Permissible to have sex slaves in Islam: UK imam

Controversial Cardiff imam says one of the signs of Doomsday will be when a slave girl gives birth to her master

In a rather shocking claim, a British Muslim cleric has said it is ‘permissible’ under Islam to have sex slaves.

Ali Hammuda, an imam at a Cardiff mosque, explained a series of Hadiths (sayings of Prophet Muhammad PBUH) saying one of them could be interpreted as meaning that one of the signs of Doomsday will be when a slave girl gives birth to her master.

“One of the interpretations as to what this means is that towards the end of time there will be many wars like what we are seeing today, and because of these wars women will be taken as captives, as slaves, yeah, women will be taken as slaves,” he said.



The cleric’s extraordinary preachings were recorded secretly at a religious study circle, at the Al-Manar mosque by an undercover reporter. During his talk, the cleric also told boys as young as 13 that the "day of judgment is close".

“And then, er, her master has relations with her because this is permissible in Islam, it’s permissible to have relations with a woman who is your slave or your wife.”

Hammuda, the English Islamic Programmes officer at the mosque, is accused of radicalising three British citizens who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State. Nasser Muthana and Reyaad Khan, then 20, and Muthana’s younger brother Aseel, then 17 – left for Syria in 2014.

The Palestine-born imam also said that another interpretation of the saying of the Prophet (PBUH) is that children would come to treat their mothers like slaves. “The one I think is strongest is that towards the end of time you will see a lot of Muslims disobeying their mothers and fathers… you see children speaking to their mothers and fathers as if they are your slave.”

The recordings were made by Hardcash Productions in an investigation into militants in October 2014, only weeks after reports of Islamic State atrocities against the minority Yazidi sect in northern Iraq, whose women were enslaved, raped or executed after being captured by the IS fighters.

Hammuda also said that music was ‘a sickness’ and a ‘tool of Satan’. Undercover reporter Rizwan Syed, who made the recordings, also found a range of extremist literature available such as Music Made Me Do It, which describes the harmful social, psychological and physical effects of music on individuals.



“I saw books preaching brutal violence, sexism, homophobia, aggressive physical jihad, dismemberment and capital punishment implemented by the state. It reinforces the idea that what these militant groups are doing, what IS is doing, is legitimised by history,” Syed said.

The Al-Manar mosque has hosted a series of visiting extremist preachers, including Muhammad Mustafa Al-Muqri, an al Qaeda ally and ex-leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The mosque, however, has denied links with radicalism.

Speaking about it earlier this week, Hammuda said he had always unequivocally condemned both the ideology and actions of ‘so-called Islamic State’. “I have lectured on this a number of times, including dedicating a number of Friday sermons to the condemnation of this evil phenomena. The undercover recording and quotations referred to seem to have been deliberately taken out of context to portray a religious perspective that I do not ascribe to.”

One of Britain’s leading moderate clerics, Imam Shahid Raza, has denounced slavery as violating the ‘dignity’ of human beings and only IS supporters would use the passage to claim it is permissible. “There is a consensus among 99 per cent of Islamic scholars – it’s only a few radicals that do not agree with it – that slavery is against the laws of Islam, and the dignity of the human being.”



“What the Daesh [Islamic State] people have done to the Yazidis is completely unIslamic. Islam came into this world in an environment where slavery was practised, but over time, it banned it with laws and brought it to an end. The Hadith this man is quoting is good [authentic], but no scholar ever interprets it literally. Most scholars interpret it as the Prophet (PBUH) saying there will come a time when children will boss their parents so much that they appear to treat their parents like slaves,” he added.

He went on to say, “That Hadith is interpreted as justifying sexual slavery only by Daesh types. You have to realise that slavery is both banned in Islam and also banned by the law of the land.”

This article originally appeared on Daily Mail.