Views on slavery
by: Sameh Askar
Al-Hiwar Al-Motamadden – Issue: 6092 – 2018/12/23 – 00:50
Theme: Secularism, political religion and criticism of religious thought
Man did not err in conceiving as much as his mistake in conceiving the meaning of freedom. In the past, he used to view the free as not being slaves and slaves of others. The human mind had not yet matured to see slavery as an ugly thing. Rather, it was consistent with it and among the greatest philosophers of such the wise Greeks and the European Renaissance. .
Yes, most of the ancient philosophers and in the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were not against (slavery) as we understand it as enslavement, slavery and exploitation, but rather they approved it for social or economic reasons, and this explains why the messages of the prophets were not explicitly exposed to the liberation of slaves because this liberation was not originally proposed as a human demand, but History testifies that some governments developed the concept of slavery into (soldier) in the sense of exploiting slaves in their wars, as did the Ayyubids, Mamluks, and then the Ottomans after that in their famous “Janissary” battalions.
To explain how this happened
Freedom does not have a single meaning..This concept develops over time. Freedom in the time of slaves was freedom of self-determination for religious, national, or political motives. As for the issue of slavery, this is a social issue that was not raised on the agenda of freedoms. Until recently, there was a belief that God created people into two groups. The first distinguished him with freedom, and the second confined with slavery. It is a class belief that entered most religions. Its traces are still present in Hinduism, where they believe that the working class and the toiling (Shudra) are the most despicable classes to be punished by God for what they did in their previous lives according to their belief in reincarnation.
As for how a person got rid of slavery, this was in two stages:
The first: Western colonization of the peoples of the world starting from the 16th century with the emergence of new discoveries and continents.
The second: the revolution against religions in the 19th century
Colonialism contributed to the shipment of slaves and slaves to Europe and America, and discrimination against them as peoples reached the point of phenomenon and not merely as a process of profit or sponsorship. Once that this discrimination is an injustice that should not continue, they proceeded to combat it until the American revolution against it was crowned with success.
This is a rooting of how slavery was mentioned in the Qur’an – for example – without denying it, because it was an existence consistent with the nature of humanity at the time, but a good reading of the Qur’an hints that it encouraged the liberation of slaves by means, including penances and human grants, as was mentioned in the stories of the liberation of slaves by Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, unlike some Western philosophers, Those who explicitly (supported) slavery, such as Hegel, Kant, Hobbes, Marx and Hume..
Some forget this act of them and launch an attack on the Qur’an for its approval of class in rulings, although there is a difference between acknowledgment and victory. . the first is closer to adapting the circumstance without expressing an opinion, while the second means bias and perhaps intellectual rooting.
As for why the Muslims delayed liberating their slaves compared to the West, it is because their religious belief prevented them from that, and throughout the era of the rule of this belief, the justification became available for the slaves, and it can be said that they got rid of slavery is not an endorsement from them or
The prohibition of that in religion or its conflict with justice and humanity, but rather because they adapt to a global circumstance that they became part of after the formation of the League of Nations and then the Security Council and the United Nations human rights councils from which emerged, the Islamic mentality was – and still is – confusing religion with everything ..
including society And slavery is a social matter, so the jurists established a chapter on jurisprudence called the jurisprudence of the proprietary of the right, then they dealt with slavery as a religious matter, which contributed to delaying the elimination of this scourge for a late time, but it is still practiced outside the law in countries such as Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen.
And because Traditional Muslims were intellectually retarded to the extent that prevented them from looking at their religion in a way that we see now on satellite channels, criticism of inheritance, books of hadiths, interpretations and others, this enlightening effort in the media and the Internet aimed at treating cognitive blindness that prevented them from discovering the reality of slavery in the first place, with evidence that the opponents of this effort are still some who believes in slavery in its old form, and introduces new types of it through religious and national discrimination against minorities and offenders in general, and in some countries they justify the government banning all forms of positions and wealth from those minorities.
If this position of the fundamentalists is understandable, how can we understand the position of some non-religious people who see that any effort for equality in the West with Muslims is in itself weakness, stupidity and helplessness, just as they criticize Europeans’ belief in the rights of Muslims, and Muslims’ ascension to Congress.. Here are the remnants of slavery and living in the confines of the old religion.
For several centuries, as if Arab non-religious people are fundamentalists in reality, and just as they criticize the fundamentalism of Muslims (and their slavery) to their religion, they also suffer from another form of slavery, which is (self-servitude) is not a generalization but an approach, as there are many non-religious trends in their vision of issues of slavery, and just as some of them believe in the necessity of subjugating Muslims, others see the necessity of equality with them as human beings, and they have no fault in inherited beliefs whose problems can be solved by law and the efforts of the Enlightenment together.
And this concept of self-servitude, I do not see it confined only to personality, behavior and whims, but transcends it to ideas.
a believer in materialistic philosophy, for example, will be immersed in it to the point of denying or disrespecting all other philosophies, he is a (prisoner) of his thoughts, and he does not have the will to break his whims with a critical review.
People of all affiliations hate criticism as a nature.. Only reformists and spiritually peaceful souls are no exception, while others need a great effort to move on to their spiritual peace and belief in others, and I think that this transition often occurs through shocks and experiences.. there is no difference between a sane and an ignorant person..everyone changes with shocks.
I conclude that the term “servitude” had a religious connotation for Muslims, meaning that a person’s servitude to God can only be achieved under conditions being such and such, and this was explained by Sheikh Ibn Taymiyyah in his book “The slavery.” Because this expression is now negative, some may be surprised that Ibn Taymiyyah wrote about it asking whether he agreed or disagreed.
In fact, Ibn Taymiyyah did not speak about slaves in this book, but he detailed the provisions of worship and its conditions as he sees them jurisprudential, ideological and behavioral, and although he acknowledged the slavery of man to man in his writings – and this is natural by virtue of his time – he has elaborated in the realization of slavery to God – and this is normal because he is a jurist
What is surprising here is that the term “slave and slaves” has been used to refer to slaves since ancient times, including, of course, the time of Ibn Taymiyyah.
So, When they take it divinely, it means “worship.” As for socially, it means “service and possession.”
Here the utterance of the word has become one with two meanings in the souls that are completely contradictory, and this confirms the development of words, languages, and beliefs according to Time, as evidenced by what we have mentioned about the philosophers’ belief in slavery, as if something in common brought together the jurists of fundamentalism and the philosophers of the Enlightenment in their stance on slavery, which is (time).