One of our serious differences with the West is in this statement of lmam Ali, the Commander of the Faithful (‘a); because the Westerners only talk about the “rights” of citizens, while according to the statement of the Commander of the Faithful (‘a), citizens have both rights and duties.

Note: Citizens’ rights are a product of the modern world and are considered a new thing. More recent than that, however, is the “Jurisprudence of Citizens’ Rights,” which discusses the divine legitimacy of these rights. Hujjat al-lslam S. Baqir Muhammadi is a graduate of the Criminal Law Department of the Mustafa lnt. University and is currently the Deputy Director of Education at the Mashhad School of Jurisprudence. In this oral note, he describes the specifics of a new approach to the jurisprudence of citizens’ rights.

The jurisprudence of civil rights is a title that we have invented ourselves. What is known as civil rights are many rights whose relationship with human rights has also been specified.

Civil rights

Civil rights have a fundamental difference with human rights. The late only actually state human rights without specifying the other side; rather, they merely present them as a right that must be respected.

But when it comes to civil rights; the other side of this right is also clear, which is the state and sovereignty; because it is the state that must actually be accountable for these rights and respect them.

The scope of civil rights is also very wide; For example: the right to life, the right to human dignity and equality, the right to quality of life, the right to a healthy environment, the right to freedom of thought and expression, the right to access information, the right to privacy, the right to a transparent and competitive economy, the right to employment, the right to welfare, the right to education, the right to peace, the right to security, the right to national authority, etc.

These rights were raised at a time when societies were in the form of city-states, and these were, in fact, rights for citizens vis-à-vis governments. However, in the current era when political systems are usually in the form of nation-states, the same term is still used; therefore, these rights are no longer reserved for residents of cities, but are fixed for all those who live within the geographical boundaries of that government.

“Jurisprudence of Citizen Rights” or “Jurisprudence and Citizen Rights”?

The point is that first, can we attribute citizenship rights with this definition and scope to jurisprudence and say “jurisprudence of citizenship rights”?

Another point is, does rights here mean law or privilege?

It seems that the meaning of rights in the term jurisprudence of citizenship rights is rights meaning privilege, therefore, the jurisprudence of citizenship rights is behind the examination of the legitimacy of the privileges that individuals enjoy by virtue of their citizenship.

In contrast to this approach that takes rights from somewhere else and then examines their legitimacy in the knowledge of jurisprudence, there is a second approach that even extracts these rights from the knowledge of jurisprudence and its sources, rather than taking them from somewhere else and presenting them as a subject to the knowledge of jurisprudence.

Of course, the current approach in the humanities and in general interactions with law is the first approach. It may be said that those who combine “jurisprudence” and “civil rights” and use the term “jurisprudence and civil rights” mean the first approach.

However, if we use jurisprudence in addition to civil rights, rights are meant to be a set of privileges and there is no requirement to extract them from non-religious sources.

Specific Rules of Civil Rights Jurisprudence

Before we enter into the discussion of the specific rules of civil rights jurisprudence, it is appropriate to talk about the method of rule-making in civil rights jurisprudence.

In a simple and first glance, citizenship rights mean the same rights that Westerners have stated for citizens, and its jurisprudential rules are either general jurisprudential rules such as the rule of non-harm or specific rules such as the “right to enjoy an honorable job” or the “rule of respect” from which rights such as the right to property, the right to housing, the right to privacy, the right to freedom of thought and expression, the right to life, and many other rights are inferred.

Here, however, a second approach can also be proposed, which is not to consider citizenship rights as something imported and certain; rather, we first obtain its characteristics from jurisprudential sources and then, considering these characteristics, extract its jurisprudential rules.

For example, Sermon 216 of Nahj al-Balaghah by lmam Ali is full of material related to citizenship rights and rule-making in it. In this sermon, he divides rights into two categories: “the right of the subject over the governor” and “the right of the governor over the subject”[1], while in the case of citizenship rights, only the former is mentioned. If we search for the word “subject” or “the right of the subject” in Nahj al-Balagha, we find very valuable points from lmam Ali, the Commander of the Faithful (‘a) regarding citizenship rights.

One of our serious differences with the West lies in this statement of the Commander of the Faithful; because the West only speaks of the “rights” of citizens, while according to the statement of the Commander of the Faithful (‘a), citizens have both rights and duties.

He further considers the existence of these rights to be due to divine forgery; [2] in the sense that the origin of the forgery of these rights is the divine will. This is while in the discussion of the philosophy of citizenship rights, where the origin of these rights is discussed, there are different schools of thought. Some consider its origin to be the will of the legislator, some consider it to be an innate and natural thing, but here, the Commander of the Faithful considers the origin of the creation of these rights to be the divine will, which is a new basis.

He then speaks of consultation and cooperation with the governor[3], on the basis of which rules such as the rule of “consultation” and the rule of “cooperation” can be established. The rule of consultation indicates that the citizen not only has rights, but also has duties such as advising the ruler.

Therefore, it seems that this approach will cause a fundamental change in the jurisprudence of citizenship rights.

[1]. “Then greater than what Allah, the Blessed and Most High, has imposed on those rights is the right of the ruler over the subjects and the right of the subjects over the ruler.”

[2]. “It is an obligation that Allah, the Almighty, has imposed on each one over the other.”

[3]. “So you must advise each other in this and cooperate well in it.”

This note is part of the electronic magazine “Principles of Civil Rights Jurisprudence”, which was produced in collaboration with the Ijtihad Network website.