A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

A Muslim Declaration of Human

Rights?

A destroyed mosque in Rafah, Gaza, 2009 / Wikimedia Commons

We have ennobled the Children of Adam.

Qur’an, 17:70

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Nelson Mandela

The idea of human rights evolved in parallel with the rise of the nation-state in nineteenth-century
Europe. For our purposes, we can define the state as a merger between a group of people sharing a
common characteristic—such as language, tribe, a sense of shared history, or the perception of a
common destiny—and a demarcated territory. Owing to the heterogeneity of the population of most
geographical regions that became a state, an immediate problem, still evident today, arose: because
most states contain more than one national group, the most populous one comprises a majority while
smaller groups become minorities, creating a tension as the majority usually seeks to impose its
language, history, religion, or culture on the minorities, sometimes with genocidal vigor.1 Western
human rights were conceived as an effort to resolve that tension by conferring upon racial, religious, and
national minorities rights deemed to accrue to every human being by virtue of a shared humanity.

Some consider it folly to speak of human rights as universal because of their European origin, history, and
philosophical foundations. Yet the culmination of Western human rights thought, codified in the United
Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), does just that. Is there something deficient in
the UDHR due to its origin? And what might a corrective rooted in Islamic teachings look like? Such a
corrective might be seen as more legitimate by Muslims while still addressing the same concerns that

1 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44
A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

motivated the creation of European human rights laws and regimes. We can begin by looking to the past
and how the challenge of ethnic and religious minorities was addressed in the Islamic tradition.

Islam and the Question of Minorities

We live in an age when the past, to use a common idiom, is “a foreign country”—the implication being
that history has little to teach us. The twentieth-century historian and social critic Christopher Lasch
identified this problem succinctly:

A society that has made “nostalgia” a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly
repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today. Having
trivialized the past by equating it with outmoded styles of consumption, discarded fashions and
attitudes, people today resent anyone who draws on the past in serious discussions of contemporary
conditions or attempts to use the past as a standard by which to judge the present.2

Besides “having trivialized the past,” we face other modern trends that also result in the failure of
Western states to effectively address the challenge of ethnic and religious minorities, including the rise
of white nationalism in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and other de facto Western
multicultural states and the attractiveness of potentially divisive ideologies, such as critical race theory,3
to racial minorities in those states. If international human rights instruments, such as the UDHR, sought
to protect minority populations, our current failures should prompt us to consider that perhaps an
alternative ethical vision from the past—or some elements of one—may prove more effective toward
this goal. Historically, minorities in Muslim-majority societies rarely experienced significant problems,
despite anomalous examples of systematic intolerance and, in rare instances, organized violence.

From the outset of Islam, prophetic teachings and practices, both personal and societal, set the tone for
nondiscriminatory treatment of minorities. During Prophet Muĥammad’s time, several eminent
representatives of non-Arab groups—e.g., Bilāl the Ethiopian, Salmān the Persian, and Śuhayb the Roman
(European)—were held in high esteem by the majority Arab Muslim population. Praise from the Prophet
Muĥammad
for non-Arab people further enhanced their stature. He stated, for example, “The call to prayer is for the
Ethiopians.”4 “Were faith in the Pleiades the Persians would attain it.”5 “The Europeans are best in the
treatment of their poor and downtrodden.”6 On two occasions, he sent contingents of his followers to
seek asylum in Abyssinia, an African kingdom, led by a just king whom he praised.7

In addition, the Prophet’s relationship with many of his black companions highlights—in stark contrast
with most societies past and present—the social cohesion and efforts to eradicate race consciousness
during the prophetic era. For example, the Prophet adopted a black Arab youth, Zayd b. Ĥārithah,8 as
his son and attached him to his lineage before the Qur’an prohibited the latter practice. He referred to
an African woman, Barakah al-Ĥabashiyyah (Umm Ayman), as his mother. Zayd and Umm Ayman married,
and their son, Usāmah, described as having a dark complexion,9 became known as the beloved of the
beloved of the Messenger of God. The Prophet was known to send his dark-skinned companions to the
homes of light-skinned aristocratic Arabs to ask for the hands of their daughters in marriage.10 He also
appointed individuals of African descent to high offices in the fledgling Muslim polity.11 Such prophetic
decisions and directives served as a model for the achievement of social integration and cohesion in
Muslim realms, especially because Muslims seek to emulate the prophetic character. Much of this came
to an end with the advent of European colonization and the dismantling of the institutional structures
buttressing the shariah as a viable civilizational force.12

