In the Treatise on Human Rights...

In the Treatise on Human Rights, we come across this passage of the Imam, which reads: “Therefore happy is he whom Allah aids in the rights which He has made incumbent upon him and whom He gives success therein and points in the proper direction.” As we said last week and the week before, in Islam, human rights and social issues are not unconnected from all other rights, and neither are they mere codes without practical purposes.

As a matter of fact, unlike the charters and constitutions of international bodies that are either misused or remain impractical because of control by vested interests, the laws of Islam and the rights defined by Allah are rational, practical and easy to observe. This is because, in Islam a human being is dignified, and his greatness does not depend on the number of rights, but in his sense of duty in accepting responsibilities and fulfilling his commitments.

For, whenever responsibility is in proportion to a person’s capabilities and talents, it plays a great role in his growth and perfection. Unfortunately, in the modern world, sociologists and legislators go to great lengths in discussing laws and what they call human rights, but their greatest flaw is negligence of spiritual aspects of human rights and the growth and development of the innate humanitarian spirit.

Man has been created by Allah as a multi-sided being, whose powers of intellect and speech make him capable of not just mastering science, technology and other fields, but also of developing and perfecting his spiritual qualities and the innate humanitarian soul.

In this regard, we read in Risalat al-Huquq or the Treatise on Human Rights of the Prophet’s 4th Infallible Successor, Imam Zain al-Abideen (PBUH) Said: “The greatest right of Allah upon you is that you worship Him without associating anything with Him.

When you do that with sincerity, He has made it binding upon Himself to give you sufficiency in the affair of this world and the next.” Thus the Imam considers some of the rights of Allah to be superior to other rights, and the greatest right of Allah upon man is to obey the laws of the All-Wise Creator. In other words, polytheism is mere conjecture and nothing but the wild imagination of a warped mind in view of the fact that Allah is One and Only without having any associates or partners.

This means those who worship other than Allah are actually relying on unrealistic and trying to build their faith on flimsy foundations.