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Story of equal justice for the enslaved in the Quran

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 4 August 2023

“And they raced with one another to the door, and she tore his shirt from behind, and they met her husband at the door. She said: What is the penalty for one who intends evil to your wife, except imprisonment or a painful punishment? He said: She sought to seduce me. And a witness of her own family bore wit­ness: If his shirt is torn in front, she speaks the truth and he is a liar. And if his shirt is torn from behind, she tells a lie and he is truthful. So when he (the husband) saw his shirt torn from behind, he said: Surely it is an intrigue of you women. Your intrigue is indeed great! Joseph, turn aside from this. And (my wife), ask forgive­ness for your sin. Surely you are one of the sinful.”  — ch. 12, v. 25–29

وَ اسۡتَبَقَا الۡبَابَ وَ قَدَّتۡ قَمِیۡصَہٗ مِنۡ دُبُرٍ وَّ اَلۡفَیَا سَیِّدَہَا لَدَا الۡبَابِ ؕ قَالَتۡ مَا جَزَآءُ مَنۡ اَرَادَ بِاَہۡلِکَ سُوۡٓءًا اِلَّاۤ اَنۡ یُّسۡجَنَ اَوۡ عَذَابٌ اَلِیۡمٌ ﴿۲۵﴾  قَالَ ہِیَ رَاوَدَتۡنِیۡ عَنۡ نَّفۡسِیۡ وَ شَہِدَ شَاہِدٌ مِّنۡ اَہۡلِہَا ۚ اِنۡ کَانَ قَمِیۡصُہٗ قُدَّ مِنۡ قُبُلٍ فَصَدَقَتۡ وَ ہُوَ مِنَ الۡکٰذِبِیۡنَ ﴿۲۶﴾  وَ اِنۡ کَانَ قَمِیۡصُہٗ قُدَّ مِنۡ دُبُرٍ فَکَذَبَتۡ وَ ہُوَ مِنَ الصّٰدِقِیۡنَ ﴿۲۷﴾  فَلَمَّا رَاٰ قَمِیۡصَہٗ قُدَّ مِنۡ دُبُرٍ قَالَ اِنَّہٗ مِنۡ کَیۡدِکُنَّ ؕ اِنَّ کَیۡدَکُنَّ عَظِیۡمٌ ﴿۲۸﴾  یُوۡسُفُ اَعۡرِضۡ عَنۡ ہٰذَا ٜ وَ اسۡتَغۡفِرِیۡ لِذَنۡۢبِکِ ۚۖ اِنَّکِ کُنۡتِ مِنَ الۡخٰطِئِیۡنَ ﴿٪۲۹﴾

This is another incident related in Surah Yusuf, or chapter ‘Joseph’, of the Quran while dealing with the earlier part of the life of Joseph, who was a great grandson of Abraham. As I said last week, Joseph was sold as a slave to an Egyptian military officer and his family, and that officer told his wife to make his stay honourable. The Quran tells us that, later on, the officer’s wife, the woman of the house, attempted to seduce Joseph, but he was righteous and rejected her advances. One day, when she and Joseph were in a room alone, she bolted the door and attempted to attract him, but he ran for the door. What then occurred is described in the Quran in the above verses.

Now bearing this incident in mind, let us look at some events that occurred in the USA in the state of Mississippi in August 1955 which have been in the news recently. These relate to the brutal killing of an innocent 14-year-old African-American boy, Emmett Till by name, which has been commemorated in the past week. On 25 July President Joe Biden signed a proclamation establishing a national monument to honour the boy and his mother Mamie. In brief, Emmett Till’s killing took place as follows. He went into a grocery store where he spoke to the owner of the store, who was a 21-year-old woman. They were alone in the store for a short while. A few days later Emmett Till was accused of having tried to flirt with her, grab her and talk to her obscenely. On hearing this accusation, her husband flew into a rage, and along with another relative he tracked down the boy. They abducted him, beat and mutilated him, murdered him and threw his body into a river. The husband and this relative were tried for murder but were found not guilty. The following year they sold a story to a newspaper, publicly admitting that they had tortured and murdered the boy. They could not be put on trial again. Many years later, the woman admitted that her allegations against the boy were largely false.

