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Sexual slavery in Islam results from the permission in Islamic law for men to have sexual intercourse with the female slaves they own. Legal and literary documents show that those slaves used for sexual service were differentiated at slave markets from those who were intended mainly for domestic services. These slave girls were called "slaves for pleasure" (muṭʿa, ladhdha) or “slave-girls for sexual intercourse” (jawārī al-waṭ). Many female slaves became concubines to their owners and bore their children. Others were just used for sex before being transferred. The allowance for men to use contraception with female slaves assisted in thwarting unwanted pregnancies.

Early sources indicate that sexual slavery of women was viewed as both a male privilege and a privilege for the victor over the defeated. Islamic legal texts state that sexual pleasure was a male privilege over women. Men were permitted to have as many concubines as they could afford. Some men purchased female slaves, whereas Muslim soldiers in the early Islamic conquests were given female captives as a reward for military participation. As the slaves for pleasure were typically more expensive, they were a privilege for elite men.

Islamic legal sanction

In Islam, it is the male's ownership of a woman's sexual organs which makes sex licit. Islamic jurists also describe marriage as a kind of sale where the wife's private parts are purchased. However, there are some differences between the rights of a wife and female slave. The term suriyya (concubine) was used for female slaves with whom masters enjoyed sexual relations. It was not a secure status as the concubine could be traded as long as the master had not impregnated her.

Islamic law and Sunni ulama recognise two categories of concubines:

• War Captives:
  • These are originally free non-Muslims who are captured in battle. The entire population of a conquered territory can be enslaved, thus providing women who are otherwise rare on the battlefield. This paves the path for concubinage. The Muslim military commander is allowed to choose between unconditionally releasing, ransoming or enslaving war captives. If a person converted to Islam after being enslaved, their emancipation would be considered a pious act but not obligatory. Islamic law does not allow enslavement of free-born Muslims.
  • Islamic jurists permitted slave raiding and kidnapping of non-Muslims from Dar al Harb. South Asian scholars ruled that jihad was not needed to seize non-muslims nor was it necessary to invite them to Islam before seizing them. Raiders were free to take and enslave any non-muslim. However, Shafi'i jurists held that non-muslims who had formal pacts with Muslims were to be protected from enslavement.
• Slave-girls by descent:
  • These are born to slave mothers. Owners who would marry off their female slaves to someone else, would also be the masters of any children born from that marriage. Thus, Islamic law made slave-breeding possible.

The concubines were owned by their masters. The owners could obtain the slave-girls through purchase, capture or receive them as a gift. Islam permits men to have sexual intercourse with them and there is no limit on the number of concubines they could keep, unlike in polygamy where there is a limit of four wives. The master could also sell her or gift her to someone else. The female slave was essentially a chattel. An owner's slave could also be inherited by an heir. While she was under her master's control the slave girl could not have sex with anyone else.

The issue of consent

The classical Islamic jurists make an analogy between the marriage contract and sale of concubines. They state that the factor of male ownership in both is what makes sex lawful with both a wife and female slave.

The Hanafi scholars allow the husband to have sex with his wife against her will, as long as he has paid her dowry. The Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali schools do not forbid a husband from forcing his wife to have sex nor do they expressly say anything in favour of it. For all Sunni law schools the concept of marital rape is an oxymoron. According to the Islamic jurists, rape is either a kind of zina or a property crime, which by definition cannot be committed by a husband or master, since he is the owner of his wife and slave's sexual capacity.

There is no requirement in any of the Sunni law schools for the master to have his female slave's consent before he has sex with her. A slave, by legal definition, does not have the capacity to refuse consent. The Hanafis explicitly state that a man may force the woman to sexually satisfy him. It is mentioned in Kitab al-Maghazi that Uthman ibn Affan had sexual intercourse with a war captive, Zaynab bint Hayyan, and that she "detested" him.

Muhammad and his Companions took for granted the allowance of having sex with female war captives. The consent of the women was irrelevant. Some modern Muslim writers seek to defend Islam by claiming that Islam permits men to have sex with female captives as a way of integrating them into society. But in the case of the women from the Banu Mustaliq tribe who were captured by the Companions, their captors wanted to practice coitus interruptus during sex with them because if these women became pregnant their captors would not be able to return them in exchange for ransom. According to Kecia Ali, modern Muslim scholarship is silent on the question of what it means to accept that Muhammad implicitly permitted Muslim soldiers to rape the female captives.

All four law schools also have a consensus that the master can marry off his female slave to someone else without her consent. A master can also practice coitus interruptus during sex with his female slave without her permission. A man having sex with someone else's female slave constitutes zina. According to Imam Shafi'i if someone other than the master coerces a slave-girl to have sex, the rapist will be required to pay compensation to her master. If a man marries off his own female slave and has sex with her even though he is then no longer allowed to have sexual intercourse with her, that sex is still considered a lesser offence than zina and the jurists say he must not be punished. It is noteworthy that while formulating this ruling, it is the slave woman's marriage and not her consent which is an issue.

