Man and Freedoms
4-Freedom of Behavior: This form of freedom is totally unconditional in the West, and is thus defined: "Do whatever you want, just don't bother anyone." Such freedom of behavior calls for reconsideration, for human desires and wishes do not always obey wisdom and reality. Thousands of the crimes, betrayals, and atrocities in history have been committed because of man's wishes. The provision about not bothering others is ineffective in confining man's freedom unless his desires and wishes are brought under control. How can one who does not believe himself to have any rights or value be expected to respect others' rights? When corrupted internally, he will never be able to consider others as having the right to live, be great or free, for none of these terms mean anything to him, let alone respecting them.
As we did with freedom of speech, we can also categorize freedom of behavior into two kinds – intelligible and unintelligible. Unintelligible behavior does not follow any law, principle or natural tendency at all; intelligible human behavior, however, is based on certain laws, rules or will-power arising from lawful, natural tendencies. Defining freedom of behavior as "Do whatever you want, just don't bother others" is a result of incorrectly isolating religion, ethics, law and politics from each other.
5-Freedom of Slavery in Any Form: Slavery arose thousands of years ago, and intellectuals like Plato and Aristotle considered it as an original social law. It had deep roots throughout history, and fighting it has always been difficult. This is the reason why Islam took a gradual approach to eradicate slavery. Had he decided not to battle it with full force, all the social and economic foundations of the society of his era would have fallen apart. The methods Islam used to gradually fight slavery were:
a)He made no exceptions between slaves and free people in regards to moral virtues and vice.
b)In Islamic societies, slaves found the chance to reach higher positions by showing themselves worthy of it.
c)If a man's bondmaid bore him a child, she would be freed as "mother to the child."
d)Slaves could work to free themselves; through an agreement with their masters, they worked to earn the money required and freed themselves.
e)In many of his (and also the subsequent Imams') hadith, the Holy Prophet emphasized that freeing slaves is a greatly rewarded deed, which prepared the grounds for more and more slaves to be freed and slavery to slowly fade away.
f)Teaching people that freeing slaves would compensate for many of the sins they had done.
g)Uprooting the main event that included taking people as slaves – wars. The occupation of Mecca resulted in all the slaves being freed.
h)The prisoners the Muslims took in their battles would be freed provided that they taught Muslims their knowledge and skills.
i)Many Islamic hadith regard slavery as an unnatural side-effect in man's social life. They emphasize that human freedom is of primary importance in Islam. All human beings are considered in Islam as being born free and entitled to dying free.
j)The Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H.) objected to slavery in Africa, Asia and all around the world, stating all humanity to be free people.
6-Political Freedom: Two principles concerning political freedom are:
●Every human being has his own free will.
●No one can dominate another human being's free will.
According to the former principle, each human being has free will about his/her own lifestyle, provided that it is not legally prohibited, like bringing harm to himself/herself or to others.
