Islam Question and Answer - The difference between slaves and prostitutes

Tue 25/2/1431 - 9/2/2010

» He is trying to get out of paying back to the property bank on the grounds that he has a right in the bayt al-maal.

» Love.

» Can he avail himself of help from social security when he is one of Ahl al-Bayt?.

» Ruling on working in a casino.

» If a divorced woman remarries, she has no right to custody.

» Love and correspondence before marriage.

» Should he pay money for the employee to expedite the paperwork he needs to get married?.

» Is it permissible to remove the bones of the deceased from the grave in order to bury someone else in it?.

» The better of them is the one who does more naafil actions.

» She works for a company that is partly owned by two riba-based banks. Is her work haraam?.

5707

Principles of Fiqh » Jurisprudence and Islamic Rulings » Transactions » Slavery

The difference between slaves and prostitutes

I've heard that it is allowed for men to have intercourse with their slaves. Does that stand for women too, & if men can have intercourse with their slaves (the ones they have bought) then why is it so much ill thought of the prostitutes...they too are, kind of bought at others will, for shorter time period perhaps. Can you make all this clear & why is it so that Islam did not stop slavery....they are humans as well, & are against their will kept in captivity & against their will may be forced into intercourse?

Praise be to Allaah.

Slavery in Islam was originally prescribed because of Kufr. If there is jihaad between the Muslims and the kuffaar, and a number of kuffaar are taken prisoner, the commander is given the choice of sharing them out, doing them a favour (by releasing them) or paying their ransom. If they are shared out as part of the booty, they become slaves, subject to the laws governing products which may be sold. But at the same time, Islam urges the freeing of slaves and makes doing so an act of expiation for numerous sins. In principle, slavery is not something that is desirable; what is encouraged in Islam is the freeing of slaves. If a woman is enslaved according to sharee’ah, it is permissible for her master to have intercourse with her. This is unlike prostitution or zinaa, which Islam has forbidden as a precaution against mixing lineages and other reasons for which it is forbidden. There is no comparison between the two, because if a slave woman becomes pregnant, the child belongs to the master and she becomes free when he dies, because she has become the mother of the master’s child (umm walad), and is subject to the same rulings as a wife. And Allaah knows best.

Written by al-Khudayr