Sexual enslavement, the concept of honour and humiliation

Enslavement was intended both as a debt and form of humiliation. The sexual relationship between a concubine and her master was viewed as a debt of humiliation upon the woman until she gave birth to her master's child and the master's later death. Becoming a slave meant losing one's honour and one's rights. The ulama asserted that slavery was a divine punishment for not being a Muslim. In the words of az-Aziz b.Ahmad al-Bukhari "servitude is a vestige of obstinacy in refusing to believe in one God". Al-Sharif al-Jurjani stated that slavery in Islamic law was a "penalty for unbelief." An Algerian scholar who lived in Morocco, Ahmad al-Wansharisi, described the purpose of slavery as a "humiliation" for previous or continuing disbelief.

Umm Walad (slave mother)

Umm walad (mother of child) is a title given to a woman who gave birth to her master's child. If a female slave gave birth to her master's child she still remained a slave. However, the master would no longer be allowed to sell her. She would also become free once he died. The Sunni law schools disagree on the concubine's entitlement to this status. Many Maliki jurists ruled that the concubine becomes entitled to the status of umm walad even if her master does not acknowledge that the child is his. However, Hanafi jurists state that the umm walad status is contingent on the master acknowledging paternity of the child. If he does not accept that he is the father of the child then both the mother and child remain slaves.

Forced conversion for concubinage

Most traditional scholars require the conversion of a pagan slave-girl before sex, even through force if necessary. The majority of jurists do not allow sexual intercourse with Zoroastrian or pagan female captives. They require a conversion of these women before sex can take place. Ibn Hanbal allowed sexual intercourse with pagan and Zoroastrian female captives if they are forced to become Musim. Many traditions state that the female captives should be forced to accept Islam if they do not convert willingly. Hasan al-Basri narrates that Muslims would achieve this objective through various methods. They would order the Zoroastrian slave-girl to face the qiblah, utter the shahada and perform wudhu. Her captor would then have sex with her after one menstrual cycle. However, others add the condition that the slave-girl must be taught to pray and purify herself before the master can have sex with her.

The scholars significantly lower the threshold of conversion for the girls so that the master may be able to have sex with her as soon as possible. Only a few early scholars permitted sex with pagan and Zoroastrian slaves girls without conversion. Al-Mujahid and Safiid bin al-Musayyab say the master can still have sex with his Zoroastrian or pagan female slave even if she refuses to convert.

Imam Shafi'i claims that the Companions of Muhammad did not have sexual intercourse with Arab captives until they converted to Islam. But Ibn Qayyim argues that the Companions of the Prophet had sexual intercourse with Arab captives, such as the women of the Banu Mustaliq tribe, without making the sex conditional on the conversion of the women. He also asserted that no tradition required the conversion of a slave-girl before her master can have sex with her.

Sexual slavery in Pre-Islamic Arabia and Early Islam

The pre-Islamic Arabs used to practice female infanticide. They would bury their daughters alive upon birth. One of the motivations for fathers burying their daughters alive was the fear that when they grew up an enemy tribe could take them captive and dishonour them. A study of the Arab genealogical text Nasab Quraysh records the maternity of 3,000 Quraishi tribesmen, most of whom lived in between 500 and 750 CE. The data shows that there was a massive increase in the number of children born to concubines with the emergence of Islam. An analysis of the data found that no children were born from concubines before the generation of Muhammad's grandfather. There were a few cases of children being born from concubines before Muhammad but they were only in his father's and grandfather's generation. The analysis of the data thus showed that concubinage was not common before the time of Muhammad, but increased for men of his generation as a result of military conquests. Due to these conquests, a large number of female slaves were available to the conquerors. Although there were more births, the attitude towards children born from slaves still remained negative. Some early Arab Muslims discriminated against those people who were born fron non-Arab female slaves. However, there is no indication that these attitudes were ever acted upon.

Women of Hawazin

The Banu Thaqif and Banu Hawazin tribes decided to go to war against Muhammad under the leadership of Malik ibn Awf. Malik had the unfortunate idea of bringing the women, children and livestock with his army. He believed that by bringing their women and children with the army, all his soldiers would fight more courageously to defend them. When Muhammad was informed that the Hawazin had brought their women, children and livestock with them, he smiled and said "Inshaa Allah, all these will become the booty of war for the Muslims."

