Tom Facchine – The Comment Section #03 – Islam Comes First

			Someone might wonder why do we have to identify first as Muslims? Why can't we just identify as
humans? Can't We? Wouldn't it make more sense to identify as humans first Muslim? The second because
then we get to relate to everybody as human beings? And the answer is actually no. Because when we
identify ourselves as Muslims, first, the sense of obligation that we have to other people is very,
very clear. And it's very, very clear because it's defined, and it's fixed by revelation by guidance
from Allah Spano Tata, he tells us exactly what we need to do in order to be good to other people,
he tells us what it is to be good in the first place. So we have a very, very clear sense of what
		

			our guidelines and what it means to be merciful to other people, what it means to be just other
people and not just Muslims to be merciful and justice to non Muslims to when we define ourselves as
human beings. First, there is no fixed definition of what that implies, there is no fixed definition
of what are our mutual obligations to each other as human beings. Some people say that, well,
because you're human and on the human, then that should mean that we have this obligation between
between us, we have an obligation to be fair, and to be just to be merciful and stuff like that.
This is sort of like the natural rights camp that well, this is a sort of a natural, right, that's
		

			put inside of all of us, and you recognize my humanity, I recognize your humanity, and we go on from
there. But that's not that's not a matter of consensus. Some people don't think that way. Some
people don't believe that some people and there's another camp that's called like sociological
realism that believes that just because you're human, and I and I'm human, I don't owe you anything,
right? If you look at animals in the animal kingdom, do they owe each other something? Do they, if
there's a lion have to be merciful to another lion, just because they're two lions, right? So if we
define ourselves by outside of Revelation, we Unmoor ourselves, we unhinge ourselves, we cut
		

			ourselves off from this kind of very clear, very fixed definition of what is good. And now we get
into this territory where we have to argue about what's good in the first place. I'm trying to argue
with somebody, well, I'm a human, and you're a human being. And we should have the sense of natural
rights and natural sort of, you know, beneficence to each other. And somebody else can come and say,
no, no, no, no, no, that's not what it means to be a human being. That's not what it means to be
good. What it means to be good is that I get to pursue what's good for me, and you're my
competition. And we're just going to duke it out. And I'm going to try to get more resources and
		

			you, et cetera, et cetera. And you can't tell them they're wrong. You have no sort of final say, to
be able to be able to say that no, that interpretation is incorrect. You can't say that we do have
rights, rights and responsibilities towards each other. Right? So it's it's appealing these days to
resort to the rhetoric of human rights and to resort to identifying first as a human and there is a
there are people who believe in that, but it's not everybody. And it's not absolute. It's not as
clear it's not as fixed and it's not as defined as when we define ourselves first, as Muslims, we're
subjects and servants to a lost power to Allah and He has given us clear, unchanging guidance for
		

			the responsibilities and duties that we have towards the rest of the creation.