Islam and modernity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Islam and modernity is a topic of discussion in contemporary sociology of religion. The history of Islam chronicles different interpretations and approaches. Modernity is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon rather than a unified and coherent one. It has historically had different schools of thought moving in many directions.

Industrial Revolution's impact on Islam

In the 18th century Europe was undergoing major transformations as the new ideas of the Enlightenment, which stressed the importance of science, rationality, and human reason, and the new technologies of the Industrial Revolution swept across Europe, giving Europeans great power and influence. In the last quarter of the 18th century, the gap widened between the technical skills of some western and northern European countries and those of the rest of the world.

The rise of modern Europe coincided with what many scholars refer to as the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which by the 18th century was facing political, military, and economic breakdown. While prior to the 18th century the Ottomans had regarded themselves to be either of superior or, by the mid-18th century, of equal strength to Europe, by the end of the 18th century the power relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Europe began to shift in Europe's favor.

French occupation of the Ottoman Empire

In 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte's army occupied the Ottoman province of Egypt and killed roughly 3000 Egyptians. Although the occupation was only three years, followed by lingering hostility to the French, the experience ultimately exposed the Egyptian people to Enlightenment ideas and Europe's new technology.

Ottoman scholars in Europe

The exposure to European power and ideas would later inspire the new governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, to draw on this technology to modernize Egypt, setting an example for the rest of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government began to open embassies and send officials to study in Europe. This created conditions for the "gradual formation of a group of reformers with a certain knowledge of the modern world and a conviction that the empire must belong to it or perish". One of the scholars sent by Muhammad Ali to Europe in 1826 was Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi. The five years he spent in Paris left a permanent mark on him. After his return to Egypt he wrote about his impressions of France and translated numerous European works into Arabic. Tahtawi was impressed with Europe's technological and scientific advancement and political philosophy. Having studied Islamic Law, he argued that "it was necessary to adapt the Sharia to new circumstances" and that there was not much difference between "the principles of Islamic law and those principles of 'natural law' on which the codes of modern Europe were based".

Like Tahtawi, Khayr al-Din was also sent to Paris where he spent four years. After his return from Europe he wrote a book in which he argued that the only way to strengthen the Muslim States was by borrowing ideas and institutions from Europe, and that this did not contradict the spirit of the Sharia.

Modernization reforms in the Ottoman Empire

In the period between 1839 and 1876 the Ottoman government began instituting large-scale reforms as a way to modernize and strengthen the empire. Known as the Tanzimat, many of these reforms involved adopting successful European practices that were considered antithetical to conservative Muslims. In addition to military and administrative reforms, Ottoman rulers implemented reforms in the sphere of education, law, and the economy. This included new universities and changes in curricula, as well new economic systems and institutions. There were also European-inspired changes to law that restricted Islamic law to family affairs such as marriage and inheritance.

The Ottoman Empire was the first Muslim country where modernity surfaced, with major shifts in scientific and legal thought. In 1834, Ishak Efendi published Mecmua-i Ulum-i Riyaziye, a four volume text introducing many modern scientific concepts to the Muslim world. Kudsi Efendi also published Asrar al-Malakut in 1846 in an attempt to reconcile Copernican astronomy with Islam. The first modern Turkish chemistry text was published in 1848, and the first modern Biology text in 1865.

Eventually, the Turks adopted the metric system in 1869. These shifts in scientific thought coincided with Tanzimat, a reform policy undertaken by the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire that was inspired by French civil law. This reform confined sharia to family law. The key figure in the Turkish modernist movement was Namik Kemal, the editor of a journal called Freedom. His goal was to promote freedom of the press, the separation of powers, equality before the law, scientific freedom, and a reconciliation between parliamentary democracy and the Qur'an.

The Greater Muslim world

The influence of modernism in the Muslim world resulted in a cultural revival. Dramatic plays became more common, as did newspapers. Notable European works were analyzed and translated.

Legal reform was attempted in Egypt, Tunisia, the Ottoman Empire, and Iran, and in some cases these reforms were adopted. Efforts were made to restrict the power of government. Polygamy was ended in India. Azerbaijan granted suffrage to women in 1918 (before several European countries).

At the recommendations of reform-minded Islamic scholars, western sciences were taught in new schools. Much of this had to do with the intellectual appeal of social Darwinism, since it led to the conclusion that an old-fashioned Muslim society could not compete in the modern world.

In 19th century Iran, Mirza Malkom Khan arrived after being educated in Paris. He created a newspaper called Qanun, where he advocated the separation of powers, secular law, and a bill of rights. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who was politically active in the Islamic world and published the pamphlet "Al-'Urwa al-Wuthqà" during a brief spell in France, proclaiming that Europe had become successful due to its laws and its science. He became critical of other Muslim scholars for stifling scientific thought, and hoped to encourage scientific inquiry in the Muslim world.

Modernism, religion and ideology

Islamic Modernism

Modernism impacted interpretations of Islam. One movement was Islamic Modernism, which was both an attempt to provide an Islamic response to the challenges presented by European colonial expansion, and an effort to reinvigorate and reform Islam from within as a way to counter the perceived weakness and decline of Muslim societies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It called for "a 'reformation' or reinterpretation (ijtihad) of Islam", and emerged in the Muslim world from Egypt to Southeast Asia.

Islamic modernists argued that Islam and modernity were compatible and "asserted the need to reinterpret and reapply the principles and ideals of Islam to formulate new responses to the political, scientific, and cultural challenges of the West and of modern life". The reforms they proposed challenged the status quo maintained by the conservative Muslims scholars (ulama), who saw the established law as the ideal order that had to be followed and upheld the doctrine of taqlid (imitation / blind following). Islamic modernists saw the resistance to change on the part of the conservative ulama as a major cause for the problems the Muslim community was facing as well as its inability to counter western hegemony.

Modernists

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838–1897) is regarded as one of the pioneers of Islamic modernism. He believed that Islam was compatible with science and reason and that in order to counter European power the Muslim world had to embrace progress.

Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) was a disciple and collaborator of al-Afghani. He was even more influential than his master and is often referred to as the founder of Islamic modernism. Abduh was born and raised in Egypt and was a scholar of Islam (alim). He taught at al-Azhar and other institutions and in 1899 became Mufti of Egypt. Abduh believed that the Islamic world was suffering from an inner decay and was in need of a revival. Asserting that "Islam could be the moral basis of a modern and progressive society", he was critical of both secularists and the conservative ulama. He called for a legal reform and the reinterpretation (ijtihad) of Islamic law according to modern conditions. While critical of the West, he believed that it was necessary to borrow or assimilate what was good from it. Abduh became a leading judge in Egypt after political activities in Paris as al-Afghani's assistant. He pushed for secular law, religious reform, and education for girls. He hoped that Egypt would ultimately become a free republic, much like how France had transformed from an absolute monarchy.

Muhammad Rashid Rida (1869–1935) also became active in the Egyptian modernization movement as Abduh's disciple, although he was born and educated in Syria. Al-Manar was his journal, through which he initially advocated greater openness to science and foreign influence. He also stated that sharia was relatively silent about agriculture, industry, and trade, and that these areas of knowledge needed renewal. He would eventually evolve to conservative positions close to Wahhabism. Qasim Amin was another reformer in Egypt and Abduh's disciple who was heavily concerned with the rights of women. 

Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi was similarly educated in Paris around the same time. He surveyed the political systems of 21 European countries in an effort to reform Tunisia.

Notable Modernists on the Indian subcontinent include Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) and Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) in the Indian subcontinent (the latter was also the conceiver of the modern state of Pakistan). Like al-Afghani and Abduh, they rejected the doctrine of taqlid and asserted the need for Islam to be reinterpreted according to modern conditions.

Other Modernists include Mahmud Tarzi of Afghanistan, Chiragh Ali of India, Ahmad Dahlan of Java, and Wang Jingzhai of China.

Although Islamic modernists were subject to the criticism that the reforms they promoted amounted to westernizing Islam, their legacy was significant and their thought influenced future generations of reformers.

Pakistan and Turkey

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, was also a prominent Muslim modernist of the twentieth century.

In some parts of the world, the project of Islamic modernity continued from the same trajectory before World War I. This was especially the case in the new Republic of Turkey, under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. But in Egypt, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, the first Islamist organization, which had no interest in reinterpreting Islam to make it compatible with modernity. 

Turkey has continued to be at the forefront of modernising Islam. In 2008 its Department of Religious Affairs launched a review of all the hadiths, the sayings of Mohammed upon which most of Islamic law is based. The School of Theology at Ankara University undertook this forensic examination with the intent of removing centuries of often conservative cultural baggage and rediscovering the spirit of reason in the original message of Islam. One expert at London's Chatham House compared these revisions to the Christian Protestant Reformation. Turkey has also trained hundreds of women as theologians, and sent them senior imams known as vaizes all over the country, away from the relatively liberal capital and coastal cities, to explain these re-interpretations at town hall meetings.

After World War I

The aftermath of World War I resulted in the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the domination of the Middle East by European powers such as Britain and France. Intellectual historians such as Peter Watson suggest that World War I marks the end of the main Islamic modernist movements, and that this is the point where many Muslims "lost faith with the culture of science and materialism", but that several parallel intellectual streams emerged thereafter.

Arab socialism

Arab socialism of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and Nasserite movement emerged as a stream of thought during decolonialization of Arab countries. It emphasized ethnicity, culture, politics and played down the role of religion. Its popularity peaked in the 50s and 60s. 

As a political ideology based on an amalgamation of Pan-Arabism and socialism, Arab socialism is distinct from the much broader tradition of socialist thought in the Arab world which predates Arab socialism by as much as 50 years. Michel Aflaq, the principal founder of ba'athism and the Ba'ath Party, coined the term in order to distinguish his version of socialist ideology from the Marxist socialism in Eastern Europe and Eastern Asia, and social democracy in Western Europe. 

The Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbours ended in a decisive loss for the Muslim side. Many in the Islamic world saw this as the failure of socialism. It was at this point that "fundamental and militant Islam began to fill the political vacuum created".

Islamic fundamentalism

In the late 20th century an Islamic Revival or Islamic Awakening developed in the Muslim World. (Islamic fundamentalism is the common term in the West used to refer to contemporary Islamic revivalism, according to John Esposito.) 

It was manifested in greater religious piety and in a growing adoption of Islamic culture. One striking example of it is the increase in attendance at the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which grew from 90,000 in 1926 to 2 million in 1979. But the said increase in the number of pilgrims may also be attributed to other factors such as increase in populations, modern transportation facilities and to some extent the over all financial prosperity of the Muslims all over the world thus making the Pilgrimage affordable to more and more Muslim populations. 

Two of the most important events that fueled or inspired the resurgence were the Arab oil embargo and subsequent quadrupling of the price of oil in the mid-1970s, and the 1979 Iranian Revolution that established an Islamic republic in Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini. The first created a flow of many billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia to fund Islamic books, scholarships, fellowships, and mosques around the world; the second undermined the assumption that Westernization strengthened Muslim countries and was the irreversible trend of the future.

The revival is a reversal of the Westernisation approach common in Arab and Asian governments earlier in the 20th century. It is often associated with the political Islamic movement, Islamism, and other forms of re-Islamisation. While the revival has also been accompanied by some religious extremism and attacks on civilians and military targets by the extremists, this represents only a small part of the revival.

The revival has also seen a proliferation of Islamic extremist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim World, who have voiced their anger at perceived exploitation as well as materialism, Westernization, democracy and modernity, which are most commonly associated with accepting Western secular beliefs and values. The spread of secularism has caused great concerns among many Islamic political groups. It has been the reasoning for the Islamization of politics and protest, due to the large Muslim majority in the Middle East as well as the region's imperial past. For Islamic countries in the Middle East, there is not necessarily a problem as such with modernity, however, "the problem is when modernity comes wrapped with westernization, with absolutely and utterly rampant materialism".

In the book, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (1994), the author N. Ayubi explained what he believes to be the two main concerns of Islamic political movements and extremist groups in the Middle East; 1) the Western belief in a bureaucratic state and 2) the secular values and beliefs associated with concepts such as modernity.

According to John Esposito:

The tendency to judge the actions of Muslims in splendid isolation, to generalize from the actions of the few to the many, to disregard similar excesses committed in the name of other religions and ideologies ... is not new.

The number of militant Islamic movements calling for "an Islamic state and the end of Western influence" is relatively small. According to polls taken in 2008 and 2010 by Pew and Gallop, pluralities of the population in Muslim-majority countries are undecided as to what extent religion (and certain interpretations of) should influence public life, politics, and the legal system.

Women in the Arab world

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Three women from Algiers in the 1880s; the reclining girl holds a cigarette.

 

Women in the Arab world live in situations that are rather unique, with special challenges not present in many other parts of the world. In particular these women have throughout history experienced discrimination and have been subject to restrictions of their freedoms and rights. Some of these practices are based on religious beliefs, but many of the limitations are cultural and emanate from tradition as well as religion. These main constraints that create an obstacle towards women's rights and liberties are reflected in laws dealing with criminal justice, economy, education and healthcare.

Arab women before Islam

Costumes of Arab women, fourth to sixth century.

 

Many people / writers have discussed the status of women in pre-Islamic Arabia, and their findings have been mixed. Under the customary tribal law existing in Arabia at the advent of Islam, women as a general rule had virtually no legal status. They were sold into marriage by their guardians for a price paid to the guardian, the husband could terminate the union at will, and women had little or no property or succession rights. Some writers have argued that women before Islam were more liberated, drawing most often on the first marriage of Muhammad and that of Muhammad's parents, but also on other points such as worship of female idols at Mecca. Other writers, on the contrary, have agreed that women's status in pre-Islamic Arabia was poor, citing practices of female infanticide, unlimited polygyny, patrilineal marriage and others. Saudi historian Hatoon al-Fassi considers much earlier historical origins of Arab women's rights. Using evidence from the ancient Arabian kingdom of Nabataea, she finds that Arab women in Nabataea had independent legal personalities. She suggests that they lost many of their rights through ancient Greek and Roman law prior to the arrival of Islam and that these Greco-Roman constraints were retained under Islam. Valentine M. Moghadam analyzes the situation of women from a marxist theoretical framework and argues that the position of women is mostly influenced by the extent of urbanization, industrialization, proletarization and political ploys of the state managers rather than culture or intrinsic properties of Islam; Islam, Moghadam argues, is neither more nor less patriarchal than other world religions especially Christianity and Judaism.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, women's status varied widely according to laws and cultural norms of the tribes in which they lived. In the prosperous southern region of the Arabian Peninsula, for example, the religious edicts of Christianity and Judaism held sway among the Sabians and Himyarites. In other places such as the city of Makkah (Mecca) -- where the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, was born—a tribal set of rights was in place. This was also true amongst the Bedouin (desert dwellers), and this code varied from tribe to tribe. Thus there was no single definition of the roles played, and rights held, by women prior to the advent of Islam. 

