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Recordings › Sex Slaves: Concubines and Collective Consciousness -Mufti Abu Layth · 28 Apr 2020 › Segment 3 of 3

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Why did Islam not abolish slavery outright?

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Why Islam did not abolish slavery outright: collective consciousness and the ambiguous picture effect

LessonRecorded 28 Apr 2020From the Mind of a MuftiSegment 3 of 3 in the recording2020-04-28-S03

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This segment11:48 to 21:11 · 9 min 23 sGeneral teaching

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Islam did not abolish slavery outright because the collective consciousness of the age could not yet see it as wrong, but it encouraged emancipation as a route to that change. Slavery was always wrong, and Mufti Abu Layth says Jonathan Brown's three axioms rest on a shallow analysis.

In more detail

Mufti Abu Layth adds that pragmatism played a part, since most men left in control of several women would mix business with pleasure. Referring to his earlier video on slavery, he says Islam did not take slavery by the horns because doing so would have compromised its actual mission and could not have been achieved in that age, since the collective consciousness of people would not embrace it; he compares this to people in the future who abolish governments and look back on taxation as tyranny. He notes a claim that the Indus Valley civilisation had no slavery and commends it if true, but says all societies generally had slavery in their collective consciousness, and that, as Jonathan Brown highlighted, Islam unquestionably encouraged emancipation as a route until social perception changed. He introduces what he calls the ambiguous picture effect: in a reversible image such as the young woman and the old lady, or the World Cup trophy that also shows a facepalm, once one sees the second picture one cannot unsee it; collective consciousness, as Durkheim and others described, works the same way. Once a society sees a certain concept of freedom it cannot unsee it, but it cannot hold the whole of humanity to account for a perception it could not see. On this basis he says the three axioms on which Jonathan Brown built his talk were a false flag or a shallow analysis: slavery is always wrong, ownership is a social construct and owning a human being is a problem, yet people in the past did not see it as we do, which does not make them dumb, and it is not a claim to be morally superior to Aristotle.

Position stated

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Mufti Abu Layth holds that Islam did not abolish slavery outright because the collective consciousness of the age could not yet perceive it as wrong, and that, now that it can be seen, owning another human being is a problem and slavery has always been wrong, though past societies cannot be held to account for a perception they lacked.

In his words

“now that we see it yes this is definitely wrong and it has been wrong but because Society and the collective consciousness wasn't perceiving it in that way we can't hold them to task”

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11:18

you haven't takes it does so this is why it was in that culture that Islam was revealed and therefore it would you see you couldn't change entire mindsets so this is one of the reasons I think that that that was condoned because they saw that they didn't have a delineating kind of factor to sex and just general utility or general work or general and the other thing is as well I think there was that pragmatism to it as well that

11:55

to be honest with you I think most men if you're gonna leave them around just in control is a better word in control of several women then is gonna be some what can we say this can they're gonna mix business with pleasure shall we put it like that so you see I have explained in my previous video on slavery which is on YouTube that I've explained that the day and age we've got to understand the mindset Islam did not take on slavery do

12:33

not tackle it by the horns because it would have felt that it was a mission that would one compromise the actual mission he came for and to it was not to be achieved in that day and age because the general collective consciousness over people just will not embrace it now we may feel that yeah that sounds strange because it does to us in this day and age but in that day and age that was the mindset of the people it was just a given and I gave an analogy and by saying something like let's say people in the future abolish all

13:11

governments and then they look back at our day and age and they say like can you believe these people would allow a group of people to rule and govern over them and that those people could even take taxes without these people having a say and they may find this incredibly tyrannical in the future but to us we just find it normal we think oh no that's not tyranny that's just normal everybody does it how else do you expect people to rule so because the way consciousness the collective consciousness of a society of all societies and and I know from what I've

13:50

heard that ancient Indian civilizations the Indus Valley Civilisation of hood did not have slavery and things like that and if that be true I commend and I think they think the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation is an awesome incredible kind of civilization anyway but and it's something that needs to be much more learnt about but putting that aside the people generally all societies had that as part of their collective consciousness now because people would not they weren't seeing it they weren't perceiving perception hadn't taken that in to the

