It is not so much in the matter of wives as in that of concubines that Moḥammad made an irretrievable mistake. The condition of the female slave in the East is indeed deplorable. She is at the entire mercy of her master, who can do what he pleases with her and her companions; for the Muslim is not restricted in the number of his concubines, as he is in that of his wives. … The female white slave is kept solely for the master’s sensual gratification, and is sold when he is tired of her, and so she passes from master to master, a very wreck of womanhood. Her condition is a little improved if she bear a son to her tyrant; but even then he is at liberty to refuse to acknowledge the child as his own, though it must be owned he seldom does this. Kind as the Prophet was himself towards bondswomen, one cannot forget the unutterable brutalities which he suffered his followers to inflict upon conquered nations in the taking of slaves. The Muslim soldier was allowed to do as he pleased with any ‘infidel’ woman he might meet with on his victorious march. When one thinks of the thousands of women, mothers and daughters, who must have suffered untold shame and dishonour by this license, he cannot find words to express his horror. And this cruel indulgence has left its mark on the Muslim character, nay, on the whole character of Eastern life.

Controlling women’s sexuality and limiting men’s access to sex with women are the central focus of the code of honor and shame. Muslim women are chattel, and every Muslim girl must be a virgin at marriage.

These questions arise urgently when one considers that classical Islamic law accepts both slavery as an institution and the sexual use of female slaves, whereas the overwhelming majority of Muslims today completely reject all forms of slavery... Yet quite a number of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century Muslim authors and laypeople gloss over the existence of slavery, and especially concubinage, in Muslim history and texts... Given that the vast majority of contemporary Muslims reject slavery, many have chosen to ignore the issue. Rather than reiterate the classical religious permission for slavery and slave concubinage, even to oppose it, they seem to believe that a moderate or progressive agenda is better served by emphasizing the contemporary agreement that slavery, and especially concubinage, is forbidden as completely outside the bounds of Muslim sexual morality. Although a few authors deny the validity of slave concubinage outright, asserting that “those jurists of Islamic law who laid down the rule that a master may have [a] sexual relationship with his female slave without marriage are totally mistaken,” most simply ignore what prevailed as the consensus for over a millennium.

The Muhammadan religion appears to give almost unlimited license to concubinage, provided the woman be a slave and not a free Muslim woman. Those female slaves must be either (1) taken captive in war, (2) or purchased by money, (3) or the descendants of slaves. Even married women, if taken in war, are, according to the injunction of the Qur'an, Surah iv. 28, entirely at the disposal of the Muslim conqueror. "(Unlawful) to you are married women except such as your right hand possess (i.e. taken in war or purchased as slave)." This institution of concubinage is founded upon the example of Muhammad himself, who took Rihanah the Jewess as his concubine after the battle with the Bani Quraizah (A.H. 5), and also Maria the Copt, who was sent him as a slave by the Governor of Egypt.

When directly confronted, in a polemical context, with historical and textual permission for the sexual use of unfree women, Muslim authors sometimes respond defensively, seeking to protect Islam’s reputation. It may be argued, for instance, that Islamic “slavery” bore no resemblance to harsh American chattel slavery. In this view, the Qur’anic permission for men to have sex with “what their right hands possess” was merely a way of integrating war captives into society. Sometimes, it is added that the captives would be “integrated” into the Muslim community through becoming the property of a specific man who would be responsible for them and their offspring. Whatever merit these arguments have in the context of inter-communal polemics and apologetics, however, they are insufficient for internal Muslim reflection. In particular, the notion that women would be integrated into society by bearing offspring to their owners or captors does not apply to the case of the Bani Mustaliq: the rationale for the captors to practice withdrawal, according to other accounts, is that they did not want to impregnate the women lest they spoil their chances to ransom them.

”Though shalt not commit adultery.” “Who so ever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” In these two scriptures we have a complete definition of unchastity. The seventh commandment, with the Saviour’s commentary upon it, places clearly before us the fact that chastity requires purity of thought as well as of outward acts. Impure thoughts and unchaste acts are alike violations of the seventh commandment. As we shall see, also, unchastity of the mind is a violation of natural law as well as of moral law, and is visited with physical punishment commensurate to the transgression.

There were, according to Muslim warrior Abu Sa’id al-Khadri, “some excellent Arab women” among the captives of the Banu al-Mustaliq. “We desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, [but at the same time] we also desired ransom for them.” The Qur’an permitted them to have sexual intercourse with slave girls captured in battle—“those captives whom your right hands possess” (4:24)—but if they intended to keep the women as slaves, they couldn’t collect ransom money for them. “So,” Abu Sa’id explained, “we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing azl”—that is, coitus interruptus. Muhammad, however, told them this was not necessary: “It does not matter if you do not do it, for every soul that is to be born up to the Day of Resurrection will be born.” Conceptions and births were up to Allah alone. The enslavement and rape of the women were taken for granted.

