Prof. Dr. Faid Muḥammad Said
Introduction
Few questions have stirred as much debate in contemporary religious and intellectual discourse as the question of slavery in Islam—owing to its historical and human sensitivity and to the queries it elicits regarding the very concept of human dignity that the Qur’an establishes in the divine proclamation:
﴿وَلَقَدْ كَرَّمْنَا بَنِي آدَمَ﴾ (al-Isrāʾ 17:70) — “Indeed, We have honored the children of Adam.”
A rigorous scholarly discussion with a Western researcher on this subject was the immediate catalyst for the present study. She posed a fundamental question: How could Islam not abolish slavery at once, even while proclaiming the dignity of the human being? This question prompted a deeper reflection on the Islamic method of addressing slavery—across Qur’anic revelation, prophetic injunctions, and the historical experience of the earliest Muslim community.
Accordingly, this study undertakes to approach the matter from within the Islamic conceptual universe itself, rather than through superficial comparisons or prior assumptions. Its aim is to show that Islam did not institute slavery; rather, it inherited it as an entrenched human phenomenon and then sought to resolve it through integrated legal and educational mechanisms, guided by a vision grounded in mercy, justice, and gradual reform.
The study seeks to answer a pivotal question:
How did Islam engage a preexisting system of slavery? Were its rulings a rationalization of that system—or a pathway to the liberation of the human being from it?
The inquiry proceeds from the foundational hypothesis that Islam came to liberate humanity from the bondage of humanity, not to entrench it, and that it established a comprehensive humanistic philosophy of dignity—embracing body, mind, and conscience—built on two pillars:
- The Qur’anic foundation of dignity (“We have honored the children of Adam”).
- The Prophet’s final injunctions, which epitomize the message of mercy and justice.
The study also examines lived models of men and women who were once enslaved yet became luminaries of Islamic civilization—from the Companions such as Bilāl, Salmān, Sālim, and Umm Ayman, to leading Successors such as ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ, Mujāhid b. Jabr, and Muḥammad b. Sīrīn—in order to demonstrate that Islam did not free people by coercion but through knowledge, faith, and justice.
Chapter One: Slavery in Human Civilizations Prior to Islam
1. Slavery as a Human Universal
It is difficult to identify an ancient civilization that did not know slavery. For many centuries slavery functioned as a global socio-economic system, tied to war, agriculture, and commerce. In ancient Egypt, pharaohs deployed thousands of enslaved laborers for construction and harvest, without acknowledging their human rights. In classical Greece, even Aristotle regarded some people as “slaves by nature” (Politics). Rome reached extremes of cruelty, treating the slave as a res, a chattel to be bought, sold, and inherited.
Within Judaism, the Book of Leviticus (25:44–46) includes provisions permitting the perpetual enslavement of other peoples. In early Christianity, there is no categorical prohibition of slavery; Paul exhorts slaves to obey their masters (Ephesians 6:5). Indeed, Europe, even after Christianization, did not abolish slavery until the nineteenth century, following centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, which carried more than twelve million Africans to the Americas.
Slavery, then, was not an aberration but part of the very social architecture of human civilization; worth and status were measured by might and lineage, not by humanity.
2. Slavery in Pre-Islamic Arabia
In pre-Islamic Arabia, slavery was embedded in tribal and economic structures, manifesting in multiple forms:
• The poor sold their children—or themselves—to pay debts.
• Prisoners of war were enslaved without constraint.
• Female slaves (jawārī) were bought and sold and exploited for domestic service, singing, and more.
Despite rare voices of compassion, freedom was not a sacrosanct value. The enslaved lacked inheritance rights, legal standing as witnesses, and social rank; the master disposed of them at will.
It is noteworthy that some pre-Islamic Arabs would manumit slaves in illness or near death seeking divine favor—an indication that human nature was already stirring toward liberation, which Islam would transform into a comprehensive legal program.
3. Slavery in the Light of Ancient Law and Economy
From the vantage of political economy, slavery was a pillar of production in agrarian societies before the Industrial Revolution. Constant warfare yielded captives; enslavement was thus deemed a “legitimate” means of securing labor. Legally, property—not the person—was the highest value.
