Hareems vs. dating?

You didn't use the word "rape" (nor did I); but maybe it is appropriate after all.  The relationship between master and slave is the ultimate power imbalance.  A slave cannot meaningfully be said to consent to anything that her master demands, when refusal might result in terrible retaliation.

We refer to it as "statutory rape" when an adult has sex with a child, for exactly that reason.  Even an employer would be on very shaky moral ground if he approached one of his female employees for sex.  But master and slave?

You are saying that if a woman is literally a man's slave and totally within his control, it is morally permissible for him to have sex with her; but as soon as she becomes free and equal, it becomes impermissible.  This is exactly backwards to most people's moral intuition.

Nausheen wrote: Ron and CH, Can you please quote where I said it was okay for the master to rape his unmarrid female slaves?

"expiation of sins in many cases includes freeing of a certain number of slaves."

Nausheen wrote: We all measure situations from the yardstick of our own culture and the norms prevalent in it.

If only that were true, but the Muslim yardstick is from 7th century Arabia.  Quite frankly, that is the problem.  I can see the justification for slavery in Muhammad's time, but that time is long past, and those justifications no longer apply.

Even i have not seen the culture and times when slavery was okay. However I know that Islam did not encourage it.

I don't want to turn this topic into a discussion of slavery, but I have to say that I just don't buy that.  Regulation of slavery does not imply disapproval of it, any more than regulation of commerce implies disapproval of it; and if Allah had wanted to abolish slavery, He would have done so.  Clearly He does approve of it -- and apparently so did Muhammad, who captured and enslaved many people in the course of warfare.  If he disapproved, he had a funny way of showing it.

Besides this, islamically a master was supposed to treat the slaves in kindness - feeding them and clothing them with the same standards as for himself.

Which doesn't alter the fact that a slave cannot be said to genuinely consent to sex with her master, any more than a child can genuinely consent to sex with an adult.  If an adult has sex with an underage girl, does it matter that he treats her with kindness?  Even if she "consents"?

Look, if we assume for the sake of argument that slavery is permissible at all, then I can understand in theory that a master can have sex with his slave.  She is his property after all, and he can do what he wants with her.  Her consent doesn't matter.

What I don't understand is how you can hold that view, while simultaneously forbidding sex with free women.  In other words, as long as she is a slave who cannot reasonably be said to consent, she is fair game; but if her frees her, so that she can freely consent, then suddenly she is off limits.  How does this make sense?