I have just left Islam. Sex slavery is indefensible. Will clerics and leaders continue ignore this issue? How can anyone allow the sexual servitude of captured, slave women - as the prophet Mohammad did? Are Muslims going to ignore this issue?

Salaams

Deciding to enter into or exit out of the fold of Islam must always be an educated (and often emotional) decision.

فاسألوا أهل الذكر إن كنتم لا تعلمون So ask the followers of the Reminder (scripture) if you do not know.

Says your Lord in the Qur'an. So your question is appropriate. I don't know the precise answer unfortunately, but I'll share what I do know and hopefully we can work towards some understanding.

The fact that you can't get a copy of a comprehensive Sharia Law book

So this exist. It is called the Qur'an. The awesome thing about the Qur'an is that in addition to shari'ah, it also has historical stories in it whereby we can derive much benefit.

Shariah is the law Allah swt intends for us. Sometimes people want a detailed explanation of how to properly understand the spirit of the law. This is contained in the hadith. Then we have Fiqh, which is our ever evolving understanding + implementation of shari'ah. As we become more knowledgeable about ourselves and the space we live in, our fiqh changes. Fiqh is also conditional on the time, place and circumstances of the person it is being applied to. Just like a medical prescription for the same ailment is different for two, when one is allergic to the medication. In summary, our first point is that not all fiqh you read may be applicable to you under your circumstances.

and that sooooo much information is hidden and obscured, that just really sealed the deal for me.

You make it sound like there's this vast nebulous amount of shari'ah information but that simply isn't true. There are a handful of prohibitions and everything else is permissible. The info is out there. You can enroll in some Islamic classes and they even have Islamic Studies degrees you can get online now. If you want a summary of the shariah (maqaasid), it is as follows:

So what's your next choice? Christianity? In Islam, the core belief... the aqeedah is simply and understandable even for a child. It also resonates with the natural disposition. Ask yourself why you entered into Islam originally. It probably wasn't due to one random off hadith and more likely was due to the general message of the religion. If you aren't migrating to Christianity and instead are going to be one of those 'spiritual but not religious' people... then ask yourself this: as someone who believes in a creator, is it realistic that said creator doesn't care how His creation worships him? Everyone is free to come up with their own method and scheme for praising the Lord according to their own whims rather than based on His prescription? Wouldn't He send guidance to be followed? If the answer is yes, then open heartedly for that guidance knowing that the Creator of the universe will not allow a sincere one who's made that request not have it fulfilled.

The confusion and contradiction among the supposedly 'unified' Muslim ummah is frankly, embarassing.

At the end of the day, Muslims are human. The message is perfect, but we the followers have many shortcomings and flaws. Perfection is not obtainable but rather the pursuit of perfection is what we strive for. And if we die in a state of seeking religious perfection, in sha'a Allah, Allah swt will reward us upon our intention and complete that for us.

And the scholars and teachers with their fancy Facebook pages and fatawah about whether or not you can take creatine or say Jumah Mubarek, are living in a fantasy world if they think they're not massively responsible for this.

I cannot disagree with this... but I also cannot agree. Islam is not a melting pot. It is a salad bowl. Islam necessarily needs to be comprehensible by a desert nomad... also need to be able to tickle the intellect of learned men. So we need people addressing intricacies such as the permissibility of Jumuah Mubaraka as well as people answering questions such as the one you've posted. We can have both without one being at the expense of the other.

I asked no fewer than 4 different Imams: Is the rape of slaves allowed in Islam? Did the prophet prevent slaves from being raped? NOT ONE ANSWERED ME.

Is it not possible that they honestly did not know the answer? For example, if I asked you about the proportion of a will which is to be given to a grandparent, would you be able to give me an answer off the top of your head? In Islam, it isn't incumbent upon you to know something until you approach it. So for example, someone who is single and isn't in the market to get married doesn't have to study the fiqh of divorce. Someone who is a child isn't required to study the fiqh of finance, since their parents do all the transactions on their behalf. The imams you asked, do any of them deal with sex slavery or know anyone who does?