The Muslim army defeated the Hawazin and captured their women and children. The pagan soldiers fled. The war booty which the Muslims obtained was 24,000 camels, more than 40,000 goats, 160,000 dirhams worth of silver and 6,000 women and children. Muhammad waited ten days for the Hawazin to repent and reclaim their families and properties. However, none of them came. Finally, Muhammad distributed the war booty among the Muslim soldiers. The Muslim soldiers initially hesitated to have sex with the married female captives, until a verse was revealed giving them permission to have sex with them:

Imam Ahmad recorded that Abu Sa`id Al-Khudri said, "We captured some women from the area of Awtas who were already married, and we disliked having sexual relations with them because they already had husbands. So, we asked the Prophet about this matter, and this Ayah (verse) was revealed, Also (forbidden are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess). Consequently, we had sexual relations with these women."

Muhammad gave a girl called Zaynab bint Hayyan to Uthman ibn Affan. Uthman had sexual intercourse with her and she detested him. A woman was given to Abdurrahman ibn Awf. He resisted having sexual intercourse with her until her menses were over and then he had sex with her by virtue of her being his property. Jubayr bin Mu'tim also received a slave girl, who was not impregnated. Talha ibn Ubaydullah had sexual intercourse with the female captive given to him. Abu Ubaydah ibn Jarrah impregnated the slave girl he was given.

A delegation from the Hawazin tribe came to Muhammad and converted to Islam. Once they had given allegiance to Muhammad they asked about their captured families and property. They said "Those who you have brought as captives are our mothers, sisters and aunts and they alone bring disgrace to peoples. O Prophet, we ask for your kindness and gerosity. Free our women." Muhammad gave them a choice between reclaiming their property or their women and children. The Hawazin tribesmen responded that if they had to choose between reclaiming their property or their honour, they would choose their honour (their womenfolk).

Muhammad returned their women and children to them. The girl who had been given to Abdurrahman ibn Awf was given a choice to stay with him or return to her family. She chose her family. Likewise, the girls given to Talha, Uthman, Ibn Umar and Safwan bin Umayya were also returned to their families. However, the girl who had been given to Saad ibn Abi Waqas chose to stay with him. Uyanya had taken an old woman. Her son approached him to ransom her for 100 camels. The old woman asked her son why would he pay a 100 camels when Uyanya would leave her anyway without taking ransom. This angered Uyanya.

Overview of slave-concubines' experiences

Becoming a concubine for her master could translate to gaining security and standing and other material benefits. If she bore her master a child and if he accepted paternity she could obtain the position of an umm walad. If she bacame an umm walad her daily life would probably resemble that of a free wife, but with a lower position. There are many instances of slave concubines in Muslim history who rose to positions of great influence. However, this position did not lighten the suffering that the slaves experienced in their lives. Many of them had been forcibly taken from their homes and permanently separated from their families. They were displayed at slave markets and humiliated and subjected to forced labour, forced marriages and sex.

Many slaves went through a period of distress, when they were first enslaved, which was typically a violent occasion. Between the 800s and 1200s the four main ways to enslave a person were kidnapping, slave raids, piracy, and poverty. Islamic law only gave female slaves protection from sexual exploitation by anyone who was not their owner. The owner was obliged by Islamic law to provide his female slaves with food, clothing, and shelter. The disciplinary hitting of the slave was considered to be for the master's own good. A prophetic hadith permitted corporal punishment and Ibn al-Jawzi stated that both slaves and wives should put up with mistreatment. The slave owner was also encouraged to not use excessive violence. While some idealise the lives of elite female slaves, many in practice suffered from abuse by both their owners and others. Because bearing her master's child could lead to freedom for a slave-girl, some female slaves had a motive to have sex with their owners. This angered the master's wives who would often punish such slaves. The most regular opposition to concubinage came from free wives. Early moral stories depicted wives as victims of concubinage.

The female slaves were traded as chattel. Because female slaves were traded among men and many of them had been owned by up to thirty men consecutively, they had a great deal of knowledge about sexual intercourse and were able to tutor elite adolescent males about sexual techniques. Slave girls were seen as sexual commodities and were not allowed to cover themselves. Before being bought many women's bodies were examined. The Hanafis allowed potential male buyers to uncover and touch a female slave's arms, breasts and legs. Umar prohibited slave girls from resembling free women and forbade them from covering their hair. Slave women did not veil and like prostitutes were exempt from a lot of the gender restrictions upon upper-class women. If a slave fornicated she also received less punishment than a respectable woman.

The most fortunate female captives were women like Safiyya and Juwayriah who were freed from slavery and married Muhammad. The lives of female captives depended on whether her tribe could ransom her or if her captor chose to marry her. If neither of the two happened such women suffered because their captors owned their bodies and lives. If they were unattractive the captors would keep them as servants and if they were beautiful the captors were allowed to keep them as their concubines. The captors were also allowed to sell her. Due to this some female captives committed suicide. There is an account of a woman called Sakhra, who was a female captive from the Banu Amir tribe. She committed suicide by throwing herself to the ground from a camel.

