This book begins with the Quran because it is the earliest and most authentic document that scholars possess for understanding how new believers found a place within the umma. While the Quran is an anchor for any enquiry into early Islamic history, it does not provide a definitive blueprint for Islamic society – it is a polyvalent and at times inscrutable text. Attempting to reconstruct the Quranic worldview requires a careful comparison of many concepts and vocabularies, scattered across many verses. Such an analysis allows scholars to glimpse the range of beliefs and practices that were meaningful for the earliest Muslims, as well as to uncover a series of questions with which the nascent umma grappled. One of these questions was the place of slaves, foreigners and other outsiders in the new umma.

Accordingly, this chapter investigates two Quranic passages that express the liminal position of enslaved believers, or believers with slave origins. The first passage, Q 33:4–6, explicates the role of genealogy in building the umma. While this passage assures believers of unknown parentage that they fully belong to the umma as ‘brothers in religion’, it also indicates that believers have closer social ties with their own relatives than they do with such outsiders. I argue that the key term mawālī in this passage refers to the bonds of support that cement all believers, but that such bonds do not necessarily entail full social equality. The second passage, Q 24:32–33, speaks of the role of sexual ethics in building the umma. While this passage encourages believers to marry virtuous slaves and discourages men from forcing their slave women into prostitution, it also indicates that believing slave women are unable to attain certain morality standards. I argue that the key term ‘taḥaṣṣun’ in thispassage refers to the enslaved concubine's relationship with her own master, and that it places the master–concubine relationship somewhere between licit and illicit sexual activity for the enslaved woman.

These two passages are certainly not the only ones in the Quran that treat belonging, slavery or the structure of the umma.However, they are especially rich because they so clearly express the Quranic tension between spiritual equality and social hierarchy, between the desire for inclusivity and the need for order.