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Quote by Henry David Thoreau

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Civil Disobedience

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Henry David Thoreau

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“The message of Islam is by no means a closed value system at variance or conflict with other value systems. From the very start, the Prophet did not conceive the content of his message as the expression of pure otherness versus what the Arabs or the other societies of his time were producing. Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions (even those produced by a polytheistic society such as that of Mecca at the time). Islam is a message of justice that entails resisting oppression and protecting the dignity of the oppressed and the poor, and Muslims must recognize the moral value of a law or contract stipulating this requirement, whoever its authors and whatever the society, Muslim or not. Far from building an allegiance to Islam in which recognition and loyalty are exclusive to the community of faith, the Prophet strove to develop the believer's conscience through adherence to principles transcending closed allegiances in the name of a primary loyalty to universal principles themselves. The last message brings nothing new to the affirmation of the principles of human dignity, justice, and equality: it merely recalls and confirms them. As regards moral values, the same intuition is present when the Prophet speaks of the equalities of individuals before and in Islam: 'The best among you [as to their human and moral qualities] during the era before Islam [al-jahiliyyah] are the best in Islam, provided they understand it [Islam].' The moral value of a human being reaches far beyond belonging to a particular universe of reference; within Islam, it requires added knowledge and understanding in order to grasp properly what Islam confirms (the principle of justice) and what it demands should be reformed (all forms of idol worship).”

ValuesJusticeDemocracyIslamEqualityMoralsMuhammadCoexistencePluralism
Book:In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad
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“Thus the community is within its rights to set and enforce a minimum level of acceptable behavior, but it strays outside its rights if it goes beyond that and imposes ethical demands on its members beyond that. The minimum is business of law, while the effort to go further is the business of ethics-and thus of individual choice. The laws of a community, the measures of acceptable behavior, take shape by the same processes of dissensus as moral choice, but the goal is different. The lawmaking process does not seek the highest possible moral good; it seeks a workable comprimise between individual freedom and the needs of the community. Laws are thus best when they are few, clear, generally accepted, and strictly enforced”

LawEthicsMoralsGodsWiccaPolytheism
Book:A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism
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