DignityIs a fundamental right of every human being merelyby virtue of his or her humanity.
The Glorious Qur’an says:“Verily we have honoured the Children of Adam. We carry them on the land and the seaand have made provision of good things for them,and have preferred them above many of thosewhom we created with a marked preferment.”[Qur’an 17:70]
Regarding equality, the Qur’anic verse is explicit:
“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a maleand a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other)Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is he who is the most righteous of you.”. [Quran49:13]
Thus, what distinguishes one human being fromanother, in the Sight of God, is the person’s piety and God-consciousness.
The proliferation of humanity into many races and ethnicities is a testament to God’s Majesty andWisdom.
Physical and racial differences among human beings do not imply inequality.
However, racial superiority and discrimination is prohibited inIslam and contradicts its essence.This concept isExemplified in the following prophetic tradition: “NoArab has any superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a Non-Arab have any superiority over an Arab. Nor does a white man have any superiority over a black man, or the black man any superiority over the white man. You are all the children of Adam, and Adam was created from clay.”
Equality of Women. As creations of God, women are accorded spiritual equality with men. They arerewarded for prayer and charitable acts, and likewise held accountable for their actions, good or bad, while on earth.The Glorious Qur’an says: “If any do deeds ofRighteousness,- be they male or female – and have faith, they will enter Heaven, and not the least injustice will be done to them. ”[Qur’an 4:124]
Both men and women have responsibilities towards their families and societies as is clear from the following verse:“The Believers, men and women, are protectors one of another: they enjoin what is just, and forbid what is evil:they observe regular prayers, practise regular charity, and obey Allah and His Messenger. On them will Allah pour HisMercy: for Allah is Exalted in power,Wise.” [Quran, 9:71]
Under the laws of Islam, women have the right to ownproperty and businesses, engage in financial transactions,Vote, receive inheritance, obtain an education and participate in legal and political affairs. The fact that MuslimSocieties do not always accord women all these rights is an example of how human beings can fall short of fully implementing the Divine Will.
The Right to Life and Safety. The most basic right of a human being is the right to live. The Glorious Qur’an Recognizes this right in the following verses: “Nor take Life – which Allah has made sacred – except for just cause…”
[Qur’an, 17:33]
“Whosoever kills a human being without due reason – not inretaliation for murder or corruption on earth – it is as though he had killed all of mankind.”[Quran, 5:32]
Islam’s position on life is that it is a sacred trust from God.No human being is permitted to take the life of another, unless it is for justice administered by a competent court following due process of law.
Not only do human beings have the right not to be harmed, they have the right to be safeguarded from harm – physical or otherwise. So under Islamic law, people are legally liable for instance, if they did not prevent a blind man from dying of a perilous fall, if they were in a position to do so.Even in a state of war, Islam enjoins that one deals with the enemy nobly on the battlefield. Islam has drawn a clear line of distinction between the combatants and the non-combatants of the enemy country. As far as the non-combatant population is concerned such as women, children, the old and the infirm, etc., the instructions of the Prophet are as follows:“Do not kill any old person, any child or any woman”. “Do not kill the monks in monasteries”.During a war, theProphet saw the corpse of a woman lying on the ground and observed: “She was not fighting. How then she came to be killed?” Thus non-combatants are guaranteed security of life even if their state is at war with an Islamic state.
Freedom of Beliefs. Contrary to popular misconceptions, aGenuine Islamic state is obligated to not only permit but respect diversity. Thus non-Muslims in an Islamic state are allowed to worship in accordance with their religion.
When Spain was under Muslim rule, the city of Cordova,was considered the ‘intellectual center of Europe’, whereStudents went to study philosophy, science and medicineUnder Muslim, Jewish and Christian scholars. “This rich and sophisticated society took a tolerant viewtowards other faiths.
Tolerance was unheard of in the rest ofEurope. But in Muslim Spain, thousands of Jews andChristians lived in peace and harmony with their MuslimOverlords.” (Burke, 1985, p. 38) 5
The Right to a Basic Standard of Life. A basic standard of life includes the minimum essentials necessary for survival, such as food, clothing, shelter, and medicalattention. Anyone suffering from deprivation of these economic necessities is entitled to receive aid in order to meet their needs. It is the duty of every Muslim with adequatemeans to give from their wealth, in order to eradicate poverty from society.
