Equality

One of Islam's remarkable and extraordinary achievements is that, a long time before the revolutions which broke out in late eighteenth century, it had laid down the foundations for equality, and made them one of the principles of Islamic faith, considering equality a gift from Allah - the Great and Almighty.

Since the early days of his mission, the Prophet sought to make the faithful understand that "all people stand equal, like the teeth of a comb; no advantage shall an Arab have over a non-Arab, except in righteousness".

As for Bani Hachim, the elite of Quraysh - and Quraysh was the elite of the Arabs - the Prophet said to them one day : "O Bani Hachim! You're related to me through lineage; others through (righteous) deeds".

While racial discrimination still exists even today in some parts of America and Africa, we notice that, as early as the seventh century, the Prophet appointed Bilal - the black slave from Abyssinia - the first Mu'zin in Islam, proclaiming him one of the closest believers to his heart. Furthermore, hundreds of years before the advent of the "civilized" humanity, we hear the Prophet say : "No authority will the child of a white woman have over the child of a black woman, save for just ends".

In this context, it is worth noting that the United States of America, the Statute of Liberty with its torch that lights up the world notwithstanding, had been practising racial discrimination up to the twentieth century, and slavery until the end of the nineteenth century.

The War of Secession, or the Civil War, which broke out between the north and the south from 1860 to 1865 and from which the north emerged victorious, did not eradicate racial discrimination whether in the north or in the south.

When Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which the author, Harriet Beecher Stow (1811-1896), took a clear stand against slavery (1850 - 1852), came out, it sent shock waves across the American states, which prompted Lincoln to say about the author : "This little woman has started a big war".

Regarding the revolt known as the American Revolution against Great Britain - the occupying power - and the war which the Thirteen States had fought from 1775 to 1783, its reasons were purely economic and had nothing to do with any tendency towards political independence.

That "revolution" ended with the victory of the Thirteen States which undoubtedly received help from outside, particularly from France - at both state and individual levels.

A quick glance at Article I, Paragraphs 2 and 9 and Article IV, Paragraph 2 of the American Constitution of 1787 will clearly reveal that slavery was legal and permissible.

In the wake of the War of Session, the Thirteenth Amendment of the American Constitution introduced on 31/1/1865 decreed that slavery be abolished in all American states. Indeed, slavery was eradicated legally speaking, but racial discrimination was still going on, especially in the south, in such ways as to shame the human being whom the two revolutions of 1789 and 1840 and other revolutions had produced.

To give an idea about the sort of the delirious impulses and violent propensities of the American character, suffice it to mention in this connection the Los Angeles events of 1992. I cannot imagine that the world has forgotten that shameful scene, aired by the various satellite TV stations around the world, in which four white US police officers were beating with their sticks a black man who was lying on the ground, his head and face bleeding as he was trying to ward off their blows.

Those police officers were taken to court, but the members of the grand jury, all of whom white, pronounced their "colleagues" Not Guilty, in spite of their seeing the tape during the hearings(*).

Racially motivated, that acquittal set Los Angeles afire and was about to set the whole of the United States ablaze; it also reveals that a large number of Americans are still "racist" - slogans, announcements, and statutes notwithstanding.

Such racism is non-existent in Islam wherein the exact opposite is found since the Prophet's days and those of the Orthodox Caliphs all the way to modern times.

Since its beginning in Makkah, Islam was a staunch supporter of the poor, the weak, and the needy against the powerful, and the rich from among the notables of Quraysh. Even when still in the cradle, it emerged as the religion of equality between all the people; one that defends the individual's right and freedom, and raises the humble person, without discrediting the powerful individual, except in such limits as Allah may permit.

When the Prophet pronounced his two famous Hadiths mentioned earlier: "all people stand equal, like the teeth of a comb, ..." and "No authority will the child of a white woman have over the child of a black woman, save for just ends", he declared a revolution - with all the meaning this word can express - against the social conditions that were prevailing then in Arabia, especially in Makkah where the powerful tribe of Quraysh held sway over all other Arab tribes.

For him to have said that and to appoint Bilal, the slave from Abyssinia, Mu'azin on an equal footing with Abu-Sufiyan, the leader of Quraysh, the Prophet must have been very brave and audacious indeed; for a person has no merit over another, except in piety.

Eleven centuries before the advent of the French Revolution, Islam proclaimed equality among all people. The virtues of this same equality were, and still are, sung even today by the "revolutionaries" who do not know, or pretend not to know, that the spark of the real and original revolution was ignited by Islam, and that it was Islam which established this revolution on eternal, indestructible bases, because it sprang from both divine and worldly principles.

As for the Americans - the makers of the Revolution and architects of the 1787 Constitution - they only brushed past this equality, so to speak. Being uncultivated in this equality, their constitutional texts only aggravated social differences and class discrimination.

Many are the events which establish the respect of Islam and Muslims for this principle; suffice it to mention here this one incident from which many lessons can be learned :

On the day when he went to Al-Qods (Jerusalem) to receive the key to the city from Patriarch Severinus, upon the latter's request, Omar Ibn Al-Khattab entered the city on foot - he, the Prophet's successor and the Commander of the Faithful - while his assistant was mounting a she-camel. Abu Ubayda Ibn al-Jarrah's attempts to convince the Caliph to ride failed, because it was not Omar's turn; it was his assistant's. Since they set out from Yathrib, the Caliph and his assistant agreed that they would not only take turns in riding the she-camel - the only one available - but that they would do so for an equal distance. Just before they reached Al-Qods, fate had willed it that the turn be the assistant's. Thus all the inhabitants of Al-Qods witnessed, from the top of the high city wall, a scene they had never seen before, and will never see again: they saw Omar - the Muslim Caliph and the commander in chief of the Muslim armies - walking and leading the she-camel by the halter while his assistant was comfortably seated on the saddle.

It was also Omar who said his famous sentence that reverberated across the world : "Since when did you enslave people whilst their mothers brought them free into this world ?"

It so happened that the son of Amr Ibn al-cAs hit a young Copt. The latter threatened to report him to Omar Ibn al-Khattab, the Commander of the Faithful. Amr's son said to the young Copt, "I have nothing to fear from your grievance, for I am Ibn-al-Akramain"(2). Time passed and one day the young Copt ran into Omar Ibn al-Khattab, Amru Ibn al-cAs and his son in al-Hadj (Makkah), and he said to Omar : "O Commander of the Faithful! This man hit me wrongfully; he is too emboldened by his being Ibn-al-Akramain". Omar glanced at Amru, and said : "Since when did you enslave people whilst their mothers brought them free into this world". Then Omar gave the plaintiff his own whip and said to him : "Hit Ibn-al-Akramain with this as he hit you".

Regarding Ali - may Allah be pleased with him - the story has it that a Jew lodged a complaint against him to the same Caliph - Omar Ibn al-Khattab. When Ali stood before the Caliph, the latter said to him : "Stand up Abu-Hassan, and sit opposite your opponent". Feeling a little uneasy, Ali did as told. After the hearing, Omar said to Ali : "Were you loathe to sit in front of your adversary, Ali ?" Ali replied, "No! I resented the fact that you did not treat us both on an equal footing when you called me 'Abu-Hassan'". Ali's point was that his being called by his nickname, 'Abu-Hassan', gave him a privileged status over his opponent.

These and other incidents were - still are, and will be - among the reasons which have made me become attached to Islam and which have opened my heart to it.