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“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
“Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
“Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
“Whereas, it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
“Whereas the people of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
“Whereas…
“Now, Therefore,
The General Assembly
proclaims
“This universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
The splendid sentences above form the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is the preamble to the charter of which it has been said is “the greatest blessing ever to come to the lot of the world of humanity in support of human rights unto this day.”
Every sentence and even part of it is numbered and, as I pointed out in the preceding article, is derived from the ideas of several centuries of world philosophers who sought freedom and recognized human rights.
Important points in the preamble to the Declaration of Human Rights:
This Declaration was drawn up in thirty sections. We shall Ignore the fact that some matters are repeated in some articles or at least that the mention of certain matter in one section makes another section redundant, and that some of the articles of the Declaration could have been divided up into several smaller articles.
The important points of the preamble which should be noted are: 1. All human beings benefit from a single kind of dignity, honour and inherent, inalienable rights.
2. Dignity, honour and inherent human rights are universal and include all human individuals with no discrimination or distinction, white and black, tall and short, woman and man, alike share in this benefit. Just as in a family an individual member cannot claim to be of a nobler and higher origin than the other members of the family, so, in the same way, all human individuals are the members of a large family and organs of one body and are the same in their dignity. No-one can consider himself to be of nobler birth than any other individual.
3. The basis of freedom, peace and justice is that all individuals, from the depth of their conscience, have belief and faith in the reality of the equal dignity and inherent honour of all human beings.
This Declaration wants to claim that it has discovered that the source of all the troubles that individual human beings create for each other, and the basic cause of the breaking out of wars of the atrocities, transgressions and acts of savagery which individuals and nations inflict on one another, is the non-recognition of the dignity and inherent honour of human beings. This non- recognition by one group compels the opposing group to explode, and it is thus that peace and security is endangered.
4. The highest aspiration which everyone must strive to attain is the advent of a world where freedom of conviction, security and material prosperity are perfectly attained. Suppression of beliefs, fear and poverty should be uprooted. The thirty articles of the Declaration were drawn up to attain this ideal.
5. Belief in the inherent dignity of human beings, and regard for their undeniable and inalienable rights should be gradually created by teaching and education in all individuals.
The dignity and respect of man:
Since the Declaration of Human Rights is based on the honour, freedom and equality of human beings, and was created in order to restore human rights, it should be met with due honour and respect by very conscientious person. We people of the east have been pleading in favour of the worth, position and honour of the human being for a long time; as I mentioned in the preceding article, human beings as such, together with their rights, their freedom and equality are given the utmost attention, respect and importance. Those who wrote and drew up this Declaration, and likewise the philosophers from whom the writers of this Declaration derived, in fact, their inspiration, deserve our tribute and regards. Nevertheless, because this Declaration is a philosophical matter and is drawn up by human beings and not by angels, and because it is the conclusions of a group of human individuals, every thinker has the right to scrutinize it critically, and, if he should find certain weak points in it, to point them out.
This Declaration is not free from weak points, however, we shall not refer here to the weak points, preferring as we do, to refer to the strong points only.
The basis of this Declaration is the ‘inherent dignity’ of the human being. According to this Declaration, a human being derives his claim to a series of rights and freedoms on the basis of a general dignity and honour that is special to him. Other animals do not have and enjoy these rights and freedoms, because they lack that dignity and honour. This is the strong point of this Declaration.
The decline and fall of the human being in western philosophy
Here, once again, we come across an old problem in philosophy. The value and worth of the human being; the position and dignity of the human being in comparison with all other creatures what, we should ask is that innate, inherent dignity of the human being which distinguishes him from a horse, a cow, sheep or a pigeon?
Here it is that a clear contradiction is observed between the basis of the Declaration of Human Rights, on the one hand, and the value and worth of humanity in western philosophy, on the other.
In western philosophy. mankind has for long been without worth and value. The previous observations that were made concerning human beings and their distinguished position had their source and origin entirely in the east. Today in most western philosophical systems, these observations are belittled and ridiculed.