It was into this darkness that Islam emerged—not merely as a new creed but as a quiet moral-civilizational revolution, engaging reality without violent rupture yet advancing a holistic plan of reform that begins with the soul and culminates in society.
Chapter Two: Islam and the Re-Definition of Human Dignity
1. A Quiet Revolution in the Concept of the Human
When Islam dawned in the seventh century, the world languished under caste hierarchies and racial stratification. Islam announced a quiet revolution that did not deny reality but rebuilt it upon a new axiom: the innate dignity of the human as human.
God says:
﴿وَلَقَدْ كَرَّمْنَا بَنِي آدَمَ…﴾ (al-Isrāʾ 17:70) — “Indeed, We have honored the children of Adam…”
As al-Rāzī observes, this verse is “the greatest principle in the chapter of human rights, for God mentions honor unqualified—without conditioning it on faith, lineage, or color.” (al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr, vol. 21). It is, in effect, a Qur’anic charter of universal dignity, centuries before modern rights instruments.
Where earlier civilizations measured worth by wealth, Islam asserted that dignity is primordial—neither acquired by riches nor nullified by poverty, but conferred by God on all humanity. Thus, slavery could no longer be an authorized norm; it became a temporary exception, while the only true measure of merit is taqwā (God-consciousness):
﴿إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ﴾ (al-Ḥujurāt 49:13) — “Indeed, the most noble of you in God’s sight is the most God-conscious among you.”
2. The Qur’an as a Program of Gradual Emancipation
Islam did not suffice with announcing principles; it translated them into a practical, phased program of liberation, recognized in the objectives-based literature as “the staged emancipation of the human.” The Qur’an proceeds on two complementary fronts: drying up the sources of enslavement and broadening the pathways to manumission.
a) Drying up the sources
Islam abolished the pre-Islamic avenues to enslavement—debt bondage, kidnapping, sale of children, and the like—retaining only a circumscribed wartime context: prisoners of battle, and even there it prioritized humane alternatives:
﴿فَإِمَّا مَنًّا بَعْدُ وَإِمَّا فِدَاءً﴾ (Muḥammad 47:4) — “[Thereafter] either release as a favor or ransom.”
This frames release and exchange as the norm, not enslavement.
b) Expanding manumission
Islam made manumission among the greatest acts of devotion, even a required expiation for grave offenses:
﴿فَكُّ رَقَبَةٍ﴾ (al-Balad 90:13) — “Freeing a slave.”
﴿وَمَن قَتَلَ مُؤْمِنًا خَطَأً فَتَحْرِيرُ رَقَبَةٍ مُؤْمِنَةٍ﴾ (al-Nisāʾ 4:92) — “Whoever kills a believer by mistake must free a believing slave.”
Similarly, freeing a slave is mandated for oath-breaking (al-Māʾidah 5:89) and ẓihār (al-Mujādalah 58:3).
As Ibn al-Qayyim notes: “No path to deliverance from Hell is greater than delivering a neck from bondage.” (Zād al-Maʿād, vol. 5, p. 180).
3. Recasting the Master–Slave Relation
At the heart of this transformation stands the pivotal hadith redefining social relations:
“Your servants are your brethren whom God has placed under your hand. So whoever has his brother under his hand, let him feed him from what he eats and clothe him from what he wears; do not burden them beyond their capacity, and if you do burden them, then assist them.” (al-Bukhārī; Muslim)
This report shifts the logic from ownership to brotherhood, redefining authority as trust and responsibility, and establishing parity in basic dignity and living standards.
It is telling that the Prophet’s final counsel included: “Prayer, prayer—and [care for] those whom your right hands possess.” In effect, he entwined two inseparable duties:
• One’s bond with the Creator (prayer), and
• One’s duty to creatures (benevolence to dependents).
4. From Slavery to Brotherhood: A Value Transformation
This Qur’anic-prophetic method produced a deep reordering of values in the first Muslim society: the psychological barrier between “master” and “slave” dissolved; people were measured by knowledge, work, and character. The Prophet ﷺ appointed Bilāl, an Abyssinian ex-slave, as the first muʾadhdhin—the very voice of Islam atop the Kaʿbah. He entrusted command to Zayd b. Ḥāritha, once enslaved, over an army that included leading Companions.
