Islam and the Western Myth of Human Rights
Or Why I Support the Taliban
 

In The Name of Allah, The Compassionate, The Merciful
 
 
 

What is Islam?
 

Correctly understood, Islam is a revelation concerning both the true nature of Reality, and the meaning and purpose of our lives, here on this planet which we call Earth.

Reality, according to Islam, is Tawhid: the infinite, eternal, Unity which is Allah, Who is the Creator, the Sustainer, of all being, of all that exists, has existed or will exist. Thus, we, as living beings, are a creation of Allah, and to understand reality is to understand and accept our relationship to our Creator.

According to Islam, Nature, the cosmos - all beings, whether living, or inert, inorganic matter - are Signs of Allah, and one of the purposes of our life, as human beings gifted with reason, is to seek to discover, know and understand these Signs, for by doing this we will come to understand Tawhid: how all beings derive from The One, depend upon The One, and change only in accordance with the Will of Allah.

Tawhid makes us aware of how we not only depend on Allah for all things, but also that it is for Allah alone to determine our duties, our responsibilities, our goals, our way of life. For we are but finite fallible beings, whose knowledge and understanding can never be complete or totally correct. Thus, we must rely on Allah, with this reliance being the essence of our very being: a manifestation of our true nature, as human beings.

That is, our natural state of being - that which expresses our purpose, our nature, that which is the meaning of our being - is to acknowledge and accept our reliance upon our Creator. Islam names this reliance "submission to the Will of Allah" and a Muslim is someone who submits to the Will of Allah.

But on what do we rely? That is, how do we know the Will of Allah? Because of the revelation which Allah has bestowed on us. That is, we rely on the perfect, the complete, way of life which is Al-Islam, which we know through Risala (prophethood - or, rather, the Prophets) and which we have in perfect form thanks to the Prophet Muhammad, who, through the revelation of the noble Quran, and in his teachings and example (the Sunnah) gave us the complete, the perfect guides we need in order to know, understand and make real, in our lives and on this Earth, the Will of Allah.
 

Thus, if we wish to know how to conduct ourselves, if we wish to know what is right, what is wrong, and if we wish to know how our communities, our societies, should be run and governed, we will find the answers, the guidance we need, in the Quran and the Sunnah, for since - as Allah says in the Quran - Islam as revealed is perfect and complete, there is nothing left out, nothing yet to be discovered, nothing withheld. There will be, for us, no more Prophets, no more divine Messengers, for Muhammad was the Last Prophet of Allah: Katam-al-Nabiyyin.
 

Hence, we know that the perfect, the Islamic, way of living for us is the one governed according to the laws which Allah has revealed to us, laws which are manifest in the Shari'ah. Shari'ah (meaning "the right Way of Living") is our Way to Allah for it is our guide, as Muslims, to the perfect and right Way of Life which is Al-Islam, determining what is lawful and what is unlawful, both in private, and in public (that is, in society).

This Islamic way of living is manifest in the Khilafah, as made real by Muhammad in Medinah and by Al-Khulafa'Ar-Rashidun, the Rightly Guided Caliphs.
 
 

Kufr, Jahiliyya, and Infidels:
 
 

According to Islam, rights belong to Allah alone. It is Allah who sets the limits; Allah who determines what is right, and just, what is wrong and unjust. Allah has determined that the right, the correct, the most just, society for us to live in is one governed according to Shari'ah: that is, according to Islamic law, where what is lawful is what the Shari'ah establishes is lawful, and what is unlawful, and "criminal", is what the Shari'ah establishes as unlawful and "criminal".

Thus, our guidance, our judgement, about what is right or wrong - about what is necessary, correct, and just - is determined and must be determined by Islamic criteria and Islamic criteria only. We must judge every individual, every community, every ruler, every society, every law, according to Islamic criteria: that is, by reference to the Quran, the Sunnah, the Shari'ah.
 

Since, in Islam, there are only Allah-given duties and responsibilities, it is correct to say that the very concept of "human rights" is alien to Islam, and indeed an expression, a manifestation, of the ways of the kuffar, the Unbelievers: those who do not accept the Will of Allah, as manifest in the Quran, the Sunnah, the Shari'ah.