14:29

consciousness to them it was like oh yeah this is just normal so it would to them it was more about the conditions and about getting freedom so Islam and to be fair Jonathan Brown did highlight that Islam did encourage unquestionably encouraged emancipation which it did and it saw that as a route until the time would come that social perception would change and allow me to give you an example people I call this I call this the the ambiguous picture effect on

15:05

consciousness and I I'm going to you see I'm going to give you an example this is the saying what some people some psychologists call the reversible pictures or reversible images or it's called the ambiguous picture effect a picture that has two pictures in it now you can see that some people they can only see one picture now the human mind the human psyche works like that now in some stages in some scenarios it's easier to see both in some you can only see one there is for example the young lady this

15:43

is a chin and she's looking away her faces away that's the top of her her and that's her neck and what if and she's got this coat on oh this is an old lady that's her nose that's a mouth lips and her chin and this is a kind of hat and she's kind of got a sunken head she's looking kind of like down so this is a reversible image or a ambiguous picture it's called in psychology as well it's from an optical illusion but the point is once sometimes you can only see one but the moment you see the other you can

16:21

no longer unsee it so the human consciousness works in a similar way you see sometimes there's certain realizations that wants humans they see it it becomes part of the way this enters your consciousness collective consciousness works in a similar way let me give you an example now you look at this people this was the trophy for the 2014 I don't really watch sports or football I believe it was the Brazilian kind of Cup trophy fee fell whatever the World Cup now you can see that there now you see as an example of things once you

17:00

see them you can't no longer unsee them you can see the trophy here but right you can see the trophy but now I want you to realize that actually it shows a facepalm it shows as well a person doing the facepalm effect you see now the moment I show it to you now you won't be able to unsee it so every time you see that now you will see the facepalm effect that is the power of

17:40

consciousness that's how it works sometimes some ideas until you don't see them they don't impact you in the same way the moment you see them and realize them everything changes now you can't judge that person as when pre perception so you see in a similar way that's on an individual level this is on an individual level now take that consciousness to a collective consciousness as Durkheim and these other people spoke of them what I believe in there is a collective consciousness in society you see now

18:18

once we see something in a particular way once we see a certain concept of freedom we can't unsee it now now we can't hold those to account who couldn't or didn't see it like that so we can say that now that we see it yes this is definitely wrong and it has been wrong but because Society and the collective consciousness wasn't perceiving it in that way we can't hold them to task with the same kind of I mean we can hold obviously we can hold individual things to task but we can't hold a whole of

18:57

humanity to task for a perception that they couldn't see in the same way as we see it so this what i'm terming the ambiguous picture effect on the collective consciousness or the collective psyche of humanity is what needs to be taken into consideration so the three axioms that Jonathan brown presented his whole talk on were actually a false flag in my understanding of a misrepresentation or there were a shallow analysis yes slavery is always wrong because what gives you the right to to own someone

19:36

and he said well what does that even mean when you employ someone yes that's logical I get that but yes other things have problems but let's just be honest possession ownership is a social construct and owning another human being right is a problem there's no good way about it right yes there's utility in it yes you can utilize it yes we may people humans have used it in the past but it is not a good thing but people have done it I get that of course things and I get that it made a lot of achievements I also get the fact that in the past people because it was so ubiquitous and everywhere they

20:16

didn't see it in the way that we're seeing it today so saying that it must have always been wrong yes it was always wrong now that we can see a different side of the picture but in that day and age to them we understand that oh they didn't they couldn't see that side of the picture as a society it hadn't just realized for them it doesn't mean they were dumb so he gave the example of saying also you're trying to say you're more morally intellectually superior than Aristotle that's not the same it's the example of this you see you if the fact you never saw the facepalm wasn't

20:55

because you were dumb or you're stupid it's just that some things once they enter the neural consciousness the neural correlates see it they can never unsee it that's

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Cite this segment

Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2020-04-28-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/5is8qpu5llu/s/3/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2020, April 28). Why did Islam not abolish slavery outright? [Video, segment 2020-04-28-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/5is8qpu5llu/s/3/
Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2020. "Why did Islam not abolish slavery outright?" Video, segment 2020-04-28-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded April 28, 2020. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/5is8qpu5llu/s/3/
BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2020-04-28-S03,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{Why did Islam not abolish slavery outright?}},
  year = {2020},
  month = {4},
  date = {2020-04-28},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/5is8qpu5llu/s/3/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/5is8qpu5llu/s/3/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2020-04-28-S03, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}
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