Sexual slavery in Islam

In traditional juristic understanding, it is the male's ownership of a woman's sexual organs which makes sex licit in Islam. Islamic jurists 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.[6] While a free Muslim woman was considered to be a man's honour, a slave-girl was merely property and not a man's honour.[7] 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.[8]

Islamic law and Sunni ulama recognise two categories of concubines:[1][2]

• War Captives:
  • These are originally free non-Muslims who are captured in battle.[1][9] 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.[10] The Muslim military commander is allowed to choose between unconditionally releasing, ransoming or enslaving war captives.[5] If a person converted to Islam after being enslaved, their emancipation would be considered a pious act but not obligatory.[2] Islamic law does not allow enslavement of free-born Muslims.[11]
  • Islamic jurists permitted slave raiding and kidnapping of non-Muslims from Dar al Harb.[12] 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.[13] However, Islamic jurists held that non-Muslims who lived in areas which had formal pacts with Muslims were to be protected from enslavement.[12]
  • Non-Muslims residents of an Islamic state who fail to pay jizya or break their contract with the state can also be enslaved.[14][15] However, Muslim rebels can not be enslaved.[16]
• Slave-girls by descent:
  • These are born to slave mothers.[1][2] Owners who would marry off their female slaves to someone else, would also be the masters of any children born from that marriage.[17] Thus, Islamic law made slave-breeding possible.[18]

The concubines were owned by their masters. The owners could obtain the slave-girls through purchase, capture or receive them as a gift.[1] 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.[19] 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.[20] While she was under her master's control the slave girl could not have sex with anyone else.[21] Though, the fate of a slave girl was controlled by her master, slave girls did have some protection. No one could rape or attack slave girls. Male slaves who raped female slaves were punished. However, the punishment for their rape was less severe than for free women and their master received an amount equivalent to their loss in value. On the other hand, punishments for slaves were less severe than those for free people, in cases of adultery. [22]

Classical Islamic family law generally recognized marriage and the creation of a master–slave relationship as the two legal instruments rendering permissible sexual relations between people and classical Islamic jurists made 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.[6][23] Responding to a query about whether a man can be forced to have intercourse or if its obligatory for him to have intercourse with his wife or concubine, Imam Al-Shafiʽi stated "if he has only one wife or an additional concubine with whom he has intercourse, he is commanded to fear Allah Almighty and to not harm her in regards to intercourse, although nothing specific is obligated upon him. He is only obligated to provide what benefits her such as financial maintenance, residence, clothing, and spending the night with her. As for intercourse, its position is one of pleasure and no one can be forced into it ."[24]

Hina Azam notes that in Islamic law "coercion within marriage or concubinage may be repugnant, but it remained fundamentally legal."[25] According to Kecia Ali, "Jurists define zina as vaginal intercourse between a man and a woman who is neither his wife nor his slave. Though seldom discussed, forced sex with one’s wife might (or, depending on the circumstances, might not) be an ethical infraction, and conceivably even a legal one like assault if physical violence is involved. One might speculate that the same is true of forced sex with a slave. This scenario is never, however, illicit in the jurists’ conceptual world".[26] The book Al Fiqh 'ala Al Madhahib Al Arba'ah (Islamic Jurisprudence According To The Four Sunni Schools) says that according to the followers of Imam Abu Hanifah, men own the right to sexual pleasure and are allowed to force the woman sexually.[27] Kecia Ali also states that the Hanafis allowed the husband to forcibly have sex with his wife if she didn't have a legitimate reason to refuse sex. She says this particular Hanafi position was not prevalent in other schools of thought [26] who neither authorized forced sex in marriage nor penalized it.[28]

Another viewpoint is of Rabb Intisar, who argues that according to the Quran, sexual relations with a concubine are subject to both parties' consent.[29] Similarly Tamara Sonn, claims that consent of a concubine is necessary for sexual relations.[30] However, Kecia Ali calls such assertions "surprising" [31] and notes that such views are not found in any pre-modern classical Islamic legal text, as there is no discussion about the topic of consent.[31] Jonathan Brown argues that the modern conception of sexual consent only came about since the 1970s, so it makes little sense to project it backwards onto classical Islamic law.[32] Brown notes that premodern Muslim jurists rather applied the harm principle to judge sexual misconduct, including between a master and concubine.[33] He further states that historically, concubines could complain to judges if they were being sexually abused [34] and that scholars like al-Bahūtī require a master to set his concubine free if he injures her during sex.[34] However, Brown's assessment of the similarity of the harm principle in Islamic legal tradition and the notion of consent in modern law, is not widely shared by his peers. Sadaf Jaffer criticized Brown and his questioning of "whether Muslim wives have recourse to the idea of sexual consent in their relationships with their husbands".[35] According to Jaffer, Brown's position also "does not address the issue of a concubine’s lack of legal consent throughout much of Islamic history".[35]