Socio-economic variations in historical concubinage

While Muslim cultures acknowledged concubinage, as well as a polygamy, as a man's legal right, in reality these were usually practiced only by the royalty and elite sections of society. The most highly desired slave-concubines in the Muslim world were not African women, but white girls, typically of Circassian or Georgian origin. However, they were very expensive. The large-scale availability of women for sexual slavery had a strong influence on Muslim thought, even though the "harem" culture of the elite was not mirrored by most of the Muslim population.

Abbasid Caliphate

The royals and nobles during the Abbasid Caliphate kept large numbers of concubines. The Caliph Harun al-Rashid possessed hundreds of concubines. The Caliph al-Mutawakkil was reported to own 4,000 concubines.

Andalusia

In Muslim society in general, monogamy was common because keeping multiple wives and concubines was not affordable for many households. The practice of keeping concubines was common in the Muslim upper class. Muslim rulers preferred having children with concubines because it helped them avoid the social and political complexities arising from marriage and kept their lineages separate from the other lineages in society. One Umayyad ruler, Abd al-Rahman III, was known to have possessed more than 6000 concubines.

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman rulers would keep hundreds, even thousands, of concubines. Female war captives were often turned into concubines for the Ottoman rulers. Ambitious slave families associated with the palace would also frequently offer their daughters up as concubines. Slave traders would abduct and sell Circassian girls. Circassian and Georgian women were systematically trafficked to eastern harems. This practice lasted into the 1890s. Fynes Moryson noted that some Muslim men would keep their wives in various cities while others would keep them in a single house and would keep adding as many women as their lusts permitted. He wrote that "They buy free women to be their wives, or they buy "conquered women" at a lesser price to be their concubines." Ottoman society had provided avenues for men who wished to have extramarital sex. They could either marry more wives while wealthy men could possess slaves and use them for sex.

Since the late 1300s Ottoman sultans would only permit heirs born from concubines to inherit their throne. Each concubine was only permitted to have one son. Once a concubine would bear a son she would spend the rest of her life plotting in favour of her son. If her son was to successfully become the next Sultan, she would become an unquestionable ruler. After the 1450s the Sultans stopped marrying altogether. Because of this there was great surprise when Sultan Sulayman fell in love with his concubine and married her. An Ottoman Sultan would have sexual relationships with only some women from his large collection of slave girls. This meant that a lot of the concubines were not given a family life if they were not desired by the Sultan. This effectively meant these women would have to spend the rest of their lives in virtual imprisonment. Some of these women would break the sharia by having homosexual relations.

Research into Ottoman records show that polygamy was absent or rare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Concubinage and polygamy were quite uncommon outside the elite. Goitein says that monogamy was a feature of the "progressive middle class" Muslims. Elite men were required to leave their wives and concubines if they wished to marry an Ottoman princess. The Mamluk governor of Baghdad, Umar Pasha, died childless because his wife prevented him from having a concubine. Writing in the early 18th century, one visitor noted that from among the Ottoman courtiers, only the imperial treasurer kept female slaves for sex and he was perceived as lustful by others. Edward Lane, who visited Egypt in the 1830s, noted that very few Egyptian men were polygamous and most of the men with only one wife did not keep concubines, usually for the sake of domestic peace. However, some kept Abyssinian slaves who were less costly than maintaining a wife. While white slave-girls would be in the keep of wealthy Turks, the concubines kept by upper and middle class Egyptians were usually Abyssinians.

Indian subcontinent

Ovington, a voyager who wrote about his journey to Surat, stated that Muslim men had an "extraordinary liberty for women" and kept as many concubines as they could afford. Akbar had a harem of at least 5000 women and Aurangzeb's harem was even larger. The nobles in India could possess as many concubines as they wanted. Ismail Quli Khan, a Mughal noble, possessed 1200 girls. Another nobleman, Said, had many wives and concubines from whom he fathered 60 sons in just four years. Francisco Pelseart describes that noblemen would visit a different wife each night, who would welcome him along with the slave girls. If he felt attracted to any slave-girl he would call her to him for his enjoyment while the wife would not dare to show her anger. The wife would punish the slave-girl later.

Lower class Muslims were generally monogamous. Since they hardly had any rivals, women of the lower and middle class sections of society fared better than upper-class women who had to contend with their husbands' other wives, slave-girls and concubines. Shireen Moosvi has discovered Muslim marriage contracts from Surat, dating back to the 1650s. One stipulation in these marriage contracts was that the husband was not to marry a second wife. Another stipulation was that the husband would not take a slave girl. These stipulations were common among middle-class Muslims in Surat. If the husband took a second wife the first wife would gain an automatic right of divorce, thus indicating the preference for monogamy among the merchants of Surat. If the husband took a slave-girl the wife could sell, free or give away that slave-girl, thereby separating the female slave from her husband.

