Freedom...

Freedom, according to Islam, maintains the revolutionary aspect of freedom: man’s emancipation from the slavery of idols' control, all idols from whose yoke humanity has been suffering throughout history. But it erects this great task of liberation on the basis of a submission purely for Allah, and for Allah alone.

Therefore, man's submission to God in Islam (instead of possessing his own self, according to capitalism) is the tool through which man breaks all other norms of submission or slavery, for this sort of submission, in its sublime meaning, makes him feel that he, together with all other sorts of power with which he coexists, stands on the same grounds before one Lord. Therefore, no power on earth has the right to fare with his destiny as it pleases or to control his existence and life.

Freedom, according to the precepts of capitalist civilization, is a natural right for man, and he may give his right up whenever he pleases. But it is not so according to Islam. Freedom according to Islam is essentially tied to submission to Allah.

Islam does not permit man to yield, to be enslaved or to give up his freedom: Do not be a slave of others, since Allah created you free .[^2] Man, according to Islam, is to account for the use of his freedom, and freedom is not a state of irresponsibility. This is the difference between both norms of freedom in their general characteristics.

Now we are going to explain this concept with more details: Freedom According to the Capitalist Civilization Freedom was initiated in the capitalist civiliza­tion under the shades of an overwhelmingly bitter doubt which dominated the mainstreams of the entire European thought as a result of the intellectual revol­utions which succeeded each other at the dawn of modern Europe, shaking all the Western intellectual pillars.

The idols of European thinking started falling down one after the other due to the revolutionary discoveries in the world of science which cast their light at the Western man with new concepts of the world and life, and with theories completely in contradiction to the accepted precepts of the past, those which formed the cornerstone of his intellectual entity, intellectual and religious life.

Western man started, across those successive ­intellectual revolutions, to look at the cosmos through new eyes, and at the intellectual heritage humanity had left him since the dawn of history with looks of doubt and suspicion.