According to Kecia Ali "Did a man who wanted to have sex with his own female slave need to obtain her consent for that relationship to be licit according to early Muslim jurists? Any argument must be largely from silence, as the sources simply do not discuss the issue. I recall no instance in any Maliki, Hanafi, Shafiʿi, or Hanbali text from the 8th to 10th centuries where anyone asserts that an owner must obtain his female slave's consent before having sex with her. Indeed, I am aware of no case where anyone asks whether her consent is necessary or even asserts that it is not required. The mere absence of discussion proves nothing, of course. Sometimes things escape mention because they are universally accepted. What jurists take for granted—particularly across madhhab boundaries—is often more telling than what they state explicitly. One could perhaps argue that slaves’ consent to sexual relationships with their masters was such an obvious requirement that no one thought it necessary to mention".[36]

However, Kecia Ali also adds "It strains logic to suggest that an enslaved woman is subject to being married off without her consent or against her will to whomever her owner chooses but that he cannot have sex with her himself without her consent. It is even more of a stretch to accept that the need for consent within concubinage was so obviously a condition for its legitimacy that no one considered it necessary to say so, but that the absence of the need for a slave's consent to her marriage required explicit affirmation."[36]

Some modern Muslim writers seek to defend the notion, by claiming that Islam permits men to have sex with female captives as a way of integrating them into society.[37] 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 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 implications of this episode and only considers the event in the context of discussing contraceptive practices.[38]

All four law schools also have a consensus that the master can marry off his female slave to someone else without her consent.[39] A master can also practice coitus interruptus during sex with his female slave without her permission.[39] A man having sex with someone else's female slave constitutes zina.[40] 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.[41] 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.[40]

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.[42] Becoming a slave meant that the person was stripped of their honour.[43] 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.[10]

Umm walad (mother of child) is a title given to a woman who gave birth to her master's child.[1] 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.[44]

Most traditional scholars require the conversion of a pagan slave-girl before sex, even through force if necessary.[45] 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 coerced to become Muslim. Many traditions state that the female captives should be coerced 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.[46]

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.[47] 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.[48]

Imam Shafi'i claims that the Companions of Muhammad did not have sexual intercourse with Arab captives until they converted to Islam.[49] 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.[50]

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.[51][52] 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.[53] The data shows that there was a massive increase in the number of children born to concubines with the emergence of Islam.[53] An analysis of the information found that no children were born from concubines before the generation of Muhammad's grandfather.[54] 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.[55]

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.[56] 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.[57] One of the earliest surviving Christian texts from the Islamic period in Syria, dated by scholars to around 640 CE, describes the rise of Islam in this way:

They take the wife away from her husband and slay him like a sheep. They throw the babe from her mother and drive her into slavery; the child calls out from the ground and the mother hears, yet what is she to do?...They separate the children from the mother like the soul from within the body, and she watches as they divide her loved ones from off her lap, two of them go to two masters, herself to another[...] Her children cry out in lament, their eyes hot with tears. She turns to her loved ones, milk pouring forth from her breast: "Go in peace, my darlings, and may God accompany you."

— Seeing Islam As Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Robert G. Hoyland[58]

However, according to the Hadith the sayings of the Prophet Muhammed, he disliked separating war captives from their relatives:

Abu Ayyub narrates: That he heard the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) say: "Whoever separates between a mother and her child, then Allah will separate between him and his beloved on the Day of Judgement." [Abu 'Eisa said:] There is something on this topic from 'Ali. This is acted upon according to the people of knowledge among the Companions of the Prophet (ﷺ) and others. They dislike separating the captives, the mother and her child, the son and the father, and brothers.[59]

Concubinage was not a common practice among the civilizations of the Late Antique Near East. Its expansion under the Umayyad period was motivated mainly by the Umayyad tribal desire for sons rather than sanction for it in the Quran and Prophetic practice.[60] Concubinage was allowed among the Sassanian elites and the Mazdeans but the children from such unions were not necessarily regarded as legitimate.[61] The position of Jewish communities is unclear although slave concubinage is mentioned in Biblical texts. Apparently, the practice had declined long before Muhammad. Some Jewish scholars during Islamic rule would forbid Jews from having sex with their female slaves.[62] Leo III in his letter to Umar II accused Muslims of "debauchery" with their concubines who they would sell "like dumb cattle" after having tired of using them.[63]

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 became 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.[78] If someone bought a woman, he could not separate her child from her until the stipulated age, which according to Ibn Abi Zayd was when the child became six years old.[79]

