Human Rights: An Imperialist Weapon

Today Islam is surrounded by a global dar-al-harb – a dar (world order) irrevocably committed to waging a never ending war (harb) against Islam. The justification of this ceaseless attack is provided by the theory and practice of human rights imperialism. It is thus necessary for Islamic revolutionaries to understand this theory and practice so as to counterattack the enemy.

The Human Rights Doctrine

Human rights ideology and imperialist world domination were twin births – both originate in the seventeenth century. The founding father of human rights ideology is John Locke. Locke provided the Lobour Theory of Value which doctrinally grounds human rights ideology.

According to the Labor Theory of Value man’s being is manifested in possession in the form of property. Property according to Locke consists of (a) man’s body (b) man’s volition/thought (c) man’s estate – his material possessions. Man creates “value” by mixing the labor of his body and thought with nature – which takes the form of his national possessions (capital).

Human rights are the rights which entitle a man to participate in value creation – to dedicate his body, thought and wealth for the sole purpose of “value” – i.e. capital – creation and accumulation. Men and women who do not dedicate their bodies, thoughts and wealth to the sole purpose of value/capital creation and accumulation are not “human” and of course not entitled to any human rights.

Human Rights Imperialism

Who gave man these human rights? Locke could find no justification for them in the holy Bible and a few years later (1713) a Lutherean priest – Wilhelm Forstner – said human rights were awarded to man by the Devil. This of course is true but the Devil did not bestow human rights to man directly. He bestowed them on man through the agency of the constitutional capitalist state. That is why every capitalist state – liberal, socialist, fascist – enshrines human rights in the preamble of its constitution as inviolable holy writ.

Major capitalist states – America, Britain, France, USSR, China, Israel, Bharat – have been (or aspire to be) imperialist states. They have always used human rights doctrines to institute their imperialist order. Today the UN system, international financial regulatory bodies, rating and standardization agencies and globally funded NGOs are being used for the same purpose by their imperialist masters.

Let us see how the three fundamental human rights – the right to life, expression and ownership – are used as tools for imperialist governance.

The Right to Life

Man has a right to live provided he is human – i.e. he is committed to autonomy and this commitment is expressed in an obsessive compulsion to accumulate capital. Thus Locke justified the slaughter of 80 million Red Indians in America on the grounds that they are not creating value – they were not accumulating. Hence they were not human. They were just like the animals that roamed the prairies – George Washington called them “wolves”. The human rights granted to the settlers by the constitutional republic entitled the settlers to slaughter the Red Indians, dispossess them, loot their belongings, rape their women, burn their villages, decapitate their children.

Human rights imperialism is thriving in the twenty first century. It is now called the “war of terror” and under it is banner America continues to slaughter non-humans in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, Russia in Chechnya, China in Eastern Turkestan, Israel in occupied Palestine, Bharat in occupied Kashmir, France in Mali and Burkina Faso. The mujahideen are of course all non-human and imperialist human rights flag bearers have the duty to slaughter them mercilessly while preaching peace.

پیتے ہیں لہو دیتے ہیں تعلیم مساوات

The Right to Freedom of Expression

Freedom of speech entitles Facebook, Google, TikTok, Amazon etc. to colonize the world of information processing and to commercialise knowledge. It celebrates the burning of the Quran by Danish politicians and ridiculing and cursing the Prophet (pbum) by the French and Dutch. On the other “extremist” (i.e. Islamic revolutionary) values are banned from the mainstream media. This is strictly in accordance with humans rights ideology for the freedom of speech is nothing but an instrument for capital accumulation. The first manifestation of the freedom of speech occurred during the French Revolution (1789-93) when thousands of Christian priests and nuns were slaughtered for of worshipping God. The commodification of information and the monopolization of the media industry is crucially important for enforcement of the right to freedom of speech as it is the principle means for denying voice to the non-human men and women.

