According to them...

According to them, the real honor belongs to the obedience to Allah and cleaving to His religion, so he who educates his own self, prevents it from committing sins and the forbidden, and conforms to Allah's religion is the unique person who has excellence in Islam. As for superiority through racism and the rest of the other material considerations, they are not included in the excellence and honor with Allah.

No one should harbor malice against the Imam when he married a Muslim slave- [1] Ibn al-Atheer, al-Kamil, vol. 5, p. 84. [2] 'Ayan al-Shi'a, vol. 4, p. 480. girl after he had emancipated her, for he through that did not oppose Allah's Book, and the Sunna (practices) of His Prophet. Surely, Islam has proudly and gloriously treated all Muslims equally, regarded the Muslim male as equal to the Muslim female, and abolished all the pagan distinctions.

An example of that is that the great Prophet married his slave-girl, Zaynab, daughter of Jahsh, to his retainer Zayd b. Haritha, who was not equal to her in her social rank. As for the story of Juwaybir, the destitute, the miserable, it is well-known and written in detail. Through this Islam has established a basic rule for the bond of marriage; it is based on the unity in religion and love in Allah.

When Islam spread in the first times and its brave mujahidin liberated many lands of the world to summon them to Allah, the movement and bringing of the slaves became very wide. We think that many kinds of such slaves were taken illegally, for the ruling authorities in those times did not observe the Islamic precepts in respect with them.

Any way, Yethrib markets were full of slave traders who brought slaves to sell them; a street in Baghdad was called Slave Street[1], in which slaves were shown and sold. As for the attitude of toward those unfortunate slaves, it was merciful and kind to them. They bought some of them as possible as they could, and freed them for Allah's sake. An example of that is that Ahmed b.

Musa al-Kazim copied the Qur'an and bought it to buy for it some slaves and freed them for Allah's sake; he freed a thousand slaves through his handwork. The Imams not only showed kindness to them through releasing them, but they also held them through giving them a lot of money that they might be in no need of what was in the hand of the people; in this way they could get rid of slavery and poverty.