These are not mere symbols; they are practical abolition of stratification, consigning slavery to a fading past by means of faith and awareness.
5. Bodily Freedom and Spiritual Freedom
Islam widened the notion of freedom beyond the corporeal to the spiritual and rational. A person may be physically free yet enslaved to passion, wealth, or power:
﴿أَفَرَأَيْتَ مَنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلَٰهَهُ هَوَاهُ﴾ (al-Furqān 25:43) — “Have you seen him who takes his own desire as his god?”
Hence Islam’s philosophy of true liberation: from the bondage of people to the servitude of God alone. ʿUmar’s famed dictum crystallizes this: “Since when do you enslave people when their mothers bore them free?” Physical slavery ends; intellectual and spiritual servitudes are more insidious.
6. Social and Economic Dimensions of Liberation
Socially, the emphasis on manumission produced the class of mawālī (freedmen and their descendants), who became integral to the ummah—scholars, judges, administrators, soldiers. This shows emancipation in Islam was institutional, not cosmetic.
Economically, restricting enslavement and widening manumission progressively dismantled slave-based production, replacing it with contracts and free labor. Within a few centuries, slavery became marginal across Muslim lands compared with its prevalence in the West.
7. Human Dignity as a Legal-Moral Objective
In the framework of the Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, honoring the human being is a core objective, interlinked with preserving life, intellect, and lineage. Al-Shāṭibī writes that the Law’s overarching aim is to release the morally responsible agent from the pull of caprice so that one becomes a servant of God by choice as one is by fact (al-Muwāfaqāt, vol. 2). Thus bodily emancipation serves the higher goal of freeing conscience.
Summary of Chapter Two: Islam uprooted slavery conceptually and practically—not by decree alone but by transforming the moral interior: making liberation an act of worship, dignity a sacred offering, and oppression a sin. In the Prophet’s polity, free and freed stood in one row behind one imam, before one Lord—marking the dawn of human emancipation under Qur’anic light.
Chapter Three: The Prophetic Sunnah and the Ethic of Mercy and Liberation
1. Sunnah as the Practical Embodiment of Dignity
If the Qur’an grounds dignity in doctrine and law, the Sunnah embodies it in conduct. Asked about his character, ʿĀʾishah said: “His character was the Qur’an.” (Muslim) The Sunnah is thus the operative reference for Islam’s ethic of liberation and mercy.
2. Three Final Injunctions: A Comprehensive Human Program
Near the end of his life, the Prophet ﷺ reiterated three encompassing counsels:
- “Prayer, prayer—and [care for] those whom your right hands possess.” (Aḥmad; Abū Dāwūd)
- “Treat women well.” (al-Bukhārī; Muslim)
- “Your servants are your brethren…” (al-Bukhārī; Muslim)
Together they map three axes of mercy:
- Vertical mercy: between servant and Lord (prayer)
- Domestic mercy: within the family (women)
- Social mercy: in labor and power relations (dependents)
3. “Prayer … and [those your right hands possess]”: Liberation from Within
By conjoining worship and justice, the counsel links piety to dignity:
﴿إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ تَنْهَىٰ عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ﴾ (al-ʿAnkabūt 29:45) — “Indeed, prayer restrains from indecency and wrong.” As al-Nawawī notes, rectitude is incomplete unless one worships the Creator and does good to creation (Sharḥ Muslim, vol. 2).
4. “Treat Women Well”: Widening the Circle of Mercy
The Prophetic vision recast marriage as mutual repose and mercy:
﴿لِتَسْكُنُوا إِلَيْهَا وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَكُم مَوَدَّةً وَرَحْمَةً﴾ (al-Rūm 30:21). This ethic parallels the counsel regarding the enslaved: both protect those structurally vulnerable, replacing domination with care.
5. “Your Servants Are Your Brethren”: An Early Rights Charter
The report establishes four principles:
- Equality in humanity (“your brethren”),
- Dignity in treatment (feed and clothe as yourself),
- Justice in duty (no overburdening), and
- Shared responsibility (assist when tasked).
