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Were Banu Qurayzah Children And Slaves Taken Captives Or Sold As Slaves?
1) In the Hadith, it seems that the arbitrator’s judgement was that the children and women be taken captives. However, in this answer (Discussion 1763 • Reply 1766), there is an excerpt from Meezan where it says that the children and women were sold as slaves. Which of these is correct? Do we have any mention in primary sources of what was done to the children and women of Banu Qurayzah after the initial judgement was passed and how they were treated?
2) If the children and women were indeed taken as slaves, how can that be justified, especially for children who should be considered innocent of the actions of adults? It seems completely unfair. We regard any offensive action or punishment against child prisoners as a crime today if done by anyone so it is difficult to believe that the Prophet PBUH would have allowed that.
What about children who were really young? Were the children separated from their mothers? All such sort of questions come to mind when thinking about this.
3) It’s really not clear why this situation qualifies as an exception to the general Quranic rule to either free captives with or without compensation.
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8 Replies
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Were Banu Qurayzah Children And Slaves Taken Captives Or Sold As Slaves?
updated 2 years, 2 months ago
3 Members
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8
Replies
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I think this video talks about how Islam handled prisoners of war and also the view of Ghamidi Sahab on event of Banu Qurayzah is mentioned at 14:32.
If there are still any confusions, please do ask.
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I have watched the video and it doesn’t answer my questions.
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Then I will answer your questions on my understanding:
1. I do not know any primary source of what happened to women and children of Qurayzah, but as the video suggest, if they were to be enslaved then they were enslaved as per the agreement based on Torah. What Islam do with slaves is another topic.
2. You need to understand the situation and the era, if all the men of Banu Qurayzah were killed then there was no place for women and children to go. It is not a commandment of Islam to enslave people but it became a necessity of the era that when a nation falls, the women and children are taken by the victors otherwise their fate is to roam the earth helplessly until someone enslaves them, they become beggars or give in to prostitution.
3. As the video suggests, if anyone is willing to ransom them or if there is a place for captives to go and live, then you will free them without ransom. But if it’s not possible for them to go anywhere or no one ransoms them then they have no choice but to remain as captives/slaves because the alternative option doesn’t exist.
As for the whole child being seperated from mother, I think such thoughts would occur if we do not consider the spirit of Islam. It is not our right to even take the name of the biological parents from an orphan, then how can anyone take a child away from their mother? Mistakes might be made but in eyes of Islam, such things are not allowed.
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Thanks for the previous replies. I would appreciate if one of the moderators could also address this question.
I am still looking for sources for the first part of my question, and regarding the others too the previous answer doesn’t specifically answer how this situation qualifies as an exception to the general Quranic ruling, as well as how can enslaving children ever be justified.
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Saad Sahen asnwer is correct. Your questions are well answered in the video and Mr Saad’s response. You may need to ponder a little on them.
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Can someone answer this part at least which Mr. Saad said he didn’t have any source on?
“1) In the Hadith, it seems that the arbitrator’s judgement was that the children and women be taken captives. However, in this answer (Discussion 1763 • Reply 1766), there is an excerpt from Meezan where it says that the children and women were sold as slaves. Which of these is correct? Do we have any mention in primary sources of what was done to the children and women of Banu Qurayzah after the initial judgement was passed and how they were treated?”
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Also, based on Mr. Saad’s answers on the remaining parts, it seems that Islam allowed enslaving orphans in those days to take care of them? Is this correct?
Because the only options are –
a) Either the children were being punished for the actions of their parents
b) or they were enslaved because that was the only option to take care of them.
c) or just because the arbitrator gave a judgement, even if it wasn’t fair to the children, it just had to be carried out.
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Children with their mothers and sisters etc. were taken care of, by taking them into custody. There was no other option. In decisions about collective matters, such unfortunate issues as orphanages do take place. Now the question is what happened to these children, there was no singular policy announced to sell them or keep them. Some might have sold them, others kept them. However, it seems that these children later became Muslims and became a part of Muslim society.
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