“Slavery cannot be intrinsically evil in Islamic law,” Georgetown University professor Jonathan Brown stated during a July 20, 2020 webinar. This disturbing assessment came during a 2019-2020 series of presentations on his 2019 book, Slavery & Islam, whose theses have hardly improved upon this Muslim convert’s past scandalous comments on slavery.
On February 7, 2017, Brown had caused furor while presenting a paper on slavery and Islam at the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). Thereby he noted the traditional Islamic doctrine expressed in Quran 33:21 that Islam’s prophet Muhammad is an “excellent pattern” of behavior. Therefore this example sanctified the slavery practiced by him and his companions, including sex slavery, a doctrine that had justified slavery throughout Islamic history.
Once public, such views completely negated Brown’s disclaimer at the presentation’s beginning. “I always make some hyperbolic statement that really makes sense in the context,” he noted, such that he would face accusations of “calling for slavery.” Given such concern over criticism, he expelled this author from the presentation before it started.
Brown’s elaboration of his views during his subsequent book tour has been hardly more reassuring, for slavery is “simply a fact of life in the Quran” and perhaps even “part of the DNA of Islam.” “Every area of Islamic law is permeated by slavery,” something that “sharia, without exception until the 20th-century, validated.” Muslim scholars have even speculated about a “time when the laws of slavery will actually be needed again,” such as in a post-apocalyptic Mad Max-like world, he has noted.
For centuries, “Muslims were neck-deep in the trade of slaves,” Brown has observed. As others have estimated, this trade included 17 million black Africans, more than the 12 million taken to the Western Hemisphere in the transatlantic slave trade. As the Ghanaian historian John Azumah has noted, while the transatlantic trade enslaved mostly men for labor, Muslim slavers favored seizing women for use as sex slave concubines.
In this regard, Brown has unsettlingly reprised his 2017 comments on sex slavery. Thus any norm that sex be consensual “is fairly unusual in world history.” This corresponds to Islamic doctrine’s proprietary understanding of female sexuality, which, he has noted, denies any recognition of rape in marriage.
Slavery in Islam is faith-based, Brown has explained. Under sharia the “only way that someone can lose their freedom is if they are a non-Muslim who lives outside the Muslim state and is then captured by Muslims.” Slavery therefore “is a reduction in legal status that is caused by unbelief,” whose “vestigial effect” can remain even for an enslaved convert to Islam or a child born into slavery.
Yet Brown has argued that Islam is “obsessed with emancipation.” Islamic doctrine’s numerous biases towards freeing slaves, such as a means to expiate sin, means that Islam “does not have an equal in any religious or philosophical tradition” from the premodern world. “The Quran and Sunna are unprecedently adamant about emancipation.”
However this emancipation should not help a slave return to unbelief in Islam. “Freedom is not the most important thing in Islamic law,” Brown has noted, although Muslim scholars have historically argued that “slavery is intrinsically harmful.” Rather, true freedom comes from submission to Islam, an “emancipatory force.” Seventh-century Arab Muslim conquerors, for example, before subjugating the Persians, announced that they would be free only as “slaves of God alone.”
Correspondingly, Brown has described Islamic civilization as a “vacuum cleaner, just sucking in people.” Muslim scholars have historically advocated enslavement of non-Muslims as a means of introducing them to Islam. Then “Muslims are always manumitting slaves, which means they need new slaves,” in an “emancipation turbine.”
Brown has correctly described how Christians led the revolutionary movement against a once universal acceptance of slavery to create the “abolitionist consensus that is held worldwide today.” “Muslims talking about the issue of slavery and abolition of slavery doesn’t happen until they encounter essentially Western abolitionism,” a development true of the Westerners themselves. In his assessment, Christians had in the process to “desacralize scripture” in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament with its numerous references to forms of servitude.
Jewish rabbis and scholars would beg to differ with Brown, for as McGill University Professor David Aberbach has written, “Judaism is intrinsically an abolitionist religion.” “In Jewish belief, every human life matters.” Contrary to superficial readings, Rabbi Dov Linzer has noted, the “Torah only accepts slavery as a deeply entrenched societal institution.”
