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Concubine
How do we justify the prophet having sex with a slave girl? How is that fair on the wife/wives? and how do we know that concubines are no longer permitted?
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4 Replies
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Concubine
updated 3 months, 2 weeks ago
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This has been replied many a times. Please find the answers here.
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@Irfan76 I must remind you that questioner does not understand Urdu. (Discussion 85138 • Reply 85264)
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1. The only concubine that Prophet (PBUH) had was a political gift, freeing her had consequences to that political tie. So Prophet (PBUH) was cautious. Also being a wife of Prophet (PBUH) was a big responsibility, Hazrat Maria RA needed to be educated in ways of Islam in a more advanced level before she could be married into the house of a prophet (especially since the house was a target of scandals and wives had to be disciplined and sacrifice a lot of freedom to protect themselves from those scandals, the burden was great)
2. The purpose of Nikkah is transparency, to ensure children will be taken care of (that’s the only reason God cares about marriage) and God restricted sexual relationship of master with only their slaves. So any child is born, the father is known and will take responsibility accordingly. The arrangement is close as you can get to an actual Islamic marriage in a difficult era. Understandable by the women of that time and more importantly, by wives of Prophet (PBUH) where God’s plan for this was being preached.
3. The wives of Prophet (PBUH) were aware of the social norms, the expectations of being a prophet’s spouse (i.e politics will be involved and possibility of more women entering the Prophet’s (PBUH) house) and Prophet (PBUH) has known to discuss with his wives before he married another wife. Assuming there was no discussion this time is just assumption in bad faith. And we do not have a historical record of wives complaining about it or asking a divorce over it which they could pressure for it if they wanted. So please, do not feel offended on someone else’s behalf when they could voice their problems to Prophet (PBUH) freely and have quite often if you look at the historical records we do have.
4. While concubinage was a tolerable alternative to Nikkah in a difficult era, Islam was working towards the ideal arrangement of having only wives and no concubine, which is why Qur’an encourages to marry slave girls and does not encourage concubinage. The direct command to prohibit making captives into slaves which produced slave girls was one of the major steps and an indication that God did not want to see Muslims getting concubine in future. But of course the question remained, where would the existing slave girls would go if not begging on the street or forced to prostitution (which was something God would not tolerate as it is an attack on institution of marriage and hence endangers the children) so concubinage was tolerated in a difficult time instead of just freeing slaves without thinking where they would go when they had nothing to their names and were completely dependent on their masters. Means of freeing slaves, enriching them and marrying them off was underway but some concubine would remain in the end, despite all efforts, out of necessity, not ideally.
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