Rutter discovered many ageing slaves in the city, freed or abandoned by their owners because they were no longer fit to work. ‘Several of these poor creatures, some of them women were living in the Haram during my stay in Mecca’ surviving on begging. Rutter had studied the Quran and was an expert in Islamic Law. He could not reconcile the teachings of Islam with the prevalence of slavery in the Holy City. If the injunctions of Islam were ‘rightly practised’, he observed, it would lead to ‘the complete cessation of slavery in the Islamic state….again and again, the Koran reiterates the teaching that one of the most acceptable acts in the sight of God is the liberation of the slave. [p310, Mecca The Sacred City, Ziauddin Sardar, Bloomsbury, 2015]
Categories: Islam
Blogging Theology 
“A Trajectory of Manumission: Examining the Issue of Slavery in Islam”
Quote from article:
“Traditions, Islam included, are not closed caskets but open conversations and debates often characterized by shifting notions of what is permissible. Slavery is one such shifting notion. There is nothing in the Islamic tradition mandating slavery. Thus, the overwhelming majority of Muslims today find slavery distasteful and have no desire to practice it. They have internalized a desire not to own people that is very modern.”
http://www.loonwatch.com/2017/04/a-trajectory-of-manumission-examining-the-issue-of-slavery-in-islam/
LikeLike