Tulûat:95-98

Question: Foreigners raise doubts and wahm on Sharî'ah from the perspective of civilisation by using issues such as polygamy and slavery as a pretext.

The Answer: The laws of Islam are of two kinds:

The First: Sharî'ah laid a new foundation for this kind of law. This kind is genuinely beautiful and pure khayr. 

As for the other: Sharî’ah adjusted them; that is, in order to facilitate a complete transition to true beauty, Sharî’ah has extracted the laws from a very savage and cruel form and shaped them into a mould which was the lesser sharr, adjusted and applicable to human nature and reflective of the context of the time and place because the sudden removal of a thing that is universally dominant in human nature requires an abrupt transformation of human nature.

Moreover, Sharî’ah did not establish slavery, but it reduced and adjusted slavery from a most brutal form to a form that would progress and lead to complete freedom.

Furthermore, while polygamy up to four wives {Men mostly can impregnate up to the age of one hundred, while women may be impregnated until the age of fifty, although menstruating half of the mounth.} is conformable to nature, mind and hikmah, Sharî’ah did not increase it from one to four but decreased it from eight or nine to four. Especially, Sharî’ah set such conditions for polygamy that, by adhering to those conditions, it will not lead to any harm. If it is sharr in some points, it is still a lesser sharr and the lesser sharr is a relative justice.

Alas! There cannot be pure khayr in every state of this ‘âlam.

Q. Why could Dâr al-Hikmah al-Islam1 not serve?

….

Secondary cause: The members of Dâr al-Hikmah were not capable of getting on well with one another, perhaps not even mixing. They all had personal merits and virtues, but the spirit of jamâ’ah did not arise. Their "Ana" was strong and had not been pierced so that there could be a "Nahnu". "I" did not become "We". They worked with the principle of shared responsibility, but the principle of mutual assistance was neglected. Shared responsibility magnifies the material works, making them extraordinary, while it renders the ma’nawî works and ideologies ordinary or even ugly.

The principle of mutual assistance is the complete opposite of this; it becomes the means of great works that are relatively small compared to the community but large compared to a single person. In the ma’nawî works, this principle elevates the work to an extraordinary degree.