RELIGION OF HUMAN DIGNITY
Problem of Slavery
By emphasizing freedom as the birthright of all human beings, by proclaiming human equality without distinctions of caste, colour or clime, by denying the sin-innate theory and all other theories of the evil origin of mankind by affirming that the progeny of Adam is the noblest creation of God, by raising humanity to the status of the Vicegerency of God on earth, by making imitation of the Divine Attributes the ethical ideal of mankind, and by pointing out the conquest of the universe as the human destiny, Islam has established human dignity on the loftiest pinnacle conceivable.
Humanity was suffering in various ways because of the wrong notions held by pre-Islamic cultures and religions about human dignity, when Islam appeared. Cruelty was being perpetrated in the name of caste, tribe and race, large masses of humanity had been reduced to the status of serfs, and slavery, which had been an age-old institution, was being practiced by various races and peoples of Europe and Asia, including the Arabs, with the sanction of such scriptures as the Bible and without the least moral compunction. Islam raised its masculine voice of protest against all those evils and gave to the world a philosophy and a legislation which has made it the saviour of the downtrodden and the oppressed for all time.
Among the many misconceptions spread about Islam by its enemies, one is that which relates to slavery. For a proper appreciation of the role of Islam in the abolition of slavery, the reader is referred to the present writer’s "Islam and Slavery." Here, in this brief brochure, we might confine ourselves to the brief statement of a fair-minded non-Muslim scholar of the last century, who said: "His (i.e., Hazrat Muhammad’s) law of slavery is, ‘If slaves come to you, you shall’ --- not imprison and then sell by public sale, though no claimant appears, as in the nineteenth century is the law of Christian England in her provinces, but, --- ‘redeem them, and it is forbidden to you to send them forth’ (Qur’an II, p.85). And this was a man standing up in the wilds of Arabia in the seventh century." (Westminster Review no. IX, p. 221).Even the hostile and biased Dutch critic of Islam, Prof. Snouck Hurgronje, had to say: "According to the Muhammadan principle, slavery is an institution destined to disappear."
