The claim: "The Qur'an permits relations outside marriage with enslaved/captive women ('what the right hands possess') (4:3; 23:6). This is sexual abuse layered on slavery."
Context and the Qur'an's direction
- This permission is given within the era's institution of slavery — which the Qur'an restricts and pushes toward freedom (→ Why didn't the Qur'an simply abolish slavery?).
- The Qur'an steers these women toward marriage: marry them "with their owners' leave, giving their dowers, in honour" (4:25); "marry off those fit for it among them" (24:32).
- It forbids forced prostitution and commands the contract of manumission (mukātaba) (24:33).
- Chastity is upheld as a general principle (23:5).
An honest limit
We do not soften this: a relation conditioned on captivity is, by today's moral standards, gravely problematic, and that is a fair part of the objection. What the Qur'an did was not to endorse unlimited concubinage but a historical regulation tied to the slavery institution that channels it toward marriage and freedom. When slavery ends, the ground of this regulation falls away too. "The Qur'an praises abuse" is not the text's necessary conclusion; but we record the historical difficulty as it is.
Source: Qur'anic verses (M. Okuyan meal). Presented soberly and respectfully, with a text/interpretation distinction.