“I’m not going to say that the Quran allows something evil” or that Islam’s prophet Muhammad “did something morally evil” declared Jonathan Brown, the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University during an April 26 webinar.
Brown’s zealotry highlighted his disturbing views on Islam and slavery, which caused a storm of criticism in 2017 when he announced that Islamic doctrine forbids an unequivocal denunciation of slavery and rape.
The Saudi-funded Brown has since elaborated on his radical views in his book Islam and Slavery, which he discussed during Comment Magazine’s “Zealots at the Gate” podcast on “Moral Progress and the Problem of Slavery.” One of the cohosts was Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and Fuller Seminary assistant research professor of Islamic studies. His colleague Matthew Kaemingk, Fuller’s Richard Norton Mouw Assistant Professor of Faith and Public Life, co-hosted the session.
“Slavery is in the Quran and the precedent of the Prophet Muhammad,” said Brown, and therefore Islamic law or sharia. Islamic State jihadists used this argument to justify their atrocities, Brown noted in order to explain the conundrum of slavery in Islam. Contrary to some Muslim apologetic attempts to whitewash the topic, he admitted, “You can’t say that the Quran prohibited slavery, because it didn’t.” Thus, the Islamic State’s revival of slave markets, including sex slaves, “was causing a lot of Muslims serious crises in their faith.”
“If you think slavery is a gross and intrinsic evil throughout space and time, somebody who is complicit in that is not a qualified moral role model,” Brown declared. Yet “in the Islamic tradition, prophets are morally upstanding.” This corresponds to Quran 33:21, which proclaims Islam’s founder an eternal exemplary model of human conduct.
By contrast, the Hebrew Bible’s narrative of King David’s adultery with Bathsheba, a popular passage in the Judeo-Christian canon, “is not acceptable from the point of view of the vast majority of Muslim theologians,” Brown emphasized.
Therefore, to conclude that Muhammad committed an inherent evil by practicing slavery “would make me not Muslim,” Brown confessed, even while noting his own revulsion towards human bondage.
To resolve this moral dilemma, he offered various unconvincing apologetics, such as speculation that servitude in Islam was somehow gentler than in other slave systems ubiquitous in human history.
“I don’t think that all things that we call in history slavery are actually the same and that they deserve the same moral judgment,” he said.
The “Atlantic slave trade” practiced by the West, Brown asserted, “is so violent and so grotesque that it really shocked people.” He traced the beginnings of the modern abolitionist movement among Christians to this horror. He did not explain how the Islamic slave trade, with its brutal, often lethal practices including castration, was any milder, or why Muslims, unlike Christian emancipators, remained resolutely committed to slavery.
Brown said that he considers the racist nature of the transatlantic slave trade especially heinous, because the “vast majority of slavery in human history is not justified racially.” Yet this overlooks how Arab enslavement of Africans over centuries promoted persistent racism in Muslim lands.
Notwithstanding the role of the cotton gin in incentivizing America’s plantation slavery system, Brown additionally claimed that technological progress played a key role in ending slavery.
“It is not chance that humans started to come to a new conclusion about the immorality of slavery at the same time that they had discovered that you can use fossil fuels to create steam to move stuff,” he said.
However, as the Islamic State showed, a marked feature of Islamic slavery over the centuries has been its emphasis on sex slavery, in contrast to slavery’s principal utility in the Americas as a source of manpower.
Analyzing abolition, Brown argued that Christians and Muslims have historically practiced “trajectory hermeneutics,” as the “Quran or the Bible doesn’t say slavery’s evil, get rid of it. But it puts us on a trajectory towards that.”
Hamid concurred, saying the “Quran encourages the freeing of slaves” with “really incredible and overwhelming incentives.” This, he said, “implants an ethical premise that leads to the emancipation of slaves.”
Such comments ignore that emancipation in Islam often entailed conversion to Islam, a proselytization effect that only encouraged more enslavement of non-Muslims, something Brown himself has previously noted.
Slavery’s omnipresence throughout history before the onset of the Christian-led abolitionist movement left Brown wondering “how God could ever have allowed something that’s evil.”
Although “Christ is divine” in Christian theology, “Jesus did not forbid slavery,” Hamid argued, although Jesus’s statements heralded the liberation of all “captives,” presumably including slaves, and the Bible does not record everything Jesus said. Jesus’s “apostles included slave owners,” Hamid claimed, without elaborating.
Contrary to Brown and Hamid, Kaemingk, a Christian, noted the Bible’s uniquely liberationist message, which made some of its followers abolitionist trailblazers.
“Jesus did not condemn the Roman Empire for wars of aggression” along with “a wide variety of moral evils,” Kaemingk noted. He pondered the “mysterious question” that “God is being patient with evil and injustice and violence,” an understanding aligned with the Biblical belief in a loving God who is not dictatorial but appeals to human free will.
As is common, the panelists noted the Hebrew Bible’s references to servitude, but “I think what’s notable about ancient Israelite culture is how restrained any kind of engagement with slavery was,” Kaemingk stated. In particular, the “very first thing that the people of Israel learn about God, their very first encounter with God, is that he hates their slavery.”