AboutDignity and Equality The Glorious Qur’an says: “And in their wealth the Beggar and the outcast had due share.” [Qur’an 51:19]
The Right to Justice. Islam requires that Muslims possess upright character and deal justly with theentire human race, irrespective of their ethnicity, nationality, creed, and whether they are friend or foe.
The Glorious Qur’an says: “O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you, make you swerve to wrong and departFrom justice. Be just: that is next to piety: and fear Allah. ForAllah is well-acquainted with all that ye do.” [Quran, 5:8]
The sense of justice that Islam encompasses “is one of the most wonderful ideals of Islam, because, as I read inThe Qur’an, I find those dynamic principles of life, notMystic but practical ethics for the daily conduct of life suited to the whole world.” [Lectures on “The Ideals ofIslam” see Speeches and Writings of Sarojini Naidu,Madras, 1918, p. 167]
Rights and Mutual Responsibility. From theForegoing discussion, it is clear that Islamic law hasDivinely mandated rights for individuals in their specific roles as spouse, parent, child, relative, neighbor, friend, and even foe. In its distribution of rights and responsibilities, Islam has addressed the social, racial, gender, and sectarian issues plaguing the world. Although much of the world, includingMuslim nations, have yet to fully implement it, theModel of rights and mutual responsibilities enshrined in Islam, has a tremendous potential for individualand social reform.
By AzraAwan
Medina Charter
The Constitution of Medina (دستور المدينة, Dustūr al-Madīnah), also known as the Charter of Medina (Arabic: صحيفة المدينة, Ṣaḥīfat al-Madīnah; or: ميثاق المدينة, Mīthāq al-Madina”Covenant of Medina”),
[1] was drawn up on behalf of the Islamic prophet Muhammad shortly after his arrival at Medina (then known as Yathrib) in 622 CE
[2] (or 1 AH), following the Hijra from Mecca.
The preamble declares the document to be “a book [kitab] of the prophet Muhammad to operate between the believers [mu’minin] and Muslims from the Quraysh tribe and from Yathrib and those who may be under them and wage war in their company” declaring them to constitute “one community [ummah wāḥidah] separate from all other people”.
It established the collective responsibility of nine constituent tribes for their members’ actions, specifically emphasising blood money and ransom payment. The first constituent group mentioned are the Qurayshi migrants, followed by eight other tribes. Eight Jewish groups are recognized as part of the Yathrib community, and their religious separation from Muslims is established. The Jewish Banu Shutayba tribe is inserted as one of the Jewish groups, rather than with the nine tribes mentioned earlier in the document. The constitution also established Muhammad as the mediating authority between groups and forbids the waging of war without his authorization.
The constitution formed the basis of a multi-religious Islamic state in Medina.
[3][4][5][6][7
The constitution was created to end the bitter intertribal fighting between the rival clans of Banu Aws and Banu Khazraj in Medina
[7] and to maintain peace and co-operation among all Medinan groups. Establishing the role of Muhammad as the mediating authority between the two groups and the others in Medina was central to the ending of Medinan internal violence and was an essential feature of the constitution. The document ensured freedom of religious beliefs and practices for all citizens who “follow the believers”. It assured that representatives of all parties, Muslim or non-Muslim, should be present when consultation occurs or in cases of negotiation with foreign states. It declared “a woman can only be hosted by a host with the consent of her family” and imposed a tax system for supporting the community in times of conflict. It declared the role of Medina as a ḥaram (حرم, “sacred place”), where no blood of the peoples included in the pact can be spilled.
The division of the constitution into numbered articles is not in the original text but added later by scholars. The numbering of clauses differs in different sources, but there is general agreement on the authenticity of the most widely-read version of the charter, which is found in Ibn Ishaq’s Sirah Rasul Allah.[8][9]
Muslims of all backgrounds pray during the 2019 Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Fethi Belaid/AFP via Getty Images
Islam’s anti-racist message from the 7th century still resonates today
Asma Afsaruddin, Indiana University
July 6, 2020 8.10am EDT
One day, in Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad dropped a bombshell on his followers: He told them that all people are created equal.
“All humans are descended from Adam and Eve,” said Muhammad in his last known public speech. “There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, or of a non-Arab over an Arab, and no superiority of a white person over a black person or of a black person over a white person, except on the basis of personal piety and righteousness.”