Respectful treatment of non-Muslim minorities living in Muslim lands became a reality because the
Prophet
 extended protection to all those living under Muslim rule. He stated, “Whoever oppresses a person
granted a covenant of protection, violates his rights, burdens him with an unbearable workload, or takes
something from him without his consent, I will prosecute him [the transgressor] on the Day of

2 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44
A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

Resurrection.”13 He also declared that anyone who unjustly kills someone under the protection of the
Muslim polity would be banned from paradise.14

The importance—and the impact—of Islam, through prophetic teachings, can be witnessed in the history
of all major Muslim population centers where Arabs, Persians, Turks, Africans, and Europeans created
dynamic, ethnically mixed societies. These centers included Baghdad; Cairo; Mecca; Medina; Hyderabad;
Istanbul; Fes; Marrakesh; Sarajevo; Timbuktu; and during the time Muslim rule prevailed in the Iberian
Peninsula, the entirety of Andalusia. 

While not without some faults, the striking ethnic and social harmony of Muslim lands inspired the
renowned twentieth-century historian Arnold J. Toynbee to write:

The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements
of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this
Islamic virtue; for, although the record of history would seem on the whole to show that race
consciousness has been the exception and not the rule in the constant interbreeding of the human
species, it is a fatality of the present situation that this consciousness is felt—and felt strongly—by the
very peoples which, in the competition of the last four centuries between several Western powers, have
won—at least for the moment—the lion’s share of the inheritance of the Earth.

As things are now, the exponents of racial intolerance are in the ascendant, and, if their attitude towards
“the race question” prevails, it may eventually provoke a general catastrophe. Yet the forces of racial
toleration, which at present seem to be fighting a losing battle in a spiritual struggle of immense
importance to mankind, might still regain the upper hand if any strong influence militating against race
consciousness that has hitherto been held in reserve were now to be thrown into the scales. It is
conceivable that the spirit of Islam might be the timely reinforcement which would decide this issue in
favor of tolerance and peace.15

Toynbee’s assessment that “the spirit of Islam” could promote “tolerance and peace” in matters of race
can be extended to matters of religion as well. The confessional nature of the premodern world made
the attainment of peaceful relations in this realm particularly challenging, but here too Islam fostered
models of success. Premodern Muslims generally permitted every human being, regardless of their faith,
to participate in unrestricted worship. During the Ottoman epoch, this freedom evolved into a
sophisticated system of minority religious rights known as the millet system. The influential historian
Bernard Lewis recognized the religious freedom afforded to all under Ottoman rule:

Surely, the Ottomans did not offer equal rights to their subjects—a meaningless anachronism in the
context of that time and place. They did however offer a degree of tolerance without precedence or
parallel in Christian Europe. Each community—the Ottoman term was Millet—was allowed the free
practice of its religion. More remarkably, they had their own communal organizations, subject to the
authority of their own religious chiefs, controlling their own education and social life, and enforcing their
own laws, to the extent that they did not conflict with the basic laws of the Empire.16

As Lewis states, it is meaningless to measure the ways premodern Muslim societies protected ethnic and
religious minorities, using a modern yardstick based on how those protections unfold, at least in theory,
in contemporary pluralistic states. It is more appropriate to compare outcomes, especially the historical
reality that those Muslim societies, as a rule, prevented the kinds of persistent ghettoization, violence,
and insecurity that ethnic and religious minorities still experience in many modern states. 

Sanctified Beings and the Rights They

Deserve
From the advent of Western human rights discourse in Muslim societies, scholars and thinkers have
endeavored to craft a modern human rights declaration rooted in the Islamic tradition. That effort

3 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44
A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

culminated in 1990 with the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI), formulated through a
collaborative effort between member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). But even
though many Muslims view the CDHRI as an Islamic corrective to the UDHR, it still reflects the structure
and content of its Western predecessor, with the notable exception of making the shariah its foundation
and the basis for its interpretation.  

Despite the “Islamic” label of the CDHRI—a descriptor many Muslims may also apply to the
overwhelming majority of articles in the UDHR—the materialistic nature of these seminal human rights
declarations limits their ability to address human beings as spiritual creatures and to capture the
complex array of rights Islam affords to humans as integrated spiritual and material beings.17 What Islam
can contribute in this regard cannot be overstated: it provides a more robust and formidable foundation
for a universal approach to human rights by including in the definition of human the sanctified spiritual
(and material) being that applies to all of humanity. 

