Scholarly Contributions | Islam

ISLAM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

For Professor Abdul Aziz Said, Islam holds principles and values that can strongly contribute to the realization of human rights and an integrative world order. In particular, his scholarship identifies Islamic traditions that affirm the importance of community and solidarity and a collaborative concept of freedom, and that demystify “the Western myth of triumphing material progress and development.”¹ As he considered the ways in which Islamic precepts of human rights are different from dominant Western perspectives, Said also demonstrated their universal implications. While acknowledging that these Islamic concepts are not always reflected within the practices of contemporary Islamic states, Said nonetheless showed how they can pave the way toward more egalitarian and just Muslim communities.

For Said, human dignity is at the heart of human rights. Concerned with the advancement of universal human rights, he nevertheless argued that they must be understood through the particular lenses of local religious and cultural beliefs and practices (see Human Rights and Development). Recognizing that the advancement of an international human rights framework has been largely dominated by Western-based worldviews, Said instead asserts that “the concept of human rights must incorporate Islamic and other Third World traditions or it will continue to provoke irreconcilable quarrels.”² His own efforts in articulating the distinct contributions of Islam to human rights can be found within his scholarly writing since the late 1970s as well as through op-eds reaching both Western and Muslim audiences, such as a 1993 piece in the Saudi Arabian publication Riyadh Daily titled “Islam for Solidarity of People.”³

While Western-based frameworks for human rights are rooted in individualism, Said explains that Islam centers human rights around the social structure. As he writes with Dr. Nathan Funk in their book Islam and Peacemaking in the Middle East, “in an Islamic context, affirmation of human rights evokes a tradition of egalitarianism in which human equality before law is combined with a strong communitarian exhortation to group solidarity.”⁴ As one of five Islamic “peace paradigms” that Said defines in his work (see Islam and Peacemaking), the “peace through equity” paradigm includes “(1) a vision of Islam as a religion of justice, (2) an emphasis on updating Islamic approaches to economic and political development, (3) a qualified affirmation of cultural and religious diversity, and (4) an optimistic conception of human responsibility and potential.”⁵ He explains in a 1989 article that Islam prescribes a strong sense of community and solidarity by seeing “the individual as the trustee of God’s bounty”:

Individuals are required to lead a good life and promote good deeds in the community (ummah). Promotion of the community is an act of faith (ilman) advocated in the Qur’an (the holy book of Islam) and Sunnah (practices of the Prophet Muhammad). The community is to be based upon social justice (‘Adalah Ijtima’yiah), solidarity (Takaful or Tadhamun) and community welfare. This principle of social fraternity (Ikha Ijtima’i) defines the way Muslims organize themselves.⁶

In other words, Said points to Islam’s focus on individual responsibility toward the wellbeing of the ummah, community, rather than individual wellbeing and rights only. As he explains, “Islam sees the community as a group of people cooperating for the sake of the common good, relying upon the use of common resources to achieve viability and creativity.”⁷ Further, Islam prescribes particular duties to the state toward the wellbeing of the community: “the Islamic political system is the form of authority designed to regulate, direct and create just laws applied equally to all persons.” Said continues to explain that “the application of laws requires power. Power is the ability to make peace. The purpose of peace is the creation of harmony … The Islamic political system must be stable, and stability bestows power.”⁸ Put another way, the political system – such as the state – is required by Islam to use its power to ensure equity and create communal harmony and peace.