In some tribes, women were emancipated even in comparison with many of today's standards. There were instances where women held high positions of power and authority. 

Pakistani lawyer Sundas Hoorain has said that women in pre-Islamic Arabia had a much higher standing than they got with Islam. She describes a free sex society in which both men and women could have multiple partners or could contract a monogamous relationship per their will. She thus concludes that the Muslim idea of monogamy being a post-Islamic idea is flawed and biased and that women had the right to contract such a marriage before Islam. She also describes a society in which succession was matrilineal and children were retained by the mother and lived with the mother's tribe, whereas in Shariah law, young children stay with their mother until they reach the age of puberty, and older children stay with their father. Hoorain also cites problems with the idea of mass female infanticide and simultaneous widespread polygamy (multiple women for one man), as she sees it as an illogical paradox. She questions how it was possible for men to have numerous women if so many females were being killed as infants.

The custom of burying female infants alive, comments a noted Qur'anic commentator, Muhammad Asad, seems to have been fairly widespread in pre-Islamic Arabia. The motives were twofold: the fear that an increase in female offspring would result in economic burden, as well as the fear of the humiliation frequently caused by girls being captured by a hostile tribe and subsequently preferring their captors to their parents and brothers.

It is generally accepted that Islam changed the structure of Arab society and to a large degree unified the people, reforming and standardizing gender roles throughout the region. According to Islamic studies professor William Montgomery Watt, Islam improved the status of women by "instituting rights of property ownership, inheritance, education and divorce." The Hadiths in Bukhari suggest that Islam improved women's status, by the second Caliph Umar saying "We never used to give significance to ladies in the days of the Pre-Islamic period of ignorance, but when Islam came and Allah mentioned their rights, we used to give them their rights but did not allow them to interfere in our affairs", Book 77, Hadith 60, 5843, and Vol. 7, Book 72, Hadith 734.

Arab women after Islam

A page from an Arabic manuscript from the 12th century, depicting a man playing the oud among women, (Hadith Bayad wa Riyad).

 

Islam was introduced in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century, and improved the status of women compared to earlier Arab cultures. According to the Qur'anic decrees, both men and women have the same duties and responsibilities in their worship of God. As the Qur'an states: "I will not suffer to be lost the work of any of you whether male or female. You proceed one from another".(Qur'an 3:195).

The Islamic studies professor William Montgomery Watt states:

It is true that Islam is still, in many ways, a man's religion. But I think I’ve found evidence in some of the early sources that seems to show that Muhammad made things better for women. It appears that in some parts of Arabia, notably in Mecca, a matrilineal system was in the process of being replaced by a patrilineal one at the time of Muhammad. Growing prosperity caused by a shifting of trade routes was accompanied by a growth in individualism. Men were amassing considerable personal wealth and wanted to be sure that this would be inherited by their own actual sons, and not simply by an extended family of their sisters’ sons. This led to a deterioration in the rights of women. At the time Islam began, the conditions of women were terrible - they had no right to own property, were supposed to be the property of the man, and if the man died everything went to his sons. Muhammad improved things quite a lot. By instituting rights of property ownership, inheritance, education and divorce, he gave women certain basic safeguards. Set in such historical context the Prophet can be seen as a figure who testified on behalf of women's rights. 

Early reforms

During the early reforms under Islam in the 7th century, reforms in women's rights affected marriage, divorce and inheritance. Lindsay Jones says that women were not accorded with such legal status in other cultures, including the West, until centuries later. The Oxford Dictionary of Islam states that the general improvement of the status of Arab women included prohibition of female infanticide and recognizing women's full personhood. "The dowry, previously regarded as a bride-price paid to the father, became a nuptial gift retained by the wife as part of her personal property." Under Islamic law, marriage was no longer viewed as a "status" but rather as a "contract", in which the woman's consent was imperative. "Women were given inheritance rights in a patriarchal society that had previously restricted inheritance to male relatives." Annemarie Schimmel states that "compared to the pre-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress; the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work." William Montgomery Watt states that Muhammad, in the historical context of his time, can be seen as a figure who testified on behalf of women's rights and improved things considerably. Watt explains: "At the time Islam began, the conditions of women were terrible - they had no right to own property, were supposed to be the property of the man, and if the man died everything went to his sons." Muhammad, however, by "instituting rights of property ownership, inheritance, education and divorce, gave women certain basic safeguards." Haddad and state that "Muhammad granted women rights and privileges in the sphere of family life, marriage, education, and economic endeavors, rights that help improve women's status in society."

Education

Fatima al-Fihri founded the University of Al Karaouine in 859. In the Ayyubid dynasty in the 12th and 13th centuries, 160 mosques and madrasahs were established in Damascus, 26 of which were funded by women through the Waqf (charitable trust or trust law) system. Half of all the royal patrons for these institutions were also women. As a result, opportunities arose for female education in the medieval Islamic world. According to Sunni scholar Ibn Asakir in the 12th century, women could study, earn ijazahs (academic degrees), and qualify as scholars and teachers. This was especially the case for learned and scholarly families, who wanted to ensure the highest possible education for both their sons and daughters. According to Aisha, the wife of the Muhammed, "How splendid were the women of Ansar; shame did not prevent them from becoming learned in the faith". According to a hadith attributed to Muhammad, he praised the women of Medina because of their desire for religious knowledge.

Sabat Islambouli (right), a Kurdish Jew and one of Syria's earliest female physicains; picture from 10 October 1885.

Employment

The labor force in the Arab Caliphate were employed from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, while both men and women were involved in diverse occupations and economic activities. Women were employed in a wide range of commercial activities and diverse occupations. Women's economic position was strengthened by the Qur'an, but local custom has weakened that position in its insistence that women must work within private sector of the world: the home or at least in some sphere related to home. Dr. Nadia YousaF, an Egyptian sociologist now teaching in the United States, states in a recent article on labor-force participation by women of Middle Eastern and Latin American Countries that the "Middle East reports systematically the lowest female activity rates on record" for labor. This certainly gives the impression that Middle Eastern women have little or no economical role, until one notes that the statistics are based on non-agricultural labor outside the home.

