Reconciling Slavery With The Prophet’s Legacy as a Teacher of Ethics
Join us on March 31st, 2025, at the Toronto School of Theology at 6:00PM, where we will gather for a presentation by Dr. Nebil Husayn (University of Miami), a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at SRI. Light refreshments will be served. Space is limited, so please register your attendance!
All are welcome to this engaging and thought-provoking discussion, to be held in the Boardroom 2 on the second floor, at the Toronto School of Theology, at the University of Toronto. This event is organized by SRI.
How do we understand the Prophet Muḥammad as a moral and ethical teacher when historical sources suggest that slavery existed in his time? This thought-provoking presentation explores this difficult question by examining fragmentary evidence in both Sunni and Shiʿi literature that points in a very different direction: that the Prophet and other early Muslims, in fact, disapproved of slavery and upheld an abolitionist ethic. This thesis was forcefully advanced by the prominent modernist Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898) and his disciple Cheragh Ali (d. 1895), and continues to shape contemporary debates about Islam, ethics, and human dignity.
Dr. Nebil Husayn is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Miami. His research broadly considers the development of Islamic theology, historiography and debates on the caliphate. Husayn obtained his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University and an M.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard University. Husayn is the recipient of a Fulbright award and the University of Miami Fellowship in the Arts and Humanities. He is the author of Opposing the Imam (2021) and Caliphate and Imamate (2023).
Event Location:
2nd Floor, Boardroom 2
Toronto School of Theology
47 Queen’s Park Cres E,
Toronto, ON
M5S 2C3