Big Sheikh, lives in Saudi! Speaks great English! "Don't ask these questions," he says to me

This might sound ridiculous, but just because someone is a shaykh in Saudi Arabia doesn't mean they've absorbed all of the knowledge of our Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him.

And we can't blame Bill Maher for this one, guys!

If this is where we're getting our news from, then...

I feel a lot of sympathy for the average Muslim who has no control over any of this, but I have to ask: Are our/your leaders going to address this issue?

Let's hold them accountable by demanding an answer, but let's also do our part by learning more about al-Islam.

The prophet forbade female infanticide, but not the rape of slaves and war captives?

Rewind. Sixth century Arabia. Men can marry 100's of women if they want. Girls are buried alive. Women are like cattle. They can't travel alone because it isn't safe. They def can't own property. Women voting? Forget about it -- voting doesn't even exist for men yet because the concept of shuurah hasn't even been introduced, more or less globally. There is no such thing as the police. Protection comes from having strong family members, thus sons and an honorable tribe. Our Prophet SAW came in and turned this system on it's head. Gave women the inalienable rights to not be killed for being born. To own property, to be counseled by their husbands, etc.

Now, when two tribes battle and one gets the upper hand, usually all the members of the losing tribe are killed. In Islam, it's prohibited to do this, so that's another ill our Prophet fixed. So if you can't kill the women and the children, what are you supposed to do with them?

  1. Kill them, can't do that due to the aforementioned reason.
  2. Let them go free. Well, you just wiped out the majority of the male / fighting population of the tribe... who exactly are those women supposed to go home to? Who is going to be protecting them now? If they were left alone, there's a greater chance even more harm would fall to them, now that they've lost both their source of livelihood as well as protection.
  3. Take them with you and take care of them.

So now you have a bunch of chicks and children who were the family members of all the slain men. It's now your Islamic obligation to feed them with the food you yourself eat. Clothe them with the clothes you yourself would wear. You provide them with shelter and basically have to take care all of their higher level Maslov hierarchy of needs items. And what do you get out of it?

Let's rephrase this a bit. I know you're a sister, but imagine you were a guy, one who is married. There is a sister at the masjid who was just abandoned by her husband at the airport. He fled cause he didn't want to be with her anymore. She has no money, all of her family is overseas, and she needs to remain in the US for the next 8 months for citizenship reasons or summat. You can go ahead and give her some money, but realistically, who's going to take care of this woman? I mean, there's only so much you can do for a sister... that you aren't married to. You aren't going to give her 8 months worth of rent. Why would you go above and beyond like that for her? At least in America, we have charitable organizations that can work together in order to support her. Unfortunately, even that being the case, believe it or not there still are more women in similar situations as above than these organizations have the resources to support. This is one of the reason these women are not against polygamy... but that's a different story.

Back to the slavery thing. So what are the Muslims supposed to do? You have a beautiful woman living in your house who's smooching off of your time, property and wealth, and you can't even be in a halal relationship with her?

If it wasn't the Muslims who won the battle and it was the disbelievers, do you think they would have any problems sleeping with their slave captives? Don't tell me that over the past 1400 years, society has become sooo much more civil. You don't even need to be a captive to get raped as a woman. Just ask the parent's of the female US soldier in Iraq who was raped and killed by her own US male peers. Or the one who took her own life at barracks after the army tried to cover up and subsequently dismissed the charges against those she alleged raped her.

In reality, I think you should be more concerned about war itself rather than

You talked about isis, daesh, etc. No Muslim, no one who has even remotely comprehensive of the Qur'an, no one who's heart in in tact believes that these people are enacting either the word nor spirit of Islamic law. So if you see they taking sex prisoners or killing children or whatever, why haven't you asked yourself about the 1.4B other Muslims on the planet? How come none of them are doing the same thing if that is what Allah swt and His messenger intended to make permissible and meritorious for us?

/r/islam Thread