FOLLOW US
I. Abidin: Complementary Rights and Responsibilities
Written by Dr. Irawan Abidin, former Ambassador from Indonesia to the Vatican
Monday, January 2, 2006
Civic responsibility in political society, I believe, refers to the duties and responsibilities of the individual Muslim as a citizen to the society that gives him protection and provides the environment for the fulfillment of his personal potential.
As it is well known, many political concepts that have greatly influenced modern political thought had Roman and Greek origins. What is not so well known is that these concepts could have been lost to the human race during the dark ages in Europe had they not been preserved and refined by Islamic scholars. Indeed, the flourishing of political ideas during the European Renaissance and the age of Enlightenment must be credited to a large extent to Roman, Greek and Islamic scholarship.
Thus there is a great deal of political lore from which we can draw in our discussions on the relationship between the citizen and the society to which he belongs, the society having become formally organized as a nation-state.
The relationship between the citizen and society is a two-way track of rights and responsibilities. The citizen has inalienable rights, rights to which he is entitled not only by virtue of his citizenship but by virtue of the fact that he is a human being who is equal in worth to any other human being before the eyes of Allah. On the other hand, the citizen has duties and obligations to the state that he may not violate without risking the legitimate and just removal of his individual rights.
Thus the citizen has civic responsibilities to society because it has rights that political society or government must uphold and protect. We may focus on these responsibilities, but let us never for a moment forget that there are rights which give meaning to these responsibilities.
We are particularly interested in the citizen or group of citizens who happen to be Muslims. Thus, the question may arise: is there any difference between the civic responsibility of a citizen who is a Muslim and that of a citizen who is not a Muslim?
What I can say with confidence is this: The teachings of Islam have an answer to all civic and political questions and to all questions of the relationship between individual and society—for they tell us not only of Allah’s mercy and beneficence and Allah’s power and providence but also of Allah’s justice. The most effective politics is is attended by justice. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) had the opportunity to prove this when he served as head of state and government first in Medinah and later a rapidly expanding ummah (community of believers). And before he could be the wise and just head of a wise and just government, he was a wise and just individual citizen. There is much that we can learn from his example.
[Source: Islamic Perspectives on Peace. Tarrytown, NY: Universal Peace Federation, 2006.]