Slavery, Strategy, and Moral Constraint: A Game-Theoretic, Ethical, and Anthropological Analysis of Early Islamic Reforms

Slavery is among the most morally charged subjects in the study of premodern societies, and discussions of slavery in early Islam often suffer from anachronism, selective evidence, or polemical treatment. This article offers an interdisciplinary analysis of slavery in the early Islamic community through the combined lenses of game theory, comparative anthropology, non-ideal ethics, and historical context. Drawing on models of cooperation and deterrence in stateless societies, the paper reconstructs the incentive structures governing war captivity, population management, and alliance maintenance in seventh-century Arabia. It argues that the Prophet Muhammad’s policies toward slavery are best understood not as expressions of ideal theory—imagining moral action unconstrained by social and institutional limitations—but as interventions within a highly restricted feasible set. Within these constraints, Islam functioned as a harm-reduction institution: restricting sources of enslavement, encouraging emancipation, improving treatment standards, and introducing legal mechanisms that eroded the practice over time. By situating early Islamic reforms alongside Greco-Roman, Jewish, Near Eastern, and African slavery systems, the study demonstrates that Islam represented a significant upward moral shift relative to regional norms. The article concludes by examining how these reforms influenced long-term transformations in Islamic societies, ultimately contributing to the gradual abolition of slavery in the modern era. The aim is neither apologetic nor condemnatory, but to reconstruct the moral and strategic logic of slavery in a world where institutional alternatives did not exist and survival hinged on the navigation of severe constraints.