Religion & Ethics: Content from Across the ABC




Date/Time 14 Mar 2014 6:22:42am
"The buyer and seller would enter into a contract of their own free wills. Any buyer was forbidden to take someone as a slave against their will (Exodus 21:16)"

That verse indicates that you cannot "steal" a man and sell him. It says nothing about the man's will in the matter if he is already property.

Leviticus also indicates that the children of non-Hebrew slaves remained slaves to you and to your children. Forever. They do not get to choose, this is not willful slavery (though I am aware that such was practiced). Regardless of whether they might be released at some other time, they were slaves, they were property and they were not allowed to leave if they wanted to. Twist and turn how you like, but it's no better than what you accuse Islam of.

"In your second example (Deuteronomy 20), which actually begins from v.10, yes, the woman was captive due to war, however, the union was predicated on marriage; which cannot be a forced union."

No verse anywhere indicates that war captives can only be kept if they're married to you (though there is an option to do so with its own rules, consent not among them). And since that verse explicitly mentions pre-pubescent girls as war captives, you might want to think about the ramifications of putting those two conditions together.