Appendix 6 – Enslavement of Apostate Muslims or Muslims Declared to be Unbelievers

In general and in theory, the main principles in Sunni law on apostasy and excommunication
(takfīr) did not provide a very robust rubric for enslavement. In effect, whether or not Sunnis
could enslave members of a sect or community that Sunni authorities considered apostate
(murtadd) and/or ab initio non-Muslim (kāfir) despite that group self-identifying as Muslim
depended mainly on whether that group lay outside or inside the borders of the Sunni state in
question. Those within the borders were almost always immune from enslavement, while
those outside were at times seen as legitimate targets.1

The tenth-century Muʿtazilite scholar al-Kaʿbī (d. 931) stated that, as long as a heretical group
was considered part of the Muslim religion (milla), neither they nor their children could be
enslaved. The main Sunni position was tied to the jizya tax, which was levied on non-Muslim
minorities allowed to live under Muslim ruler. If a group was eligible to pay the jizya (i.e., all
major groups, including Hindus and Yazidis), then they were protected dhimmīs if inside the
Abode of Islam. If outside the Abode of Islam, they were unbelievers who could be enslaved.
Groups deemed ineligible to pay the jizya, if they were found within the Abode of Islam, should
be asked to repent and killed if they refused.

This second category included ‘Muslim’ sects whose beliefs put them outside the pale of Islam,
like the Safavid Shiite followers and the Qarmatian movement of the ninth and tenth centuries.
Such groups were considered apostates, who must either repent or be killed. Enslavement was
not an option for their men, and it was rarely an option for their women (see below). It was
seen by most Sunni scholars as acceptable to enslave the young children of apostates, since
they were presumed to be non-Muslims like their parents, but their minority meant that they
had not committed the crime of apostasy. Thus, the caliph ʿAlī enslaved the children of the
tribe of Nājiya, which had apostatized during the Ridda Wars. A major opinion in the Ḥanbalī
school did not allow enslaving the young children of apostates, since their birth into Islam had
elevated them above that.2

The question of Sunni views on Imāmī Shiites requires particular attention in light of the
enslavement of Persian Shiite Muslims by Sunni Turkmens and Uzbeks. This discourse is
complicated because, though Sunni writers often specify that they are passing judgment on a
discrete category they call Rāfiḍīs (i.e., Imāmī Shiites), their judgments as to whether the
subjects in question were Muslim or not often focus on specific actions or beliefs that have not
been consistent features of Imāmī Shiism, such as cursing Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. This practice
has been encouraged by some Shiite ulama at various times and discouraged by some at

1Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, 10:93.

2Abū al-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī al-Balkhī, Kitāb al-Maqālāt, 379; ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, Kitāb Uṣūl al-
dīn, 292-293, 322-332; Mullā Hüsrev, Durar al-ḥukkām, 1:301; Yaḥyā b. Ādam, Kitāb al-Kharāj,
69; Abū Yaʿlā Ibn al-Farrā’, Kitāb al-Muʿtamad, 273; Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, 10:93-94.
others, with popular practice often ignoring ulama opinion altogether. 3 Just as often, however,
Sunni rulings on the status of Imāmī Shiites are derived from discussions on rulings on specific
actions or beliefs in general books on creed or dealing with the larger issue of takfīr. In such
cases, tenets like cursing the first two caliphs are often assumed to be synonymous with Shiism.
Since the list of Shiite practices or beliefs that Sunni authors target generally subsumes at least
some items that are consistent features of Imāmī Shiite belief (such as the rejection of the
legitimacy of the first two caliphs) or were found in Imāmī Shiism as it was elaborated or
practiced in some region and at some point in the post-medieval world, I will treat the Sunni
discussions summarized below as applicable to Imāmī Shiism overall unless otherwise specified.
It is important to note that Sunni fatwas on the status of Imāmī Shiites have been consistently
shaped by the political contexts in which they were written.4

