In fact...

In fact, many Christian thinkers, both Catholic and Protestant, as well as Jewish thinkers insist that human dignity is based on the Divine Imprint upon the human soul and that historically in the West the idea of human rights, even in its secularized version, is derived from the religious conception of the human state. For Islam, likewise, human beings are defined in their relation to God, and both their responsibilities and rights derive from that relationship.

As mentioned earlier, Islam believes that God breathed His Spirit into Adam and according to the famous hadith, “God created Adam in His form,” “form” meaning the reflection of God’s Names and Qualities. Human beings therefore reflect the Divine Attributes like a mirror, which reflects the light of the Sun. By virtue of being created as this central being in the terrestrial realm, the human being was chosen by God as His vicegerent (khalifat Allah ) as well as His servant (‘abd Allah ).

As servants human beings must remain in total obedience to God and in perfect receptivity before what their Creator wills for them. As vicegerents they must be active in the world to do God’s Will here on earth. The Islamic conception of insan, or man, as the anthropos encompassing both the male and female states, can be summed up as the wedding of these two qualities in him.

But God has also given human beings free will; this means that they can rebel against their own primordial nature and become active against Heaven and passive to their own lower nature and the world of the senses, so that not all human beings remain God’s servants and vicegerents. In fact, the perfection of these passive and active modes belongs to the prophets and saints alone.

Nevertheless, all human beings possess dignity, and their lives are sacred because of that primordial nature, which all the progeny of Adam and Eve carry deep within themselves.

Throughout Islamic history many philosophical, theological, and mystical discussions have taken place about this issue, but one basic element with which all schools of Islamic thought and in fact ordinary believers agree is the truth that God is our creator, or, philosophically speaking, the ontological cause of our existence. It is therefore we who owe everything to Him and our rights derive from our fulfilling our responsibilities toward Him and obeying His Will.

To understand our relation to God, we must first ask what God wants of us.