Suleiman Hani – Powerful Stories of Everyday Muslims #04 – The Story of Rights

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			hours story today is the story of rights. How do I define rights? And how do I fulfill those rights?
In a conversation with many non Muslims at a university class, a student asked why Muslims cared so
much about the worship of God, as though that was the foundation. It was as though that was more
important than all of the urgent and pressing needs of social justice causes. And when we go back to
the foundation, we see very clearly and obviously, that Islam is all about rights, we begin with the
most foundational and most crucial rights of all, and that is the right of the Creator upon His
creation, the One who created us that we follow his path that we listened to his message that we
		

			obey objective morality. And as a result of that, He promises us to enter us into paradise for
fulfilling that right. And we have with that message from God by fulfilling the right of God, the
rights of people as well, and the rights of animals and the rights of the environment in Islam. All
of these are part of that package, meaning accepting objective morality, any worldview that helps
you to really and truly establish and fulfill rights. Now, here's an important question a lot of
people don't ask in the 21st century, we are a people of rights and a religion of rights. But
someone needs to define these rights. Otherwise, everyone can come up with their own claim of rights
		

			with no basis whatsoever. Here's an example.
		

			A man passes away, and his sibling demands 100% of the inheritance from his brother, despite the
fact that the one who passed away has a wife and children. Is that something you can accept? Is that
something you would accept? That you might say no, but the question is, why not? If he's making the
claim to our right, does he not have a right to take what he claims to be is his right? In Islam
rights are defined by ALLAH SubhanA wa Tada. And they all have a wisdom behind the rulings for us to
advocate for any rights at all for social justice causes or the rights of animals or the
environment. For us to pass even judgments on rights, we need to first have an objective reference
		

			point, a factual reference point that defines what these rights are. If someone, for example, were
to disagree with a fixed right in Islam, it would imply that they are looking first, at a different
set of values, a different set of rights, which they then have accepted, different moral values, a
different dictionary that defines what these rights are that they believe in. And then this
individual is, after that, looking at the revelation of Allah subhanaw taala. And they are passing
judgment on the revelation as though they know any better, they are shaped by their upbringing,
their moral values from their parents, their society, their culture, social media, social justice,
		

			causes politics, whatever is trending at the time, whatever has shaped them, whatever they have
inclined it towards. And then they are passing judgments on the revelation of Allah subhanaw taala,
as though through that lens, they know what's the best. And this is generally the situation of
society today.
		

			Let us restore the rights that are violated and advocate for the rights that are unfulfilled and
call people simultaneously and most importantly, to worship Allah subhanaw taala to worship the
Creator and follow his message, the message that provides guidance on what rights are and which
rights need to be fulfilled, and how we are to establish morality in this world and as a result of
human beings, obeying the message of God and correspondence from God. We are then serving the rights
of mankind through different campaigns and causes and we should be at the forefront of that. The one
who fulfills the right of the Creator ends up naturally having to fulfill the rights of the
		

			creation. We ask Allah subhanaw taala to help us to fulfill all of these rights and to put
everything in its proper place along the
		

			way.