An estimated 1 million women in America earn their main income working as prostitutes. These women are much more likely to suffer from violence and abuse than those who do not work as prostitutes. They are also much more likely to be addicted to drugs than other women. Many are forced into prostitution.

If you took a random sampling of female slaves in Muslims lands at any point in history, and compared their quality of life to a random sample of modern American prostitutes, who do you think would have an overall better quality of life? Who would be happier? Who would be more subject to abuse and emotional, psychological, and physiological health hazards?

Islam is a system, and the Western lifestyle is a system. Slavery is an integral part of the Islamic system, and prostitution is an integral part of the Western system.

As Muslim countries emulate the Western system more and more, the amount of prostitution in these countries increases. This begins with “soft” forms of prostitution. Soft prostitution refers to any activity where a woman’s physical beauty is made available to the public in order to generate additional revenue.

Attractive female receptionists and secretaries in offices, female servers in restaurants and cafés, female flight attendants in tight clothing, and women’s bodies used in advertising are all examples of soft prostitution. Dancers and actresses in movies, television, also fit this description, and pornography edges toward “hard” prostitution. All of these are methods of leveraging a woman’s beauty and sexuality for profit, and all of these activities normalize a culture of prostitution.

There are many arbitrary and absurd distinctions in modern, secular morality. For example, the idea that for a man to have a sexual relationship with a girl a few days younger than 18 years old is exploitation of a child, while a week later it’s a consensual, legal activity. The distinction between soft and hard prostitution is similarly problematic; for a woman’s body to be used in almost every imaginable way for the enjoyment and financial gain of strangers is accepted as normal and healthy, while taking the final step into actual prostitution carries a stigma.

Laws are boundaries. In secular law, the boundary between child and adult, or between acceptable work where women are sexualized for profit and prostitution is very nearly meaningless. Like the artificial national borders that cut through families and tribes, the boundaries of secular laws stand out as a paragon of ignorance when compared to the wisdom of Islamic law.

While adultery and prostitution are still less common in Muslim countries than in the West, they are becoming more common all the time. This process, whereby the sexual enjoyment of women becomes the domain of the public, is actually an integral part of the process commonly referred to today as “development,” although it would be more accurate to call it degeneration.

Beyond augmenting revenue by marketing women’s beauty, it’s possible to use women to stimulate desire and increase overall consumption and economic output. Ultimately, the system of prostitution is a system where humans become slaves to their desire. Desire is never completely satisfied— rather, like a fire, the more it is fed, the larger it becomes.

أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ‏ “‏ لَوْ أَنَّ لاِبْنِ آدَمَ وَادِيًا مِنْ ذَهَبٍ أَحَبَّ أَنْ يَكُونَ لَهُ وَادِيَانِ، وَلَنْ يَمْلأَ فَاهُ إِلاَّ التُّرَابُ، وَيَتُوبُ اللَّهُ عَلَى مَنْ تَابَ ‏”‏‏.‏

The Prophet ﷺ said, “If Adam’s son had a valley full of gold, he would like to have two valleys, for nothing fills his mouth except dust. And Allah forgives him who repents to Him.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 6439

In a society ruled by desires, fulfilling sexual desire outside marriage is far preferable to the commitment of marriage. Men are able to enjoy women sexually without any responsibility, and with minimum costs incurred. The disintegration of families that comes with this attitude towards sexuality also prevents the formation of large households, which reduce the amount of consumption per person.

This is a vicious cycle, since the absence of healthy emotional fulfillment in the form of a functional family leads people to seek empty sexual gratification instead to fill the void in their soul. While fulfilling desires in this manner is enjoyable in the short term, There are at least two reasons why the system of prostitution is destined to fail.

First, consider the material dimension. An economy driven by desires rather than needs will outpace the regenerative capacity of the earth, and will soon find itself unable to provide for its needs. This was a major factor in the decline of the Roman empire, which descended into hedonistic decadence. There are many parallels to these events in the West today.

Second, the social fabric of the society will unravel. Sexual norms are the basis of family, and family is the basis of mental health. Mental health, in turn, is the key to raising healthy, productive citizens. Societies with high rates of hyper-sexuality and extramarital sex have more broken families, and children from broken families have higher rates of mental illness. Since the definition of mental illness is more fluid than physical illness, the kuffar also change the definitions of mental illness to call their diseases healthy, and to call health a disease, according to whatever suits their desires.