نہ تڑپنے کی اجازت ہے نہ فریاد کی

گھٹ کے مر جاؤں یہ مرضی ہے مرے صیاد کی

The Right to Possession

Today the principle means for ensuring that all wealth is dedicated to capital accumulation is financialization and securitization – the expression of physical assets in the form of fictitious financial values – has established the dominance of the financial transactional structures over all wealth creation and distribution activities. Moreover the comodification of money – through the banking system – ensure that all wealth is entrapped in the circuit of capital. Haramkhori becomes the dominant norm. as the reach of the financial markets grows (through securitization) to encircle wealth creation the scope for earning a halal livelihood shrinks and is further constrained through state regulation, documentation and taxation and through unavoidable absorbtion within global financial value chains. Men and women are forced to become human for their survival. This is the meaning of the rule of law of capital.

Our Response

The key instrumentality for the systemic dominance of human rights imperialism is the capitalist state. It is the capitalist state which enforces human rights and enacts the project of transforming men and women into human beings. Thus the essential Islamic revolutionary response to human rights imperialism is the struggle to establish non-capitalist Islamic revolutionary states.

By the grace and mercy of Allah two such states have been established – Iran and Afghanistan and one of them has endured for almost half a century. These are exceptional Islamic states – exceptional in that such Islamic states have not typically existed in our history at least until the 19th century. They are exceptional precisely in the sense that they exist in a global dar-al-harb.

The global dar-al-harb is using the human rights weapon to subvert Islamic rule in Afghanistan and Iran. Human rights propaganda is being intensified to dilute the support of the Muslim masses for their Islamic governments. We must counter the propaganda by uncovering the true face of human rights ideology and praxis. We must support the Islamic regimes to stand firm in the face of the imperialist onslaught.

The imperialist human rights attack on both Iran and Afghanistan focuses on formenting rebellion against Islam among Muslim women. Those who were resoening the mother of all bombs on their heads are now championing the cause of women’s human rights, as substitutes for the bombs. Immense pressure is being exerted through UN sponsored “humanitarian aid” to force the Islamic governments to bring women into the public sphere. Iran has partially succumbed to this pressure with disastrous social and political consequences. Afghanistan is standing firm and it is the duty of Islamic revolutionaries throughout the world to expose imperialist designs and vindicate the Islamic Emirate’s policies for safeguarding the chastity of Muslim women in that country.

In secular Muslim countries – Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria etc. – the human rights challenge has to be met at the economic, political and social levels.

At the economic level, Islamic revolutionaries should seek to strengthen the traditional bazar and non-capitalist (i.e. halal) business. In Pakistan, for example, over 40 percent of gross value added is generated by the informal sector – a sector with no direct dependence on the money and capital markets, national or international. Promoting self employment and halal business through a fully articulated tamveeli system should be a central concern of the Islamic revolutionary agenda so that non-capitalist property forms emerge and flourish in the national economy the encroachment of capitalist property on mass level is restricted and the ground is prepared for delinking the national economy from global value chain networks – the global dar-al-harb.

Politically the human rights challenge is expressed in the legitimation of human rights discourses by Islamic groups – especially Islamic political parties. Revolutionary ulema must urgently address the task of demonstrating that human rights are the anti-thesis of huqu-al-ibad and that the social practice of human rights ideology necessarily secularises the lifeworld.

Today all Islamic political parties in Pakistan (and in Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt) present themselves as instruments for the promotion of capitalist justice. Their political agenda are loaded with liberal, social democratic and national promises and themes. It should be the prime concern of revolutionary ulema to demonstrate that capitalist justice is zulm-e-azeem for it entails submission to the commands of the nafs-e-ammara. Championing capitalist justice and its human rights is a sure route to the secularization of Islamic political parties.

At the social level human rights ideology is being propagated by imperialist camp followers, quislings and fellow travelers. In Pakistan they are entrenched in the English print and electronic media and the imperialist funded NGOs led by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. it is obligatory for Islamic revolutionaries to uncover the face of these imperialist stooges and to oppose their moves to secularization of Pakistani society.