Abolition

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Muslims and the abolition of slavery

Slavery remained part of the fabric of Islam for over 1200 years (although the Druze, a group that sprung from Muslim roots, abolished it in the 11th century).

While slavery was in theory greatly limited by Islamic law, in practice it persisted on a large scale in Muslim lands.

During the 20th century attitudes to slavery changed radically and in 1990 The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam stated that:

Human beings are born free, and no one has the right to enslave, humiliate, oppress or exploit them, and there can be no subjugation but to God the Most-High.Article 11, Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, 1990

The Declaration also includes a number of other articles that are incompatible with slavery, although "All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'ah".

Since slavery is permitted by Islamic law, Muslim countries have used secular law to ban it. Some countries outlawed slavery only comparatively recently:

• Qatar in 1952
• Yemen and Saudi Arabia in 1962
• Mauritania in 1980

Early opponents

Mughal painting of Akbar as a boy, circa 1557 ©

The idea that slavery should be abandoned began to be seriously discussed in the 16th century. The Mughal Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) banned the slave trade in his Indian territory.

The Muslim leader and reformer Nasr al-Din denounced slavery to the people of Senegal in the 1670s and banned the sale of slaves to Christians there, undermining the French trade in slaves.

In some countries, slaves who held high rank demonstrated that slaves were perfectly capable of playing any role in society if they were freed. Egypt had even been ruled by a slave dynasty for more than a century. These traditions slowly changed some Muslim thinking about slavery, and gradually created a climate in which the pressure for abolition could build.

But serious abolition for the Muslim world had to wait until the 19th century.

Attacking the slave trade

Because slavery was accepted by Islamic law it would have been difficult or impossible to forbid slavery itself, so the abolition pressure was concentrated on the transportation of slaves, including the slave markets, which was where the worst cruelties were to be found.

Islam forbade raids to gain slaves, making a slave out of a free person and other cruelties. So Muslim abolitionists focused on showing slave trading was illegal under Islamic law, knowing that if they could stop the trade in slaves, slavery itself would slowly die out from lack of supply. For the same reason, colonial powers attacked the trade in slaves as much as the institution of slavery.

The slave trade in Muslim societies ended not so much through a single act of abolition but by withering away as the result of external and internal pressure.

The outside pressure came from colonial powers that had only recently abandoned slavery themselves:

• Colonial powers such as Britain and France applied great pressure for the abolition of slavery in their dominions. This pressure was successful in some places, like Egypt, but much less influential in others.
• Colonial powers also took direct action against slave traders: the British Navy played a role in intercepting and taking action against slave traders, and between 1817 and 1890 signed treaties with over 80 territories allowing them to do this.
• Christian missionaries, including David Livingstone, aroused public indignation in the West.

Internal pressure came from a variety of Muslim sources:

From the 1870s, radical and gradual rationalists, together with moderate literalists and progressive ulama, could all be placed in the broad category of opponents of slavery, despite their manifold disagreements.William G. Clarence-Smith, Religions and the abolition of slavery - a comparative approach

Muslim abolitionists were influenced by factors like these:

• The abolition of the Atlantic slave trade provided an enlightening example
• Some Muslim thinkers readdressed Islamic ideas on human equality
• Some Muslim thinkers saw slavery as colonialist/imperialist behaviour that was incompatible with growing anti-colonialism
• Some Muslim thinkers regarded slavery as an activity incompatible with the modern world
• Changes in culture brought about by factors such as urbanisation, changes in the demand for labour, education, a desire to relate to Western nations as equals
• An increase in the freeing of slaves in some territories helped to accustom people to the ending of slavery

The result of these forces was to shrink the slave trade, and put pressure on slavery itself.

Initially, it was a source of great hostility that the West dared to intervene in Islamic affairs in contradiction to what was allowed by the Koran.

But as Western influence, or modernism, became more and more [widespread], it became less fashionable as well as profitable in Islam to own slaves. And it became illegal over much of the area.

The pressures against slavery were extremely great from Western powers. It was the moral issue. It became more scandalous because the conditions of procurement and transport became more and more horrendous.

Ronald Segal, interview with Suzy Hansen, Salon Magazine, 2001

Abolition

The Ottoman Empire was the major Muslim slave society of the abolition period, and it abolished the slave trade in stages.

Although the Ottomans never abolished slavery itself, their policy of restricting the slave trade and increasing opportunities for slaves to get their freedom greatly reduced the number of slaves in its territories:

• 1847: slave trade banned in Persian Gulf
• 1857: African slave trade banned
• 1864: Traffic in Georgian and Circassian child slaves restricted
• 1867: Programme introduced to help slaves from Russia get their freedom
• 1887-1880: Conventions against the slave trade signed with Britain
• 1890: Brussels Act against slave trade signed

Slavery was harder to outlaw in areas far from central government where tribal traditions had been less influenced by the factors above, and where the military power of the centre was much weaker.

The slavers retreated into these areas, and moved their slaves to market more secretly. Quite a few of the anti-slavery military initiatives ended in victory for the slavers rather than the forces of abolition.

Some other Muslim countries passed laws allowing for the prosecution not only of the sellers of slaves but the buyers too.

The Indian Slavery Act of 1844 made slavery illegal there, and Egypt in 1896 implemented laws with very severe penalties for slaving activities.

British colonial power played a major role, enforcing treaties that prohibited slaving.

The British felt that they had a mission to do this - as can be seen from this Foreign Office document of 1861:

Captain Hamerton should take every opportunity of impressing upon these Arabs that the nations of Europe are destined to put an end to the African Slave Trade, and that Great Britain is the main instrument in the Hands of Providence for the accomplishment of this purpose.

That it is in vain for these Arabs to endeavour to resist the consummation of that which is written in the Book of Fate, and that they ought to bow to superior power, to leave off a pursuit which is doomed to annihilation, and a perseverance in which will only involve them in losses and other evils.

British Foreign Office document, 1861

The British action did not gain universal support. The Sultan of Zanzibar wrote to the British Consul:

If I put a stop to the traffic in slaves it will ruin these countries, and it will ruin my subjects; and I am sure that the British Government would never agree to this; my friend, it is in my wish to comply with all the desires of the British Government but these countries cannot do without slaves. For the British Government is far off, and does not know the circumstances of these countries.