In this sense, both the UDHR and the CDHRI represent thoroughly modern declarations that accept the
Darwinian divorce of the spiritual and the intellectual essence of humans. Contemporary legal theorist
Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah says concerning this divorce:

As for Darwinism, which today has become a reference point for most intellectual circles, a human being
does not transcend the designation of a primate from the animal kingdom, of the hominoid family,
distinguished by its brain, crescent shaped nails, and full set of teeth. In doing so, Darwinism has nullified
its own rationality, which includes human rationality with all its attributes, extraordinary perceptions,
marvelous intellectual faculties, and unique gifts, reducing man to nothing more than an offspring of a
monkey that once walked on all fours only to evolve into a biped. In this way, they were satisfied with
the form of man forgetting the essence. They put forth a scientifically unsound explanation that those
who claim knowledge fell over one another to support.18

As Shaykh Bin Bayyah suggests, the Islamic tradition does not regard humanity as a mere biological
advancement of lower life forms. Were this the case, there would be little fundamental distinction
between human and animal rights, other than those arising from the advancement and complexity of the
human brain. Rather, Islam categorizes human life as a biological reality that has been sanctified by a
special quality, the spirit (rūĥ), instilled into the human being. We read in the Qur’an: “He then fashioned
[the human being] and breathed into him of His spirit” (32:9).19

Interestingly, all humans by virtue of their being—regardless of which nation, tribe, or religious group
they belong to—share this spiritual quality. A well-known prophetic tradition illustrates this unifying
spiritual bond: a funeral procession was passing by, and the Prophet rose in respect, prompting one of
his companions to remark that the deceased was a Jew, and the Prophet responded, “Is he not a
human soul?”20 God refers to this shared spiritual quality when He says: “We have truly ennobled the
human being” (17:70). 

The manifold ennoblement of humans in creation highlights the ascendancy of their spiritual and
intellectual faculties21 and forbids their belittlement or debasement, a prohibition that extends far
beyond the mere preservation of worldly life. Their ennobled status guarantees, for example, rights
before birth, by forbidding abortion, except in certain well-defined instances; by mandating the proper
washing, shrouding, and burial of a stillborn baby over the age of four months;22 and by urging, as an
affirmation of their personhood in utero, the naming of stillborn babies.23 After their death, humans
possess the right for their bodies to be properly washed, shrouded, and buried. In addition, the
intentional mutilation of a cadaver, even in times of war, is forbidden, as is insulting or verbally abusing
the dead, whether Muslim or not. These ordainments and practices remind us that all aspects of human
life are sanctified, a necessary basis for extending formally legalized rights to their theoretical
possessors.

Meanwhile, neither the UDHR nor the CDHRI defines the terms human and rights. The absence of the
definitions leads to ambiguity, which in turn creates significant controversy around emotionally and

4 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44
A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

politically charged issues such as abortion. The topic of abortion, or the fetus, receives no mention in the
UDHR or the CDHRI. All the arguments put forth in favor of including abortion as a universal human right
assume that a fetus cannot be defined as a human at any stage of development, leaving it bereft of
rights.

A faithful Muslim human rights declaration must define a human and when its life begins with great
clarity and precision so it can afford humans the right to life, both physical and spiritual, at every stage of
their existence on earth.

A truly Islamic corrective to the UDHR would also root itself in the intellectual heritage of Islam, one that
acknowledges the rights that humans possess in their relations with each other, the rights that societies
possess over individuals and those of individuals over society, and the rights of God over humans and the
rights God grants humans over Him. Further, the definition of a human being would include both the
spiritual and material natures of the human. The Islamic tradition, in other words, furnishes a broad base
for crafting a universal declaration of human rights.

The mural at the United Nations Security Council / Wikimedia Commons

Translating the ideas, principles, and underlying ethos of that base into a viable legal structure reflecting
a truly Islamic human rights declaration requires a methodology rooted in the maqāśid al-sharī¢ah (the
overarching objectives of the shariah). The maqāśid are more than a system of legal philosophy and
ethics. In some cases, they identify the inapplicability of a particular ruling in certain contexts. More
importantly, for our purposes, they provide a framework for establishing Islamic rulings for novel
contingencies, such as the need for an Islamically informed conception of human rights that arises from
the modern state and its imposition on the global Muslim community. Such a corrective would augment
and enrich the UDHR and the CDHRI to make them more universal and acceptable to religious
communities around the world.