In the 12th century, the most famous Islamic philosopher and qadi (judge) Ibn Rushd, known to the West as Averroes, claimed that women were equal to men in all respects and possessed equal capacities to shine in peace and in war, citing examples of female warriors among the Arabs, Greeks and Africans to support his case. In early Muslim history, examples of notable female Muslims who fought during the Muslim conquests and Fitna (civil wars) as soldiers or generals included Nusaybah Bint k’ab Al Maziniyyah, Aisha, Kahula, Wafeira, and Um Umarah. 

Sabat M. Islambouli (1867-1941) was one of the first Syrian female physicians. She was a Kurdish Jew from Syria.

Contemporary Arab world

Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan is one of the Arab world's most high-profile educational campaigners.

Politics

Asmahan a prominent Arab singer and actress (1912–1944).

 

There have been many highly respected female leaders in Muslim history, such as Shajar al-Durr (13th century) in Egypt, Asma bint Shihab (d. 1087) in Yemen and Razia Sultana (13th century) in Delhi. In the modern era there have also been examples of female leadership in Muslim countries, such as in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey. However, in Arabic-speaking countries no woman has ever been head of state, although many Arabs remarked on the presence of women such as Jehan Al Sadat, the wife of Anwar El Sadat in Egypt, and Wassila Bourguiba, the wife of Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, who have strongly influenced their husbands in their dealings with matters of state. Many Arab countries allow women to vote in national elections. The first female Member of Parliament in the Arab world was Rawya Ateya, who was elected in Egypt in 1957. Some countries granted the female franchise in their constitutions following independence, while some extended the franchise to women in later constitutional amendments.

Arab women are under-represented in parliaments in Arab states, although they are gaining more equal representation as Arab states liberalise their political systems. In 2005, the International Parliamentary Union said that 6.5 per cent of MPs in the Arab world were women, compared with 3.5 per cent in 2000. In Tunisia, nearly 23 per cent of members of parliament were women. However, the Arab country with the largest parliament, Egypt, had only around four per cent female representation in parliament. Algeria has the largest female representation in parliament with 32 per cent.

In the UAE, in 2006 women stood for election for the first time in the country's history. Although just one female candidate – from Abu Dhabi – was directly elected, the government appointed a further eight women to the 40-seat federal legislature, giving women a 22.5 per cent share of the seats, far higher than the world average of 17.0 per cent.

The role of women in politics in Arab societies is largely determined by the will of these countries' leaderships to support female representation and cultural attitudes towards women's involvement in public life. Dr Rola Dashti, a female candidate in Kuwait's 2006 parliamentary elections, claimed that "the negative cultural and media attitude towards women in politics" was one of the main reasons why no women were elected. She also pointed to "ideological differences", with conservatives and extremist Islamists opposing female participation in political life and discouraging women from voting for a woman. She also cited malicious gossip, attacks on the banners and publications of female candidates, lack of training and corruption as barriers to electing female MPs. In contrast, one of UAE's female MPs, Najla al Awadhi, claimed that "women's advancement is a national issue and we have a leadership that understands that and wants them to have their rights."

Lebanon recently appointed the first interior of state minister a female. This move is consideret precendented in the Arab World, for she is the first arab woman to hold this important position.

Politics of invisibility

Since the discussion of the representation of women in Arab societies is being dissected, there should also be a discussion of Arab women representation in western societies. The idea of "politics of invisibility", was introduced by Amira Jarmakani, in the book Arab and Arab American Feminism: Gender, Violence, & Belonging by Naber, Nadine Christine Alsultany, Evelyn Abdulhadi, and Rabab. Jarmakani explains that Arab American Feminists are placed in a paradoxical frame-work of being simultaneously invisible and hypervisible. Jarmakani called this, the "politics of invisibility", she argues that one can actually use it in a creative way to gain positive attention to important issues. 

Jarmakani argues that because of the dominant representation of Arab women given by the Bush administration many individuals in western societies have an orientalist point of view, have Islamophobia and believe that Arab feminism cannot exist.The reason for this is because the Bush administration led the, "invasion of Afghanistan, as a project of liberation meant to save Afghan women from the oppression of the Taliban," this did not allow for the idea that there could be Arab feminism. Jarmakani explains that US based Feminist Majority Foundation has taken on the role of savior instead of fighting with Arab feminists for issues that they believed were important topics that need to be addressed in their communities. This coupled with the invasion led to, "reify stereotypical notions of Arab and Muslim womanhood as monolithically oppressed. They depend on a set of U.S. cultural mythologies about the Arab and Muslim worlds, which are often promulgated through overdetermined signifiers, like the "veil" (the English term collapsing a range of cultural and religious dress expressing modesty, piety, or identity, or all three)". She then concludes that because of the symbols that are used to reinforce this they, "threaten to eclipse the creative work of Arab American feminists. Because the mythologies are so pervasive, operating subtly and insidiously on the register of "common sense," Arab American feminists are often kept oriented toward correcting these common misconceptions rather than focusing on our own agendas and concerns." Because of these symbols, Arab women are placed in a paradox where, "the marker (supposedly) of invisibility and cultural authenticity, renders Arab and Muslim womanhood as simultaneously invisible and hypervisible" because the veil is seen as a form of oppression and becomes well known in the western societies as an oppressive form therefore it brings hypervisibility to these women.

Because of this hypervisibility from symbols like the veil, it makes it difficult to talk about the realities of Arab and Arab American women's lives, "without invoking, and necessarily responding to, the looming image and story that the mythology of the veil tells", she goes on to state that the veil is not the only symbol, there are others such as "honor killings" and "stoning". The argument that is being made is that because of these symbols it is hard to talk about anything else that is currently taking place in the lives of Arab and Arab American women. These symbols make it difficult to focus on other important issues, however Jarmakani states that because of this hypervisibility Arab feminists can take advantage of it. She builds her argument off of Joe Kadi from her essay, "Speaking about Silence" where Joe argues that those who are silenced or being forced into being silent can break this silence by speaking out. Jarmakani argues that unlike Joe who said one should speak out, Jarmakani is stating to use the silence, meaning that Arab women should use the hypervisibility that is being given by the symbols of invisibility. Jarmakani ends with

"Simply advocating for a rejection of current stereotypical categories and narratives would inevitably lead to the establishment of equally limiting categories of representation, and spending energy to create a counterdiscourse will perhaps unwittingly reify the false binary that already frames much of public understanding. The work of Arab American feminists, then, must continue to encourage a fruitful fluidity that constantly forges new possibilities for understanding and contextualizing the complex realities of Arab and Arab American women's lives. In solidarity with social justice and liberation projects worldwide, we must mindfully utilize the tools of an oppositional consciousness in order to support the urgent work of carving and crafting new spaces for the expression of Arab American feminisms. Rather than simply resisting the politics of invisibility that have denied us a full presence, we must mobilize it, thereby reinventing and transforming that invisibility into a tool with which we will continue to illustrate the brilliant complexities of Arab and Arab American women's lives".

Women's right to vote in the Arab world

Samah Sabawi is a Palestinian dramatist, writer and journalist.