Thus it is totally wrong, wholly incorrect, to talk about Islam, when implemented in an Islamic society, granting human beings "human rights" or even giving them "rights". What Islam does - or should do via an Islamic society, the Khilafah - is determine the correct limits of personal behaviour, both private and public. To live according to these limits, is to live according to the Will of Allah: that is, as we should live. To transgress these limits, for whatever reason, is to either actively defy the Will of Allah, or to live in Ignorance, as animals live.

Islam is the opposite of Ignorance (Jahiliyya), for Islam was revealed in order to remove Jahiliyya. Jahiliyya is everything that keeps us from a true understanding of our own Muslim nature, and as such Jahiliyya includes the submission, either willfully or through lack of knowledge, to human-derived concepts, ideas, laws and edicts, all of which, being fallible and imperfect, serve only to distance us from Tawhid, from the true nature of Reality and thus from our own purpose in this life.

Jahiliyya is thus a concealment: that is, Kufr. Kufr essentially is a projection of our own abstract, fallible, ideas and concepts onto Reality itself: that is, interpreting Reality in terms of these human-derived abstract ideas, theories and forms, and assuming that such ideas, theories, concepts and forms actually are Reality.

Infidels (kaffiruun) are those who by their deeds (such as fighting against Muslims) actively defy the Will of Allah, and while these infidels may sometimes seem to others to succeed in their aims, their oppression, their injustice, they will be held accountable on The Last Day for their transgressions, and will be judged, and sentenced, for their intentions, for what they have done, or failed to do. That is, they cannot and will not escape the Justice of Allah, the final day of reckoning.
 

The Myth of Human Rights:
 

The truth, the reality, which Islam reveals is that we do not possess any inalienable human rights; we possess only a Muslim nature, which we can: (a) discover, know, and accept, or (b) which we can remain in ignorance of, or (c) which we can defy. Our Muslim nature guides us to submit to Allah.

We can discover, know and accept our true, Muslim, nature through discovering and knowing Islam and through the willing submission of being a Muslim: that is, through doing what is halal, and avoiding what is haram; through enjoining what is good, and striving (through Jihaad) to overturn or remove what is bad, in ourselves, in others, and in society itself.

Thus, as Muslims, we have certain duties and responsibilities: to ourselves, our family, our community, our society, to all life, and to our Creator, Allah. To live in an Islamic way, in a Khilafah, is to know, understand, accept and discharge these duties and responsibilities, since a Khilafah by its very Muslim nature outlines and manifests in practical ways and in detail the terms of these duties and responsibilities. We do not need anything more, or anything less, than this.

What has been called "human rights" are modern untrue myths: expressions, manifestations, of the profoundest Ignorance and the profoundest arrogance, for the basis of such concepts as these is the belief that human-derived laws, edicts, rulers, governments and organizations can somehow "give" us these rights, or embody them, or protect them, and furthermore that we have some kind of "duty" to "obey" such laws, such edicts, such rulers, such governments, and such organizations.  This, in essence as well as in practice, amounts to kufr: to insolence, to overstepping the bounds which Allah has set for us. It is a profound denial of both our Muslim nature and the truth of Tawhid. For a Muslim, it is Shirk.

Thus, to judge an Islamic society by abstract ideas such as "human rights" or "democracy" is to use the wrong criteria, the wrong standard of judgement, and the acceptance of such ideas, such standards, such norms, by Muslims is an imitation of the kuffar, which is expressly forbidden in Islam since it is a denial of our Muslim nature: a submission to Jahiliyya, a concealment of the true nature of Reality, a turning away from the truth of Tawhid.
 

For there is only Islam, or Ignorance. There is only the striving to implement Islam in a practical way through the creation of Islamic societies and the Khilafah, or there is submission to the ways of Ignorance.  This is the simple truth about Islam which we Muslims must know, accept and act upon, just as we must know, accept and act upon the truth that today the infidels and the unbelievers are striving hard to distance us from our Muslim nature, and the truth of Tawhid: that is, striving to undermine Islam itself so that their kuffar ways, manifest in their kuffar societies, can triumph.

To counter these infidels and unbelievers - to fight for Islam - we must actively distance ourselves from the ways, the ideas, the values, the standards, of the kuffar, just as we must adhere only to our own Islamic ways, principles, and standards, and judge everything according to these.
 

Those who do not judge by what Allah has revealed are the disbelievers   (Kafirun 5:44. Interpretation of meaning)

Abdul-Aziz Ibn Myatt