During the formative period of Muslim law, legal scholars largely ignored the maqāśid; later, some
scholars began to theorize the approach, a practice that continues into the modern era.24 Collectively,
the premodern scholars identified five definitive objectives (đarūriyyāt), or essentials: the preservation
of life, the preservation of intellect, the preservation of the family, the preservation of religion, and the
preservation of wealth or private property. The brilliant Maliki legal theorist Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī
added a sixth: the preservation of honor or human dignity.25 These six essentials of the divine law readily
constitute a foundation for a viable, principled human rights scheme. They also facilitate expansion into

5 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44
A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

areas neglected by contemporary Western human rights declarations, which would require the ad hoc
introduction of novel categories of rights to include those areas.

How Rights Flow from the Essentials

The preservation of life as a divinely sanctioned human right illustrates how building on the essentials
can facilitate a principled expansion of human rights protections. This divine objective demands the
prohibition of murder; the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction; and a ban on the current
acceptance of “collateral damage,” whereby innocent civilians are killed in the pursuit of targeting
enemies. It also demands environmental protection and the maintenance of biodiversity,26 including
diverse and variegated seed stocks of food crops necessary for perpetuating and expanding the
production of fruits and vegetables; the right to clean water, air, and soil; and the preservation of
wildlife. Hence, in a maqāśid scheme, with the objective of preserving the life of future generations,
environmental protections become human rights, with clear policy implications for both international
and domestic law. 

Because losing these protections does not immediately threaten human life, they constitute a lower
level of rights in relation to the essentials. A maqāśid-based hierarchy would categorize them as pressing
needs (ĥājāt). While the level of any right flowing from an essential might be debatable, in the case of
environmental protections, considering the future implications of the loss of biodiversity, we might
argue that the essential of preserving life logically subsumes biodiversity, even as a pressing need.
Hence, expanding a Muslim human rights declaration to include the preservation of biodiversity would
not be an ad hoc or a politically motivated move; it would flow naturally from the foundational essential
of preserving human life.

While a maqāśid-based supplement to the UDHR should be readily attractive to Muslims, one might
question its legitimacy with other groups, such as staunch secularists who may be more concerned about
its theological origins than its content. It would be a misplaced concern, however; as Imam al-Ghazālī
states:

It is impossible for any way of life or religious dispensation through which the greater good of humanity
is desired to allow the prohibition or eradication of these five Essentials [preserving religion, life,
intellect, family, private wealth, and human dignity—a sixth Essential added after Imam al-Ghazālī’s
time].27

Imam al-Ghazālī’s insight remains true today because most of the global opposition to the UDHR
originates from religious communities, both Muslims and others, thus demonstrating a pressing need for
a scheme that is rooted in universally recognized religious principles but whose categories are broad
enough to include many concerns addressed by existing materialist human rights declarations.
Contemporary scholar of maqāśid Jasser Auda predicts that the need for a religiously sound corrective
will only grow with the increasing polarization between “traditionalists” and “progressives”:

However, some members of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR)
expressed concerns over the Islamic Declaration of human rights [sic] because they think that it “gravely
threatens the intercultural consensus on which the international human rights instruments were based.”
Other members believe that the declaration “adds new positive dimension to human rights, since, unlike
international instruments, it attributes them to a divine source thereby adding a new moral motivation
for complying with them.”28

I end where I began, with a brief discussion of nationalism. As mentioned, the modern state involves a
merger of a state and a nation. In terms of a nation, Article 15 of the UDHR declares that everyone has a
right to a nationality, and no one shall be denied the right to change their nationality. This article
illustrates how closely the UDHR is tied to the rise of the modern European state. Were it not for the
emergence of the state within the European political context, we would not be speaking of this right at
all, let alone its “universality.” In other words, the state is not a transcendent, timeless reality; therefore,

6 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44
A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

the right to membership within a state or nationality cannot be described as a fixed, universal right. It is
amenable to change or eradication with the changing nature or eventual demise of the state.

In contrast, the six essentials lying at the heart of the maqāśid are transcendent and timeless. Indeed,
they are frequently referred to as the six universals. Two hundred years ago, talk of nationality as a
universal human right was meaningless, and one hundred years from now, that may again be the case.
This is not to deny the benefits derived from the imposition of the state on the world’s peoples and from
the associated rise of human rights as an aspect of international law. But if we examine the harm
associated with nationalism, including two world wars that culminated with the atomic bombing of
Japan, along with the inconsistent embrace of national aspirations by the “global powers” (now
illustrated in stark relief by the contrast in the level of support for the Ukrainian and Palestinian national
struggles), we can see the defects inherent in a regime rooted in two amoral institutions: the nation and
the state. An alternate system rooted in the morality of world religions may prove to be more than just a
supplement to the UDHR.