Islam made it lawful for a master to have a number of slave-women captured in wars and enjoined that he alone may have sexual relations with them ... Europe abhors this law but at the same gladly allows that most odious form of animalism according to which a man may have illicit relations with any girl coming across him on his way to gratify his animal passions.[

The earth is stationary. The sun revolves around it. The stars are stationary, hung as lamps by Allah to guide travellers, and to stone the Devil. To believe anything contrary to all this is to betray The Faith. Men are the masters. Each may keep up to four wives at a time and as many concubines ‘as the right hand holds’. The wives are fields which the husband may or may not ‘irrigate’ as he will. The husband can bind them to obeying his merest whim on pain of being divorced. If he is still not satisfied, he can throw them out with one word. Upon being thrown out they are to be entitled to bare sustenance—but only for three months, and nothing at all beyond that. To see any inequity in this, to demand anything more for the women is to question the wisdom of Allah, it is to strike at Islam. To urinate while standing, to fail to do istinja in the prescribed way, to fail to believe that the saliva of a dog is napaak and his body paak—these are grave sins. To ask for the well-being of a kafir, be he ever so saintly, even upon his death, to fail to believe that a Muslim, be he ever so sinful, is better than a kafir, be the latter ever so virtuous, is kufr itself. Such is the mindset of the ulema. It pervades their rulings on all aspects of life.

I and countless other Muslims, have been taught from our earliest years that our religion demanded respect and caring for others. The Prophet Mohammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “None of you has faith until you love for your neighbour what you love for yourself.” This is what it means to be a Muslim. Among the very names of God, we hear: the Compassionate, the All-Merciful. All my life, every day, I have heard and used the greeting, Assalamu aleikum — a wish for the other to be blessed with peace. This is what it means to be a Muslim. More than a thousand years before the Geneva Conventions, Muslim soldiers were ordered not to kill a child, a woman or an old person, not to destroy a tree, not to harm a priest, not to destroy a church. These are the same values of Islam we were taught in school as children: not to destroy or desecrate a place where God is worshipped, not a mosque, not a church, not a synagogue. This is what it means to be a Muslim. These are the values I teach my children and they will hand on to theirs.

A few weeks later, an opportunity came for me to ask one of these Islamists as to what would happen to them since they had committed the sin of Zina (illicit sex/adultery). He was very surprised at me for this impertinence. He told me that they had committed no sin. What? No sin! My brain must have failed to work! I simply could not hold my breath any longer to listen to what he had to say. He told me that Thais were not Muslims, so having fun with their girls was all right. In fact, he told me that that had been the practice in Islam for centuries. Whenever the Muslims defeated the non-Muslims, they could do whatever they wanted with non-Muslims. The Muslims could use the non-Muslim women as sex slaves and please themselves as they wished. A Muslim even had the right to kill the women if he wished. In simple language, the non-Muslims were not really human beings. They were inferior even to cattle and animals. Moreover, the Pakistani told me that the Prophet had allowed sex if a man was living overseas. I could not believe what I was hearing! He then quoted from memory many verses from the Koran and Hadith to support his views.

A surprising assertion about consent also appears in a recent monograph by a scholar of Islamic legal history who declares in passing that the Quran forbids nonconsensual relationships between owners and their female slaves, claiming that “the master–slave relationship creates a status through which sexual relations may become licit, provided both parties consent.” She contends that “the sources” treat a master’s nonconsensual sex with his female slave as “tantamount to the crime of zina [illicit sex] and/or rape.” Though I believe in the strongest possible terms that meaningful consent is a prerequisite for ethical sexual relationships, I am at a loss to find this stance mirrored in the premodern Muslim legal tradition, which accepted and regulated slavery, including sex between male masters and their female slaves.

And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess… [4:24]. Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Bunani informed us through Abu Sa‘id al-Khudri who said: “We had captured female prisoners of war on the day of Awtas and because they were already married we disliked having any physical relationship with them. Then we asked the Prophet, Allah bless him and give him peace, about them. And the verse, And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess, was then revealed, as a result of which we consider it lawful to have a physical relationship with them”. Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn al-Harith informed us through ‘Abd Allah ibn Muhammad ibn Ja‘far through Abu Yahya through Sahl ibn ‘Uthman through ‘Abd al-Rahim through Ash‘ath ibn Sawwar through ‘Uthman al-Batti through Abu’l-Khalil through Abu Sa‘id who said: “When the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, captured the people of Awtas as prisoners of war we said: ‘O Prophet of Allah! How can we possibly have physical relationships with women whose lineage and husband we know very well?’ And so this verse was revealed: And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess”. Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Farisi informed us through Muhammad ibn ‘Isa ibn ‘Amrawayh through Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Sufyan through Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj through ‘Ubayd Allah ibn ‘Umar al-Qawariri through Yazid ibn Zuray‘through Sa‘id ibn Abi ‘Arubah through Qatadah through Abu Salih Abu Khalil through Abu ‘Alqamah al-Hashimi through Abu Sa‘id al-Khudri who reported that on the day of Hunayn the Messenger of Allah, Allah bless him and give him peace, sent an army to Awtas. This army met the enemy in a battle, defeated them and captured many female prisoners from them. But some of the Companions of the Messenger, Allah bless him and give him peace, were uncomfortable about having physical relations with these prisoners because they had husbands who were idolaters, and so Allah, exalted is He, revealed about this: And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.

In Allah's Eyes, Exalted is He, what a Muslim possesses does not gather any silver or gold, for one should only be doing what is permitted and avoiding what is forbidden, and whatever does not have leave a believer with a single friend. When we ask them to do what is permitted they insult us, and in that they are helped by the unbelievers and sinful people. By Allah they have thrown terrible things at me, but O Allah I will not leave them until I show them the right way.