COVER STORY
Muslims for Human Dignity: A Global Call The dignity of all individuals is a core Islamic principle BY MOHAMMAD OMAR FAROOQ
T
aking a glance at the Muslim world, it’s quite a stretch to talk about a “global call” let alone presenting a model for others to emulate. After all, for several centuries it has appeared dizzyingly fragmented, disoriented, disunited and dysfunctional. While the problems and issues for the rest of the world might be somewhat different in nature and scale, most countries are contending with deeper issues. For example, in the U.S., part of humanity “can’t breathe” and needs to be reminded of this truth by the Black Lives Matter movement. In parts of Europe, racial discrimination and ghettoization are widespread and not all Muslims have the basic freedom to wear the dignified attire of their choice. In China, people lack basic liberty. The country is steadily gaining economic and military power and asserting itself forcefully, as in the formerly British-occupied Hong Kong, or repressively, as in what used to be the Uyghur Muslim-majority province of Xinjiang. From the continuing conflicts in Indian-occupied Kashmir and Israelioccupied Palestine, everywhere one looks human dignity — the dignity associated with just being human — is at stake. Comparatively, the Muslim world’s condition is, in general, worse. The post-colonial dismembered Muslim world of nation states had hardly any truly independent entities, for almost all of them gradually became appendages of the colonial legacy and essentially served the interests of the former colonial masters or of the privileged domestic group that had its grip on the political and economic power in most of them. As history shows, their role was to serve themselves or their colonial patrons, not their people. Parallel to the rampant concentration of wealth and resources, poverty and corruption, there isn’t a lot of positive things to say about most Muslim-majority countries. Conflicts based on and shaped by internal and external dynamics are raging in the Muslim world. Wars are imposed on them, and being played by external powers and
interests engenders many fratricidal conflicts. Extremists play their own tunes, and God only knows what their moral boundary is, as they attack people indiscriminately, especially on a sectarian basis. Various Muslim-majority countries are adding fuel to the fires of hunger and devastation in Syria , Libya and Yemen, instead of trying to establish justice and bring peace. Palestine keeps bleeding, Israel shrewdly and masterfully pursues its monstrous dream of the Greater Israel and some key Muslim-majority countries are prostrating themselves at its feet. Given all of this, is it at all relevant for the world’s Muslims to take a stance? This indeed is a pertinent issue, for Muslims have something that others do not and thus have a pivotal role to play in this regard. Throughout history, self-centeredness has been an inalienable aspect of human traits. It has manifested itself at the individual, tribal and racial levels, and today through nationalism as nation-states. Decadent for a long time due to many internal factors, even the Muslim world has been sucked into this ruinous path. The worst manifestation of such nationalism has occurred in Europe, the cradle of Western civilization, in the form
20 ISLAMIC HORIZONS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
of two continental wars that eventually became world wars. The long-fragmented Muslim world was easily placed on the chessboard as the colonizers’ pawns. As an appendage to this legacy, it continues to manifest a disorientation and delinkage from its original transcendent civilizational and religious root, because nothing Islamic can be self-centered. The Muslims’ aspiration is distinctively special, with a common thread binding us all at the level of humanity. At that level, irrespective of race, religion, language, nationality, gender or culture, we are one — one common humanity, of which human dignity is the foremost concern. This is where all modern societies have failed dismally. If we want to pick up the pieces and move toward a better future for everyone, then we need to transcend our parochial, self-centered mentality and perspective and embrace a sense of global belonging or, more aptly, a humanity-centered orientation. That means that even Muslims cannot be Muslim-centered. Seriously? Yes, seriously. In my “Toward Our Reformation: From Legalism to Value-oriented Islamic Law and Jurisprudence” (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2011), several specific Quran-based values were mentioned as part of the value-orientation, among them humanity orientation and global belonging, on the basis of: “You are indeed the best community that has ever been brought forth for [the good of] humanity: you enjoin the doing of what is right and forbid the doing of what is wrong, and you believe in God ...” (3:110). The Quran unambiguously states that God meant for Muslims to be a community that serves everyone. “O humanity! Revere your GuardianLord, the One who created you from one being, and created from it its mate, then spread from the two many men and women; Revere God, through whom you demand your mutual (rights), and (revere) the wombs (that bore you): for Allah ever watches over you” (4:1).