Endnotes
• 1 There are many instances, such as apartheid in South Africa and British India, where a minority
imposed its rule on a majority. The opposite, however, is usually the case.
• 2 Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
(New York: Warner Books, 1979), 23–24.
• 3 I am not positing that critical race theory lacks benefit in terms of helping non-European
minorities to identify sources of their oppression, alienation, discrimination, or marginalization in
European or European-settler societies. I claim that it is divisive and works against creating the
social solidarity and political consciousness necessary to move all ethnic groups in those societies
beyond racist and racializing histories. Here, Islam, which has historically proven capable of
unifying people, offers a lot more help, as recognized by Malcolm X in his famous “Letter from
Mecca.” See Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1993), 390–92.
• 4 Al-Tirmidhī, 3936.
• 5 Al-Bukhārī, 4897.
• 6 Muslim, 2878.
• 7 For a detailed account of the migration of Muslims to Ethiopia during the prophetic epoch, see
Imam Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūţī, Raf¢ sha’n al-Ĥabash (Elevating the status of the Ethiopians), trans.
Adeyinka Muhammad Mendes (Cincinnati, OH: CelebrateMercy, 2021) 49–75.
• 8 Abū al-Faraj b. al-Jawzī mentions Zayd b. Ĥārithah as being among the black companions,
contrary to what some allege. See Abū al-Faraj b. al-Jawzī, Tanwīr al-ghabash fī fađl al-Sūdān wa al-
Ĥabash (Illuminating the darkness: The virtues of Blacks and Abyssinians), trans. Adnan Karim
(Birmingham, UK: Dar al-Arqam, 2019), 139.
• 9 Tanwīr al-ghabash, 139–40.
• 10 Tanwīr al-ghabash, 146–56.
• 11 For a lengthier list of African companions of the Prophet Muĥammad , along with brief
biographical sketches, see Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūţī, Raf¢ sha’n al-Ĥabash; also Abū al-Faraj b. al-Jawzī,
Tanwīr al-ghabash as well as Habeeb Akande, Illuminating the Darkness: Blacks and North Africans in
Islam (London: Ta Ha Publishers, 2012).
• 12 Wael Hallaq, among others, views the dismantling of the institutional structure of the shariah
as the effective end of Islam as a viable civilizational force. The total acceptance of the modern
state, with its demand for ultimate allegiance, along with its institutional weight, led to the
Muslim world becoming an appendage of Western civilization. See Wael Hallaq, The Impossible
State (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). Especially relevant here is the first chapter,
“Premises.”

7 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44
A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

• 13 Abū Dāwūd, 3052.