The late Jewish sage Rabbi Jonathan Sacks delved into this deeper understanding of the Torah’s position of slavery. God’s intends “slavery is to be abolished, but it is a fundamental principle of God’s relationship with us that he does not force us to change faster than we are able to do so of our own free will.” Nonetheless, in the “Torah’s value system the exercise of power by one person over another, without their consent, is a fundamental assault against human dignity.”
This analysis requires that non-Jews such as Brown properly understand Jewish scripture. “Jews have always read the Torah through a rabbinic interpretive lens and not simply on the plain meaning of its words,” the website My Jewish Learning has observed. Thus Jews cannot “read every mitzvah as an ideal” that allows for no further development, Linzer has cautioned.
Accordingly, in various stipulations the “Torah indeed sees slavery as a problematic phenomenon,” Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of Jerusalem’s Western Wall and holy sites has noted. “Although it sanctions the institution of slavery, biblical law begins the process toward abolition,” University of Waterloo Professor James A. Diamond has observed. “Rules limiting slavery challenged the way society was built and prompted Jews to question an institution perhaps so natural it was invisible,” Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner has confirmed.
The Torah’s restrictive regulation of slavery indeed manifested a Jewish “light to the Gentiles” in the ancient slave-holding world. As the Chabad-Lubavitch organization has noted:
At a time when Romans had literally thousands of slaves per citizen, even the wealthiest Jews held very modest numbers of servants. And those servants, the Talmud tells us, were treated better by their masters than foreign kings would treat their own subjects.
Particularly the Bible’s Exodus narrative of Jews escaping bondage in Egypt imprints upon Jewish consciousness emancipation’s value. Diamond has noted that the Passover “commemorates the exodus, anchoring the relationship between God and Israel as Liberator and slave.” As Sacks commented, “Jews were the people commanded never to forget the bitter taste of slavery so that they would never take freedom for granted.”
Tellingly, Brown has noted that Islamic tradition rejects the Torah’s narrative of a gracious God emancipating Jews in ancient Egypt and equates them with Muhammad’s early Muslim followers in pagan Mecca. “The Muslims in Mecca are like the Jews in Egypt, but they are not slaves, they are oppressed.” Thus the Israelite exodus “is not a story of emancipation, it’s a story of victory over oppression,” symbolizing Islam’s triumph.
The contrast between beliefs held by Muslims such as Brown and the Judeo-Christian tradition clearly indicates why Muslims have struggled to reject slavery. Confronted with this moral evil, Muslim reformers have argued that slavery is an artifact of jihadist doctrines inapplicable in modernity, or that rulers have discretionary power to prohibit human bondage. Nonetheless, Brown has recalled that jihadists going to Muslims’ defense during Bosnia’s 1990s sectarian carnage had asked Saudi clerics about taking slaves, only to hear warnings that this would create bad publicity.
These Islamic realities reflect Brown’s moral relativism. Although the Ottoman Empire’s slave trade “was undeniably brutal,” he has argued that slavery and other often onerous labor relations such as indentured servitude have widely varied across human history. Following therefore his dubious claim that slavery is not really objectively definable, any slavery-induced “disgust is a cultural construct” and “just custom; it’s just urf.” By analogy, he has noted that China’s brutal dog meat trade horrifies many non-Chinese, although increasing domestic opposition to dog meat consumption undermines his cultural relativism arguments.
Despite grappling with slavery’s moral problems for Islam’s legitimacy, Brown has failed to find a solution. In recent years Islamic State jihadists in their mercifully brief caliphate have “really caused a crisis for young Muslims” by piously invoking Islamic canons to justify the enslavement of Mesopotamia’s non-Muslims. But as the foregoing analysis has proven, he is wrong to claim in Islam’s tu quoque defense that slavery’s abolition “is not indigenous to any religion or any philosophy.”
Contrary to traditional Islamic understandings of an aloof, arbitrary Allah, the biblical God’s natural law ultimately revealed slavery’s injustice to Jews, Christians, and the wider world. Church historian John B. Carpenter has noted as much in the relationship of America’s famed escaped slave and 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass to the Jew Jesus Christ:
Christianity’s commitment to freedom was so pronounced that Frederick Douglass, who decried the hypocrisy of slave-holding religion vividly, did not convert to Islam and become “Frederick X,” but professed, “I love the religion of our blessed Savior.”