 

Women were granted the right to vote on a universal and equal basis in Lebanon in 1952, Syria (to vote) in 1949 (Restrictions or conditions lifted) in 1953, Egypt in 1956, Tunisia in 1959, Mauritania in 1961, Algeria in 1962, Morocco in 1963, Libya, Sudan in 1964, Yemen in 1967 (full right) in 1970, Bahrain in 1973, Jordan in 1974, Iraq (full right) 1980, Kuwait in 1985 (later removed and re-granted in 2005), Oman in 1994, and Saudi Arabia in 2015.

Economic role

In some of the wealthier Arab countries such as UAE, the number of women business owners is growing rapidly and adding to the economic development of the country. Many of these women work with family businesses and are encouraged to work and study outside of the home. Arab women are estimated to have $40 billion of personal wealth at their disposal, with Qatari families being among the richest in the world.

Education

Female education rapidly increased after emancipation from foreign domination around 1977. Before that, the illiteracy rate remained high among Arab women. The gap between female and male enrollment varies across the Arab world. Countries like Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Lebanon, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates achieved almost equal enrollment rates between girls and boys. Female enrollment was as low as 10% in North of Yemen back in 1975. In Unesco's 2012 annual report, it predicted that Yemen won't achieve gender equality in education before 2025. In Qatar, the first school was built in 1956 after a fatwa that states that the Qur'an did not forbid female education.

Travel

Women have varying degrees of difficulty moving freely in Arab countries. A couple of nations prohibit women from ever traveling alone, while in others women can travel freely but experience a greater risk of sexual harassment or assault than they would in Western countries.

Women have the right to drive in all Arab countries with Saudi Arabia lifting the ban on June 24, 2018. In Jordan, travel restrictions on women were lifted in 2003. "Jordanian law provides citizens the right to travel freely within the country and abroad except in designated military areas. Unlike Jordan's previous law (No. 2 of 1969), the current Provisional Passport Law (No. 5 of 2003) does not require women to seek permission from their male guardians or husbands in order to renew or obtain a passport." In Yemen, women must obtain approval from a husband or father to get an exit visa to leave the country, and a woman may not take her children with her without their father's permission, regardless of whether or not the father has custody. The ability of women to travel or move freely within Saudi Arabia is severely restricted. However, in 2008 a new law went into effect requiring men who marry non-Saudi women to allow their wife and any children born to her to travel freely in and out of Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, women must travel with their guardians permission and they are not supposed to talk to strange random men, even if their lives are in danger.

Traditional dress

May Ziade, a key figure of the Al-Nahda in Arab literary scene, and is known for being an "early feminist" and a "pioneer of Oriental feminism."

 

Adherence to traditional dress varies across Arab societies. Saudi Arabia is more traditional, while countries like Egypt ,and Lebanon are less so. Women are required by law to wear abayas in only Saudi Arabia; this is enforced by the religious police. Some allege that this restricts their economic participation and other activities. In most countries, like Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, the veil is not mandatory. The veil, hijab in Arabic, means anything that hides.The hijab has been used to describe the sexist oppression Arab women face, especially after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001. This use of the hijab "...capitalizes on the image of exotic, oppressed women who must be saved from their indigenous (hyper)patriarchy." In doing so, the Arab woman is exoticized, marginalized, and considered the other. To the United States military specifically, the hijab symbolizes Arab women's sexist oppression. This idea has paved the way for the U.S. military opposition against Arab communities, claiming Arab women must be saved from the patriarchy and sexism they experience. Global feminism has also taken part in this orientalism. The Feminist Majority Foundation is an example of a global feminist group who have "...been advocating on behalf of (but not with) Afghan women since at least the early 1990s." They, like the United States military, have been fighting against the hijab in an effort to save or free women of their oppression. Instead of speaking with Arab women, global feminists speak for them, ultimately silencing them in the process. Through this silencing, Arab women are seen as incapable of defending themselves. 

In Tunisia, the secular government has banned the use of the veil in its opposition to religious extremism. Former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali called the veil sectarian and foreign and has stressed the importance of traditional Tunisian dress as a symbol of national identity. Islamic feminism counters both sorts of externally imposed dress codes. 

Religious views differ on what is considered the proper hijab. This explains the variation in Islamic attire according to geographic location.

Conflation of Muslim and Arab identity

"Arab" and "Muslim" are often used interchangeably. The conflation of these two identities ignores the diverse religious beliefs of Arab people and also overlooks Muslims who are not Arabs. It, "also erases the historic and vast ethnic communities who are neither Arab nor Muslim but who live amid and interact with a majority of Arabs or Muslims." This generalization, "enables the construction of Arabs and Muslims as backward, barbaric, misogynist, sexually savage, and sexually repressive." This type of stereotyping leads to the orientalizing of Arab women and depicts them as fragile, sexually oppressed individuals who cannot stand up for their beliefs.

Arab women and feminism

Egypt is one of the leading countries with active feminist movements, and the fight for women's right's is associated to social justice and secular nationalism. Egyptian feminism started out with informal networks of activism after women were not granted the same rights as their male comrades in 1922. The movements eventually resulted in women gaining the right to vote in 1956.

Although Lebanese Law does not give the lebanese woman her full rights, Lebanon has a very large feminism movement. NGOs like Kafa and Abaad have served this feminist obligation, and tried several times to pass adequat laws that give the lebanese woman her rights. The most talked about right is citizenship passing systems : a woman in Lebanon isn’t authorised to pass her citizenship to her spouse nor her children. This right is making a fuzz among lebanese, but has the people’s consent.

Feminists in Saudi Arabia can end up in jail or face a death penalty for their activism. Some of their requests were granted such as not requiring a male guardian to access government services. Women still need a male guardian's approval to travel and marry.

Slavery and religion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Historically, slavery has been regulated, supported or opposed on religious grounds. 

In Judaism, slaves were given a range of treatments and protections. They were to be treated as extended family with certain protections and could be freed. They were property but could also own material goods.

Early Christian authors maintained spiritual equality of slaves and free persons, while accepting slavery as an institution. Early modern papal decrees allowed enslavement of unbelievers, though some popes denounced slavery from the 15th century onwards. In the eighteenth century the abolition movement took shape among Christians across the globe, but various denominations continued to be pro-slavery into the 19th century. Enslaved non-believers were sometimes converted to Christianity, but elements of their traditional beliefs merged with their Christian beliefs.

Early Islamic texts encourage kindness towards slaves and manumission, while permitting enslavement of non-Muslim prisoners of war.

Slavery in the Bible

Genesis narrative about the Curse of Ham has often been held to be an aetiological story, giving a reason for the enslavement of the Canaanites. The word ham is very similar to the Hebrew word for hot, which is cognate with an Egyptian word (kem, meaning black) used to refer to Egypt itself, in reference to the fertile black soil along the Nile valley. Although many scholars therefore view Ham as an eponym used to represent Egypt in the Table of Nations, a number of Christians throughout history, including Origen and the Cave of Treasures, have argued for the alternate proposition that Ham represents all black people, his name symbolising their dark skin colour; pro-slavery advocates, from Eutychius of Alexandria and John Philoponus, to American pro-slavery apologists, have therefore occasionally interpreted the narrative as a condemnation of all black people to slavery. A few Christians, like Jerome, even took up the racist notion that black people inherently had a soul as black as [their] body.