• 14 Al-Bukhārī, 6403.
• 15 Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), 205–6.
• 16 Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East
(New York: Perennial, 2003), 33–34.
• 17 Saying this does not deny the benefit of both the UDHR and the CDHRI in terms of providing a
legal framework for protecting Muslims from the unspeakable abuses and undeniable oppression
visited upon them by the states of the modern Muslim world. It also is not to deny that traditional
bases of political legitimacy in the Muslim world have been radically transformed by the almost
universal acceptance of the modern state system by the world’s Muslims. Ann Elizabeth Mayer, a
leading expert on human rights in the Muslim world, mentions in this regard, while responding to
the idea of Muslim exemption from prevailing Western human rights regimes based on claims of
cultural relativism: “Thus when one compares Islamic human rights concepts with international
law, one is not judging an institution of an intact traditional culture by alien Western standards but
examining Muslim reactions to concepts already influencing their national legal systems. It should
be borne in mind that elements of Western rights adopted in these legal systems are institutions
that independent Muslim countries have freely chosen. Thus, to maintain at this stage in history
that [human] rights are somehow external to Islamic culture is to accept the notion that Islamic
culture froze in its premodern formulations and taking the position that Islam rejects both the
political changes wrought by modernization and the adoption of the new political ideas and legal
institutions that accompanied the process.” Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Islam and Human Rights:
Tradition and Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 10.
• 18 Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, Ĥiwār ¢an bu¢d ĥawla ĥuqūq al-insān fī al-Islām (A conversation at
a distance around human rights in Islam) (Riyad: Maktabat Obeikan, 2007), 28.
• 19 Muslim scholars have defined the spirit (rūĥ) in various ways. Perhaps the best translation is
“the humanizing spirit.” Some translate it as “life spirit”; however, many scholars, such as Imam al-
Ghazālī, view it as a divinely gifted subtlety that does more than animate the physical body.
Although that is one of its functions, it also contains those qualities that animate the physical
heart, allowing it to yearn for and know God, which is the essence of our humanity. Hence, my
preference for the humanizing spirit. Its true nature is unknown to any human being, although
there has been much speculation as to what exactly it is. See Abū Ĥāmid Muĥammad al-Ghazālī,
Iĥyā’ ¢ulūm al-dīn (Vivifying the sciences of religion) (Jiddah, Saudi Arabia: Dār al-Minhāj, 2011),
5:9–15.
• 20 Al-Bukhārī, 1312; Muslim, 2222; al-Nasā’ī, 1920.
• 21 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī listed twenty examples that support the superiority of the metaphysical
composition of humans over their animal composition, with a comparison of the realizations
possible via physical vision to those possible via the inner vision of the mind and heart. A summary
of several of the points he made is that physical vision cannot realize the existence of abstractions,
while the inner vision of the heart and mind can. Furthermore, in that God is beyond physicality,
physical vision, unaided by the inner vision of the heart and mind, cannot realize the existence of
God (“There is nothing like unto Him” [42:11]), whereas the inner vision of the heart and mind,
unaided by any physical reality, can. Hence, its superiority. See Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Al-Tafsīr al-kabīr
(Beirut: Dār Iĥyā’ al-Turāth al-¢Arabī, 1997), 8:380–82.
• 22 Aĥmad b. Naqīb al-Misrī, ¢Umdat al-sālik (Reliance of the traveler), trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller
(Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 1994), 236.
• 23 Not all Sunni schools of law urge conferring a name on the stillborn. The soundest opinion is
that a name should be conferred “by way of honoring the child of Adam.” See Wahbah al-Zuĥaylī,
Al-Fiqh al-Islāmī wa adillatuh (Islamic jurisprudence and its proofs) (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1997),
2:1491.
• 24 The great Shafi‘i jurist and legal theorist al-Juwaynī perhaps was the first to provide a
systematic categorization of the maqāśid. Al-Juwaynī’s student Imam Abū Ĥāmid Muĥammad al-
Ghazālī advanced his teacher’s work in this area, particularly in examining the role the maqāśid
plays in advancing public interest (maślaĥah). Abū Ĥāmid Muĥammad al-Ghazālī, Al-Mustaśfā fī ¢ilm

8 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44
A Muslim Declaration of Human Rights? - Article - Re... https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/a-muslim-declara...

al-uśūl (Beirut: Dār al-Śadr, 1995), 1:257–66. Subsequent Shafi‘i scholars, particularly Fakhr al-Dīn
al-Rāzī and Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī, built on al-Ghazālī’s works; however, the most thorough and far-
reaching insights into the nature and role of the maqāśid are found in the works of Maliki scholar
Abū Isĥāq al-Shāţibī. During the twentieth century, the great Tunisian scholar Ţāhir b. ¢ Āshūr
continued to advance the work of al-Shāţibī, while contemporarily, the erudite Mauritanian scholar
Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah is recognized as not only the leading scholar of maqāśid but also the
most innovative in terms of using the maqāśid in conjunction with jurisprudential principles to
restore the relevance and flexibility of Islamic law. In terms of the specific application of the
maqāśid to the issue of human rights, we must mention the work of the prolific legal scholar
Mohammad Hashim Kamali. Another contemporary scholar, Jasser Auda, conducts research with
the maqāśid at the heart of an effort to develop a systems approach to Islamic law.
• 25 For a concise overview of the evolution, methodology, and application of the maqāśid, see
Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Shari’ah Law: An Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications,
2008), 123–40. Also, Jasser Auda, Maqasid al-Shariah as Philosophy of Islamic Law (London: The
International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2021), 13–25.
• 26 In terms of biodiversity being essential for the perpetuation of life, the rapidly shrinking strains
of bees and various food crops are exposing these animals and crops to heightened threats of
extinction. The problem is especially acute among bee populations.
• 27 Al-Ghazālī, Al-Mustaśfā, 1:258.
• 28 Auda, Maqasid al-Shariah, 23.

9 de 9 24/11/22, 11:44