The Prophet ﷺ operationalized this ethic—admonishing generosity to neighbors and servants, and tying manumission to disciplining anger and pride.
6. Lived Mercy
Anas served the Prophet ten years: “He never said to me ‘uff,’ nor rebuked me for what I did or failed to do.” (al-Bukhārī; Muslim) In this model, service is not humiliation; authority is trust, not tyranny. Leadership is measured by mercy, anticipating modern social psychology.
7. Social Impact: A Culture of Emancipation
The Prophet’s ethic catalyzed a social movement of freeing slaves. Abū Bakr spent his wealth liberating Bilāl and others. Thus emancipation became a communal ethos—moving slavery from an economy of domination to a devotion of liberation.
Summary of Chapter Three: The Sunnah shows Islam to be a project of liberation and mercy, uniting worship with social beneficence and building a bridge between piety and justice.
Chapter Four: From Bondage to Leadership—Applied Models in the Prophetic Community
1. Preface: Islam Reforms Substance, Not Labels
Islam did not merely rename the slave “servant”; it re-formed the substance—making the enslaved a brother and the master a custodian accountable to God. The community integrated free, enslaved, and freed persons on terms of equal human worth, and many formerly enslaved became leaders and scholars.
2. Bilāl b. Rabāḥ: From the Voice of Suffering to the Call of Freedom
Once tortured for saying “One, One,” Bilāl was purchased and freed by Abū Bakr. He became the first muʾadhdhin, calling Allāhu Akbar atop the Kaʿbah on the day of Mecca’s conquest. ʿUmar’s tribute—“Abū Bakr is our master; he freed our master Bilāl”—captures the inversion of values: true mastery is emancipation, and true nobility rests on faith, not lineage. The Prophet ﷺ told Bilāl he had heard his footsteps in Paradise; Bilāl attributed it to persistent prayer after ablution (al-Bukhārī).
3. Salmān al-Fārisī: The Seeker of Truth
Sold into slavery in Yathrib, Salmān recognized in the Prophet ﷺ the awaited signs, was aided by the community to purchase his freedom, and then offered the strategic counsel of the trench, saving Madīnah. The Prophet’s declaration—“Salmān is one of us, the People of the House”—erased ethnic barriers, crowning merit over origin.
4. Sālim, Client of Abū Ḥudhayfah: Imam of Emigrants and Helpers
A freedman renowned for his mastery of the Qur’an, Sālim led the Muhājirūn and Anṣār in prayer at Qubāʾ. ʿUmar said: “Had Sālim lived, I would have appointed him as caliph.” He died a martyr at al-Yamāmah, bearing the banner—free in both worlds.
5. Umm Ayman (Barakah al-Ḥabashiyyah): The Prophet’s Second Mother
Freed by the Prophet ﷺ, she became a matriarchal figure of the community. The Prophet said, “She is my mother after my mother,” and testified to her place in Paradise. Her son Usāmah b. Zayd commanded the army as a teenager, with Abū Bakr and ʿUmar in its ranks—an astonishing elevation from bondage to command.
6. Intellectual and Civilizational Implications
These cases illustrate Islam’s structural transformation: emancipation conferred real status, not tokenism. Sociologically, the prophetic polity pioneered a functionally egalitarian society, where differences reduce to piety and knowledge; politically, it actualized equal citizenship in the ummah of faith.
Summary of Chapter Four: The prophetic community turned slogans into social reality, making faith, knowledge, and action—not property or pedigree—the criteria of worth.
Chapter Five: Enslaved Scholars—Successors Who Became Imams of the Ummah
1. From Bodily Liberation to Intellectual Liberation
Islam’s civilizational marvel lies not only in freeing bodies but in freeing minds. Knowledge was opened to all:
﴿قُلْ هَلْ يَسْتَوِي الَّذِينَ يَعْلَمُونَ وَالَّذِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ﴾ (al-Zumar 39:9) and
﴿يَرْفَعِ اللَّهُ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مِنكُمْ وَالَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْعِلْمَ دَرَجَاتٍ﴾ (al-Mujādalah 58:11).
2. ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ (d. 114 AH): Mufti of the Sacred Mosque
A Black freedman, visually impaired, ʿAṭāʾ rose to become Mecca’s leading jurisconsult, consulted by the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik on rites. Ibn Jarīr called him the most learned in pilgrimage; Ibn Saʿd deemed him Ibn ʿAbbās’s successor in Meccan iftāʾ. He embodied humility and piety over pedigree.
3. Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. 104 AH): The Freedman Exegete
A client of Quraysh and a foremost student of Ibn ʿAbbās, he said: “I recited the Qur’an to Ibn ʿAbbās thirty times, stopping at every verse to ask about it.” Later exegetes rely heavily on him; al-Shāfiʿī advised, “Who seeks tafsīr, let him turn to Mujāhid.”
4. Muḥammad b. Sīrīn (d. 110 AH): Jurist, Hadith Scholar, Interpreter of Dreams
A freedman of Anas b. Mālik, he became a pillar of ḥadīth criticism and piety, reminding students: “This knowledge is religion; see from whom you take your religion.” His life illustrates intellectual emancipation as the highest freedom.
5. Mawālī and Knowledge: A Unique Social Phenomenon
Historians note that the mawālī were among the most productive scholars—Nāfiʿ, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Qatādah, Saʿīd b. Jubayr, and many others. As Goldziher observed, Islam uniquely elevated freedmen into the scholarly elite. Symbolically, authority shifted from lineage to learning.
Summary of Chapter Five: After freeing bodies in the prophetic era, the early Muslim community freed intellects in the age of the Successors—placing former slaves at the vanguard of knowledge and reform.
Chapter Six: A Critical Comparison with the Western Experience of Slavery and Emancipation
1. Setting the Historical Frame
Islam arose amid a world where slavery was universal. The Western experience—often upheld today as the emblem of freedom—was in fact among the last to renounce slavery and the fiercest in practicing it. This comparison contrasts two civilizational logics:
• Islam’s mercy-driven, interior liberation;
• The West’s conflict-driven, interest-based emancipation.
2. Europe: From Plantations to Factories
Europe inherited Roman slavery and intensified it in the early modern colonial era through the transatlantic trade: over twelve million Africans were shipped to the Americas; more than two million perished en route (Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, 1966). Churches at times legitimated the system (e.g., appeals to the “curse of Ham”). The Code Noir (1685) afforded masters near impunity. Slavery was a pillar of emerging capitalism.
3. Islam: A Project of Liberation, Not a Trade
By contrast, Islam restricted enslavement to a narrow wartime condition, prioritized release or ransom, forbade enslaving the free, recognized umm al-walad status (leading to freedom), mandated equitable treatment, and transformed manumission into worship and expiation. The Prophet’s final counsels enshrined benevolence and parity. Slavery thus became a transitional state that withered without civil war.
4. Philosophical Differences in Freedom
- Source: In Islam, freedom is a divine endowment; in modern Western thought, it is often a product of the social contract.
- End: In Islam, freedom aims at servitude to God; in the West, historically, at release from church and crown.
- Responsibility: Islamic freedom is bounded by right and justice (no harm and no reciprocating harm); modern Western freedom often trends toward radical individualism.
- Means: Islam advances gradual moral reform; the West frequently pursued violent revolution.
Thus, Islam frames freedom as the fruit of faith, whereas Western modernity often casts it as an alternative to faith.
5. Western Abolition: Emancipation by Conflict, Not Conscience
Abolition in Europe and America coincided with industrial shifts that made free wage labor more profitable than chattel slavery. The United States abolished slavery only after a bloody civil war (1861–65), with enduring racism thereafter—showing law alone cannot reform the moral interior. Meanwhile, Europe proclaimed rights even as it colonized Africa and Asia.
6. The Distinctiveness of the Islamic Method
• Ethical: Liberation springs from conscience and worship.
• Legal: Manumission is woven into law and expiation.
• Social: Emancipation becomes a communal culture, not an elite project—hastening slavery’s decline without upheaval.
7. Testimony of Fair-Minded Historians
Gustave Le Bon: “No nation treated its slaves as humanely as did the Muslims.”
