Editor’s note: Today’s report in the Guardian and the release of first global index on slavery is an eye opener for those who have criticized the Quran on the basis of the fact that it talks about resolving the problem of slavery which was a problem of mediveial ages. How can a book that claims to have an eternal and final message talk about a old problem that does not exist anymore and still claim to be true. Well here it is. Slavery remains a serious, growing, large scale contemporary problem. Among the holy scriptures only Quran comes out with clear exhortions to address this problem. I copy below the extent of the problem from the news item and then what Islam says about it based on Quranic teachings as mentioned in a lecture by the Head of Ahmadiyya Movement delivered at Roehampton University in UK in 2007.
guardian: More than 29 million people are living in slavery, according to the first index to attempt to measure the scale of modern-day slavery on a country-by-country basis.
The index, published by the Walk Free Foundation on Thursday, ranks 162 countries and identifies risk factors for enslavement and the government responses.
The research found that around 10 countries hold about 70% of the world’s slaves. India has the highest number of people enslaved in absolute terms, approximately 14 million, almost half the total worldwide. China has 2.9 million enslaved and Pakistan is third, with an estimated 2 million.
Lack of data has long frustrated anti-slavery campaigners, who argue that without knowing who is being exploited and where, it is impossible to properly tackle the problem.
Nick Grono, CEO of the Walk Free Foundation, said: “There is no index out there, and it’s critical to measuring the scale of the problem on a country-by-country basis because that informs policy responses. Measuring a hidden crime is very challenging, but there are efforts to measure domestic abuse and drug trafficking. A lot of it boils down to taking the best data on reported issues and then looking at the scale of the unreported or ‘dark’ problems.”
watch: start at 28th minute.
Islam, a religion of peace, Roehampton University Lecture – Islam Ahmadiyya
Uploaded on Feb 4, 2011
Documenting the lecture about Islam; a religion of peace delivered by Hadhrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Khalifatul Masih V (Head of the worldwide Ahmadiyya Muslim community) at Roehampton University, UK on 16th April 2007. For more information please visithttp://www.alislam.org and for more videos check out online Media Library at http://www.alislam.org/v/