Since its founding, the United States government has paid reparations to several groups due to violations committed during wartime. It has, however, never paid reparations to the descendants of former slaves brought to the Americas by force. One distinction often underscored by opponents of reparations is that former recipients were actual survivors of injustice, while contemporary American Blacks have never been subjected to slavery, nor has any living American White ever owned a slave. That is to say that a condition for receiving damages is that both the perpetrator and victim be alive so that the former may be compelled to make amends with the latter. This suggests that, unlike assets, liabilities cannot be inherited by a person’s progeny. Supporters of reparations, however, claim otherwise, arguing that even if today’s Blacks never experienced slavery, the vestiges of slavery, like “post-traumatic slavery syndrome,” the fight for racial equality throughout the twentieth-century post-Emancipation, and the war on drugs have all undermined black progress and directly contributed to gross wealth disparities between Blacks and Whites. (The term is part of the title of Joy Angela DeGruy’s work Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (Uptone Press, 2017).) Even if one challenges the presumption of slavery being a universal moral wrong irrespective of how a person fell into bondage, or whether enslavers had legal backing for their actions, kidnapping, theft, property destruction, and unequal treatment under the law deserve special consideration even if those living today were not immediately affected. As there are no detailed essays about how the Shariah (Islamic law) rules on reparations for slavery, this essay will cover the legal bases for an argument in favor of and against slavery reparations and related matters. Muslim law books, typically, cover such matters under the topic of criminal infractions (al-jināyāt) and in chapters dealing with property damage and destruction (al-ta’addī), usurpation (al-ghasb), and lex talionis (al-qisās). While enslavement alone is insufficient justification for reparations since the Shariah tolerates enslavement as a punishment for prisoners of war, reparations are due for any illicit form of enslavement as well as for torture, family separation, the usurpation of property, murder, mutilation, and other forms of mistreatment during and after bondage. As psychological trauma cannot be quantified, no specific fine is prescribed in the Shariah although a judge may impose suitable fines at his discretion as accorded by the rules of Islamic statecraft (al-siyāsah al-shar‘iyyah).

Who’s Entitled to Reparations? An Islamic View

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发表日期：

2026年

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Abdullah bin Hamid Ali

摘要

Since its founding, the United States government has paid reparations to several groups due to violations committed during wartime. It has, however, never paid reparations to the descendants of former slaves brought to the Americas by force. One distinction often underscored by opponents of reparations is that former recipients were actual survivors of injustice, while contemporary American Blacks have never been subjected to slavery, nor has any living American White ever owned a slave. That is to say that a condition for receiving damages is that both the perpetrator and victim be alive so that the former may be compelled to make amends with the latter. This suggests that, unlike assets, liabilities cannot be inherited by a person’s progeny. Supporters of reparations, however, claim otherwise, arguing that even if today’s Blacks never experienced slavery, the vestiges of slavery, like “post-traumatic slavery syndrome,” the fight for racial equality throughout the twentieth-century post-Emancipation, and the war on drugs have all undermined black progress and directly contributed to gross wealth disparities between Blacks and Whites. (The term is part of the title of Joy Angela DeGruy’s work Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (Uptone Press, 2017).) Even if one challenges the presumption of slavery being a universal moral wrong irrespective of how a person fell into bondage, or whether enslavers had legal backing for their actions, kidnapping, theft, property destruction, and unequal treatment under the law deserve special consideration even if those living today were not immediately affected. As there are no detailed essays about how the Shariah (Islamic law) rules on reparations for slavery, this essay will cover the legal bases for an argument in favor of and against slavery reparations and related matters. Muslim law books, typically, cover such matters under the topic of criminal infractions (al-jināyāt) and in chapters dealing with property damage and destruction (al-ta’addī), usurpation (al-ghasb), and lex talionis (al-qisās). While enslavement alone is insufficient justification for reparations since the Shariah tolerates enslavement as a punishment for prisoners of war, reparations are due for any illicit form of enslavement as well as for torture, family separation, the usurpation of property, murder, mutilation, and other forms of mistreatment during and after bondage. As psychological trauma cannot be quantified, no specific fine is prescribed in the Shariah although a judge may impose suitable fines at his discretion as accorded by the rules of Islamic statecraft (al-siyāsah al-shar‘iyyah).