Subsequently, all “moral questions” in Judaism result in the “same thing,” namely, “treat the widow and the foreigner like yourselves, because you yourselves were slaves in Egypt,” he said. “God liberated you, so you should liberate others.”
This nuanced biblical rejection of slavery exposes Brown’s tu quoque (“you too”) defense of rigid Islamic orthodoxy. The Bible-inspired human revolution against slavery belies Brown’s equivocating “everyone is doing it” analysis of an inhumane practice, however longstanding. His intellectual contortions may salve his tormented conscience, caught between Islamic fidelity and human decency, but they do not satisfy what should be—but too often are not—the rigorous academic standards in Middle East studies or other disciplines.
Andrew E. Harrod, a Middle East Forum Campus Watch Fellow, freelance researcher and writer, is a fellow with the Lawfare Project. Follow him on Twitter @AEHarrod. This article has been cross-posted with the author’s permission from Jewish News Syndicate.
DHZ says
When you want to minimize the role Africans took in the taking of slaves and the rise of slave markets throughout history then you pretend history began with the first slave ship leaving Africa for a cotton field in North Carolina. These scholars have blind spots that are bigger than their entire careers.
bill says
He hardly merits the label scholar. But he is taking the Muslim’s coin so we cannot expect anything moral from him
Alan Knight says
Brown is “bought and sold for Islamic gold”.
He must be dismissed from his position TODAY!
Pray Hard says
Why would the university do that. The University is getting most of that money.
Keys says
+1
Indeed he is a kind of slave himself to his Saudi buyers!
Chief Mac says
Islamofascists still have slavery to this day
End PC says
Problem is that the gradual Islamic sabotage of America isn’t done by armed fanatics but by straight forward buy-outs of people in positions of influence with Mideast petrol-money. Talking about many billions upon billions of such money to universities, think tanks, political programs/institutions, media, etc.
Why try to conquer the West with armies when you can just buy it down to its knees.
libertyORdeath says
Great comment.
World@70 Richard says
Yes, great comment. Any religion that’s bought and paid for cannot claim a good deal of moral high ground.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
That’s fine, but in that case, he should not condemn Western powers, be it Britain, Spain, Portugal, America for having slavery either
Not that he won’t, since he also has to profess allegiance to the woke crowd
Wellington says
This rube is making excuses masquerading as arguments and not real arguments. And apparently he misses (perhaps intentionally?) that the Koran is always prescriptive while the Bible is often only descriptive for one place and time.
Pray Hard says
Professor reveals who’s donating $millions to university …
OLD GUY says
And why does George Town University have Islamic studies on its campus? Simple answer MONEY from Saudi Arabia and most likely lots of it. And what does Islamic Studies mean, PROPAGANDA from islamic countries being taught in our schools.
FYI says
Isn’t it funny how allah claims he gave the Torah to Moses{koran 2;87,koran 14;5}confirms the Torah{koran 3:3}and yet completely MISSED the Purpose and meaning of the Torah?.
So allah wrote the Torah,confirms the Torah….and forgot the Torah.
If people are made in the spiritual image of God{Genesis 1;27}according to The Bible which contains the Law given to Moses then slavery cannot be right.
Yet in koran 98:6 where non-muslims are called ‘the WORST OF CREATED BEINGS”
we can see why allah is okay with slavery.
But WAIt:I thought allah wrote the Bible?
In koran 10:94 allah tells muhammed to check those who know the Bible{NOT you notice islamic scholars;it is as if allah is saying ‘well what would they know about the Bible’}This is WHY the Bible is banned in islamic countries.Muslims might find out that islamic ‘scholars’ have been lying to them -for CENTURIES.
koran 10:94 have a look if you are muslim but IGNORE islamic scholars;allah says to check with the BIBLE people.
FYI says
Difficult dilemma for muslims: a question ..
“Non muslims are ‘the WORST OF CREATED BEINGS{ koran 98;6}”
Do you agree?{And Why?}
YES or NO?
If YES then you agree with allah { you are an islamic supremacist}
if NO then you must disagree with allah{ you will probably be an ex-muslim right?}
You see there is none of that ‘love thy neighbor'[2nd Chief Commandment}/Golden Rule nonsense for allah..which is funny when you remember he claims he wrote the Bible{koran 3:3}which has these important teachings-teachings allah apparently forgot..
That is the job of islamic scholars:to help you NOT to figure things out.
At least think for yourself.
Richard Pelland says
While he acknowledges the wrongs of slavery, paedophilia and rape, he refuses to apply this condemnation to the actions of Mohammed for fear that it would force him to acknowledge the inherent flaws of a man he is bound as a Muslim to venerate.
gannon says
” biblical rejection of slavery ”
There is no such thing. Islam does not condemn slavery and neither is it condemned anywhere in the bible.
The bible and the quran are very clear on the things they reject and they do not reject it. It is dishonest to claim otherwise in an effort to sharpen contradictions with Islam.
Bird of Paradise says
So why are they always hiding these screwballs this intellectual egghead should be put In a Time Machine and shown the reality of Islam he wont see in the liberal revionists history