Will Durant: “Slaves in the Islamic world were often better off than many free workers in medieval Europe.”
8. Modern Slavery in New Guises
Despite formal abolition, over 40 million people today endure “modern slavery” (UN, 2023). This underscores that material freedom without moral freedom yields new forms of bondage—to desire, money, and consumption. Islam’s concept of liberation remains profoundly relevant.
Summary of Chapter Six: Islam confronted slavery with a program designed to end it gradually; Western abolition came after extracting profit from it. Islam made manumission an act of devotion; the West, a legal decision. Islam liberates body, mind, and soul.
Chapter Seven: General Conclusion and Findings
1. From Material Bondage to Human Liberation
This study shows that slavery is not a marginal legal issue but a window onto Islam’s anthropology. The Qur’an’s proclamation—“We have honored the children of Adam”—laid the foundation of a revolution that raised consciousness and redefined the human.
2. The Islamic Trajectory Summarized
Four interlocking circles:
- Legal: Extirpating pre-Islamic sources of slavery; confining wartime captivity; integrating manumission into expiations; instituting umm al-walad.
- Ethical: Replacing absolute dominion with brotherhood and trust.
- Social: Making emancipation a societal cause.
- Intellectual: Opening knowledge to all, elevating freedmen to scholarly leadership.
Thus slavery dissolved from within.
3. Philosophical Contrast with the West
Islam freed by mercy; the West by conflict. Islam made freeing a slave an act of worship; the West made abolition a transaction of interest. Islam ties freedom to taqwā; Western modernity often to unbounded individualism, birthing new servitudes—of wealth, body, spectacle, and system.
4. Key Findings
- Islam abolished slavery in substance through staged legal-moral reform.
- Human dignity in Islam is absolute and universal.
- The Prophet’s final injunctions constitute a universal charter of mercy and emancipation.
- Islam anticipated the ethical foundations of human rights.
- The Islamic path to emancipation is peaceful and pedagogical.
- Value migrated from lineage to piety, from class to knowledge, from ownership to trust.
- Modern forms of bondage reveal the need for a Qur’anic moral reference.
5. Humanistic and Civilizational Implications
Islam does not merely unshackle; it redefines the human in servitude to God alone—free from every other allegiance and fear. The lives of Bilāl, Salmān, Sālim, Umm Ayman, ʿAṭāʾ, Mujāhid, and Ibn Sīrīn witness to a method that liberates by faith, advances by knowledge, and builds by justice.
6. Toward a Contemporary Vision of Human Dignity
In an age boasting technological prowess yet suffering new idolatries, Islam reminds us that freedom is not license but responsible commitment to truth and good; dignity is safeguarded not only by law but by faith, learning, and righteous action.
7. Final Word
Islam teaches that servitude to God is the essence of freedom, and freedom without that servitude decays into new bondages. Thus the Prophet’s deathbed counsel—“Prayer, prayer—and [care for] those whom your right hands possess”—draws two inseparable paths: worship and mercy. Human dignity is earned not by wealth, lineage, or color but by faith, justice, and beneficence.
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References (Chicago Style)
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- ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī. al-Insān fī al-Islām. Beirut: al-Muʾassasah al-ʿArabiyyah lil-Dirāsāt, 1982.
- Western Scholarship
- Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800. London: Verso, 1997.
- Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966.
- Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization, Vol. 4: The Age of Faith. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1950.
- Goldziher, Ignaz. Muslim Studies (Muhammedanische Studien). London: Allen & Unwin, 1967.
- Le Bon, Gustave. La Civilisation des Arabes. Paris: Librairie Firmin-Didot, 1884.
- Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract. Trans. Maurice Cranston. London: Penguin Classics, 1968.
- Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. New York: Vintage Books, 1945.
- Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
- Brown, Jonathan A. C. Slavery and Islam. Oxford: Oneworld, 2019.
- Abou El Fadl, Khaled. Islam and the Challenge of Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
- Esposito, John L. Islam: The Straight Path. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
- Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.
- Contemporary Documents and Reports
- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2023. New York: United Nations Publications, 2023.
- United Nations Human Rights Council. Contemporary Forms of Slavery Report. Geneva: UNHRC, 2022.
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