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.[78] The disciplinary hitting of the slave was considered to be for the master's own good.[80] A prophetic hadith permitted corporal punishment and Ibn al-Jawzi stated that both slaves and wives should put up with physical mistreatment.[81] 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.[78] 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.[82] The most regular opposition to concubinage came from free wives. Early moral stories depicted wives as victims of concubinage.[83]

The female slaves were traded as chattel.[78] 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.[82] Slave girls were seen as sexual commodities and were not allowed to cover themselves.[84] 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.[85] Umar prohibited slave girls from resembling free women and forbade them from covering their hair.[86] Slave women did not veil and like prostitutes were exempt from a lot of the gender restrictions upon upper-class women.[87] While free women were regulated by higher standards of modesty, most Islamic jurists stated that female slaves were not required to cover their arms, hair or legs below the knees. Some did not require them to cover their chest either.[88] If a slave fornicated she also received less punishment than a respectable woman.[87]

The most fortunate female captives were women like Safiyya and Juwayriah who were freed from slavery and married Muhammad. In their regard, Levy notes that "Captive women might be treated with great regard and consideration during the prophet's time" [89] 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.[21] 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.[90] According to Muslim sources, Muhammad was worried about such captive slave women due to which he reported "to treat them kindly and fear God in their dealings with them" in his farewell sermon. [91]

While Muslim cultures acknowledged concubinage, as well as polygamy, as a man's legal right, in reality, these were usually practiced only by the royalty and elite sections of society.[92] 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.[93] 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.[94]

Marriage was not the only legal way to have sex in Muslim societies prior to the end of slavery in the 19th and 20th centuries.[154] Colonial governments and independent Muslim states restricted slave raids and the slave trade in response to pressure from Western liberals and nascent 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.[155] It was mostly because of the pressure from European colonial powers and economic changes that slavery was abolished. While the institution was eventually abolished, there was no internally well-developed Islamic narrative against slave-ownership.[156]

There is an academic consensus that the Islamic legal sanction for slavery prevented the emergence of any anti-slavery movement in the Muslim world. But William Clarence-Smith has argued that "Islamic abolitionism" was indigenous and rooted in Islamic tradition. However, Ehud R. Toledano states that abolitionist views were very rare in Muslim societies[157] and that there was no indigenous abolitionist narrative in the Muslim world.[158] The scant evidence that exists of "Islamic abolitionism" shows that such discourse was extremely limited. The first anti-slavery views came from Syed Ahmad Khan in the subcontinent. The next anti-slavery texts are to be found, from the 1920s onwards, in the works of non-ulema who were writing outside the realm of Islamic tradition and Shariah. Amal Ghazal has shown that the modernist ulema in Egypt such as Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida were strongly opposed by the majority of Islamic jurists.[158] While Abduh took a stand in favour of abolition, he noted that only a gradualist approach, which encouraged manumission, would work because slavery itself was sanctioned in Islamic law.[159]

In the late 19th century some Indian Muslim modernists had rejected the legitimacy of slavery in Islam.[161] This reformist take on slavery was a part of regenerated Indian Muslim thinking in the 1860s and 1870s.[162] Syed Ahmad Khan and Syed Ameer Ali were primarily concerned with refuting Western criticism of Islamic slavery. However, they did not directly refute the European criticism about female slavery and concubinage.[163] According to Dilawar Husain Ahmad, polygamy and concubinage were responsible for "Muslim decline."[164] Chiragh Ali denied the Quranic permission for concubinage.[165] However, he accepted William Muir's view that Muslims would not abandon female slavery willingly, but he asserted that Muslim jurists did not allow concubinage with the female slaves being imported from Africa, Central Asia and Georgia in that time. However, he did not specify who these Islamic jurists were.[166] Syed Ahmad Khan was opposed by the ulama on a number of issues, including his views on slavery.[164]

A group of ulama led by Waji al-Din Saharanpuri gave a fatwa in the 1830s that it was lawful to enslave even those 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.[167] 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.[168] After 1882 the Egyptian ulama refused to prohibit slavery on the grounds that the Prophet had never forbidden it. In 1899 a scholar from Al-Azhar, Shaykh Muhammad Ahmad al-Bulayqi implicitly defended concubinage and refuted modernist arguments.[169] Most ulama in West Africa opposed abolition.[170] They ruled that concubinage was still allowed with women of slave descent.[171]

In 1911 one Qadi in Mombasa ruled that no government can free a slave without the owner's permission.[172] Spencer Trimingham observed that in coastal Arab areas masters continued to take concubines from slave families because the descendants of slaves are still considered to be enslaved under religious law even if they had been freed according to secular law.[173] The Ottoman ulama maintained the permissibility of slavery due to its Islamic legal sanction. They rejected demands by Young Ottomans for fatwas to ban slavery.[174]

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.[167] 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."[175]

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:[173]

"is contrary to the teachings of the fundamental text of Islamic law, the Koran... [and] 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."

