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228 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
subject in his book, Islam, and its Founder, says: ‘Some Mohamedans make a habit of continually changing their wives. We read of young men who have had twenty and thirty wives, a new one every three months: and thus it comes about that women are liable to be indefinitely transferred from one man to another, obliged to accept a husband and a home whenever they can find one, or in case of destitution, to which divorce may have driven them, to resort to other more degrading means of living. Thus while keeping the strict letter of the law, and possessing only one or certainly not more than four wives, unscrupulous characters may yet by divorce obtain in a lifetime as many wives as they please.
“In another way also a Mohamedan may really have more than four wives, and yet keep within the law. This is by means of living with concubines, which the Koran expressly permits. In that sura which allows four wives, the words are added, ‘of the slaves which ye shall have acquired.’ Then in the 70th sura, it is revealed that it is no sin to live with slaves. The very words are: ‘The slaves which their right hands possess, as to them they shall be blameless.’ At the present day, as in days past, in multitudes of Mohamedan homes, slaves are found; as Muir says, in his Life of Mahomet ‘so long as this unlimited permission of living with their female slaves continues, it cannot be expected that there will be any hearty attempt to put a stop to slavery in Mohamedan countries.’ Thus the Koran, in this matter of slavery, is the enemy of the mankind. And women, as usual, are the greater sufferers.’
Take the caste system. Islam speaks of brotherhood. Everybody infers that Islam must be free from slavery and caste. Regarding slavery nothing needs to be said. It stands abolished now by law. But while it existed much of its support was derived from Islam and Islamic countries.* While the prescriptions by the Prophet regarding the just and humane treatment of slaves contained in the Koran are praiseworthy, there is nothing whatever in Islam that lends support to the abolition of this curse. As Sir W. Muir has well said † :—
“... rather, while lightening, he reverted the fetter.... There is no obligation on a Muslim to release his slaves....”
But if slavery has gone, caste among Musalmans has remained. As an illustration one may take the conditions prevalent among the Bengal Muslims. The Superintendent of the
- Ibid., Chapter XXXIX.
† The Koran, its Composition and Teaching, p. 58.