Slavery was customary in antiquity, and it is condoned by the Torah. The Bible uses the Hebrew term ebed to refer to slavery; however, ebed has a much wider meaning than the English term slavery, and in several circumstances it is more accurately translated into English as servant. It was seen as legitimate to enslave captives obtained through warfare, but not through kidnapping. Children could also be sold into debt bondage, which was sometimes ordered by a court of law.

As with the Hittite Laws and the Code of Hammurabi, the Bible does set minimum rules for the conditions under which slaves were to be kept. Slaves were to be treated as part of an extended family; they were allowed to celebrate the Sukkot festival, and expected to honour Shabbat. Israelite slaves could not be compelled to work with rigour, and debtors who sold themselves as slaves to their creditors had to be treated the same as a hired servant. If a master harmed a slave in one of the ways covered by the lex talionis, the slave was to be compensated by manumission; if the slave died within 24 to 48 hours, he or she was to be avenged (whether this refers to the death penalty or not is uncertain). 

Israelite slaves were automatically manumitted after six years of work, and/or at the next Jubilee (occurring either every 49 or every 50 years, depending on interpretation), although the latter would not apply if the slave was owned by an Israelite and wasn't in debt bondage. Slaves released automatically in their 7th year of service, which did not include female slaves, or did, were to be given livestock, grain, and wine, as a parting gift (possibly hung round their necks). This 7th-year manumission could be voluntarily renounced, which would be signified, as in other Ancient Near Eastern nations, by the slave gaining a ritual ear piercing; after such renunciation, the individual was enslaved forever (and not released at the Jubilee). Non-Israelite slaves were always to be enslaved forever, and treated as inheritable property.

In several Pauline epistles, and the First Epistle of Peter, slaves are admonished to obey their masters, as to the Lord, and not to men; however these particular Pauline epistles are also those whose Pauline authorship is doubted by many modern scholars. By contrast, the First Epistle to the Corinthians, one of the undisputed epistles, describes lawfully obtained manumission as the ideal for slaves. Another undisputed epistle is that to Philemon, which has become an important text in regard to slavery, being used by pro-slavery advocates as well as by abolitionists; in the epistle, Paul returns Onesimus, a fugitive slave, back to his master.

Judaism

More mainstream forms of first-century Judaism did not exhibit such qualms about slavery, and ever since the 2nd-century expulsion of Jews from Judea, wealthy Jews have owned non-Jewish slaves, wherever it was legal to do so; nevertheless, manumissions were approved by Jewish religious officials on the slightest of pretexts, and court cases concerning manumission were nearly always decided in favour of freedom, whenever there was uncertainty towards the facts.

The Talmud, a document of great importance in Judaism, made many rulings which had the effect of making manumission easier and more likely:

• The costly and compulsory giving of gifts was restricted the 7th-year manumission only.
• The price of freedom was reduced to a proportion of the original purchase price rather than the total fee of a hired servant, and could be reduced further if the slave had become weak or sickly (and therefore less saleable).
• Voluntary manumission became officially possible, with the introduction of the manumission deed (the shetar shihrur), which was counted as prima facie proof of manumission.
• Verbal declarations of manumission could no longer be revoked.
• Putting phylacteries on the slave, or making him publicly read three or more verses from the Torah, was counted as a declaration of the slave's manumission.
• Extremely long term sickness, for up to four years in total, couldn't count against the slave's right to manumission after six years of enslavement.

Jewish participation in the slave trade itself was also regulated by the Talmud. Fear of apostasy lead to the Talmudic discouragement of the sale of Jewish slaves to non-Jews, although loans were allowed; similarly slave trade with Tyre was only to be for the purpose of removing slaves from non-Jewish religion. Religious racism meant that the Talmudic writers completely forbade the sale or transfer of Canaanite slaves out from Palestine to elsewhere. Other types of trade were also discouraged: men selling themselves to women, and post-pubescent daughters being sold into slavery by their fathers. Pre-pubescent slave girls sold by their fathers had to be freed-then-married by their new owner, or his son, when she started puberty; slaves could not be allowed to marry free Jews, although masters were often granted access to the services of the wives of any of their slaves.

According to the Talmudic law, killing of a slave is punishable in the same way as killing of a freeman, even if it was committed by the owner. While slaves are considered the owner's property, they may not work on Sabbath and holidays; they may acquire and hold property of the own.

Several prominent Jewish writers of the Middle Ages took offense at the idea that Jews might be enslaved; Joseph Caro and Maimonides both argue that calling a Jew slave was so offensive that it should be punished by excommunication. However, they did not condemn enslavement of non-Jews. Indeed, they argued that the biblical rule, that slaves should be freed for certain injuries, should actually only apply to slaves who had converted to Judaism; additionally, Maimonides argued that this manumission was really punishment of the owner, and therefore it could only be imposed by a court, and required evidence from witnesses. Unlike the biblical law protecting fugitive slaves, Maimonides argued that such slaves should be compelled to buy their freedom.

At the same time, Maimonides and other halachic authorities forbade or strongly discouraged any unethical treatment of slaves. According to the traditional Jewish law, a slave is more like an indentured servant, who has rights and should be treated almost like a member of the owner's family. Maimonides wrote that, regardless whether a slave is Jewish or not, "The way of the pious and the wise is to be compassionate and to pursue justice, not to overburden or oppress a slave, and to provide them from every dish and every drink. The early sages would give their slaves from every dish on their table. They would feed their servants before sitting to their own meals... Slaves may not be maltreated of offended - the law destined them for service, not for humiliation. Do not shout at them or be angry with them, but hear them out." In another context, Maimonides wrote that all the laws of slavery are "mercy, compassion and forbearance".

Christianity

Slavery in different forms existed within Christianity for over 18 centuries. Although in the early years of Christianity, freeing slaves was regarded as an act of charity, and the Christian view of equality of all people including slaves was a novelty in the Roman Empire, the institution of slavery was rarely criticised. David Brion Davis writes that the "variations in early Christian opinion on servitude fit comfortably within a framework of thought that would exclude any attempt to abolish slavery as an institution". Indeed, in 340, the Synod of Gangra condemned the Manicheans for their urging that slaves should liberate themselves; the canons of the Synod instead declared that anyone preaching abolitionism should be anathematised, and that slaves had a "Christian obligation" to submit to their masters. Augustine of Hippo, who renounced his former Manicheanism, argued that slavery was part of the mechanism to preserve the natural order of things; John Chrysostom, regarded as a saint by Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, argued that slaves should be resigned to their fate, as by "obeying his master he is obeying God". but also stated that "Slavery is the fruit of covetousness, of extravagance, of insatiable greediness" in his Epist. ad Ephes. As the Apostle Paul admonished the early Christians; "There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus". And in fact, even some of the first popes were once slaves themselves.

In 1452 Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which granted Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery. The approval of slavery under these conditions was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. (This was regarding wars caused by the fall on constantinople) In 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon and distributed those slaves to his cardinals and the Roman nobility. Also, in 1639 Pope Urban VIII purchased slaves for himself from the Knights of Malta.

