Riqab
Riqab means necks, and is the Qur'an's word for people held in bondage. Freeing them is the fifth of the eight uses of Zakat. Slavery as the texts knew it has been abolished, and scholars differ over what the category covers now.
HAF distributes Zakat within the agreed categories through its Zakat appeal.
What the Words Mean
Raqabah means a neck. Riqab is the plural.
Arabic uses the neck to stand for the whole person, and specifically for a person held in bondage, because the neck is where a collar sits. The standard phrase for setting someone free is not "freeing a slave" but fakku raqabah - the undoing of a neck.
Keep that image in mind while reading the rest of this page. The language is physical. Something is tied, and the instruction is to untie it.
Where It Appears
More often than most people realise.
In the verse listing who may receive Zakat, one of the eight uses is simply fi'r-riqab - for the necks (Qur'an 9:60).
In the verse describing what real righteousness consists of, giving wealth away "for the necks" is listed alongside feeding relatives, orphans and travellers (Qur'an 2:177).
Surah al-Balad asks what the steep and difficult path is, and answers: the freeing of a neck (Qur'an 90:11–13).
And where an enslaved person asks their owner for a written agreement to buy their freedom, the Qur'an instructs that the agreement be made, and that they be given from the wealth Allah has provided (Qur'an 24:33).
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said that whoever frees a believing slave, Allah frees a part of him from the Fire for every part of the one he freed (Sahih al-Bukhari 6715; Sahih Muslim 1509). He also told his companions to feed the hungry, visit the sick, and set the captive free (reported in Sahih al-Bukhari).
There is a pattern worth naming plainly. Islamic law did not end slavery in a single act. What it did was build emancipation into the system at multiple points: as a standing act of reward, as the first option in several expiations - for a broken oath, for an unjust form of divorce, for accidental killing - and as one of the eight permanent uses of the community's annual Zakat.
Who the Category Covered
Classically, three groups, and scholars did not agree on all of them.
The mukatab. An enslaved person who had agreed terms with their owner to purchase their own freedom in instalments. Zakat could help them meet the payments. This is the least disputed application, and Hanafi scholars generally restrict the category to it, because a mukatab is a person who can receive and own what is given.
Buying someone in order to free them. Maliki and Hanbali scholars permitted Zakat to be used to purchase an enslaved person outright and release them. Hanafi scholars objected, on the grounds that Zakat must pass into a qualifying person's ownership, and buying is a transaction with an owner rather than a gift to the one freed.
Ransoming captives. Some scholars included paying to release Muslim prisoners. Others treated that as belonging elsewhere.
What It Means Now
Chattel slavery as the classical texts describe it has been abolished in law everywhere. So what happens to a category with nothing obvious left to apply to?
Three answers are given.
It lapses in practice, not in principle. There is nothing to spend it on, so the share goes to the other categories. The rule remains on the books in case circumstances ever change.
It covers ransom and release. People held captive, whether by criminals or armed groups, are in a condition the category was written for even if the legal label differs.
It covers modern bondage. Forced labour, debt bondage, and people trafficked and held against their will. Many contemporary scholars accept this reading. Others hold it stretches a specific legal term past what it can carry, and that such people are better helped as the poor or as those in debt - categories nobody disputes.
That last point is worth holding on to. Someone trafficked and destitute is almost certainly poor. Nothing prevents helping them, whichever reading of this category a scholar takes.
Bondage and Britain
This is not only a historical subject here.
The United Kingdom has its own modern slavery legislation and thousands of people are referred into the national system each year - in agriculture, car washes, nail bars, domestic work and the sex trade. Some are Muslim. Some are in communities a charity like this one serves.
Two cautions belong alongside that.
Helping someone in these circumstances is rarely a matter of writing a cheque. It involves the police, immigration advice, safe accommodation and specialist support, and charities working here do so alongside statutory agencies rather than around them.
