Re: Sex with slaves
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Minah-pa : you are right about historical perspective. But, it doesn't mean that living in a less technological or civilized world makes it perfectlly moral to have relations with a married woman whose husband isn't in the "zone" and the other finer details. One issue I am trying to understand is exactly how historical perspective should be understood along with cultural reinterpetation. Another issue is how to comprehend a 'flaw' within Islam if Islam is 30 chapter long assertion onto itself? Basically it becomes a bigger analogy of this: Anything contained within this sentence is absolute truth because a higher power has dictated so. Is life reduced to not understanding and simply accepting a set of assertions of grand magnitudes?
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828 - simply put -> Now, slavery is not acceptable, then slavery was, so first you have to think that it is acceptable to own slaves and next that they are not people but property that lives, like horses or dogs only smarter. Slaves were property and bought and sold as such. It is harder for people now to understand this, but they were not seen as being totally human, they were property only during the times when Torah, Bible, Quuran, etc.. were being written.
It was also justified by people believing a person became a slave from God's will (meaning defeat in war, poverty, bad character, etc) and therefore deserved their fate.
That is why historical perspective should be included when trying to understand somethings that are included in these different books. Ethical treatment of slaves was an issue that all three books addressed as well as they could during that time, but they stopped short of saying Don't do something because slaves were total property of the owners. Instead, they added conditions to improve a slave's lot, that is it. Property was not married nor did it belong to anyone other than an owner because it was not truly considered human culturally.
It has nothing to do with technology but with cultural norms and the evolving process of civilization.
As far as cultural reinterpetation I am not a scholar but if something does not apply to the times (even if divinely spoken and written) meaning that mankind has taken care of a problem addressed in the Quuran/Bible/Torah, then those passages should be seen as fullfilled, not stressed over because they don't apply to modern times.