Other Popes in the 15th and 16th century denounced slavery as a great crime, including Pius II, Paul III, and Eugene IV. In 1639, pope Urban VIII forbade slavery, as did Benedict XIV in 1741. In 1815, pope Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna the suppression of the slave trade, and Gregory XVI condemned it again in 1839.

In addition, the Dominican friars who arrived at the Spanish settlement at Santo Domingo in 1510 strongly denounced the enslavement of the local Indians. Along with other priests, they opposed their treatment as unjust and illegal in an audience with the Spanish king and in the subsequent royal commission. As a response to this position, the Spanish monarchy's subsequent Requerimiento provided a religious justification for the enslavement of the local populations, on the pretext of refusing conversion to Roman Catholicism and therefore denying the authority of the Pope.

Some other Christian organizations were slaveholders. The 18th-century high-church Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts owned the Codrington Plantation, in Barbados, containing several hundred slaves, branded on their chests with the word Society. George Whitefield, famed for his sparking of the so-called Great Awakening of American evangelicalism, overturned a province-wide ban against slavery, and went on to own several hundred slaves himself. Yet Whitefield is remembered as one of the first to preach to the enslaved.

At other times, Christian groups worked against slavery. The 7th-century Saint Eloi used his vast wealth to purchase British and Saxon slaves in groups of 50 and 100 in order to set them free. The Quakers in particular were early leaders in abolitionism, attacking slavery since at least 1688. In 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed, with 9 of the 12 founder members being Quakers; William Wilberforce, an early supporter of the society, went on to push through the 1807 Slave Trade Act, striking a major blow against the transatlantic slave trade. Leaders of Methodism and Presbyterianism also vehemently denounced human bondage, convincing their congregations to do likewise; Methodists and Presbyterians subsequently made the repudiation of slavery a condition of membership. 

In the Southern United States, however, support for slavery was strong; anti-slavery literature was prevented from passing through the postal system, and even sermons, from the famed English preacher Charles Spurgeon, were burned due to their censure of slavery. When the American Civil War broke out, slavery became one of the issues which would be decided by its outcome; the southern defeat led to a constitutional ban on slavery. Despite the general emancipation of slaves, members of fringe white Protestant groups like the Christian Identity movement, and the Ku Klux Klan (a white supremacist group) see the enslavement of Africans as a positive aspect of American history.

Slave Christianity

In the United States, Christianity not only held views about slavery but also on how slaves practiced their own form of Christianity. Prior to the work of Melville Herskovits in 1941, it was widely believed that all elements of African culture were destroyed by the horrific experiences of Africans forced to come to the United States of America. Since his groundbreaking work, scholarship has found that Slave Christianity existed as an extraordinarily creative patchwork of African and Christian religious tradition. The slaves brought with them a wide variety of religious traditions including both tribal shamanism and Islam. Beyond that, tribal traditions could vary to a high degree across the African continent. 

During the early eighteenth century, Anglican missionaries attempting to bring Christianity to slaves in the Southern colonies often found themselves butting up against not only uncooperative masters, but also resistant slaves. An unquestionable obstacle to the acceptance of Christianity among slaves was their desire to continue to adhere as much as possible to the religious beliefs and rituals of their African ancestors. Missionaries working in the South were especially displeased with slave retention of African practices such as polygamy and what they called idolatrous dancing. In fact, even blacks who embraced Christianity in America did not completely abandon Old World religion. Instead, they engaged in syncretism, blending Christian influences with traditional African rites and beliefs. Symbols and objects, such as crosses, were conflated with charms carried by Africans to ward off evil spirits. Christ was interpreted as a healer similar to the priests of Africa. In the New World, fusions of African spirituality and Christianity led to distinct new practices among slave populations, including voodoo or vodun in Haiti and Spanish Louisiana. Although African religious influences were also important among Northern blacks, exposure to Old World religions was more intense in the South, where the density of the black population was greater.

There were, however, some commonalities across the majority of tribal traditions. Perhaps the primary understanding of tribal traditions was that there was not a separation of the sacred and the secular. All life was sacred and the supernatural was present in every facet and focus of life. Most tribal traditions highlighted this experience of the supernatural in ecstatic experiences of the supernatural brought on by ritual song and dance. Repetitious music and dancing were often used to bring on these experiences through the use of drums and chanting. The realization of these experiences was in the "possession" of a worshipper in which one not only is taken over by the divine but actually becomes one with the divine.

Echoes of African tribal traditions can be seen in the Christianity practiced by slaves in the Americas. The song, dance, and ecstatic experiences of traditional tribal religion were Christianized and practiced by slaves in what is called the "Ring Shout." This practice was a major mark of African American Christianity during the slavery period. 

Christianity came more slowly to the slaves of North America. Many colonial slaveholders feared that baptizing slaves would lead to emancipation because of vague laws concerning the slave status of Christians under British colonial rule. Even after 1706, by which time many states had passed laws stating that baptism would not alter slave status, slaveholders were worried that the catechization of slaves wouldn't be a wise economic choice. Slaves usually had one day off each week, usually Sunday. That time was used to grow their own crops, as well as dancing and singing (doing such things on the Sabbath was frowned on by most preachers), so there was little time for slaves to receive religious instruction.

During the antebellum period, slave preachers - enslaved or formally enslaved evangelists - became instrumental in shaping slave Christianity. They preached a gospel radically different from that of white preachers, who often used Christianity in an attempt to make slaves more complacent to their enslaved status. Rather than focusing on obedience, slave preachers placed a greater emphasis on the Old Testament, especially the book of Exodus. They likened the plight of the American slaves to the enslaved Hebrews of the Bible, instilling hope into the hearts of those enslaved. Slave preachers were instrumental in shaping the religious landscape of African Americans for decades to come.

Islam

According to Bernard Lewis, slavery has been a part of Islam's history from its beginning. The Quran like the Old and the New Testaments, states Lewis, "assumes the existence of slavery". It attempts to regulate slavery and thereby implicitly accepts it. Muhammad and his Companions owned slaves, and some of them acquired slaves through conquests.

The Quran does not forbid slavery, nor does it consider it as a permanent institution. In various verses, it refers to slaves as "necks" (raqabah) or "those whom your right hand possesses" (Ma malakat aymanukum). In addition to these terms for slaves, the Quran and early Islamic literature uses 'Abd (male) and Amah (female) term for an enslaved and servile possession, as well as other terms. According to Brockopp, seven separate terms for slaves appear in the Quran, in at least twenty nine Quranic verses.

The Quran assigns the same spiritual value to a slave as to a free man, and a believing slave is regarded as superior to a free pagan or idolator. The manumission of slaves is regarded as a meritorious act in the Quran, and is recommended either as an act of charity or as expiation for sins. While the spiritual value of a slave was same as the freeman, states Forough Jahanbakhsh, in regards to earthly matters, a slave was not an equal to the freeman and relegated to an inferior status. In Quran and for its many commentators, states Ennaji, there is a fundamental distinction between free Muslims and slaves, a basic constituent of its social organization, an irreparable dichotomy introduced by the existence of believers and infidels.