The most frequently and vigorously articulated position in pre-modern and much modern Sunni
law is that Imāmī Shiites are unbelievers (kuffār), mostly because of their rejection of the
legitimacy of the caliphate of the first three successors of the Prophet as well as the Shiite
custom of cursing the first two caliphs. Scholars advocating this position have often even
insisted that anyone who doubts that Shiites are unbelievers is themselves an unbeliever. The
most explicit exposition of this harsh, first position came from the Ottoman Ḥanafī scholar Nūḥ
al-Ḥanafī (d. 1660), who wrote that Shiites should be fought and killed either as a Hadd
punishment for rebellion and spreading corruption in the land or as the punishment for
apostasy. Their repentance could not be accepted. Their women could be enslaved because, in
a position unique to the Ḥanafī school, a female apostate could be enslaved if she entered the
Dār al-Ḥarb. Their children could also be enslaved, since they followed their mothers in the
matter of slavery. Finally, any Imāmī Shiites who remained must be treated like polytheists
(mushrikūn), meaning they could not be allowed to remain within the Muslim realm or pay the
jizya.5 Decades later this opinion was substantially replicated by the Ottoman Shaykh al-Islam
ʿAbdallāh Efendī (d. 1743) during another round of wars between the Ottomans and Safavids:
Persian Shiites were apostates who must be killed unless they reverted to Islam, and their
women and children could be enslaved. ʿAbdallāh Efendī introduced a more dangerous
element as well. If one categorized Shiites not as apostates from Islam but simply as
unbelievers who had never been Muslims to begin with, then Shiite lands conquered by a
(Sunni) Muslim army were like any unbelieving population – they could all be enslaved.6

3 Al-Ṭabāṭabā’ī al-Ḥakīm insists that the core Imāmī position is not to do takfīr of any of the
Prophet’s Companions, though he acknowledges that it is difficult to answer for the breadth of
Shiite belief and practice on this issue. He defends cursing Companions as something they did
to each other; Muḥammad Saʿīd al-Ṭabāṭabā’ī, Fī riḥāb al-ʿaqīda, 1:39-40, 153-155.
4 See, for example, Amalia Levanoni, ‘Takfīr in Egypt and Syria during the Mamlūk Period,’ 155-

188; Guido Steinberg, ‘Jihadi-Salafism and Shi’is: Remarks about the Intellectual Roots of anti-
Shi’ism,’ 107-125.
5 Cited from a book copied by ʿAbdallāh Efendī and cited by Ibn ʿĀbidīn, Kitāb al-ʿUqūd al-

durriyya fī tanqīḥ al-Fatāwā al-ḥāmidiyya, 1:102-103. Nūḥ’s fatwa is found in a manuscript

majmūʿa, entitled ‘Risāla fī wujūb muqātalat al-rawāfiḍ wa jawāz qatlihim,’ 4b-7a.
6 Yanishehirli ʿAbdallāh Efendī, Behcetül’l-Fetâvâ, 189-192.
With the Kizilbash Shiite followers of the Safavid Shah Ismāʿīl (d. 1524), the case was
exacerbated greatly by the antinomian tendencies of the early Safavids and their extremist
belief that the Shah was God incarnate on earth. For Ottomans like Shaykhs al-Islam Ibn Kamāl
(d. 1534) and Abū Suʿūd (d. 1574), this clearly pushed the Safavid movement into the territory
of unbelief. They concluded that they were apostates, the land they controlled was Dār al-
Ḥarb, and their women and children could be enslaved (though Abū Suʿūd exempted any
children over five or six years old who pronounced the Muslim testimony of faith). Their men
could either revert to Islam or be killed.7

A second Sunni position on Shiites, which seems to be less salient in Sunni writings but which
has historically been more widely followed in practice, considers Shiites to be mere heretics
(mubtadiʿa, zanādiqa, ḍāllīn) as opposed to unbelievers. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) articulated this
clearly when he explained that Imāmī Shiites were Muslims/believers both inwardly and
outwardly, though he considered their scholars to be hypocrites and heretics (munāfiqūn,
zanādiqa). Al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) explained that denying the caliphates of the first three rulers
did not violate any core principles (uṣūl al-dīn) of the religion and was seconded by the great
theologian al-Taftāzānī (d. 1390). Ibn Abī al-ʿIzz al-Ḥanafī (d. 1390) cautioned against declaring
Shiites unbelievers, and Mullā ʿAlī al-Qāri’ (d. 1606) warned against overgeneralization and
severity in this. Ibn ʿĀbidīn (d. 1836) only applied the unbeliever label to those Shiites who held
extremist beliefs like Gabriel having erred in giving the revelation to Muhammad instead of ʿAlī
or accusing Aisha of fornication. 8 Opinions in the Shāfiʿī school on declaring Shiites unbelievers
have been split.9

