Captives and slavery

The claim is put as though slavery were an Islamic invention, introduced into a world that had not previously conceived of it.

The historical setting

Islam did not originate the institution. Slavery was the established economic substrate of the ancient world, practised by the Greeks, and present within Judaism and Christianity long before Islam arrived. Whole economies rested on it. Any recognised textbook of the period’s social history will establish this much.

The trajectory

A reformer confronting an institution woven through the economy of every surrounding society had a choice of methods. Abolition by a single stroke would have been resisted and disobeyed, and would have failed. The course taken was to recognise the institution, restrict its sources, and open wide the gates through which the enslaved could escape their bondage. Manumission was made an act of expiation, a means of atonement, and a standing recommendation.

The direction of travel is the point. Islam recognised the institution while working toward its eventual abolition, which is what a system attempting reform under real constraints looks like from the inside.

What the objection presumes

The polemic reads a seventh-century reform as though it were a twenty-first-century endorsement. It takes a text that constrains an existing evil and treats it as though the text had invented the evil.

A person may still find this unsatisfying, and may wish the abolition had been immediate and absolute. That is a serious moral response, and it is worth taking seriously. It is a different thing from the claim that Islam introduced slavery to the world, which is simply false.