The corpus of hadith attributed to Muhammad or his Companions contains a large store of reports enjoining kindness toward slaves. Chouki El Hamel has argued that the Quran recommends gradual abolition of slavery, and that some hadith are consistent with that message while others contradict it.

According to Dror Ze'evi, early Islamic dogma set out to improve conditions of human bondage. It forbade enslavement of free members of Islamic society, including non-Muslims (dhimmis) residing under Islamic rule. Islam also allowed the acquisition of lawful non-Muslim slaves who were imprisoned, slaves purchased from lands outside the Islamic state, as well as considered the boys or girls born to slaves as slaves. Islamic law treats a free man and a slave unequally in sentencing for an equivalent crime. For example, traditional Sunni jurisprudence, with the exception of Hanafi law, objects to putting a free man to death for killing a slave. A slave who commits a crime may receive the same punishment as a free man, a punishment half as severe, or the master may be responsible for paying the damages, depending on the crime. According to Ze'evi, Islam considered the master to own the slave's labor, a slave to be his master's property to be sold or bought at will, and that the master was entitled to slave's sexual submission.

The Islamic law (sharia) allows the taking of infidels (non-Muslims) as slaves, during religious wars also called holy wars or jihad. In the early Islamic communities, according to Kecia Ali, "both life and law were saturated with slaves and slavery". War, tribute from vassal states, purchase and children who inherited their parent's slavery were the sources of slaves in Islam. In Islam, according to Paul Lovejoy, "the religious requirement that new slaves be pagans and need for continued imports to maintain slave population made Africa an important source of slaves for the Islamic world." Slavery of non-Muslims, followed by the structured process of converting them to Islam then encouraging the freeing of the converted slave, states Lovejoy helped the growth of Islam after its conquests.

According to Mohammed Ennaji, the ownership gave the master a right "to punish one's slave". In Islam, a child inherited slavery if he or she was born to a slave mother and slave father. However, if the child was born to a slave mother and her owner master, then the child was free. Slaves could be given as property (dower) during marriage. The text encourages Muslim men to take slave women as sexual partners (concubines), or marry them. Islam, states Lewis, did not permit Dhimmis (non-Muslims) "to own Muslim slaves; and if a slave owned by a dhimmi embraced Islam, his owner was legally obliged to free or sell him". There was also a gradation in the status on the slave, and his descendants, after the slave converted to Islam.

Under Islamic law, in "what might be called civil matters", a slave was "a chattel with no legal powers or rights whatsoever", states Lewis. A slave could not own or inherit property or enter into a contract. However, he was better off in terms of rights than Greek or Roman slaves. According to Chirag Ali, the early Muhammadans misinterpreted the Quran as sanctioning "polygamy, arbitrary divorce, slavery, concubinage and religious wars", and he states that the Quranic injunctions are against all this. According to Ron Shaham and other scholars, the various jurisprudence systems on Sharia such as Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi'i, Hanbali and others differ in their interpretation of the Islamic law on slaves.

Slaves were particularly numerous in Muslim armies. Slave armies were deployed by Sultans and Caliphs at various medieval era war fronts across the Islamic Empires, playing an important role in the expansion of Islam in Africa and elsewhere. Slavery of men and women in Islamic states such as the Ottoman Empire, states Ze'evi, continued through the early 20th-century.

Bahá'í Faith

Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Bahá'í Faith, commended Queen Victoria for abolishing the slave trade in a letter written to Her Majesty between 1868-1872. Bahá'u'lláh also forbids slavery in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas written around 1873 considered by Bahá'ís to be the holiest book revealed by Bahá'u'lláh in which he states, "It is forbidden you to trade in slaves, be they men or women."

Both the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh owned slaves of African descent before the writing of the Kitab-i-Aqdas. While the Báb purchased several slaves, Bahá'u'lláh acquired his through inheritance and freed them. Bahá'u'lláh officially condemned slavery in 1874. 21st century scholarship has found that the Báb credited one of the slaves of his elders as having raised him and compares him favorably with his own father. Work has continued on other recent finds in archives such as a very early document of Bahá'u'lláh's explaining his emancipating his slave because as all humans are symbolically slaves of God none can be owned by another saying "How, then, can this thrall claim for himself ownership of any other human being? Nay,…."

Hinduism

Hindu Vedas regard liberation to be the ultimate goal which is contrary to slavery. Hindu Smritis condemn slavery.

The term "dasa" (dāsa) in ancient Hindu text is loosely translated as "slave." However, the meaning of the term varied over time. R. S. Sharma, in his 1958 book, for example, states that the only word which could possibly mean slave in Rigveda is dāsa, and this sense of use is traceable to four later verses in Rigveda. The term dāsa in the Rigveda, has been also been translated as a servant or enemy, and the identity of this term remains unclear and disputed among scholars.

The word dāsi is found in Rigveda and Atharvaveda, states R.S. Sharma, which he states represented "a small servile class of women slaves". Slavery in Vedic period, according to him, was mostly confined to women employed as domestic workers. He translates dasi in a Vedic era Upanishad as "maid-servant". Male slaves are rarely mentioned in the Vedic texts. The word dāsa occurs in the Hindu Sruti texts Aitareya and Gopatha Brahmanas, but not in the sense of a slave.

Towards the end of the Vedic period (600 BCE), a new system of varnas had appeared, with people called shudras replacing the erstwhile dasas. Some of the shudras were employed as labouring masses on farm land, much like "helots of Sparta", even though they were not treated with the same degree of coercion and contempt. They could be given away as gifts along with the land, which came in for criticism from the religious texts Āśvalāyana and Kātyāyana Śrautasūtras. The term dasa was now employed to designate such enslaved people. Slavery arose out of debt, sale by parents or oneself (due to famines), judicial decree or fear. The slaves were differentiated by origin and different disabilities and rules for manumission applied. While this could happen to a person of any varna, shudras were much more likely to be reduced to slavery.

The Arthashastra laid down norms for the State to resettle shudra cultivators into new villages and providing them with land, grain, cattle and money. It also stated that aryas could not be subject to slavery and that the selling or mortgaging of a shudra was punishable unless he was a born slave.

Buddhism

In Pali language Buddhist texts, Amaya-dasa has been translated by Davids and Stede in 1925, as a "slave by birth", Kila-dasa translated as a "bought slave", and Amata-dasa as "one who sees Amata (Sanskrit: Amrita, nectar of immortality) or Nibbana". However, dasa in ancient texts can also mean "servant".

Words related to dasa are found in early Buddhist texts, such as dāso na pabbājetabbo, which Davids and Stede translate as "the slave cannot become a Bhikkhu". This restriction on who could become a Buddhist monk is found in Vinaya Pitakam i.93, Digha Nikaya, Majjhima Nikāya, Tibetan Bhiksukarmavakya and Upasampadajnapti. Schopen states that this translation of dasa as slave is disputed by scholars.

Early Buddhist texts in Pali, according to R. S. Sharma, mention dāsa and kammakaras, and they show that those who failed to pay their debts were enslaved, and Buddhism did not allow debtors and slaves to join their monasteries.

The Buddhist Emperor Ashoka banned slavery and renounced war.