In this sermon, known as the Farewell Address, Muhammad outlined the basic religious and ethical ideals of Islam, the religion he began preaching in the early seventh century. Racial equality was one of them. Muhammad’s words jolted a society divided by notions of tribal and ethnic superiority.
Today, with racial tension and violence roiling contemporary America, his message is seen to create a special moral and ethical mandate for American Muslims to support the country’s anti-racism protest movement.
Challenging kinship
Apart from monotheism – worshipping just one God – belief in the equality of all human beings in the eyes of God set early Muslims apart from many of their fellow Arabs in Mecca.
Chapter 49, verse 13 of Islam’s sacred scripture, the Quran, declares: “O humankind! We have made you…into nations and tribes, so that you may get to know one another. The noblest of you in God’s sight is the one who is most righteous.”
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This verse challenged many of the values of pre-Islamic Arab society, where inequalities based on tribal membership, kinship and wealth were a fact of life. Kinship or lineal descent – “nasab” in Arabic – was the primary determinant of an individual’s social status. Members of larger, more prominent tribes like the aristocratic Quraysh were powerful. Those from less wealthy tribes like the Khazraj had lower standing.
The Quran said personal piety and deeds were the basis for merit, not tribal affiliation – an alien and potentially destabilizing message in a society built on nasab.
The wealthy Quraysh tribe of ancient Arabia dominated the region for centuries. Qantara
Give me your tired, your poor
As is often the case with revolutionary movements, early Islam encountered fierce opposition from many elites.
The Quraysh, for example, who controlled trade in Mecca – a business from which they profited greatly – had no intention of giving up the comfortable lifestyles they’d built on the backs of others, especially their slaves brought over from Africa.
The Prophet’s message of egalitarianism tended to attract the “undesirables” –people from the margins of society. Early Muslims included young men from less influential tribes escaping that stigma and slaves who were promised emancipation by embracing Islam.
Women, declared to be the equal of men by the Quran, also found Muhammad’s message appealing. However, the potential of gender equality in Islam would become compromised by the rise of patriarchal societies.
By Muhammad’s death, in 632, Islam had brought about a fundamental transformation of Arab society, though it never fully erased the region’s old reverence for kinship.
I can’t breathe
Early Islam also attracted non-Arabs, outsiders with little standing in traditional Arab society. These included Salman the Persian, who traveled to the Arabian peninsula seeking religious truth, Suhayb the Greek, a trader, and an enslaved Ethiopian named Bilal.
Bilal, center, found freedom in Islam. Wikimedia Commons
All three would rise to prominence in Islam during Muhammad’s lifetime. Bilal’s much-improved fortunes, in particular, illustrate how the egalitarianism preached by Islam changed Arab society.
An enslaved servant of a Meccan aristocrat named Umayya, Bilal was persecuted by his owner for embracing the new faith. Umayya would place a rock on Bilal’s chest, trying to choke the air out of his body so that he would abandon Islam.
Moved by Bilal’s suffering, Muhammad’s friend and confidant Abu Bakr, who would go on to rule the Muslim community after the Prophet’s death, set him free.
Bilal was exceptionally close to Muhammad, too. In 622, the Prophet appointed him the first person to give the public call to prayer in recognition of his powerful, pleasing voice and personal piety. Bilal would later marry an Arab woman from a respectable tribe – unthinkable for an enslaved African in the pre-Islamic period.
Black lives matter
For many modern Muslims, Bilal is the symbol of Islam’s egalitarian message, which in its ideal application recognizes no difference among humans on the basis of ethnicity or race but rather is more concerned with personal integrity. One of the United States’ leading Black Muslim newspaper, published between 1975 and 1981, was called The Bilalian News.
More recently Yasir Qadhi, dean of the Islamic Seminary of America, in Texas, invoked Islam’s egalitarian roots. In a June 5 public address, he said American Muslims, a population familiar with discrimination, “must fight racism, whether it is by education or by other means.”
Many Muslims in the U.S. are taking action, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and protesting police brutality and systemic racism. Their actions reflect the revolutionary – and still unrealized – egalitarian message that Prophet Muhammad set down over 1,400 years ago as a cornerstone of the Muslim faith.
Comment on this article
Asma Afsaruddin
Professor of Islamic Studies and former Chairperson, Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University
Asma Afsaruddin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Indiana University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.
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