The first concerns its virtue.
The second deals with Islam’s position on slavery and manumission.

As for its virtue, one need only recall the sound hadith reported by al-Tirmidhi (1547) from Abu Umamah and other Companions, in which the Prophet ﷺ said: “Whichever Muslim emancipates a Muslim slave, that act will serve as his ransom from the Fire.”

The hadiths and early reports that extol and encourage manumission are numerous. Allah, exalted be He, has made it the foremost of the prescribed expiations, for through it sins are effaced, offenses are atoned, and a tremendous reward is earned, commensurate with the beneficence involved. No beneficence is greater than delivering a Muslim from the shackles of slavery and the bonds of ownership; by freeing him his full humanity is restored, whereas before he had been treated like livestock, directed and controlled at will.

Thus, whoever liberates a soul wins the reward of Allah—and with Allah is the finest reward.

Second discussion: Some enemies of the Islamic faith have faulted the Sharīʿah for sanctioning slavery, which they regard, in its entirety, as a barbaric practice. We therefore wish to outline, briefly, the state of slavery within Islam and elsewhere, and to clarify Islam’s stance, for this is not the place for an exhaustive treatment.

Slavery was by no means unique to Islam; it was, rather, widespread throughout the inhabited world. It was practiced among the Persians, Romans, Babylonians, and Greeks, and was endorsed by their leading thinkers, such as Plato and Aristotle.

Among those civilizations slavery arose from many causes—war, captivity, kidnapping, banditry; a man would even sell the children under his authority, and some counted farmers as slaves. They viewed slaves with scorn and contempt, employing them for filthy tasks and back-breaking labor.

Aristotle, one of the ancient philosophers, even held that slaves are not everlasting beings, neither in punishment nor in—