There is no evidence that concubinage was practiced in Kashmir where, unlike the rest of the medieval Muslim world, slavery was abhorred and not widespread. Except for the Sultans, there is no evidence that the Kashmiri nobility or merchants kept slaves. In medieval Punjab the Muslim peasants, artisans, small tradesmen, shopkeepers, clerks and minor officials could not afford concubines or slaves. But the Muslim nobility of medieval Punjab, such as the Khans and Maliks, kept concubines and slaves. Female slaves were used for concubinage in many wealthy Muslim households of Punjab.

Colonial court cases from 19th century Punjab show that the courts recognised the legitimate status of children born to Muslim zamindars (landlords) from their concubines. The Nawab of Bahawalpur, according to a Pakistani journalist, kept 390 concubines. He only had sex with most of them once. Marathas captured during their wars with the Mughals had been given to the soldiers of the Mughal Army from the Baloch Bugti tribe. The descendants of these captives became known as "Mrattas" and their women were traditionally used as concubines by the Bugtis. They became equal citizens of Pakistan in 1947.

History of sexual enslavement

Sexual enslavement of non-Muslim women by Muslim men

In Andalus the concubines of the Muslim elite were usually non-Muslim women from the Christian areas of the Iberian peninsula. Many of these had been captured in raids or wars and were then gifted to the elite Muslim soldiers as war booty or were sold as slaves in Muslim markets. Berber pirates trafficked French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese women to North Africa. Christian females were enslaved more than any other religious demographic. It is difficult to track down the experienced of European female slaves because they would have accounted for 5 percent of the slaves trafficked to North Africa and even fewer women were freed from slavery than men between the 16th and 19th centuries. During those centuries, at least 50,000 to 75,000 European girls were forcibly taken and most of them never returned home. One male English slave narrated an account of a young English girl who was given as concubine to the Moroccan king, Mulley Ismail. She tried to resist his sexual advances. He then ordered his black slaves to whip and torture her until she gave in.

Enslaved European men also narrated accounts of women who "apostasised." The life stories of these women were similar to Roxelana, who rose from being a Christian slave-girl into the chief advisor of her husband, Sultan Suleyman of the Ottoman Empire. There are several accounts of such women of humble birth who associated with powerful Muslim men. While the associations were initially forced, the captivity gave women a taste for access to power. Diplomats wrote with disappointment about apostate women who wielded political influence over their masters-turned-husbands. Christian male slaves also recorded the presence of authoritative convert women in Muslim families. Christian women who converted to Islam and then became politically assertive and tyrannical were regarded by Europeans as traitors to the faith. Enslaved Christian women lost all hope of returning home through ransom once they entered a Muslim household. The women were forced to enter a life of sexual subjugation to their new husbands. There is also evidence that many "privileged" female captives wanted to escape if they were given the chance. There is an account of an Irish mother who attacked her Algerian male captors when she learnt that her enslavement meant that she was going to be separated from her children forever. She was later subdued.

The Muslim Sultanates in India before the Mughal Empire captured large numbers of non-Muslims from the Deccan. The Muslim masters would impregnate their non-Muslim slaves and the children they fathered would be raised as Muslims. Non-Muslim girls were socially ostracised by their own communities for the sexual relationships Muslim soldiers and nobles would have with them, therefore, many of them preferred to convert to Islam. When Muslims would surround Rajput citadels, the Rajput women would commit jauhar (collective suicide) to save themselves from being dishonoured by their enemies. In 1296 approximately 16,000 women committed jauhar to save themselves from Alauddin Khalji's army. Rajput women would commit it when they saw that defeat and enslavement was imminent for their people. In 1533 in Chittorgarh nearly 13,000 women and children killed themselves instead of being taken captive by Bahadur Shah's army. For them sexual intercourse was the worst form of humiliation. Rajputs practised jauhar mainly when their opponents were Muslims.

The womenfolk of enemies were captured both to humiliate their men and to use the beautiful maidens for various purposes. Beautiful female captives were mostly used for sex. After the period of Akbar's rule enslavement of women continued to be used to punish their men. Jahangir explicitly ordered the destruction of the domain of the rebellious zamindar of Jaitpur and the capture of his women. Thus, his daughters and wives were captured and brought to the harem. Aurangzeb would enslave rebellious peasants. Manucci records that, during Mughal rule, when faujdars would enter rebellious villages they would take the most attractive girls and present them to the king. The rest would either be sold or kept for themselves. Ahmad Shah Abdali's army captured Maratha women to fill Afghan harems. The Sikhs attacked Abdali and rescued 2,2000 Maratha girls.

