History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

[662] Sura xxiv. 33. The New Testament nowhere inculcates the manumission of slaves, but the spirit of its teachings is opposed to slavery, and the early Fathers of the Church encouraged the emancipation of slaves.

[663] Sura iv. 3.

[664] Suras vi. 138, 141, 152; xvii. 33.

[665] Suras ii. 216; v. 93.

[666] R. Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism (1875), p. 204.

[667] Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam, 2d ed., p. 283.

[668] According to the principles of the Koran, though no Moslem captive might be reduced to servitude, all non-Moslem prisoners could, as spoils of war, be enslaved: “We make lawful for ye ... what thy right hand possesses [slaves] out of the booty God has granted thee” (sura xxxiii. 49).

[669] “The recognition of the slave traffic by Mohammedanism has been, and is to this day, a curse to Africa and a source of disturbance to the world’s politics.”—Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution (1906), vol. i, p. 307.

[670] In an address. Cf. R. Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism (1875), pp. 59 ff.

[671] Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam, 2d ed., p. 328. The author maintains that Mohammed himself did not intend that his rules should be binding for all time.