Professor Hasan Amir Aktas said in the concluding remarks of his article "A Comparison between Ancient Greek and Early Islamic Understanding and Practice of Slavery"...
Quote:
It has been seen that there are many differences between Ancient Greek and Early Islamic practice and understanding concerning slavery:
1. Above all Islamic perspective accepts wars as the only necessitating reason for the emergence of slavery; whereas Greek approach recognizes some so-called ‘natural’ differences between individuals as legitimate reason for slavery.
2. Islamic civilization considers slavery as an undesirable institution, necessitated by war and diplomacy conditions. Therefore it uses all kinds of opportunities and encourages any sort of steps to release the slaves in hand. But Greek civilization holds slaves as tools necessary for the functioning of the economic and social machine and doesn’t need to make an attempt to improve the conditions of those people.
3. For Islamic understanding, slaves have exactly and absolutely the equal humanly values and properties as free individuals. Slavery is nothing more than an accidental trouble that a normal human being undergoes for a period in his/her life, like accidents or diseases. Therefore he/she has to be treated in a manner that a dignified human being deserves. However the Greek held slaves as inferior creatures unable to manage himself/herself and they didn’t mind to treat them like a machine or an animal.
4. Islamic civilization did not apply a discrimination to slaves based on races and classes; whereas Greek civilization regarded outsiders as ‘barbarians’ and did not abstain from applying racism by excluding the free outsiders from the political society as well as enslaving the captured outsiders in a permanent status.
5. The freed slaves in the Islamic society could rise to the highest ranks of the political society in terms of their skills and abilities. But in Greek society, even if the slaves were manumitted, which was quite rare an occasion, they could, at best, rise to the level of outsiders, who were excluded ever from the political society.
6. In Islamic law, slaves receive, for many offences and crimes, only half of the punishment prescribed for free people. This is a humanistic attitude aiming to compensate and alleviate the troublesome situation they endure. As for the Greek practice, the punishments applied to slaves were much more severe and arbitrary than free men.
7. As Islam regarded slavery as an undesired practice necessitated by special conditions, number of slaves in Islamic communities in the later centuries increasingly declined and their conditions considerably improved; Whereas in the West, which was a heir of Greek civilization, conditions of slaves increasingly worsened both throughout Roman era and during the pre-modern period. Emergence of a process in which thousands of Africans were
driven by force from their homelands to be sold like commercial commodities and worked in farms and factories with heaviest conditions might be originated from Greek understanding and practices.
This website simply clarifies the allegations against islam and its working principle (aka shar`iah) by touching sensitive but famous topics like women rights, human rights, etc.
