Al-Mu’minūn 23:6

The issue

The verse permits sexual intercourse between Muslim men and their female slaves, an act that is not counted as a sin for any Muslim man because the slave woman has no right to protect her body. (See the section Female Slaves in the article “Women in the Qur’ān”). It is noteworthy that this permission comes with the following expression: “what their right hands possess.” The Arabic word mā (translated here in English as “what”) is typically used in reference to objects. In Arabic, references to humans typically use man (“who” or “whom”) instead. Is this pronoun replacement a grammatical mistake or an accurate reflection of the Qur’ān’s view of slaves as less than human?