Islam has clearly and categorically forbidden the primitive practice of capturing a free man,
to make him a slave or to sell him into slavery. On this point the clear and unequivocal words
of the Prophet (S) are as follows: "There are three categories of people against whom I shall
myself be a plaintiff on the Day of Judgement. Of these three, one is he who enslaves a free
man, then sells him and eats this money" (al-Bukhari and Ibn Majjah). The words of this
Tradition of the Prophet are also general, they have not been qualified or made applicable to
a particular nation, race, country or followers of a particular religion. The Europeans take
great pride in claiming that they abolished slavery from the world, though they had the
decency to do so only in the middle of the last century. Before this, these Western powers had
been raiding Africa on a very large scale, capturing their free men, putting them in bondage
and transporting them to their new colonies. The treatment which they have meted out to
these unfortunate people has been worse than the treatment given to animals. The books
written by the Western people themselves bear testimony to this fact.