liberated in a single day. Owing to the legacy of the past and also because those were troubled times, some slaves were inherited by people and went on serving private homes. The Holy Prophet sa repeatedly admonished Muslims that they should be as kind to them as to their kith and kin. We find mention of many such incidents; for instance, when a master and a slave went together