Freedom is also an important component of human rights within Islam, according to Said. He contrasts Islamic conceptions of freedom with that of Western liberalism, which emphasizes self-interest and sees the individual as “the victim of society” with “the ideal task of society seen as serving the individual.”⁹ Said writes that “societies have so often been repressive that a strong Western tradition has emerged which sees the elimination of repression and want as the chief goal of society.”¹⁰ On the other hand, freedom from an Islamic perspective “implies conscious rejection of the individualistic philosophy of ‘doing one’s own thing.’”¹¹ Instead, freedom is rooted in the notion within Islam that human beings are created in the image of God and are God’s representative on earth, empowered to govern themselves. God is complete freedom, thus “personal freedom lies in surrendering to the Divine Will and must be sought within oneself. It cannot be realized through liberation from external sources of restraint.”¹² Further, “freedom means the ability, skills and security (inner and outer) affirmatively and creatively to express oneself, individually and as a group. It implies community, because to create is to communicate.”¹³

Dr. Said pointed to religious and cultural diversity as an important component of freedom through community, and an integral part of Islamic tradition and history.¹⁴ He explains in a 2003 co-edited book with Dr. Meena Sharify-Funk titled Cultural Diversity and Islam that Islamic conceptions of cultural pluralism parallel Western liberal conceptions of political pluralism, yet while the latter is widely acknowledged, the former deserves greater attention, particularly after 9/11.¹⁵ He asserts that cultural pluralism is seen within Qur’anic verses, stories of the Prophet Muhammad, and historical traditions. Religious and cultural diversity is also a critical component of Islamic practices of peace (see Islam and Peacemaking).

Said also viewed Islam as offering an alternative to Western notions of modernity that equate human progress with material evolution. He points to “the reduction of the person to the purely physical” that was conveyed throughout the European Renaissance and through colonialism, and which continues to underly Western paradigms of human development. Within Islam, on the other hand, “Divine Will is not relegated to the origin of creation but continues to function in all phases of human life and history.”¹⁶ Equivalent to the law of nature within Western thought, “Divine Will is always present and predominant.”¹⁷ Yet it does not imply an absence of free will, a point that Said asserts has been discussed by jurists, theologians, and philosophers throughout Islamic intellectual history: “it is the Muslim’s responsibility, having free will, to follow the Shari’ah, the concrete embodiment of Divine Will in the world.”¹⁸

Professor Said was critical of Western models of development that equate modernity solely with economic development and progress, particularly within the rapidly changing Middle East (see Democracy and Development). In an article on “The Paradox of Development in the Middle East,” he writes that these Western development approaches have “eroded traditional Islamic values and undermined Muslims’ confidence in themselves and their cultural heritage.”¹⁹ Said argues there are many paths to development; just as many in the West are rethinking its meaning to be inclusive of environmental and social factors, Muslims also have an opportunity “to reconstruct an Islamic concept of development rooted in their own cultural values and reflecting the historical development of Islam.”²⁰ According to Said, “the word development in Islam refers to the development of the soul in its return back to God.”²¹

While ideas of progress and evolution have been central to traditional Western conceptions of development, “Muslims do not think that the simple march of time by the very process of what is called historical determinism makes things better and better. There is not necessarily automatic betterment through the change of historical conditions.”²² Indeed, “Islam and development can be reconciled when we free development from the linear, rational idea of progress canonized by the Western mind.”²³ Further, within Islam materialism is viewed as detrimental to human dignity, “undermining the nobility of the human species.”²⁴ Yet “while wealth is not a virtue in Islam, neither is poverty; for extreme poverty leads to non-belief.” Rather, Said again emphasizes the role of the political system according to Islam, which is obligated to meet people’s essentials of life, such as through “the public treasury [in which] there must be a fixed portion for the poor, needy, and distressed.”²⁵ Ultimately, he asserts that “reconciliation between Islam and development may yet become possible if the concept of development can be distinguished from Western unilinear, rationalistic, and ultimately ethnocentric conceptions of progress that leave little room for cultural values to define conditions for quality of human life.”²⁶

Through his articulation of Islam’s affirmation of human rights – particularly through its conceptualizations of community solidarity, freedom, and development – Professor Said highlights an important opportunity to respond to contemporary challenges through solutions based on resonating, core Islamic values. “In the long run,” he asserts, “it is better for the Islamic world to develop through its own traditions … not through Western secular ideologies. The first is rooted deeply in the heart of the people as mass culture. The second is uprooted from mass culture and can easily be seen as external penetration.”²⁷

Notes