While Brown’s exculpation for slavery in Islamic doctrine is unconvincing, he has nonetheless provided valuable insight into this previously “taboo subject.” As Azumah has written, a “critical approach is reserved for the Christian past but forbidden for the Muslim past.” However inadvertently and awkwardly, Brown has helped uncover Islam’s dark slavery legacy.
DBM echo says
“International Institute of Islamic Thought”
Hmmmm. Thinking? By Muslims? Islam is pay, pray and obey.
Since that Gate of Ijtihād closed a long, long time ago, there’s nothing further to think about when it comes to all subjects Islam.
mortimer says
Right. The gates of Ijtihad are shut, so Islamic SLAVERY is still in effect with the DIVINE SANCTION of Allah.
What would happen to ANY OTHER WHITE MAN AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY WHO ENDORSED SLAVERY? He would IMMEDIATELY BE FIRED from the university, of course.
But, it’s not bad when a Muslim endorses slavery! But why is that?
Neither Islam nor the very foolish convert Jonathan Brown are able to drag Islam forward to CIVILIZATION and unequivocally denounce slavery as EVERY OTHER WHITE MAN TODAY IS REQUIRED TO DO!
I wonder what millions of BLACK Americans would think of Prof. Brown if they knew he ENDORSED THE ENSLAVED OF MILLIONS OF AFRICANS by Islam in the last 14 centuries?
Prof.Brown is a white university professor in the American capital who ENDORSES BLACK SLAVERY.
gravenimage says
Important points, DBM and Mortimer.
Halal Bacon says
writing garbage for petrodollars is slavery
Infidel says
Are they still getting that many petrodollars anymore? B’cos all the Gulf countries have been tightening their belts – both due to the crash in oil prices, as well as the pandemic. I doubt that even Qatar can be as generous. More likely, woke companies in the West are paying for these
SJ says
Being woke is a joke.
tom parry says
GET ME SOME EARPLUGS, the marxist woke students will have a melt down. just joking, they know protesting islam is akin to being pro jewish. This professor is paid by Gtown whom are being paid from HAMAS palastine- guess they got their money worth from this quack professor.
SJ says
How do Marxists react to the revelation of Muhammed being a pedophile?
mortimer says
The Marxists ban you from social media if you criticize Mohammed and call him the owner of black slaves.
SJ says
True. Been there
gravenimage says
Grimly true.
Frank says
Brown is an intelligent man and his Youtube videos are well presented and interesting so a non-Muslim can learn from him. But even he can’t defend the indefensible, try as he might.
mortimer says
Brown is a WHITE MAN who just stood up in an American university and ENDORSED the enslavement of black people. What would happen to any other white man within minutes?
Brown’s theology is not Islamic. Allah is not concerned with good or evil. Allah just says ‘permitted’ or ‘forbidden’. Good and evil have nothing to do with Islam. Allah permits the enslavement of KAFIRS because Allah hates ‘wrong worship’. These ‘wrong worshippers’ do not deserve to live, so keeping them alive as slaves is considered a ‘mercy’ to them.
Brown fully endorses enslavement of KAFIRS. Brown is ‘amoral’ because Allah takes responsibility for such questions. Brown discusses morality as something that concerns someone else, but not him personally.
In the end, Brown is concerned merely whether slavery is ‘legal’ (according to Sharia). He couldn’t care less whether slavery is ‘moral’.
Rishi Sarin says
The base of islam are LIES & FEAR..
What is good about Islam…????NOTHING…
What has islam done in technology,science,etc…?????
NOTHING..
What is bad about islam..????
pedophilia,murder,slavery, wife beating, racism,
muslims put a blanket over its evil and don’t face up to the real teachings of islam,pretending its a compassionate , fantastic religion which will lead you to paradise – bullshit.
Intellectually Poor.. Tells inadequate males what they want to hear and that the sole purpose of women is to serve and be owned by them.
Even tells men that women are stupid and can’t look after themselves. Truth is that no intelligent woman would choose these men of her own free will and has to be forced to be with them hence forced marriages.
mortimer says
Response to Rishi: Islam tells Muslims to be nice to their mothers. That’s one ‘good thing’, I suppose. And Islam also tells Muslims to go easy on their slaves, but there should be no slavery in the first place, but Allah says slavery will exist until Judgement Day.
gravenimage says
Mortimer, Muslims can murder their mothers if they leave Islam or are friendly with an unrelated male.