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.[176]

Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker noted in The Better Angels of Our Nature that despite the de jure abolitions of slavery by Islamic countries in the 20th century,[177] the majority of the countries where human trafficking still occurs are Muslim-majority,[178] while political scientists Valerie M. Hudson and Bradley Thayer have noted that Islam is the only major religious tradition that still allows polygyny.[179]

While classical Islamic law permitted slavery, the abolition movement starting in the late 18th century in England and later in other Western countries influenced slavery in Muslim lands both in doctrine and in practice.[238] According to Smith "the majority of the faithful eventually accepted abolition as religiously legitimate and an Islamic consensus against slavery became dominant", though this continued to be disputed by some literalists. [239] [240] and the vast majority of Muslims today oppose it. However, contradictions persisted as 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.[241] 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.[242] Kecia Ali notes that one reason for this defensive attitude may lie with the desire to argue against the common Western media portrayal of "Islam as uniquely oppressive toward women" and "Muslim men as lascivious and wanton toward sexually controlled females" .[243]

Muhammad Asad, also rejected the notion of any sexual relationship outside of marriage.[244]

Asifa Quraishi-Landes observes that most Muslims believe that sex is only permissible within marriage and they ignore the permission for keeping concubines in Islamic jurisprudence.[245] 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. She notes that "Muslims around the world nevertheless speak of marriage in terms of reciprocal and complementary rights and duties, mutual consent, and with respect for women’s agency" and "many point to Muslim scripture and classical literature to support these ideals of mutuality—and there is significant material to work with But formalizing these attitudes in enforceable rules is much more difficult."[245] "She 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."[6] She agrees "with Kecia Ali that the slavery framework and its resulting doctrine are not dictated by scripture". [246]

In response to the Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram's Quranic justification for kidnapping and enslaving people,[247][248] and ISIL's religious justification for enslaving Yazidi women as spoils of war as claimed in their digital magazine Dabiq,[249][250][251][252][253][254] the 126 Islamic scholars from around the Muslim world, in late September 2014, signed an open letter to the Islamic State's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, rejecting his group's interpretations of the Qur'an and hadith to justify its actions.[255][256][n 1] The letter accuses the group of instigating fitna – sedition – by instituting slavery under its rule in contravention of the anti-slavery consensus of the Islamic scholarly community.[257] It included the claim that no scholar disputes the abolition of slavery was one of the aims of Islam. However, Kecia Ali finds this claim well intentioned but ahistorical and simplistic. While there was definitely an “emancipatory ethic” (encouragement for freeing slaves) in Islamic jurisprudence, "there has not been a strong internally developed critique of past or present slaveholding practices".[258][259] Nevertheless, she also states that the position of these views that ISIS holds are not unquestionable. She notes that slavery is illegal and no longer practiced in nearly all majority-Muslim countries and points out that other Islamic scholars like Professor Bernard Freamon oppose ISIS on the issue of slavery.[260] She compares the shift in attitudes within Islam towards slavery, to similar shifts within Christianity towards Biblically sanctioned slavery, which was once widespread in the late antique world in which the Quran arose [241] [261] She further adds that "the Islamic State’s attempt to create an imagined pristine community relies on a superficial and selective enactment of certain provisions from scripture and law and states that singling out slavery or rules governing marriage or punishments for a handful of crimes as constituting the enactment of “authentic” Islamic law surely reflects a distorted notion of a Muslim polity." [262]

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 does not find the idea of consent explicitly stated in the per-modern Muslim legal tradition between the 8th and 10th century.[31] Nevertheless, Kecia Ali points out that slavery is, "in fact, marginal to the Qur’anic worldview" and notes that "it is possible to view slavery as inconsistent with basic Qur’anic precepts of justice and human equality before God.[259]

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.[263] This position is opposed by other Islamic scholars like Abu Fadl who argue against slavery as being a permanent institution within Islam.[264] Similarly, Imam Zaid Shakir has argued against those who claim that Islam still allows sexual slavery as a deterrence against those who fight Muslims. He states that in the current context the taking of sex slaves by ISIS only has harmful effects on Muslims. He argues that slavery is not an integral part of Islam and fatwas on it can be changed [265]

• Islamic views on slavery
• Islamic sexual jurisprudence
• Polygyny in Islam
• Rape in Islamic law
• Umm walad
• What your right hands possess
• Cariye