And paying a ransom is a legal question before it is a religious one. A UK charity cannot make funds available where there is reason to suspect they would reach a proscribed organisation. Anyone considering this needs legal advice, not only scholarly advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Opinions differ. Some scholars treat it as having no present application and distribute the share among the other seven. Others apply it to captives or to people held in forced labour. Nobody holds that the verse has been cancelled; the disagreement is about what, in the world as it now is, answers to the description.
It goes to the remaining categories. Only the Shafi'i school divides Zakat among all available groups in the first place, and even there a group with no members present simply drops out. For almost everyone this is a question that never arises in practice.
Most likely yes, though scholars reach it differently. Some apply this category directly. Others say the person qualifies as poor, or as someone in debt, which requires no interpretive stretch at all. Either route reaches the same place, which is why this is a question for a scholar rather than an obstacle to helping anyone.
Some scholars permit it under this category. Before that question is reached, though, there is a legal one. In the UK, making funds available where there is reason to think they may reach a proscribed group is a criminal matter, and no charity can do it. This is one of the few places in this glossary where the law comes before the fiqh.
Because it appears not just as a good deed but as a remedy. Break an oath, and the first option given is to free a person. The same for an unjust divorce formula, and for accidental killing. Add the annual Zakat share and the standing promise of reward, and the result is a system in which wrongdoing, wealth and worship all push in the same direction - towards fewer people being owned.
What It Means Now
Chattel slavery as the classical texts describe it has been abolished in law everywhere. So what happens to a category with nothing obvious left to apply to?
Three answers are given.
It lapses in practice, not in principle. There is nothing to spend it on, so the share goes to the other categories. The rule remains on the books in case circumstances ever change.
It covers ransom and release. People held captive, whether by criminals or armed groups, are in a condition the category was written for even if the legal label differs.
It covers modern bondage. Forced labour, debt bondage, and people trafficked and held against their will. Many contemporary scholars accept this reading. Others hold it stretches a specific legal term past what it can carry, and that such people are better helped as the poor or as those in debt - categories nobody disputes.
That last point is worth holding on to. Someone trafficked and destitute is almost certainly poor. Nothing prevents helping them, whichever reading of this category a scholar takes.
This is not only a historical subject here.
The United Kingdom has its own modern slavery legislation and thousands of people are referred into the national system each year - in agriculture, car washes, nail bars, domestic work and the sex trade. Some are Muslim. Some are in communities a charity like this one serves.
Two cautions belong alongside that.
Helping someone in these circumstances is rarely a matter of writing a cheque. It involves the police, immigration advice, safe accommodation and specialist support, and charities working here do so alongside statutory agencies rather than around them.
And paying a ransom is a legal question before it is a religious one. A UK charity cannot make funds available where there is reason to suspect they would reach a proscribed organisation. Anyone considering this needs legal advice, not only scholarly advice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Opinions differ. Some scholars treat it as having no present application and distribute the share among the other seven. Others apply it to captives or to people held in forced labour. Nobody holds that the verse has been cancelled; the disagreement is about what, in the world as it now is, answers to the description.
It goes to the remaining categories. Only the Shafi'i school divides Zakat among all available groups in the first place, and even there a group with no members present simply drops out. For almost everyone this is a question that never arises in practice.
Most likely yes, though scholars reach it differently. Some apply this category directly. Others say the person qualifies as poor, or as someone in debt, which requires no interpretive stretch at all. Either route reaches the same place, which is why this is a question for a scholar rather than an obstacle to helping anyone.
Some scholars permit it under this category. Before that question is reached, though, there is a legal one. In the UK, making funds available where there is reason to think they may reach a proscribed group is a criminal matter, and no charity can do it. This is one of the few places in this glossary where the law comes before the fiqh.
Because it appears not just as a good deed but as a remedy. Break an oath, and the first option given is to free a person. The same for an unjust divorce formula, and for accidental killing. Add the annual Zakat share and the standing promise of reward, and the result is a system in which wrongdoing, wealth and worship all push in the same direction - towards fewer people being owned.