A human being, in the eyes of the west has been degraded to the level of a machine. His spirit and nobility is denied. Belief in a final cause and a plan or design for nature is considered a reactionary idea.
In the west, the belief in mankind being the noblest of creatures could not lash for long, for the western belief was based on the belief that all other creatures were dependent on and under the domination of human beings and his derived from the ancient Ptolemean theory of the earth and the heavens that the earth was the centre and all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. Thus, when this belief was abandoned there were no grounds left for considering mankind as the noblest of creatures. In the eyes of the west, all such, thoughts were mere self- aggrandizements to which human beings were the victims of the past. A human being today is courteous, obliging and modest and considers himself to be like other objects, nothing more than a handful of dust. From dust he comes and to dust he shall return, and it is here that he will finally come to an end.
A westerner, in his humility, does not consider the soul to be an independent form of human existence, and does not consider it to have the capacity of actual and real existence. He does not believe in there being any difference between himself and a plant or an animal in this respect. A westerner does not consider there to be any difference between the thought and actions of the soul and the heat generated from coal, as far as its entity and essence are concerned. He considers all of them to be manifestations of matter and energy. In the eyes of the west, the field of life for all living beings, including mankind, is the bloody battle-field which give birth to them. The actual, ultimate controller of the life or living beings, including mankind, is , basic struggle for survival. Man always struggle to save himself in this battle. Justice, virtue, cooperation, benevolence and all other moral and human values are all products of this fundamental struggle for existence. Man has constructed these concepts in order to make his own position secure.
According to some influential western philosophers, a human being is a machine, under the fundamental control of nothing but financial interests. Religion morals, philosophy, science, literature and all the arts are all built on the foundation of the manner of production, sharing and distribution of wealth. All these things are manifestations of the economic aspects of man’s life.
But no, this is all too glorified for man. The real motivating and stimulating factors in all human actions are innate sexual drives. Morals, philosophy, science, religion and art, all manifestations of humanity are melted down and reshaped as the action of the sexuality of man’s being.
What is difficult to understand is that if we decide that we should deny the purposefulness of creation, and believe that nature quite blindly proceeds on its own course; if the only law which guarantees the life of the various species of living creatures is the struggle for survival, the selection of the fittest and nothing but chance; if the survival and existence of a human being is the product of accidental change, devoid of any purpose, merely a chain of unnatural acts over a few million years, which his forefathers permitted with other species and which resulted in him having the form he has today, if it is decided to believe that man is an example of the machines which he now manufactures himself with his own hand, if it is decided that belief in the spirit, its fundamentality and its permanence is, it is considered to be, a sort of egotism or self-conceit, or an exaggeration by man about himself, if the real activating and stimulating factors in all human actions are economic or sexual drives or the desire for superiority, if ideas of right or wrong are wholly relative, and if reference to natural, inward inspiration is nonsense, if a human being is a species that is slave to his sensualities and passions and never lowers his head except by force, if….. and so on, then how can be possible for us to talk about the dignity and honour of man, his unalienable rights and his noble individuality, and make that the basis of all our activities?
The west is involved in a basic contradiction about man:
In western philosophy, the personal dignity of mankind had been destroyed as far as possible and his position totally debased. Concerning the creation of man and the causes that gave him existence, concerning the purpose of Creation for him and the structure and warp and woof of his existence and being, and concerning the motivation and stimulation for his activity, his conscience and moral sense, the western world has lowered him to the degree we have already pointed out. With this background, the west issues a great declaration about the worthiness and dignity of mankind, his inherent honour ad nobility, his sacred and inalienable rights and invites all human individuals to believe in that lofty declaration.
For the west, they should firstly have revised the explanations and expositions they made concerning man, and then they could have issued a declaration for the sacred and inherent rights of human beings.
I admit that not all western philosophers have presented man in the above-mentioned way. A large number of them have presented man almost in the same way as the east has done. My viewpoint concerns the way of thinking which exists among the majority of people in the west and is now influencing people all over the world.
