In the aftermath of Islamic jihadis — the Boko Haram — enslaving Christian school girls in Nigeria, the Muslim intelligentsia, instead of doing some serious introspection, has chosen to exercise damage control.
Columns by my co-religionists have appeared in newspapers ranging from the Toronto Star to The Independent in London and on CNN.com, where they avoid any reference to Sharia laws that permit Muslims to take non-Muslim female prisoners of war as sex slaves.
The fact is Muslim armies throughout history have been permitted under Islamic law to make sex slaves of non-Muslim prisoners.
Here is chapter 33, verse 50 of the Qur’an:
“O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee.”
When asked for a clarification, A Saudi cleric issued a fatwa permitting sex slavery.
He said: “Praise be to Allaah. Islam allows a man to have intercourse with his slave woman, whether he has a wife or wives or he is not married … Our Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also did that, as did the Sahaabah (his companions), the righteous and the scholars.”
In the eighth century, when Arab armies invaded India, they took thousands of Hindu POWs as slaves back to the Caliph Walid in Damascus, who distributed the women as gifts to the newly emerging Arab nobility.
The ninth-century Persian historian al-Baladhuri writes in his book The Origins of the Islamic State that when the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim invaded India in the year 711AD, the non-Muslim prisoners taken were given a choice of death or slavery. Continue reading.
Tarek Fatah is a Pakistani-born Canadian writer and broadcaster. He is Muslim, and often comments on Islam for the Toronto Sun.
Source: Toronto Sun
Image: Baloch Hall