Equality but not Uniformity

We said that Islam has a special philosophy concerning the relations and rights of men and women within the family which differs from that which was current fourteen centuries ago and does not conform either with what is accepted in the world of today.

We have already explained that according to the Islamic view it is never a matter of dispute as to whether a man and woman are equal as human beings or not and as to whether their family rights should or should not be equal in value with each other. According to Islam a woman and a man are both human beings and both are apportioned equal rights.

That which has been kept in view in Islam is that woman and man on the basis of the very fact that one is woman and the other is a man are not identical with each other in many respects. The world is not exactly alike for both of them and their natures and dispositions were not intended to be the same. Eventually this requires that in very many rights duties and punishments they should not have an identical placing. In the western world they are now attempting to create uniformity and identicalness in laws regulations rights and functions between women and men while ignoring the innate and natural differences. It is here that the difference between the outlook of Islam and that of western systems is to be found. Thus the dispute between on the one hand those sections of the people who support Islamic rights and on the other hand those who support western systems is about the identicalness and exact similarity of rights of women and men and not about equality of rights. ‘Equality of rights’ is a counterfeit label which the followers of the west have stuck on as a souvenir of the west.

In my writings conferences and lectures I always avoid the use of this counterfeit label and the use of this phrase which comes to mean nothing but uniformity and identicalness of rights for women and men in place of genuine equality of rights.

I am not saying that nowhere in the world did or does the claim for equality of rights for women and men have any meaning nor am I saying that every past and present law in the world concerning the rights of men and women was passed on the basis of equality of worth and estimation and that it is just identicalness which was eliminated.

No I have no such claim. Europe before the twentieth century is the best evidence. In Europe before the twentieth century woman legally as well as practically lacked all human rights. Neither did she have rights equal to those of man nor the same as his. In the sudden development of the movement which sprang up in less than one century in the name of woman and for woman she acquired rights almost the same as those of man. However considering her natural build and her physical and spiritual needs she never acquired rights equal to those of man. For if woman wishes to acquire rights equal to the rights of man and happiness equal to the happiness of man the only way to get that end is for her to forget about an identicalness of rights with man and have faith in rights suitable for herself. Only in this way can unity and real sincerity between man and woman be achieved and only then will woman obtain happiness equal to or better than man’s.

Man then out of sincerity and without any derogatory thoughts will be ready to concede to her equal and at times better rights than their own.

Similarly I am not at all claiming that the rights that have in practice been the lot of women in our seemingly Islamic society are equal in value to the rights that men have had. I have many times said that it is essential to hold a thorough inquiry into the plight of women and that many rights that have been given to women by Islam and have in practice been ignored should be restored to them; but not that we should blindly follow and imitate the ways of the west which have brought thousands of misfortunes for them and give a pretty name to an erroneous principle and thus encumber women who already have misfortunes of the eastern type with misfortunes of the western type as well. Our point of view is that dissimilarity in the rights of man and woman should be observed to whatever extent nature has differently moulded and created them. This is in better accord with justice and with natural rights; and will both secure good will in the family and also result in the better development of society.

It must be completely understood that we claim that justice and the natural and human rights of man and woman call for dissimilarity in certain rights. Thus our discussion has a completely philosophical orientation: it is linked to the philosophy of rights and linked with a principle which is called the principle of justice which is one of the vital pillars of Islamic theology and jurisprudence. The principle of justice is the same fundamental principle which brought into existence the rule of the harmony of reason and religious law in Islam. It means that according to Islamic jurisprudence — or at least Shi’ite jurisprudence — if it can be established that justice demands that a particular precept should be such-and-such and not something else then if it is something else it will be an iniquity and against justice; thus we are obliged to say that the ruling of religious law is what reason and justice tell us it should be. For Islamic religious law according to the fundamental principle which it has itself taught can never leave the axis of justice and intrinsic natural rights.

By expounding and elucidating the underlying meaning of justice Islamic scholars have laid upon it the foundation of the Philosophy of rights. As a result of the occurrence of regrettable historical events they could not continue the work they had started At any rate preoccupation with the idea of human rights and the principle of justice as being something essential in accordance with the order of things and beyond conventional law was first of all propounded and put forward by the Muslims. They laid the foundation of the rights that are both natural and also required by intellectual considerations.

However it turned out that Islamic scholars could not carry on that work and after a gap of about eight centuries European thinkers and philosopher’s continued it and took upon themselves the credit for that task. On the one hand they worked out social political and economic philosophies and on the other hand they informed individuals societies and nations and explained to them the value of life and their rights as human beings. They started movements instigated revolutions and changed the face of the world.

In my opinion besides historical reasons psychological and geographical reasons also played their part in creating this situation whereby the Islamic east did not follow up these rights which are intellectually indispensable and whose foundations they had laid This is one of the differences in mentality between the east and the west that the east has a tendency towards ethical thinking while the west is inclined towards the idea of rights. The east is under the spell of morality and the west is in love with rights. The easterner by virtue of his eastern nature conceives of his humanity as consisting of behaving with kindness and toleration in being friendly towards his fellow men and in conducting himself the generosity towards them. On the other hand a westerner takes pride in the realization of his rights and in safeguarding them and will not allow anybody to intrude upon the sacred territory of his rights.

Humanity needs ethics as well as rights. It is linked to rights as well as to morals and neither of the two rights or morals is in itself the criterion of humanity.

The sacred religion of Islam has the great privilege of having approved both rights and ethics. In Islam as was mentioned before sincerity and right action in the moral sense is considered a virtue; and knowledge of rights and defending them is also considered a virtue and to be human. This matter has details which cannot be gone into here.

However the particular mentality of the east set to work. In spite of the fact that in the beginning the concept of rights and the insistence on morality had both been acquired from Islam the east gradually let go of rights and focused its attention on morals.

Our point is that the problem with which are at present confronted is a problem of rights a philosophical and intellectual problem a problem based upon arguments and reasoning. It is closely connected with reality of justice and the nature of the rights. Justice and rights were in existence before any laws were passed in the world so the enacting of a law cannot change the reality of justice and the human rights of mankind.

Montesquieu said: “Before man created laws there seem to have been relations founded on law and upon justice between creatures. The existence of these relations itself was the cause of the creation of laws. If we say that apart from the actual first laws consisting of orders and prohibitions nothing else just or unjust exist it is as if we say that before man drew a circle the radii of that circle were not all equal”.

Herbert Spencer said: Justice is associated not with the sentiments but with something else which is the natural rights of individuals. For justice to have external reality it is necessary to have regard for rights and innate differences”.1

The European philosophers who upheld and still do hold this view are in large number. The manifestos and proclamations that were drawn up and the material that was incorporated under the heading of Human Rights has as its source this very theory of natural rights. In other words it was the theory of natural and innate rights which reappeared in the form of the Proclamation of Human Rights.

Once again what Montesquieu Spencer and others have said concerning justice is as we know the very same thing that theologians have said concerning the inborn intellectual capacity to determine ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and the real meanings of justice. Amongst Islamic scholars there were some individuals who refused to accept the idea of instinctive rights and considered justice as something conventional. Amongst Europeans also such a belief existed. The Englishman Hobbes refused to accept justice as having real existence.

1. Both translated from the Persian. Originals untraced. (Tr.)