The standard counterargument from secularists is that both harmful prostitution (as if a harmless prostitution exists!) and slavery should be eradicated. But is this really realistic?

The largest and most well funded police forces on earth have failed to stop either slavery or prostitution. You can’t stop people’s reproductive desire anymore than you can stop flowers from blooming in the spring. To suggest that you can change or eliminate this reality is an outright rejection of nature, which itself is a rejection of Allah’s creation.

Why is it that the suggestion of legalizing and regulating prostitution to protect women working as prostitutes sounds reasonable in mainstream discourse, but discussion of legalizing and regulating slavery is absolutely taboo? The answer is at least partly because of the underlying economic model.

The system of prostitution favors high, unsustainable output, while Islam encourages balanced and sustainable production and consumption. Talking about the rights of women is a smokescreen, because an authentic implementation of Islamic slavery would be vastly better for women than either soft or hard prostitution.

Secularists try to make it seem as if slavery is worse simply due to the compulsion involved, but a majority of prostitutes are forced into their line of work by economic circumstances. In most cases, they have limited choice about which men they have sex with, and in many cases face abuse by their customers or their pimps, and threats of violence if they try to change their pimp.

Some recoil from the idea of slavery reflexively because it means a woman not being able to choose her partner, but the reality is that in the system of prostitution, women are also frequently compelled into miserable situations not of their choosing. In many cases, their chosen partner cheats on them, abandons them for no reason, or plays with them for years while refusing to commit. After this, they may end up settling for a partner they would not have originally chosen.

This is the situation even for women who are not forced by economic circumstances into prostitution, and the situation for prostitutes is generally much worse. This entire pattern of relations is symptomatic of a society that where everything, including relationships, are treated as disposable. In the system of prostitution, women have little or no choice about being treated in this way, yet somehow they are indoctrinated to believe that this condition is “freedom.”

Slavery does entail compulsion, but Islamic regulations ensure that a woman only has one sexual partner at a time, and if a slave is sold, it is necessary to wait for three months until she can have another sexual partner. This waiting period helps to be certain about the paternity of children, but it also allows for an emotional adjustment period. Her food, housing, clothing, and basic expenses are all paid for, and if she becomes pregnant she can no longer be sold, and the children born of the union have full inheritance rights, just like any of the father’s sons.

If a female slave enters Islam, her owner must give her the right to earn extra income alongside her duties so that she can buy her freedom if she wishes. Historically, female slaves were often freed as charity or expiation and voluntarily married their owners.

In almost every sense— spiritual, emotional, and psychological, Islamic slavery is better for women than prostitution. A prostitute might earn more money initially, but as she grows older her earning power will drop off sharply. If she has children, they will most likely not know their fathers, and the fathers will probably be under no legal obligation to support the children. A slave who has children with her owner, on the other hand, will have assistance in raising his children, and they will eventually inherit from their father.

This means that the children will have better social standing, education, and wealth than the fatherless child of a prostitute by virtue of their clear paternity and rights. This will enable them to provide a social safety net for the mother as she grows old.

The individual trajectories of a slave under Islamic law and a prostitute under secular law reflect the trajectories of the societies that they live in. The female slave in an Islamic society may face some hardship, especially in initial adjustment phases, but she has stability, all of her needs are met, her lifestyle is healthier in every way, and she has good prospects for the future.

By contrast, the prostitute in a secular society earns a much higher income than the Muslim slave, but because of the severe trauma she goes through, in many cases, she will spend her earnings on drugs. Even if she has good financial planning practices, her children are likely to grow up in an unhealthy and unsupportive environment, and will likely not be in a position to support her when her earning power drops. In most cases, prostitutes face bleak future prospects.

Likewise, the system of prostitution yields high earnings in the short term, but is very unhealthy and leaves the society in a much worse position over the long term. The Islamic system, on the other hand, has lower total output, but leads to much healthier outcomes over the long term.

May Allah to wake the Muslims up, and spread the awareness that adopting the system of prostitution on the collective level will eventually lead to prostitution and adultery on the individual level. If women enter workplaces with non-mahram men and allow their sex appeal to be used as a product for sale and a driver of economic growth, it may yield some profits and fun in the short term, but in the long run, it will degrade familial relations and lead to the disintegration of society, and an even worse outcome in the hereafter.

May Allah protect us from selling our religion for a small price.