Let us now compare this event of 1955 with the incident of Joseph that I read above from the Quran which happened more than 3500 years ago. Of course, Emmett Till was not a slave and the woman who accused him, and her husband and the rela­tive who killed him, were not slave owners. But their status was a continua­tion and a legacy of the society that existed during actual slavery in those parts of the USA, a hundred years before this. Emmett Till was a successor of slaves and those ranged against him were successors of slave owners. In the incident of Joseph as related in the Quran, when the wife alleged to her husband that Joseph had done evil to his wife and should be punished, the husband and her other relatives did not fly into a fit of rage against Joseph and start beating him. It was a member of the family itself who suggested that they should look for independent evidence instead of accepting the unconfirmed allegation made by the woman. The independent evidence was provided not by a person but by the condition of Joseph’s shirt. When evidence indicated that she was in the wrong, the husband declared the wife as sinful and told her to repent. He also asked Joseph to overlook this matter, as he was now cleared of the charge. Justice was administered regardless of who was the slave and who was the owner.

This was in complete contrast to the Emmett Till case. In this modern-day case the woman’s relatives and friends believed all the accusers, including the woman herself, without any independent evidence and they got together to take revenge. They took revenge brutally and viciously, against the law of the country, and yet at their trial the jury believed their defence and found them not guilty of murder. Justice was very much administered in favour of the party who were the successors of slave owners. Of course, there is no suggestion that the woman store owner had attempted to entice the boy herself and, failing in it, she attributed the act to him. In this aspect, it differs from the incident of Joseph. However, she did falsely accuse him of trying to commit sexual assault and she supported those who took action on the basis of her accusation.

Regarding the incident involving Joseph, I want to point out that the brief account I quoted above, that a member of the accuser’s own family wanted to check the evidence, then the evidence was accepted, and the husband declared Joseph innocent and his wife guilty of making a false charge, this account is found in the Quran but not in the Bible. The Bible covers the whole story of Joseph in detail. It also mentions this incident but its version is that when the wife alleged to her husband that “this is the way your servant has treated me”, the husband fell into a rage and put Joseph in prison (Genesis, 39:19­–20). The husband’s official position in Egypt gave him the authority to have him put in prison.

You can see that from the narration in the Quran people can learn lessons about the need for seeking evidence and doing justice on that basis, and not just believing what your close relative tells you against someone else. Regrettably, from the narration of the same incident in the Bible, we cannot learn any such lesson. It has often been claimed by the Western critics of Islam that the stories of the Biblical prophets given in the Quran were taken by the Holy Prophet Muhammad from what he had heard about the Bible and he then presented them as his own revelation. It is further alleged that sometimes he was confused in repeating a story from the Bible because his knowledge of the Bible, obtained from other people, was defective. In this case, however, it is obvious that the Holy Prophet could not have taken this incident from the Bible, since the most significant aspects of it, about evidence and justice, are absent from the Bible account. Indeed, in these significant aspects the Quran contradicts the Bible. Therefore, the Quran’s account is not some confused and garbled version of what is given in the Bible. It is, in fact, a clear correction of it.

This example presented in the Quran, of seeking objective and independent evidence and doing justice according to it, is from a time before the Quran was revealed, more than 2000 years before the Holy Prophet Muhammad appeared. This shows that according to the Quran these are universal, human values, and they provide a lesson not only for the Western superpower where this atrocious murder took place, but more so for the societies which claim to follow the Quran.

There is another statement in the Quran that is relevant to the topic of slavery. It is as follows: “Allah sets forth a parable (i.e., an example or illustration): There is a slave, the property of another, controlling nothing, and there is one to whom We have granted from Ourselves a goodly provision, so he spends from it (on good works) secretly and openly. Are the two alike? Praise be to Allah! But most of them do not know” (16:75). In the words “are the two alike?”, the Quran is telling us that it is better for a human being to possess things, and then to use his property for the benefit of others, giving from it both privately and publicly. He is granted those things by God, and God also grants him power and authority over the use of his property. That is a far better position than for a human being to be another human’s property, and have no power or authority over anything because he has to obey his human master. This is a clear indi­cation that the Quran does not approve of slavery, because it wants people to be owners of property and possess some power, rather than be owned by others as their property, with no control or empowerment for themselves.

This verse could also be taken in a more general sense. “The slave, property of another, controlling nothing” could be anyone who slavishly and blindly follows something or someone. An example may be those people whose minds become the property of religious leaders. Those people “control nothing”, make no decisions by themselves, think not for themselves and do as they are told. The same applies to those who follow certain social customs and attitudes, because they see other people following the same. It also applies to certain habits, where a person becomes the property of the habit, “controlling nothing” by his own decision, rather than being the master who has it under control. In fact, that is the story of human life.

So may Allah enable us to achieve the freedom in every sense that Allah wishes every human being to have, ameen.

 

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