What is the criterion for applying the description "al-Mawāli"? Is it a condition for describing a person as a mawlā that they be present in the country of the one who manumitted them? Is the mawlā considered part of the family of the one who manumitted them, inheriting from them and taking their name or the name of their tribe? Are the mawālī among the Ashraf (nobles) or the Ahl al-Bayt (family of the Prophet), having the same rights and obligations as them? Is it permissible to apply the description "slaves" to them?

The term "Mawla" has multiple meanings, and the questioner's inquiries revolve around "Mawla" in the sense of a freed slave (al-ateeq). Anyone who is freed is a free person, and the freed person can move wherever they wish. Manumission is one of the causes of inheritance; the master who frees a slave inherits from the freed slave in certain circumstances, whereas the freed slave never inherits from their emancipator. The freed slave is attributed to their father and tribe, and also to the tribe of their emancipator by loyalty (wala'), such as Al-Layth ibn Sad al-Misri al-Fahmi, or Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak al-Marwazi al-Hanzali, their freedmen (mawlahum). There are no longer any slaves from the Household of the Prophet (Ahl al-Bayt) in this era. A Muslim whom Allah has freed through Islam and honored with the message of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ cannot be described as a slave. This is an act of ignorance and blind Jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic ignorance). Whoever disparages another with such terms is sinful and a slanderer, especially since the Prophet ﷺ condemned anyone who taunted another about their mother, saying: "Did you taunt him about his mother? Indeed, you are a person who still has traces of Jahiliyyah in him."