"Endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..." In this phrase Thomas Jefferson not only proved himself to be a master propagandist but also a fine epitomizer of the Enlightenment idea which was deeply rooted not only in Christianity but the Hebraic seedbed from which the Christian tree grew. Stop and think about the phrase for a moment for the focus on rights serves to define one side of the greatest, deepest, widest, and most unbridgeable gap between the West and Islam.
The foundational idea which emerged centuries ago in the Hebrew faith is that of free will. The deity provided human beings with free will, the right to choose. The right to choose, to either accept the grace, mercy, and gifts of the deity as well as the obligations imposed by the deity or, to reject the deity. In a slightly different form, free will existed so that humans would have the ability, the right to sin as well as the right to repent.
Free will as part and parcel of the human condition has significance only insofar as the individual has both the capacity and freedom to decide, to choose. This capacity coupled with the freedom necessary to exercise it constitutes the most basic right of all--the right to decide.
From this beginning the concept of inherent rights, rights which accrued to humans simply as a consequence of being born, grew to include not only the famed trio listed in the Declaration of Independence--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the plethora of rights which must exist so that humans could pursue that elusive and subjectively defined condition called "happiness."
The concept of people being imbued with rights by the deity is resident in Christianity from its earliest days. So is the notion of happiness. Jesus spoke of a deity who was not a remote, judgmental "father" but rather a kind and indulgent "dad" who very much wanted humans to enjoy, to have fun in the Earth over which man had been granted "dominian." Jesus enjoyed eating. He enjoyed drinking in the company of tax collectors and fishermen. He went to weddings and presumably danced there along with the other guests. In short, the behavior and words of Jesus bespoke of choosing, of having the right to pursue happiness, of having the right to liberty, the freedom to live and enjoy life.
Rights bring with them the companion necessity of duties. Duties or obligations derive from the existence of rights, most particularly the right to choose. When one looks at the history of law in the West, examines how the law has evolved over the generations, a conclusion is evident. Duties emerged so as to assure that all could exercise their manifold rights freely and without fear. Duty exists to protect the more fundamental feature of life: rights. The rights with which humans have been endowed demand the handmaiden of duty.
Indeed the polity and its instrument, government, exist because humans have the right to choose. Since it is inevitable that some humans will choose not to execute the duties incumbent upon them by virtue of the rights with which they have been endowed, the government must intervene to protect the rights of others against the individual's failure of duty.
Historically it was a simple and direct line: deity to free will, to right to choose, to ever broader rights all accompanied with commensurate duties and, finally, the justification of the state by the requirement that the freedom of the individual to exercise rights does not lead to license, to the absence of duty. To the Jews, to the Christians, to the sons of the Enlightenment, the existence of rights and the direct linkage of rights with duties was not only self-evident but the sign of a deity directly involved in the nature of the human condition.
Islam has a diametrically opposed view. The sacred literature of Islam makes clear that the deity has imposed duties on humans. That the relationship of deity and human demands the human to submit to the duties placed upon him by the deity. The submission is total. Every bit as total as the breadth of Islam's authority over all aspects of human life, human society, the human condition, and the material universe. There is no reference to endowed rights in the sacred writings of Islam. Put bluntly but accurately, there is no such referent as divinely endowed rights resident in Islam.
While tortured arguments can and have been made which purport to demonstrate the process by which divinely imposed duties lead to rights, the logic is not as clear, simple, and accurate as the rights demand duties contention of the West. Duties lead only to duties. Duties also lead to doubts regarding whether or not the individual has adequately and completely performed his duties. This second consideration can become of greatest importance when evaluating the nature of so-called "radical extremists" and the processes by which these people develop.
There was a time--centuries ago--when Islam made genuflections before the idea of free will and the right to choose. At one time Islam maintained that the individual believer had to exercise personal judgement in matters of faith, doctrine, and praxis. But, over time in an insensible fashion, this concept of personal judgement became attenuated. Finally, it resolved itself to selecting which of the long established and well respected schools of theological jurisprudence one would affiliate. This process became in practice choosing which local cleric one would follow.
There are a couple of ground truths you have to get a grip on before going further. The first is Islam means "submission," that is, the total submission of the good slave to the will of the master, in this case the divine creator. The will of the deity is transmitted through human instruments. Whether the Prophet Mohammad or an established cleric or the collective of clerics, the human instrument interprets and explains the will of the deity to the community of believers. The role of the believer is to accept and act upon the message provided by Prophet or cleric or the tradition of theological jurisprudence represented by that cleric. Hear and obey.
All law comes from the deity through the several human instruments. This means that insofar as the polity and its manifestation, the government, have legitimacy it is limited to passing and administering laws which apply the revealed will of the deity to a particular time and place.
