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by brazzy
4648 days ago
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> Islam and specifically the second Caliphate is the only state in history that has a documented history of killing slaves for fun). Ancient Rome would like to disagree. > Slavery (if you define it as forced labour without compensation), in case anyone doesn't know, is part of every religion. Buddhism would like to disagree, probably many more. I'm sure there was forced labor of some kind pretty much everywhere, but that doesn't make it part of the religion, and I'd also say that that it's a too-broad definition. Slavery IMO implies more than just forced labor without compensation: it implies that people are considered property. |
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As for Buddha, he had to say a lot on several subjects : 1) the untouchables, effectively slaves (he only found it unjust that people were born into a caste, not that the untouchables existed or were forced to labour without compensation) 2) the fact that the Buddha forbade runaway slaves to join any Buddhist order, is but one of many indications that the Buddha accepted slavery as normal and moral. 3) This is not to say that the Buddha did not advance the state of morality, by saying that a Buddhist is allowed to trade in human beings, but that it would be better not to (he did say, however, that it was allowed, and that interference with it was not allowed). The Buddha did outlaw quite a few things, so I find the argument that he was somehow unaware of this distinction extremely unconvincing.
All Buddhist states I know of, historically, used slavery. Buddhists monasteries used slave labour throughout history, until the English banished it. In fact one of the emperors of China famously put forth an edict, stripping all Buddhist monasteries in his domain of their slaves. It mentions that this affected over 150000 individuals.
This is not abnormal or strange, by the way. All societies around them used slavery, and so did Buddhists.