The Declaration of Human Rights ought to have been issued by those who consider human beings of a higher rank than a material, mechanical compound. It would have been worthy of someone who did not consider the drives and motivations of the activities of human beings to depend exclusively upon animal and selfish motives: someone who believed in human nature. The Declaration of Human Rights should have been issued by the East, which believes in I am settling on the earth a vicegerent, [1] and perceives in man a sign of the manifestation of Divinity. He who goes after human rights should be someone who believes that man is built with the intention of traveling towards the destination of: O Man! Thou art striving into thy Lord with a striving and thou shalt encounter Him.” [2]
The Declaration of Human Rights befits those systems of philosophy which agree with the Qur’anic verse: By the soul, that which shaped and inspired it to lewdness and god-fearing! [3] and believe that a human being is naturally disposed towards virtue.
The Declaration of Human Rights should have been issued by those who are optimistic about the nature of man according to: We indeed created man in the fairest stature [4] and consider man to have the most harmonious and the most Perfect structure.
Looking at the way of thinking of the west in their explanations and presentations of man, the Declaration of Human Rights does not befit them, because it is the way which the west uses in practice to deal with human beings; that is to say, doing away with all human sentiments, making fun of all human distinctions, maintaining the priority of capital for man, the primacy of money, worshipping the machine, deeming wealth supreme, exploiting man and giving capital unlimited power. If, by chance, a certain millionaire should happen to bequeath his wealth to his dear dog, that dog would be regarded as being more honourable than man. Human beings would attend on the wealthy dog like butlers, clerks and office-hands, and stand before it respectfully with folded-hands.
The west has forgotten both itself and its God:
The important problem of human society today is that man has forgotten what the Qur’an calls his “self “, and also his God. The important thing is that he has debased himself. He has totally neglected to look inside himself, to listen to his inner self and conscience, and he has entirely focused his attention on material and solid things. He considers the aim of life is nothing but to enjoy material things, and the knows nothing except that. He considers creation as if it were without purpose. He denies his own self and has forsaken his soul. Most of the misfortunes of human beings result from these misconceptions, and it may be feared that the day is not far-off when this way of thought will be universal, and suddenly destroy humanity. This angle of viewing human beings is the cause of the fact that, as Civilization spreads and develops, the civilized person slowly degenerates. This way of thinking about human beings has turned out to be the cause of the Fact that man in his true meaning is to be Found only in the past. The great machine of civilization has the capacity to manufacture every grand and first-class thing except man.
Gandhi said [5]: Because of this, the westerner deserves to receive the title of Lord of the Earth, for he is the master of every worldly possibility and blessing. He is capable of every worldly task, which other nations regard as being in the hands of God. But the westerner is incapable of one thing, and that is reflecting on his own self; and this thing alone is enough to prove the futility of the false glitter of the new civilization.
“If western civilization has made accidental addicts to alcohol and engaged their attention in sexual activities, it is because the westerner wants to forget his self and lose his self instead of a searching for it…
“His practical strength in discovering, inventing and preparing the means of war is the result of the westerner’s escape from his self, not of his exceptional power and domination over himself….. The westerner’s fear of solitude and silence, his reliance on money, have made him incapable of hearing the voice of his inner self, and the motive for his unremitting hustle and bustle is the same thing. His impulse to conquer the world is his inability to rule over his self, and for this reason the westerner is the creator of confusion and corruption all over the, world….. What is the use of conquering the world when man give up his own soul?.. . . The people who are taught by the Bible to preach truth, love and peace are themselves running in all directions in search of gold and slaves. Instead of conforming to the teachings of the Bible in looking for reward and justice in the Kingdom of Heaven, they use the weapon of religion to exonerate their own sins, and instead of broadcasting the Word of God, they drop bombs onto nations.”
This is the reason that the Declaration of Human Rights was violated by the west before anyone else and more than anyone else. The philosophy that the west follows in practice leads them to no other way of action except the breaching of the Declaration of Human Rights.
Notes: [1] (Qur’an, 2:30)
[2] (Qur’an, 84:6)
[3] (Qur’an, 91:7-8)
[4] (Qur’an, 95:4)
[5] Translated from the Persian. Original untraced, (Tr.)
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