:salam2:
Slow down guys,
I'm seeing a lot of people jumping to conclusions based on their understanding of 'slavery' without taking into consideration the specific requirement of such practices to occur.
First of All, in Islam 'freedom' is the natural state of affairs, thus the conditions of having slaves are reduced in various ways.
Just to name a few.
Limiting the circumstances and the number of people who could be taken as slaves
Not allowing mistreatment of slaves
Giving the slaves right to purchase their freedom. This is one of the thing that I do not see in many fatwas that are being posted. More often than not, slaves and the master enter into a contract that sets the conditions for the slave to be freed. The incident of The Prophet Sal lella elahi wasalam, giving Rihana the option of becoming his wife and thus be a free women or not to become his wife and thus remain a slave women, clearly demonstrates this principle.
Making the freeing of slaves a virtuous acts (you can find tons of examples of it, if you go through the hadeeth literature).
Also, banning Muslims from enslaving other Muslims.
Slavery for the Muslims came strictly through wars which many people overlook. These are kuffars who are fighting the Muslims and when they are captured what are the Muslims supposed to do with these people? Massacre all of them?
A group of prisoners could say "we became Muslims", can we just free them only to have them fight against us later? Only Allah knows best if their faith is sincere. In my opinion, it was a necessity for the Muslims during wartime.
It was the most compassionate and virtuous way to deal with Prisoners of War.
Many of these former slaves became Muslims, some became scholars, some became kings (the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt was a slave dynasty), and other became powerful military generals (The viziers of the Ottomans).
You guys are also not taking into consideration that when the Muslims were captured, they were also taken as slaves and they did not have all these rights and room toward freedom.
As for the women being taken as slaves. Majority of these women did become Muslim, some of them married the Muslims, and their off springs were also Muslims. I don't see what is so bad about it?
We are simply spending to much time thinking about "hypothetical scenarios". We should look at real scenarios, I've never come across a single incident during the time of Rasullah Sal lella elahi Wasalam or the Khalifas, that would make one raise their eyebrows.
This reminds me of an story about a man who came to Umar RA to ask a hypothetical question. I forgot the entire question but, the man created a hypothetical situation where he would 'fly by collecting the wind that passes from him in a bag'.
Umar RA's reply was, "come back to me when such incident does take place".
In Islam we know that we should seek knowledge that benefit us and keep away from knowledge that do not.
IMO, dwelling on this hypothetical situation (if slavery came into existance in the future) is not beneficial because we are just going to argue with each other without going anywhere.
P.S. Not sure why a brother should be so concerned about justifying to a friend. If Islam says it is okay to have sexual relation with 'what your rigth hand posses', then just be honest about it. Explain the background history and the circumstances that are required for such practice to take place, and if your friend is not pleased, then there is no reason for you to "justify" it.
Forgive me if I was harsh in my response.