Human Rights

There was a time when, in the West, judges and thinkers and leaders and masses did not know anything about the principle of presumption of innocence. Today the whole world takes this fundamental principle as one of the bedrocks of justice. However, the West did not know about it until they came to contact with Islam and Muslims during the time of the crusades.

Before the West knew about the principle of presumption of innocence from the Muslims, Europeans determined the guilt of any accused man by employing a number of methods to find out or seek “God’s judgments” about the accused. Such methods included using boiling water on the accused, dueling, or “ordeals”—which meant that accused persons had to experience red-hot iron, boiling oil, sinking into containers of water, and survive these ordeals if they were to be acquitted of criminal accusations.

Meanwhile, among the Muslims, Prophet Muhammad had taught that “the accuser has the burden of proof, and for the accused is the taking of the oath”. The same principle was taught as a principle of Islamic justice system by Prophet Muhammad’s successors, and it became a “golden thread” in the Islamic legal system.

During the crusades, of Louis IX of France, came to the lands of Muslims at the head of his crusading army, spent a long time among the Muslims and learnt a great deal from them, and then went back to Europe to start his famous legal reform program, in which the principle of presumption of innocence was first introduced in Europe.

From that time until now, several centuries have passed and the world has changed. Today the West is trying to take moral high ground in everything, and trying to be the boss around, ordering everyone to “respect human rights”. The problem is that the West is neither qualified, nor honest enough to speak about human rights in the presence of any true Muslim.

We Muslims are the ones who introduced the concept of rights to the world. We protected human rights, and Islamic shariah still offers the most comprehensive bill of rights—encompassing those of not just human beings, but also those of the world and all other living things. Even after centuries of hypocritically preaching about human rights, the West has failed to bring about as comprehensive a program of rights as Islam.

If the West is honest about human rights, then why aren’t they really concerned about what is going in Palestine? Why did they let Bosnia become a “hell” for those Muslims whose home it was? Why aren’t they concerned about what is going in Myanmar right now? The list of such questions goes on.

The simple truth is that the West is not genuinely concerned about human rights. Human rights are important to them when they can and are in a position to use human rights rhetoric to protect their own people and their own interests around the world. Otherwise, it is just a weapon to be used politically.

The Maldives, being an Islamic nation, needs to realize what truly goes on in today’s world. If we are interested in making sure that the richest and most powerful countries in the world are with us, then we can defy Almighty God, accept political hypocrisy, and be like monkeys that imitate a group of nations which have precious few good things to offer to humanity. Or else, we can return to the Truth, and start building and strengthening our human rights program on the basis of Islam. Islam’s call for human rights is not political, not intended to protect any vested interest, and is truly a program for humanity. It is designed to protect man as himself.

We have the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights and the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights. Our Human Rights Commission should, in my opinion, take these instruments as the foremost grounds upon which the Maldivian human rights program must be built. Islam-haters would not tolerate this idea, and might at once start abusing me, my opinion and the Islamic human rights instruments that I have mentioned. No worries, as there is nothing new about such hatred of Islam and Muslims!