The Qur’an allows for the owning of sex slaves:
If you fear that you will not act justly towards the orphans, marry such women as seem good to you, two, three, four; but if you fear you will not be equitable, then only one, or what your right hands own; so it is likelier you will not be partial. (Qur’an 4:3)
This verse is the basis for Islamic polygamy, allowing a man to take as many as four wives, as long as he believes he is able to “deal justly” with all of them. But justice in these circumstances is in the eye of the beholder. Ibn Kathir says this the requirement to deal justly with one”s wives is no big deal, since treating them justly isn’t the same as treating them equally: “it is not obligatory to treat them equally, rather it is recommended. So if one does so, that is good, and if not, there is no harm on him.”
The verse goes on to say that if a man cannot deal justly with multiple wives, then he should marry only one, or resort to “what your right hands own” — that is, slave girls.
The Qur’an commentator Maulana Bulandshahri explains the wisdom of this practice, and longs for the good old days:
During Jihad (religion war), many men and women become war captives. The Amirul Mu”minin [leader of the believers, or caliph — an office now vacant] has the choice of distributing them amongst the Mujahidin [warriors of jihad], in which event they will become the property of these Mujahidin. This enslavement is the penalty for disbelief (kufr).
He goes on to explain that this is not ancient history:
None of the injunctions pertaining to slavery have been abrogated in the Shari”ah. The reason that the Muslims of today do not have slaves is because they do not engage in Jihad (religion war). Their wars are fought by the instruction of the disbelievers (kuffar) and are halted by the same felons. The Muslim [sic] have been shackled by such treaties of the disbelievers (kuffar) whereby they cannot enslave anyone in the event of a war. Muslims have been denied a great boon whereby every home could have had a slave. May Allah grant the Muslims the ability to escape the tentacles of the enemy, remain steadfast upon the Din (religion) and engage in Jihad (religion war) according to the injunctions of Shari”ah. Amen!
This is by no means an eccentric or unorthodox view in Islam. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that as they waged jihad warfare against infidels, Muslims would take slaves. He clarified what he meant in a subsequent interview:
…Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels”¦.Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars–there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.
When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name milk al-yamin, “that which your right hands possess” [Qur’an 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this point–there is no disagreement from any of them. […] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.
Right around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti activist and politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.
…A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth”¦.I brought up (this man”s) situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?”Â
The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”
“Is this forbidden by Islam?,” I asked.
“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not–she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that”s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”
While the savage exploitation of girls and young women is an unfortunately cross-cultural phenomenon, only in Islamic law does it carry anything approaching divine sanction. Here is yet another human rights scandal occasioned by Islamic law that the international human rights community and the mainstream media cravenly ignore.
“The schoolgirls stolen as sex slaves by Nigeria’s anti-education jihadists Boko Haram,” by Rod McPhee, Mirror, May 3, 2014:
When 100 armed men turned up at a girls’ boarding school they claimed to be Nigerian government troops sent to protect the pupils from marauding terrorists.
Staff took them at their word and it was only when 329 terrified teenagers were ordered out of their beds in the dead of night and herded into Toyota Hilux jeeps that they knew something was wrong.
In fact the soldiers were themselves terrorists from the radical Muslim jihadist group Boko Haram – and they were there to carry out one of worst mass kidnappings in modern history.
Families of the schoolgirls, aged from 15 to 18, are certain their daughters are now being used as sex slaves by an extreme sect that has killed 1,500 people since the start of this year alone.
They are captives in the wild Sambisa Forest in north-east Nigeria where Boko Haram has a heavily armed camp of bunkers, tunnels, ramshackle buildings and tents.
One girl who recently escaped following an earlier kidnapping said she was prized as a terror leader’s wife because she had been a virgin. She said young female captives were raped up to 15 times a day, forced to convert to Islam and had their throats cut if they refused.
Since the school abductions on April 14, news has filtered back of mass marriages with girls forcibly shared out as brides. Boko Haram has warned that any attempt to find them will lead to their execution.
Under President Goodluck Jonathan, the Nigerian government appears to have done little except issue an entirely false claim that most of the girls had been rescued by defence forces. Now as an international outcry builds, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is travelling to Nigeria on Tuesday in his role as the UN’s special adviser on girls’ education.
His aim is to secure the pupils’ release. But with stories of many already trafficked into neighbouring Chad and Cameroon for just 2,000 nira (£7.50) campaigners fear that without urgent action they will never be seen again.
“It is a very bad situation for those girls,” says Mma Odi, executive director of the Nigerian charity Baobab Women’s Human Rights.
“The men went to the school for no other reason than to make them their sex objects. The men will have reduced them to sex slaves, raping them over and over again. And any girl who tries to resist will be shot by them. They have no conscience.
“The conditions will be terrible and it seems like the government has just abandoned them because they are girls and they are poor. If they were the sons of the rich, the government would act.
“Their abductors are not human beings and if the girls get out they will no longer be normal. They will have to have years of counselling to recover.”
At the time of the abduction most schools in the region had closed because of attacks by a terror sect whose very name, Boko Haram, means “Western education is sinful” in the Hausa language….