Despite episodes of sectarian violence, it is this more lenient opinion that has characterized the
general treatment of Shiites by Sunni Muslim jurists, rulers and communities. Moreover,
regardless of whether Shiites are unbelievers or not, the general rule and practice among Sunni
Muslims has been that even minority groups that are considered unbelievers or apostates are
left alone provided they do not spread their beliefs or disrupt order, as exemplified by the Sunni
treatment of Kharijite groups on the fringes of Sunni lands. The Ottoman Shaykh al-Islam Abū
Suʿūd Efendī even stated that the Kizilbash Shiite followers of the Safavid Shah, if they dwelt

7 Ertuğrul Düzdağ, Ebussuud Efendi Fetvaları, 138-139; Muḥammad al-Kawākibī, al-Fawā’id al-
samiyya, 2:396; al-Fatāwā al-Hindiyya, 2:264; Ibn Kamāl Pāsha, Majmūʿ rasā’il al-ʿallāma Ibn
Kamāl Bāsha, 5:457-461. See also Vladimir Minorsky, Medieval Iran and Its Neighbors, Chapter
8: ‘The Poetry of Shah Ismāʿīl’.
8 Ibn Taymiyya, Minhāj al-sunna, 2:452-453; al-Ghazālī, al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād, 122; Ibn Abī al-

ʿIzz, Sharḥ al-ʿAqīda al-Ṭaḥāwiyya, 320-324; Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī, Sharḥ al-Arbaʿīn al-
Nawawiyya, 60; Ibn ʿĀbidīn, Ḥāshiyat Ibn ʿĀbidīn, 4:237, 5:11; Mullā ʿAlī al-Qāri’, Majmūʿ, 6:348
ff., 361-363, 371, 381, 419-425 (from his treatises Shamm al-ʿawāriḍ fī dhamm al-rawāfiḍ and
Sulālat al-risāla fī dhamm al-rawāfiḍ min ahl al-ḍalāla).
9 Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī, Fatāwā, 2:577-594; Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī, al-Iʿlām bi-qawāṭiʿ al-islām, 17;

Lutz Wiederhold, ‘Blasphemy against the Prophet and His Companions,’ 39-70.
peacefully and quietly in Ottoman lands, should be left alone.10 Interestingly, Mullā ʿAlī al-Qāri’
studied with the son of an imam in Herat who was killed by the Safavids but still drew attention
to what he saw as an unacceptably excessive anti-Shiite sentiment among the Uzbeks in
particular, and how this had led to an escalation of persecution between them and the Safavids.
He even directly contradicted the senior Ottoman ulama of his own Ḥanafī school by declaring
that the Safavid realm of Khurasan was not Dār al-Ḥarb, since some of its Shiite inhabitants
might only be heretics, not unbelievers, and there was no guarantee at all that Sunni
inhabitants there would not also be enslaved or killed.11

In practice, the enslavement of self-identifying Muslims by fundamentalist Muslim movements

has tended to meet with outrage. On the Red Sea coast of Yemen, a fanatic named ʿAlī bin
Mahdī (d. 1159) adopted the view that anyone who sinned or disagreed with his religious views
was an apostate, and their women and children could be enslaved. This was considered
outrageous. In the early 1800s, the Sokoto Caliphate revivalist movement expanded based on
the claim that many of its neighboring ‘Muslim’ states were actually non-Muslim and had to be
brought back into the fold. Its founding figures, however, stated that, while it was licit to make
war on deviant and apostate Muslims, they could not be enslaved. In the 1880s, when a
leading Muslim scholar in Senegal issued a fatwa allowing his ruler to enslave a defeated
opponent’s followers and their families on the flimsy grounds that their leader was a heretic, it
remained an issue of controversy for decades. The enslavement of Persian Shiite Muslims by
Sunni Uzbeks and Turkmens was similarly objected to by some Sunni Muslim scholars.12

10 Ibn Qudāma, Mughnī, 10:58-60; al-Nawawī, Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, 7/8:175-7; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ
al-Bārī, 12:353; al-Kawākibī, al-Fawā’id al-samiyya, 2:396.
11 Al-Qāri’, Majmūʿ, 6:358, 362-363.
12 A. Bivar, ‘The Wathīqat Ahl al-Sūdān,’ 240-241; Ware, The Walking Qur’an, 158-160; Najm al-

Dīn ʿUmāra al-Yamanī, al-Mustafīd fī akhbār Ṣanʿā’ wa Zabīd, 236; Burnes, Travels into Bokhara,
1:190, 343.