Christianity & Slavery: Ahmed is Wrong

I have found that listening to various debates between different religious representatives can be extremely thought-provoking. I am (of course) interested exclusively in people who disagree with me.

But every once in a while, something that is clearly and demonstrably ignorant and inane simply must be highlighted and refuted. Nadir Ahmed, debating against The Word and I on Modern Day Debate, repeatedly asserted (and I mean repeatedly) a series of claims:

1. Christianity condones and encourages slave beating

2. Christianity somehow flourishes when children suffer

3. The Bible lies

4. Islam > Christianity in terms of slavery

5. Slave masters are “called” to enslave

Ahmed quotes (or rather, mangles) two passages initially, the same ones that Muslim apologists almost always abuse here. One is from Jesus, and one is from Peter. Neither says anything even remotely like “child abuse is acceptable.”

First, as Christians, the words of Jesus are foundational to our faith. Not patriarchs, not popes, not bishops, and not theologians. And what did Jesus say? “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

This is one of the strongest condemnations of harming children in ancient literature. Not metaphorical. Not soft. Jesus says it would be better to die horribly than to harm a child. This is not one of his rhetorical flourishes like we see in his parables; he is very clearly articulating disdain for those who harm children.

This alone should end the conversation, but since Ahmed fixates on a single Bible passage with the myopic obsession one usually finds only in goldfish, let us continue.

Repeatedly, Ahmed points to 1 Peter 2:18-21 (21:51), though nearby verses are also compressed into the broader claim. The chief verse is this: “Slaves, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.”

However, since you and I are not biased, antagonistic polemicists of bad faith, let’s actually view the entire passage:

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:18-24).

Anyone who reads this passage in its entirety cannot walk away thinking it is a general endorsement of slavery. That is stupid. What we see is what Christianity is: imitating the example given us by Jesus Christ. In fact, this is the precise method used in the Civil Rights movement in the United States: passivity and grace under hate and persecution. The example that we see is that a slave who sins and is beaten offers no moral glimpse, but one who does good, is beaten, but continues to remain righteous because they are Christian will influence not only spectators, but also the slave masters.

Considering that these slaves existed under Roman law, there was no other option available at the time.

Regardless, Muslim apologists like Ahmed take a brief break from screeching to point to a single verse and then mangle it with a barrage of fallacies in order to claim it fits within their “Christian bad” paradigm. This involves category jumps: Slavery → children and Enduring injustice → endorsing abuse. As a nice addition to this general illiteracy, Ahmed claims that the “calling” portion refers to slave masters who are called to enslave, when it applies to slaves who are called to endure in the faith.

Basic hooked-on-phonics caliber stuff here.

Specific to his broader claims beyond basic reading comprehension—None of Ahmed’s assertions are fulfilled in the text. What Peter is actually addressing is the very real issue of adult converts living under Roman legal slavery. His prescription is to endure persecution without retaliatory violence. He offers a pastoral strategy for survival in an empire that executed Christians, free and slave.

Peter is not endorsing abuse, justifying harm, commanding obedience to evil, speaking about children at all. Peter explicitly says unjust suffering is tragic, not good. The exhortation is about faithfulness under persecution, not moral approval of injustice. Crucially, Peter never even says abuse is righteous. In fact, God will judge unjust masters.

Ahmed (and others) create a fallacious sandwich:

Category error

Slaves ≠ children

Social persecution ≠ abuse 

Then they smear it with a nice topping of descriptive vs prescriptive confusion:

“Here’s how to survive injustice” ≠ “This injustice is good”

And, just for garnish, no Muslim apologist can argue without selective outrage. They ignore Jesus’ explicit condemnation of harming children while pretending one pastoral letter overrides it.

So let us just go ahead and dissect this asinine claim. Christianity explicitly condemns harming children and threatens the harshest judgment imaginable for those who do so (Matthew 18:6).

Peter never discusses children at all—he addresses adult believers living under Roman persecution and does not endorse abuse, injustice, or harm.

To claim Christianity promotes child abuse requires ignoring Jesus, misquoting Peter, and inventing meanings that are not in the text. If enduring injustice were the same as endorsing abuse, as Ahmed insists, then every persecuted minority in history would be morally guilty for surviving oppression.

But then Ahmed points to another passage (1:42:54) to distort: Titus 2:9–10: “Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.”

Like we saw earlier, Titus 2:9–10 gives ethical instructions to enslaved believers living inside the Roman slave system, which Christianity neither created nor controlled. Free Christians were persecuted and killed; slaves were already socially inferior under Roman law, so as Christians their lives were in immediate and imminent danger.

Reading the text itself, we see that it addresses behavior but offers no ontological guidance. There is no implicit message that slaves and masters are ontologically different. It is a practical, descriptive analysis of present circumstances for Christian converts who were already slaves under Roman law.

