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The Concept of Freedom in Islam 1 - Al-Shia The Scientific and Cultural Website of Shia belief The Concept of Freedom in Islam 1 2022-09-24 556 Views free will , Freedom , Islam vs Freedom , Rewards and Punishment In the Nahjul Balaghah, Imam Ali (PBUH) has repeatedly emphasized that Almighty Allah created man as a free being with sound senses and reason, and led him with His grace to the right path, but it was the man who chained himself with false desires and misguided ambitions.

He stresses this point regards to man’s natural makeup and his ability to exercise his freedom on the right path. Rousseau’s famous dictum said: “Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains” , echoes the utterance of Imam Ali (PBUH), repeated time and again during his indefatigable struggle for human freedom at a time when it was threatened by the slaves of worldly desires and encroached upon by those who wanted to reduce a free Muslim society to a tyrannical monarchy.

Freedom, a yearning of many inner beings, has been expressed in various forms throughout human history. Adam and Eve (PBUTH), were compelled by this urge to leave Heaven. It presumed that action is grounded in freedom. Islam does not accept the Christian notion of original sin, as a punishment for which man was exiled from Heaven. What is called the fall of man in pre-Islamic Semitic tradition may be interpreted from the Islamic viewpoint as man’s ascension to a life of freedom.

The history of humankind is a ceaseless quest for freedom. It is a multi-pronged quest: freedom from want, from fear, from the forces of nature, from the tyranny of fellow beings, from injustice, from superstition, from prejudice, from tribal and racial loyalties, and, ultimately, from his own egocentric existence. The man passed gradually through the various stages of realizing all these freedoms, each of which had material as well as a spiritual aspect.

Sheer material freedom means nothing unless it brings in its wake spiritual freedom also. Rather, both of them complement each other and are inseparable. The quest for freedom suffered setbacks and reverses whenever any one of the two was neglected. The modern civilization suffers from the malady of overemphasizing the material dimension of freedom, totally or partially neglecting the relevance of spiritual freedom to human existence.

Religion has been striving for man’s spiritual freedom, while philosophy has been concerned with intellectual freedom.