As for the idea that they are nice to their slaves, the very fact that there are basically no surviving descendents of slaves in Dar-al-Islam gives you an idea of how *that* was practiced.
Kepha says
Is Brown truly a Muslim, or, as may well be the case with a lot of academic converts to Islam, is he really just another Marxist who’s adopted a few Islamic trappings?
Frankly, I welcome Brown’s clarifying things by stating that slavery cannot be intrinsically evil in Islamic law–since I am neither Muslim, attracted to Islam, nor and advocate of slavery. I do not know how many times Robert Spencer and others who’ve read deeply into Qur’an and Hadith have stated essentially the same thing on this website. From the little i’ve read, it seems that Islamic jurisprudence reflects the mindset of a loot-hungry program of political-military conquest for which the living bodies of the conquered are just so much more loot.
As for Judaism and Christianity, I cannot say what the Torah’s picture of slvery meant to a Mesopotamian rabbi in, say, the 4th century A.D. However, speaking as an heir of Christian abolitionism, it seems that the main thing about slavery in ancient Israel was that it was to be a temporary condition to aid the poor–with the enslaved person freed in the seventh year (hence sabbatical) with enough to start over; with permanent slavery reserved only for those who’d developed a tight bond with the owner’s house. It was never designed as a program for a whole racial group. I will also note that scruples and doubts about African chattel slavery arose among Christians of both ROman and Reformed persuasions as soon as their nations got involved in the trade. Even Bartolome de Las Casas, who had suggested following the Moorish precedent of using African slave labor when he saw what slavery was doing to the Indians (he didn’t understand epedimiology) ended up decrying African slavery as well. And, yes, there were “weightier matters” that informed Christian abolitionism from within the received theology.
But, to return to Brown and Islam, I note his denial of the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt in favor of seeing them as “oppressed”. That, perhaps, reveals even more of the mindset of Islam: it glorifies pride and arrogance in its aherents, and will never admit the present or past degradation of its people. It has no room for a truly gracious God. It’s a religion of self-righteousness, self-glorification, and boastfulness. Thank you, Dr. Brown, for revealing your plan for those of us who cannot accept the prophetic claims of a seventh century Arabian merchant-cum-successful-warlord. May the resistence to this ugly creed grow and grow. Christ is risen and holds the keys of death and Hades; Muhammad lies in his Medinan grave awaiting judgment with the rest of us.
SJ says
“Slavery is Freedom. War is Peace. I love Big Brother Muhammed” – All of warlord Muhammad’s followers
mortimer says
Jonathan Brown is telling the truth about the obscene cruelty of the Islamic slave trade. What’s next for Brown? It seems Brown is listing reasons for not being a Muslim.
I hope Brown grows a conscience and leaves that vile, cruel Death Cult.
Keith O says
Lots of luck with that hope!
Crusades Were Right says
The Western “woke” brigade only gets hot under the collar about slavery when it takes the form of people who look like them being mean to black folks…
…in the movies. lol
Keith O says
If slavery is so great, how about his manky arse gets thrown into slavery for a year and see if he changes his tune.
No rights, no special book, no special food, no banging his head on the ground 5 times a day. Just hard work and misery.
Sickening mudslime arse kisser.
Michael Copeland says
As a Kuwaiti cleric says,
“Slavery should be celebrated as one of the virtues of Islam.”
https://barenakedislam.com/2017/12/24/kuwaiti-muslim-cleric-slavery-should-be-celebrated-as-one-of-the-virtues-of-islam/
Bad Penguin says
Funny I have read that over 90% of the captured black slaves were sent to North African and Asia Minor Muslim countries. Many died on the trip as they had to walk. When they got to the north the boys were turned into Eunices and the women were made into sex slaves. I have been to many muslim countries in that area of the world and one thing you will not see is Back People. Why? Because when the black people got old and useless they were killed. The babies born to these sex slaves were killed immediately upon birth. Yeah thats freedom for you.
gravenimage says
Most male Africans were castrated upon capture. Many–most, even–bled to death on the forced march. Just hideous.
gravenimage says
Georgetown Professor: Islamic Slavery is Freedom?
………………
More sickening apologia for evil.
Brown is certainly right when he deadpans, “Freedom is not the most important thing in Islamic law”.
Peter says
These are the teachers of the previous and the next generation of politicians, teachers and NGO leaders.. In which case we may as well give up now