Similarly, we see pastoral counsel without any form of legal endorsement. Slavery is presumed as an existing institution without divine mandate. It contains no command to enslave, purchase, retain, or defend slavery.

Addressing people already within an unjust system is not the same as endorsing the system.

The instructions are framed explicitly so that the Christian message is not publicly discredited. Again, Christians were being actively sought by Jewish and Roman persecutors. By behaving in a righteous and humble manner, believers were less likely to be singled out as subversive agitators. If there are no Christians, then Christianity cannot spread; persecuted communities needed to survive long enough to bear witness.

Again, like adults, let us not forget the historical reality of the time. In Roman society, slave insubordination was treated as criminal rebellion. A slave converting to a new religion was already suspect. The passage therefore aims at risk reduction, not moral validation of the system.

This is prudential ethics, not slave theology.

Per usual, it is worth reviewing what the text does not contain. Nowhere do we find a declaration that slavery was good or natural, that God ordained slavery, nor does it grant masters any kind of divine authority. Neither does it instruct slaves to endure abuse silently, forbid escape, manumission, or resistance, or threaten punishment for disobedience.

The absence of any enforcement language is decisive. There is no church authority empowered to discipline, coerce, or return slaves.

Also, as Christians, we are not called to fixate obsessively on parsed verses like anti-Christian interlocutors do. In that sense, let us examine the internal coherence of the claim by acknowledging where Paul limits authority everywhere else.

If Titus 2:9–10 was an endorsement of slavery, Paul would contradict himself repeatedly.

But, he does not.

Elsewhere, Paul forbids harshness and cruelty by those in power, warns parents explicitly not to provoke or mistreat children, undermines slave ontology by calling enslaved believers spiritual equals, and encourages manumission when possible (see Col. 3:11, 19, 21; Eph. 6:4, 9; Cor. 7:22; Gal. 3:28).

The ethic is consistent: power is restrained, not sacralized. You cannot extract a pro-slavery doctrine from a corpus that repeatedly destabilizes hierarchy.

Ahmed, the Muslim apologist, is committing a juridical fallacy — reading the New Testament as if it were a law code. This is not surprising since Islamic ethics are legal, enforceable, and codified into social order.

But Christianity is not Islam. Christian ethics are moral, relational, and non-coercive.

Because Islam regulates slavery as law, the apologist projects that framework onto Christianity and then pretends the projection is textual.

Except it is not.

Ahmed’s claim is ripe for a good ol’ fashioned reductio ad absurdum. If giving ethical advice to oppressed people equals endorsement of oppression, then:

Every persecuted minority in history endorsed its own persecution

Every survival ethic becomes moral approval

Nonviolent resistance is indistinguishable from collaboration

That position is logically indefensible.

What we see is that Titus 2:9–10 gives ethical guidance to enslaved Christians living under Roman law; it does not endorse slavery, mandate obedience to abuse, or grant masters divine authority. The passage contains no legal framework, no enforcement mechanism, and no claim that slavery is good. Reading it as pro-slavery requires importing a juridical system that the New Testament explicitly does not provide.

Addressing people within injustice is not the same as blessing injustice. Conflating the two is polemic, not exegesis.

This passage actually weakens hierarchical religion and demonstrates the role of Christianity as the leaven of the world. There is no sacramentalization of power, no divine endorsement of social structures, and it moves moral authority away from institutions and toward conscience and character.

These are precisely the reasons why legal-religious systems dislike it.

“Ah!” says the Muslim apologist as they pivot. “But obedience language leads to abuse culture!” or perhaps, “Christian hierarchy enables it!”

That’s a sociological critique, not a textual one—and it applies equally (or more so) to any hierarchical religious system, including Islam. We will not even address the fact that the Muslim slave trade castrated, killed, and enslaved more Africans than Christian nations, and did so for more than 1,000 years. We also will not address that it was not until the 20th century that Islamic nations actually banned slavery, or that in modernity slavery actually continues in those countries. They still invade other nations (Israel) to take slaves, especially sex slaves.

Ahmed insists that Islam has “viruses” that magically eliminate slavery.

Demonstrate that, Ahmed. The historical record laughs at you.

As a Christian father, I am proud that my Savior condemns harming children more strongly than almost any ancient text.

Put simply, Peter does not teach abuse. Titus does not endorse, condone, or divinize slavery. Ahmed’s accusations only work if you lie about what the text says, which Ahmed does with glee and repeated appeals to AI.

Collectively, these are cheap shots, and really pretty basic and weak. That is why they all fall apart under even mild light.

This is why no one accepts debates with Ahmed, whose entire argument devolved into an apologia in defense of ChatGPT and Grok and who appears to lack basic reading comprehension.