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cohesiveness of the family. In more concrete terms, when husband and wife, child and parent are
preoccupied with their own individual rights, intra-family relationships which have always
depended upon mutual understanding and compromise become problematic.
Who is the Human Being?
In developing the human being’s awareness of his rights, his responsibilities, his relationships, his
roles, the Quran also raises what are undoubtedly the most essential questions about the human
being: Who is the human being? Why is the human being here? What happens to the human being
after this, after his life on earth?
The Quran (and this is true of religion as a whole) provides lucid, unambiguous answers to each of
these questions. The human being is vicegerent of God (Khalifah Allah). He is here on earth to
serve God, to do God’s will. After this life, he returns to God, to be judged for his deeds on
earth.Once the human being is perceived as the vicegerent of God, his rights, his responsibilities,
his relationships, his roles assume a different, more significant meaning. His fundamental rights —
from the rights to life to the freedom of expression — are bestowed upon him by God. His
ultimate responsibility — transcending all other responsibilities — is to God. His most precious
relationship — surpassing all other relationships — is with God. His most sacred, most significant
role — defining all other roles — is his role as the vicegerent, as the deputy, of God on earth.The
significance of the human being’s role as Khalifah Allah is something that humanity as a whole
has yet to grasp in the fullest sense. It places the human being in the loftiest plane conceivable —
higher, in a sense, than the angels. It endows him with life, with intelligence, with creativity, with
freedom, with power, with love, with compassion, with mercy. It makes him the conduit of truth.
It transforms him into the agent of justice.Indeed, it is through this relationship between man, the
vicegerent of God, and God, his Creator, that the whole basis of human existence is established.
The basis of life is spiritual; the purpose of all human endeavour is, in the ultimate analysis,
spiritual. The human being, as the vicegerent of God, strives to transforms life and society guided
by all those spiritual values — truth, justice, compassion — which God had revealed through the
ages. What this means, from the Quranic standpoint, is that God’s eternal spiritual values find
expression in the material world through the avenue of God’s vicegerent.Equally significant, the
human being’s position as the vicegerent of God, the spiritual values which should guide his life,
and the spiritual meaning and purpose of his existence on earth, provide the raison d’etre for
forging a bond of brotherhood with the rest of the human family. This, and this alone, constitutes
the essence of unity in Islam. It is unity founded upon faith — faith in God, the one God of the
entire human family, of all the universes.The oneness of God (Tauhid) is what encourages the
Muslim to strive for the oneness of humankind. There can be no greater motivation, no greater
inspiration for struggling against all the barriers that divide man from man. This is why the Quran
reminds us that we are one people. In forthright language, it tells us that all our differences of
colour and creed, of class and community are secondary. What is primary is righteous conduct
guided by God-consciousness. This is what makes the Quranic message so universal. This is the
ultimate significance of Tauhid, as an idea and an ideal for the whole of humanity as it enters the
twenty-first century.
Western Human Rights Doctrine
If we compared the Quranic vision of the human being and of the unity of humankind with the
dominant Western view of who the human being is, and what the global community is, we would
realise how puerile and pathetic the latter’s philosophy is. One may even get the impression, going
on the basis of human rights declarations and covenants, that contemporary Western human rights
doctrine does not bother with metaphysical issues such as `Who is the human being?’ and `Why is
the human being here?’. In fact, some Western human rights thinkers even boast that the strength
of contemporary secular human rights documents is their avoidance of metaphysical/spiritual
controversies about the purpose of man and the meaning of life. If it is true that contemporary
human rights doctrine is not interested in metaphysical questions then it only confirms its moral