Sexual enslavement of Muslim women by non-Muslim men

Muslim historical sources see the capture and concubinage of non-Muslim women as legitimate violence against women. However, the same practice was criticised when Christians captured Muslim women. In the eleventh century Christians began an aggressive policy towards Muslims in Andalus. Christian military leaders captured Muslim women and included eight year old Muslim virgins as part of their war booty. When Granada passed from Muslim rule to Christian rule, thousands of Moorish women were enslaved and trafficked to Europe. Muslim women were kept as concubines by Christian men.

For both Christians and Muslims, the capture of women from the other religion was a show of power, while the capture and sexual use of their own women by men of the other religion was a cause of shame. Many women would convert to their master's religion. In one case an Algerian woman, Fatima, was captured and enslaved. She converted to Christianity and refused the ransom which the Turks had sent for her release. Other enslaved Muslim women had more "harrowing" experiences in being converted to Christianity.

In India, the Hindu elites and rulers would take revenge by taking Muslim women into their own harems. Rana Kumbha captured Muslim women. Under Medini Rai in Malwa, the Rajputs took Muslim and Sayyid women as slave girls. According to Manucci, the Marathas and Sikhs would also capture Muslim women because 'the Mahomedans had interfered with Hindu women.'

Sexual enslavement of Muslim women by Muslim men

Islamic jurists had completely forbidden the enslavement of Muslims. However, Muslims have still at times enslaved Muslims from other ethnic groups. The Umayyad caliph Muhammad II of Córdoba gave orders that the Berber houses in Cordoba be looted and that Berber women be captured and sold in Dar-al Banat. In another case the Andalusian ruler of Malaga, Ibn Hassun, unsuccessfully attempted to kill his female relatives before the Berber Almohads could capture them. He committed suicide but his daughters survived. These girls were then sold and some of them were taken as concubines by Almohad military commanders.

In India attitudes towards women ignored their religious background if they belonged to enemies or rebels. Ferishta narrates that Baban captured female supporters of the rebellious noble Tughral. The atrocities of Alauddin Khilji on women have been documented in Tabaqat-i-Akbari by Nizamuddin Ahmad. Khusrau Khan humiliated Sultan Qutb ud din Mubarak by marrying his widow and allowing Hindus to take away his other female relatives. Abu Fazl records atrocities by Kamran on the female relatives of Humayun's supporters. Sher Shah was reported to have sold the wives of rebellious zamindars.

Kurds in the Ottoman-Persian frontier would enslave both Shias and Yazidis. The Ottoman jurist Ebu Su'ud upheld the permissibility of wars against the Shia but he forbade the taking of Shias as captives. In particular, he also declared that sexual intercourse with Shia female captives was unlawful. However, he endorsed enslavement of Shias in a later fatwa. In 1786-7 an Ottoman general enslaved the wives and children of Mamluk emirs. In the region of modern day Chad, Muslim women and children from Bagirmi were enslaved by the ruler of Wadai around 1800.

Modern Muslim attitudes

While classical Islamic law permits sexual slavery, the vast majority of Muslims today oppose it. This contradiction is demonstrated by Ahmed Hassan, a twentieth century translator of Sahih Muslim, who prefaced the translated chapter on marriage by claiming that Islam only allows sex within marriage. This was despite the fact that the same chapter included many references to Muslim men having sex with slave-girls. Most ordinary Muslims ignore the existence of slavery and concubinage in Islamic history and texts. Most also ignore the millennia old consensus permitting it and a few writers even claim that those Islamic jurists who allowed sexual relations outside marriage with female slaves were mistaken. For example, Muhammad Asad, rejected the notion of any sexual relationship outside of marriage. Asifa Quraishi personally concludes that she is "not convinced that sex with one's slave is approved by the Quran in the first place", claiming that reading the respective Quranic section has led her to "different conclusions than that held by the majority of classical muslim jurists."

Asifa Quraishi-Landes also observes that most Muslims believe that sex is only permissible within marriage and they ignore the permission for keeping concubines in Islamic jurisprudence. Furthermore, the majority of modern Muslims are not aware that Islamic jurists had made an analogy between the marriage contract and sale of concubines and many modern Muslims would be offended by the idea that a husband owns his wife's private parts under Islamic law. A modern scholar on Islamic legal history made an assertion that the Quran does not allow non-consensual sex between masters and female slaves. However, Kecia Ali states that this view is not found anywhere in the pre-modern Islamic legal tradition.

Abolition

Colonial governments and independent Muslim states restricted slave raids and the slave trade in response to pressure from Western liberals and weak Muslim abolitionist movements. Eliminating slavery was an even more difficult task. Many Muslim governments refused to sign the international treaties against slavery which the League of Nations was co-ordinating since 1926. This refusal was also an issue at the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and at the 1956 Anti-Slavery Convention. It was mostly because of the pressure from European colonial powers and economic changes that slavery was abolished. White the institution was eventually abolished, there was no internally well-developed Islamic narrative against slave-ownership.

