Sep 4th 2020 Shabbir Ally Imam, scholar & president of, The International Toronto Dawah Center was interviewed on Let the Quran Speak an online You Tube channel. This channel began in 2001 and states as it’s mission “Let the Quran Speak subverts those misconceptions and reveals the truth about Islam and Muslims.” Bellow is an excerpt of this interview.

Aisha Khaja: Dr. Shabbir welcome to let to the Quran speak. Now we have spoken about slavery before. I want us to revisit that topic because I feel like, and I think we both felt that way, that we hadn’t completed talking about it. I there was some unfinished questions that we need to answer. One of those is about agency and ownership and the fact that in the Islamic classical law it seems like one can own a slave. Can you talk to me about that?

Shabbir Ally: Yes and this is rooted in the Quran itself. We should also acknowledge that the Quran left the matter somewhat open. In that one can still argue in a very traditional way today that since the Quran has left it open as a possibility people can own slaves. Well who are we to cancel it all together. We human beings have no say in what God has allowed…

Aisha Khaja: I’m going to ask you a hard question. Let’s talk about concubines. Because Daesh or otherwise known as ISIS or Islamic State comes and says well, you know, capturing concubines in time of war is acceptable. It’s allowed in Islam. It’s even a moral good. So how would you respond to that?

Shabbir Ally: The one problem that remains to be discussed squarely is the problem of concubinage. Where in classical Islamic law it was recognized that if a man owned a female slave he had the automatic right to have intimacy with her… There’s nothing in the Quranic texts properly interpreted which would necessitate that this has to be done, or even, that it was actually done. So we couldn’t prove from the Quran itself that one would have this automatic right. When the female slaves are spoken about in the Quran for example, in sura 4 verse # 24 it is apparent that this slave women were to be married off rather than just simply taken by the owner against her will and treated as his concubine. Of course in the Hadith and in classical Islamic tradition it is widely recognized that the slave owner would have this right.

Let the Quran Speak “continues to grow and redefine itself to fulfill its mandate of advancing the public discourse about Islam and Muslims in Canada.“

Islam Q&A is an academic, educational, da‘wah website which aims to offer advice and academic answers based on evidence from religious texts in an adequate and easy-to-understand manner. These answers are supervised by Shaykh Muhammad Saalih al-Munajjid

by al-Bukhaari (2542)  And we captured some prisoners from among the Arabs. We desired women and the period of abstention was hard for us, and we wanted to engage in ‘azl (coitus interruptus). We asked the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and he said, “There is no point in doing that, for there is no soul which Allaah has decreed should exist until the Day of Resurrection but it will come into existence.”

Allaah has permitted intimacy with a slave woman if the man owns her. 

Once this is understood, it should be noted that what is suggested in the question, that this was zina, never occurred to the Sahaabah (may Allaah be pleased with them). What they were asking about was the ruling on practicing ‘azl with the slave women whom they had acquired in the course of jihad. 

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