Abduction and Selling of Non-Muslim Women as ‘Slave’: Boko Haram Upholds the Holy Tradition of Prophet Muhammad

Nigeria has been the worst victim of Islamic terrorism for many years now with its Christian population suffering horrible death and devastations at the hands of Boko Haram Islamic Jihadis, the Nigerian version of Al-Qaeda. Thousands of innocent Christians – from school students to Church attendees to common villagers – have been killed or burned alive by the Boko Haram Jihadis in the past few years. A staggering 1,500 people were killed in the first 3 months of 2014 in Boko Haram violence. Sufferings of the totally innocent Christians at hands Boko Haram Jihadis have been such that the Christians of Nigeria—as I think—have only one way out of it, which is: Partition of the country like the 1947 India-Pakistan, but with a complete separation of the Muslim and Christian populations.

As of latest, a new dimension has been added to the sufferings of Nigerian Christians at hands of Boko Haram Jihadis. On 14 April 2014, Boko Haram militants attacked a secondary school and abducted 300 young girls. In another incident, 8 girls were abducted from a village on May 6, while 12 persons were hacked to death in a separate incident on May 5.

The latest in this abduction saga is the release of an hour-long video by Boko Haram commander Abubakar Shekau, in which he claims responsibility for the abductions and threatens to continue the same. About the abducted girls, he said:

“I abducted your girls... They are slaves and I will sell them because I have the market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell them. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I will sell.”

He also said that he abducted the girls because they dared to accept sinful western education defying the dictates of Islam and the Sharia.

He added: “the abducted Christian girls have been converted to Islam” and that “they will remain as slave with us.”

Boko Haram’s attack on girls’ school that cater secular western education may not surprise many of us, as we are familiar with numerous similar attacks on girls’ school in Afghanistan and Taliban-dominated areas of Pakistan, where the Taliban militants deem education for girls as un-Islamic. However, what most people will find incredible about the Boko Haram attacks is abducting those school girls to make them “slave” and their intention of selling them in the market, which already appears growing to be common in the Boko Haram strongholds in Nigeria.

Although the Boko Haram commander claimed his abduction and intention of selling the girls was according to Allah’s command to Muslims, the overwhelming majority of ignorant Muslims as well as the deceptive ones among them will surely become vocal in condemning his action, and will claim that there no place of such horrendous actions in Islam.

“This is against the noble and peaceful teachings of Islam, against the holy tradition of Prophet Muhammad,” they will say.

So will many non-Muslim apologists of Islam, for example, the likes of Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Far from being against the spirit of Islam, capturing women by attacking non-Muslims and keeping them as sex-slaves as well as selling them in the market is sanctioned by the Quran and tradition of Prophet Muhammad. For example, the holy Quran says that Muslims, aided by Allah, can attack and kill the non-Muslims, and take some of them, namely the women and children, as slave (captive):

And He (Allah) brought those of the People of the Scripture (i.e., Banu Qurayza) who supported them (i.e. the Quraysh) down from their strongholds, and cast panic into their hearts. Some (adult males) ye slew, and ye made captive some (women and children)… [Quran 33:26–27]

The holy Quran (33:50) also gives divine license to Muslims to use the women, captured in war, as sex-slaves:

O Prophet! surely We have made lawful to you your wives whom you have given their dowries, and those whom your right hand possesses (i.e. slaves) out of those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of war… [Quran 33:50]

These divine writs of Allah, the Islamic God, were also duly put into action by the Muhammad, the holy prophet of Islam. For example, Prophet Muhammad attacked the Jewish community of Banu Quraiza in 627 AD, and after killing all of their grown-up men (600-900 in number), captured their women and children as slave, who were distributed among his followers. The prophet himself took the 17-year-old beautiful girl Rayhana as his sex-slave. (see Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, Karachi, p. 461-470)

The prophet did exactly the same thing in his attack of Khaybar, i.e. after killing the men, he captured the women and children as slaves and distributed them among his followers. There, he took the exquisitely beautiful 17-year-old Safiyah, wife of the young leader of the Banu Nadir Jewish community, as his own sex-slave. (ibid, 510-518)

As far as the Boko Haram leader’s intention of selling the captured school girls are concerned, Prophet Muhammad himself established the tradition of selling captured women in Islam as recorded by Ibn Ishaq (p. 466):

Then the apostle sent Sa'd b. Zayd al-Ansari brother of b. 'Abdu'l-Ashhal with some of the captive women of B. Qurayza to Najd and he sold them for horses and weapons.

So, abducting the women and keeping them as sex and selling them, which the Boko Haram leader intends and claimed to be commanded by Allah, is indeed in keeping with what Allah commands Muslims to do, as well in keeping with the tradition Prophet Muhammad, in following Allah’s commands, had set in motion some 14 centuries ago. And it remained a dominant occurrence in the history of Islam until the West initiated a blanked ban on slavery and forced the Islamic world to comply.

The only difference between the capturing of women by Boko Haram Jihadis and the Prophet Muhammad is that the Prophet’s instances were much more cruel and barbaric, wherein he used to kill hundreds of men of a community before capturing their women and children as slave.

Source: http://www.islam-watch.org/authors/65-khan/1537-abduction-and-selling-of-non-muslim-women-as-slave-boko-haram-upholds-the-holy-tradition-of-prophet-muhammad.html