A group of ulama led by Waji al-Din Saharanpuri gave a fatwa in the 1830s that it was lawful to enslave men and women "who sought refuge" after battle. Sayyed Imdad Ali Akbarabadi led ulama in publishing a lot of material in defence of traditional kinds of slavery. Sayyid Muhammad Askari condemned the idea of abolishing slavery. A conservative Deobandi scholar published a book in Lahore in 1946 in which he denied that the Prophet had ever encouraged the abolition of slavery. Armenians and other Christian rebels who had been enslaved in World War I were considered to be "people of the book" who had violated their contract. Hence, one Palestinian shaykh ruled that Muslims could buy those Christian girls from the slave markets in the Levant.

In the 19th century some ulama in Cairo refused to allow slave girls, who had been freed under secular law, to marry unless they had obtained permission from their owner. Most ulama in West Africa opposed abolition. They ruled that concubinage was still allowed with women of slave descent. In 1911 one Qadi ruled that no government can free a slave without the owner's permission. Spencer Trimingham observed that masters continued to take concubines from slave families because the descendants of slaves are still enslaved under religious law even if they have been freed according to secular law.

After 1947, the ulama in Pakistan called for the revival of slavery. The wish to enslave enemies and take concubines was noted in the Munir Commission Report. When Zia ul Haq came to power in 1977 and started applying sharia, some argued that the reward for freeing slaves meant that slavery should not be abolished "since to do so would be to deny future generations the opportunity to commit the virtuous deed of freeing slaves." Mufti Taqi Usmani states that slavery and turning captives into concubines is still allowed by Islam. However, he states that due to the fact that most Muslim countries have signed international treaties which prohibit enslavement, the Muslim countries should not enslave prisoners of war as long as other nations also refrain from enslavement.

A lot of ulama in Mauritania did not recognise the legitimacy of abolishing slavery. In 1981 a group of ulama argued that only owners could free their slaves and that the Mauritanian government was breaking a fundamental religious rule. In 1997 one Mauritanian scholar stated that abolition:

"is contrary to the teachings of the fundamental text of Islamic law, the Koran... amounts to the expropriation from Muslims of their gods, goods that were acquired legally. The state, if it is Islamic, does not have the right to seize my house, my wife or my slave."

In response to the enslavement of Yazidi women by ISIS the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Fiqh Council of North America claimed that no scholar disputes the abolition of slavery was one of the aims of Islam. However, Kecia Ali finds this claim dishonest. While there was definitely an “emancipatory ethic” (encouragement for freeing slaves) in Islamic jurisprudence, slavery was never actually abolished. The translator of Ibn Kathir's treatise on slaves, Umar ibn Sulayman Hafyan, felt obliged to explain why he published a slave treatise when slavery no longer exists. He states that just because slavery no longer exists does not mean that the laws about slavery have been abrogated. Moreover, slavery was only abolished half a century ago and could return in the future. His comments were a reflection of the predicament modern Muslims find themselves in.

Modern manifestations

Middle East

Armenians underwent a genocide in the Ottoman Empire, which climaxed around 1915-16. It has been accepted as the first genocide of the 20th century by scholars of genocide and historians of the late Ottoman period. The Ottomans had intended to destroy the Armenians. The Turks also raped Armenian women. Derderuan notes that after being separated from their men who were killed, the Armenian women and children were raped, forcibly converted to Islam and subjected to sexual slavery. Eliz Sanasarian also notes the involvement of Turkish women in perpetrating violence against Armenian women by selling them into sexual slavery. Women who were deemed beautiful were sold as sex slaves to military officials. The remaining women would be beaten and raped. The women were also often forced into prostitution or forcibly married with non-Armenians. Kidnapped Armenian girls were sorted on the basis of their age, beauty and marital status. The "first choice" was given to high-level Ottoman officials. Outside Mezre, purchasers asked doctors to check the girls for diseases and to verify their virginity. One German reported the sale of girls in Ras al-Ayn and testified that the policemen carried out the trade in girls. A few slave markers were set up in the vicinity of government buildings while Armenian captive sex slaves were kept in the Red Crescent Hospital in Trebizond.

A large number of free Baloch women were kidnapped in the first half of the 20th century by slave traders and sold across the Persian Gulf. For example, Yuri bint Lapek was abducted after raiders killed her husband. Another notable case was that of Marzuq who was kidnapped from Makran and sold in Sharjah. Marzuq was purchased by Rashid bin Ali who had sex with her. When she became pregnant he married her off to another Baluchi to avoid taking responsibility for the child. Many slave owners arranged marriages for their female slaves, just so they would not have to take responsibility for impregnating their slaves.