The Western concept of the role of the government is antipodal to the Islamic ideal. In the West the polity and its government are legitimate in their actions when and only when these acts serve to reinforce duties and thus protect the free exercise of the divinely imbued rights of the individual. The government exists to backstop the general concept of rights occasioned duties to meet particular requirements of time and place as well as to accept the reality that humans are imperfect and likely to fail in fulfilling their inherent duties. The state exists as a melancholy recognition that humans can and do choose to "sin."
OK, bucko, to summarize. In the Western tradition derived from Hebrew and Christian roots and expanded by the Enlightenment and its follow-ons, rights are inherent to the individual but demand the performance of certain duties so that the rights of all can be exercised freely. In Islam there is only duty. There is only submission, total and abject obedience to the will of the deity as interpreted and set forth by human instruments. There is no such thing as a "right" divine in origin or otherwise. And, if there are no "rights" accruing to a Muslim, then infidels have no "rights" and even greater duties.
One more point deserves brief consideration before shifting from the general to a few specific examples of the vast gulf between Western rights and Islamic duties. Both the Western and Islamic practice of jurisprudence rely upon applying universal principles--whether from sacred writings or human made laws and constitutions--to specific matters of fact.
A Western appellate or supreme court (or a Jewish Talmudic judicial body) makes a good faith effort to divine the intentions, purposes, and goals of the authors of the Constitution and amendments to a particular case with specific facts, facts which may have been utterly inconceivable to the original writers. The judges and justices have some latitude in their translation effort, but are expected to refrain from exercises in creative non-fiction, that is rewriting the original document to meet the predilections of judge or the prejudices of time and place.
The judges or justices may lean to the strict constructionist pole of the spectrum of interpretation. Or the individual may tilt to the opposite end of the continuum, the pole marked "living document." As courts at all levels are political bodies and not immune to the winds of public opinion, the courts may veer from one pole to another as times or context changes, but overall the courts must stay within the parameters of precedent or run the very real risk of losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public. The dynamic tension has resulted historically in jurisprudence which shifts over time but shifts slowly, cautiously, and in a way which allows stability and predictability in the application of law.
The Islamic view of jurisprudence places the greatest weight on precedent. In a real way the several major schools of theological jurisprudence (and all jurisprudence must be theological in Islamic societies) can be characterized as strict constructionist, more strict constructionist, very strict constructionist and impossibly strict constructionist. As a result even the most "liberal," most "living document" oriented of the schools, the strict constructionist one, does everything conceivable to "let the decision stand," which is to say fit the facts of a case into an intellectual bed of Procrustes designed and constructed in and for the ways of living in the Arabian Peninsula more than a thousand years ago. Within the two most "conservative" schools, the temptation simply to lop off the inconvenient and unpleasant facts is irresistible. That means repress new developments of whatsoever nature when these cannot be fitted on the ancient Arabic framework.
Whew! That's it for the basics. The very quick course in the roots of rights and duties in two opposing civilizations is done. Short, even brutally short, but not inaccurate.
Now for some specifics of contrast. Let's start with sex. It is a good place to kick off, since all religions seem to be fixated on bodies thwacking together in a pool of sweat, other sticky liquids, and passion.
No, bucko, we aren't going to pop into the bedroom. That is too much for the Geek's aging blood pressure. We are going to start with the public presentation of women. That's fair. It is where all sex starts.
In the West a woman has the right to present herself in public in whatsoever way she believes shows her to her best advantage. She has an untrammeled right to dress, to use makeup, to style her hair however she wants, however she believes will meet her needs and goals for the moment. In exchange men have the right to an aesthetic experience. They have the right to whatever imaginings might result from encountering an attractive woman who presents herself well.
At the same time the man has a duty not to act upon his imaginings in an untoward or improper way. He has a duty to limit his behavior, to control the hormones regardless of the visual provocation and the resultant fantasies. If the man fails in his duty--as some will--the state has the obligation to intervene, to punish the man's failure of duty. That is the job of the state. It must act in order that women generally may exercise their inherent right to present themselves however they may choose.
The matter is rather different in an Islamic context, particularly one where the more austere and repressive schools of theological jurisprudence reign supreme. In the sacred writings of Islam, the deity imposes the duty of modest dress on both men and women. Over the centuries the more severe and austere human interpreters of this duty have defined it to mean that women must be placed in all encompassing garbage bags so as to prevent lust from bursting forth in the minds (and other body parts) of men. The woman has the sole duty to protect men from their own presumed inability to control their twangers. The fact that this duty reduces women to perambulating interchangeable lumps without personal identity or freedom is frankly irrelevant.
