"Debates about Muslim slavery occur in a context of fierce polemics between Islam and other belief system. While Islamic groups had a generally muted impact on the legal repudiation of slavery, a growing religious commitment to abolition was essential if legislation was to be successfully enforced. Drawing on examples from the Philippines to Senegal and from Tatarstan to Brazil, this book sweeps away entrenched myths to show that there was indeed an abolitionist current in Islam."--Jacket.