South Asia

The most widespread raptio in modern times was the kidnapping of tens of thousands of girls during the Partition of India. These women were kept as captives or forced wives and concubines. For instance, one account from Kirpal Singh mentions how Pakistani soldiers in Kamoke took 50 Hindu girls after killing most of their men. After being taken, Hindu and Sikh girls would be forcibly converted to Islam to be "worthy" of their captors' harems. Pashtun tribesmen captured a large number of non-Muslim girls from Kashmir and sold them as slave-girls in West Punjab. In Mirpur, many of the Hindu women captured by Pakistani soldiers committed jauhar, the old practice of Hindu women to escape Muslim soldiers. Eyewitness and official accounts describe how Hindu girls in West Punjab and Mirpur would be distributed among the Muslim Military, National Guards, police and ruffians. The non-muslim girls from Punjab and Kashmir were sold in different parts of Pakistan and the Middle East and were forced into concubinage. They were kept like slaves, forcibly converted to Islam as soon as they fell into Muslim hands and used for sexual pleasure. During the fighting in Kashmir, the government put 600 Hindu women in the Kunja camp in West Punjab The Pakistani army used all of them before returning them to India. Gopalaswami Ayyangar accused the Pakistani government of holding 2000 Hindu women.

An even larger number of Muslim women were taken by Sikh jathas. Muslim girls in East Punjab would be distributed among the jathas, Indian military and police and many were then sold multiple times. The Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan complained that Muslim women in Jammu had been taken as sex-slaves by Sikhs. The Maharaja of Patiala was reported to be holding a Muslim girl from a reputable family. Meo men were expelled to Pakistan and their lands taken. About the conflict with Meos, a captain from the Alwar State Army would later recall "We took away the women. That was the system." The governments of India and Pakistan later agreed to restore Hindu and Sikh women to India and Muslim women to Pakistan. Many women feared how they would be treated by their relatives if they returned, so they refused to return and chose to convert to the religion of their captors. However, most of those women who returned were accepted by their fathers and husbands. Some girls fell in love with their captors and consequently did not want to return.

During the 1971 war Mullahs and a West Pakistani fatwa declared that Bengali Hindu women could be treated as war booty. The Pakistani elite blamed the Hindus for the revolt so army officers operated with an intent to drive out the Hindus. The Pakistani Army and their allies mostly raped Hindu women. Pakistani soldiers kept female captives as sex-slaves inside their military camps and cantonments. The rape of Hindu captive girls was part of a policy to "dilute" their "religious community's bloodline."

In Afghanistan the Taliban has committed atrocities against the Shia population. One of its atrocities has been to enslave Shia Hazara women and use them for concubinage. The Taliban either took beautiful young women from other ethnic groups as concubines or forcibly married them. In 1998 eyewitnesses in Mazar e Sharif reported the abduction of hundreds of Shia girls who were used by Taliban fighters as concubines. The number of Hazara women taken as concubines by the Taliban was 400.

North Africa

The evidence strongly demonstrates that the government of Sudan had revived slavery and made it as important as it was in the previous century. The Sudanese army had a central role in the revival of slavery. The slavery in Sudan was a result of the conflict between North Sudan's Arab Muslims and South Sudan's black Christians. Christian prisoners of war in the Sudanese civil war were often enslaved. The female captives were used sexually. Their Muslim captors asserted that Islamic law allowed them. Sudan's Arab government had recruited Arab troops. One component consisted of millitias and the other component of their forces, called the Popular Defense Forces, consisted of the Sudanese Army. This was a mainly jihadi force fighting the SPLA which they considered to be an "enemy of Islam and the Arabs." Arab raiders destroyed black Christian villages, executed all their males and then took away the women and children as slaves.

Regular soldiers also abducted women and children. The Sudanese government allowed soldiers to take booty to supplement their low salaries. The first slave raid on the Dinka took place on February 1986. Two thousand women and children were taken. In a second raid on February 1987 one thousand women and children were taken. Once the raiders acquired enough booty they would distribute the captives between their selves and their families. Slave raids continued every year after 1985. Dinka girls kept in Arab households were used as sex-slaves. Some of them were sold to Arab men in Libya, It has been alleged that slave markets were set up in Sudan. Western visitors noted that five or even more slaves could be bought for one rifle. Near the peak of the civil war in 1989 female black slaves were sold for 90 dollars at the slave markets. Several years later, when there was an abundance of slaves, the price of an average female black slave had dropped to $15. Many Western organisations traveled to Sudan with funds collected for the purpose of purchasing these slaves to emancipate them.

See also

• Islamic views on slavery
• Polygamy in Islam
• Rape in Islamic law
• What your right hands possess

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• Groups practising sexual slavery
• Concubinage
• Wartime sexual violence
• Violence against women
• Slavery