In the West a woman has the right to choose with whom she will publicly associate. She has the right to walk down the street with a male coworker, a male friend, a suitor, or anyone (or no one) else. Again the man, the coworker, the fellow student, the friend has an affirmative duty not to transgress the limits of the non-intimate relationship. Even the suitor, a potential intimate, has the duty not to go over the edge of what the woman considers to be proper behavior. Should the man fail in his duty, the government has the obligation to intervene, to punish in order that the general right of all women to select their company may be protected.
Not so in Islam. The woman has the duty to not appear in public with a man who is not either her husband or a close relative. She has no right in this matter only duty.
(Yes, it is true that Christianity has exhibited a similar sense of female "duty." But that came long after the life and death of Jesus. It was in large measure the artifact of a Church Doctor who was scared to death of his own sexual nature, his own "tumescence." His own fears offloaded the responsibility on women and the preposterous invention of "original sin" which contended that the surrender of Eve to the smooth talking serpent constituted a rebellion against the deity subsequently transmitted like mitochondrial DNA down the generations.)
In the US as in the West generally people have the right to pursue happiness. We have the right to have fun. The Christian roots of the West acknowledge this, even celebrate it. We can listen to music, participate in or watch sports. Go to the movies. Watch television. Whatever constitutes "fun."
Not so in the more severe and austere parts of Islam. As the Ayatollah Khomeini famously said, "There is no fun in Islam." Certainly Taliban, al-Shabaab and other groups advocating violent political Islam agree. There is a sound foundation for this in the sacred writings of Islam such as the Prophet's prohibition of musical instruments and singing.
Beyond the specific prohibition there is the general duty that all Muslims spend every waking moment possible contemplating the will of the deity, the duties owed the deity, and the requirements of being the perfect slave of the deity. Music, sports, movies, all these other forms of fun are distractions from the basic duties of determining and obeying the will of the deity, of being the full and complete slave of the creator or the universe and all life. The total absence of diversions is inherent to Islam--at least as interpreted by some of the deity's human instruments.
There is another, far more critical duty imposed on all Muslims, all members of the ummah. This is the duty of perfect conformity. Islam fears disunity. Islam fears internal divisions. It fears, therefore, all debate, all disagreement, all dissension. Inherent to the sacred writings as well as the life of the Prophet, the "perfect man" is the duty to impose perfect uniformity upon all members of the faith community.
Nothing could be at a greater distance from the traditions of the West. The right to dissent, to disagree, to oppose is a defining hallmark of the West generally and the US in particular. The right of free expression is specified in the Constitution and well recognized by the courts. As was true with the recent Westboro Baptist Church case, expression of even the most obnoxious and wounding sort is protected jealously. The right to hold and express even highly unpopular and distressing views is foundational. It is also a key to evolution in political, social, cultural, economic, and technological thought and deed.
In some Islamic contexts the dissident, the person standing in opposition to those in power, is subject to dreadful punishments as an apostate, even as one in rebellion against the deity. Signs of discontent, of dissent, must be stomped on and stamped out lest the faith community be divided against itself. Whereas in the West dissent and opposition are signs of positive change, in at least some Muslim contexts they are perceived as emblems of evil, refusal to be submissive to the will of the deity as interpreted by the clerics with power.
It is undoubtedly the case that the overwhelming majority of Muslims like their counterparts in Christianity and Judaism wear their religion lightly. They follow the Five Pillars, perhaps renounce the temptations of John Barleycorn, dress modestly but reject the garbage sack, and are discrete in their sexuality but do not go the entire duty route. Yes, it may be true, but, unfortunately for the world, it is also irrelevant.
The True Believers of Islam, the men who follow the lead of the most strict constructionist and impossibly strict constructionist schools of theological jurisprudence, the men who desperately fear the wrath of the deity, the fires of the pit, are the men who set the agenda for political Islam both violent and otherwise. These are the men who take the duty of offensive jihad most seriously. They are the men who are willing to die in fulfilling this duty--provided they can kill a suitable number of infidels, apostates, or the merely unfortunate in the process. These men, the men who proudly proclaim they love death more than we infidels love life, are the fountainheads of terror, fear, war.
Their sense of duty. Their commitment to the duty of offensive jihad like their dedication to the other duties serves to define Islam in the minds of most of us in the West. These men are the enemy. But what gives them a power far greater than their numbers may merit is the simple fact that they can invoke the pervasive sense of duty which is inherent to the religion.
It has often been stated that rights without duties leads to degenerate license. That is true historically. Equally true in the historical record is the blunt fact that duties without commensurate rights leads to fatal extremism which harms not only the target but the faith community which produces the attacks.
Rights must be balanced with duties. So also must duties be balanced by rights. The West has gotten the balance right. Islam has not. Unless and until Islam does address this reality effectively, the conflict of civilizations will continue and grow. The responsibility rests with Muslims, particularly those Muslims who are not True Believers in the duty of offensive jihad.
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