There is no distinction between black and white...

There is no distinction between black and white, man and woman, noble and humble, rich and poor, king and beggar, strong and weak, eastern and western, learned and ignorant, old and young, or between those who are present and those who will come in the future, for all of these share human nature and that which it implies in common. Equality of this sort is limited to Islam; other ways, each in its own measure, have certain discriminatory principles.

For example, Hinduism distinguishes fundamentally between Brahmins and non-Brahmins and between man and woman; in Judaism, a distinction is made between the children of Israel and the Gentiles, and in Christianity between man and woman. As for secular social systems, in these, there is a distinction between the subjects of a country and foreigners. It is only Islam which considers humanity as one and has uprooted completely the principle of distinction and discrimination. “O mankind! Lo!

We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct.”(1) “Lo! I suffer not the work of any worker, male or female, to be lost. Ye proceed one from another.”(2) That is, male or female, you are all of the same human statuses. 2.

The Principle of Realism In view of the fact that man is provided with the instinct of seeking reality and of discerning between the real and the unreal, the laws and injunctions laid down by Islam are based upon a correspondingly realistic view of things. This can be explained as follows: Although the man in his natural activity is stimulated towards his vital goals by feelings and emotions, he in fact sets out after real goals, not an illusion, and fantasy.

The newly born baby who cries in his hunger and reaches for his mother’s breast in search of milk desires that which is milk in reality, not the illusion of milk; he cries from real hunger, not from fantasy and imagination. Every individual who strives in the way of achieving his own interests seeks his own real interests, not their mental concept.

In the same manner when feelings and emotions present certain desires to man, and without being able to take into account his true best interest stimulate him toward certain goals, it is the faculty of discrimination or reason which harnesses and modifies these emotions and shows to a man that which is, in reality, the good and the evil and the rightness and the wrongness of his action.