Citizenship rights do not mean the rights of the city. A citizen does not mean someone who lives in the city. Of course, the reason for the fabrication of this term is that the history of citizenship rights goes back to ancient Greece. There, too, they used the word city instead of the word country, and therefore they used the term citizenship rights. Otherwise, these rights do not mean rights that are exclusive to city residents and that rural dwellers and nomads are deprived of.

Note: Sir Sayfullah Sarami is one of the oldest and most renowned jurist scholars of Qum Seminary. Born in 1963 in Khumayni town, Isfahan, he has been a member of the academic board of the Center of Sciences and Culture for many years and has also been the director of the Center for Jurisprudence and Law for several years. In addition to jurisprudence, he is also interested in law, and accordingly, in addition to always considering legal propositions in his jurisprudential research, he was also a member of the scientific council of the Jurisprudence of Citizens’ Rights at the Center for Contemporary Jurisprudence for some time. We talked to him about the challenges of research in the jurisprudence of citizens’ rights. He criticizes many of the assumptions of those who abuse citizens’ rights and expresses important challenges in this nascent science. The details of an exclusive conversation with a member of the council of the Center for Contemporary Jurisprudence’s research institutes are as follows:

What is the jurisprudence of citizens’ rights?

Sir Sarami: The word jurisprudence of citizenship rights has two parts: one is jurisprudence and the other is citizenship rights. Naturally, citizenship rights here do not mean the science of law; rather, they mean rights, and rights are the sum of rights. This point is noteworthy because rights have different meanings; sometimes they mean the science of law and sometimes they mean the sum of rights. Here, they mean the sum of rights; that is, recognizing the rights that someone has as a citizen.

In other words, citizenship rights mean the rights of citizens. Citizens are people who live in a country. The meaning of the country is also clear. In modern law and in today’s world, a country means a government that governs people of different races and nationalities; but it has specific geographical borders. This country has a government and various forces that hold power and are responsible for administering the country. This is the meaning of the country.

It should also be noted that citizenship rights do not mean the rights of the city. The meaning of a citizen is not someone who lives in a city. Of course, the reason for the fabrication of this term is that the history of citizenship rights goes back to ancient Greece. There, too, they used the word city instead of the word country, and therefore they used the term citizenship rights. Otherwise, these rights are not meant to be rights that are exclusive to city residents and that villagers and nomads are deprived of.

Of course, the fact that the meaning of a city is not a country does not mean that everyone who lives in a country is considered a citizen of that country and benefits from citizenship rights, but countries have different laws in this regard. For example, in ancient Western law, they said that a citizen is someone who pays taxes to the government; therefore, someone who lives in a country but does not pay taxes is not considered a citizen of that country.

This means that when someone in a country commits some crimes, the judge deprives him of some of his rights; for example, he says that you do not have the right to be employed in any office, or even if you are employed in an office, you cannot work in that office for a few years, or, for example, you do not have the right to be elected to government positions such as the presidency and representation in parliament.

As a result, even in modern law, citizenship rights are accompanied by duties on the part of citizens; that is, just as citizens of a country enjoy rights, they also have duties in return for which, if those duties are not performed, they will be deprived of all or some of those rights.

After clarifying the concept of citizenship rights, we will move on to understanding the term “jurisprudence of citizenship rights.”Jurisprudence of citizenship rights means examining the jurisprudential views related to these rights; whether this view is reflected in the opinions of jurists or is included in the category of deductive jurisprudence; That is, jurisprudence based on authentic sources, the Qur’an, Sunnah, reason, and consensus.

What are the requirements of citizenship rights jurisprudence?

Mr. Sarami: The requirements of citizenship rights jurisprudence are as follows:

First, the jurist must have a precise subject matter. For example, what does citizenship rights mean? What is meant by rights and what rights and cases does it include? What does citizenship mean? What does it mean? These were general subject matters; but in relation to each of these rights and their precise meaning, an independent subject matter must also be conducted.

The second point is that in deducing propositions of citizenship rights jurisprudence, the rules of principles and jurisprudence and the requirements of deducing a jurisprudential ruling must be observed and it should not be so that we assume; because it is a new discussion and has come from outside, there is no need to apply certain criteria for inference.

For example, jurists and fundamentalists believe that the purposes of the Sharia are suspect. Here, some cannot say; because this is a new discussion, there is no objection to using the maqasid (which is assumed to be invalid).

Can the paradigm of slave and master be used to conduct a jurisprudential analysis of citizenship rights propositions?

Mr. Sarami: Some have assumed that the paradigm of slave and master existed among people in the early days of Islam, and these people believe that the rulings of the Shari’ah were also fabricated based on this paradigm.

In my opinion, however, this assumption is incorrect and has not been proven in any science.

It is true that in the early days of Islam, the buying and selling of slaves and maidservants was common, and some were so-called masters and some were slaves, and there were special relationships between them; but this proposition does not prove, either rationally or by tradition, that the rulings of the Shari’ah were also limited to such a context and were issued solely for this space.

In addition, accepting this statement requires other statements that some of the proponents of this basis do not accept. For example, it requires that the rulings of the Shari’ah were relevant to its time. In the next step, it is said that since the rulings of the Shari’ah were relevant to the conditions of its time, then they are no longer applicable today; something that many speakers of this theory certainly do not adhere to.

This is in terms of arrogance. But if we want to discuss hypothetically and base the discussion on the assumption that the Shari’ah rulings were issued solely based on the slave and master paradigm, the answer to the question “can citizenship rights propositions be analyzed with this paradigm?” is positive!

Of course, the meaning of this positive answer is that citizenship rights can also be imagined based on this paradigm that God is the master and humans are slaves; but we should not expect that the propositions of the jurisprudence of citizenship rights based on this paradigm are exactly like the propositions of French, American, and English law, which are based on the lack of servitude of humans to God.

It seems that the premise of this question is that the propositions of citizenship rights are meant solely to be propositions that exist in the laws of these countries, otherwise, if we do not limit citizenship rights to Western citizenship rights, the answer to this question will be positive.

Can the propositions of the jurisprudence of citizenship rights be analyzed with the approach of dividing humans into Muslims and infidels?

Mr. Sarami: It seems that there is a bias in this question as well, and what is meant by citizenship rights is citizenship rights based on the Western interpretation. It seems that the questioner considers the correctness of these propositions to be certain, and with this assumption, he raises the question of whether or not the “same results” can be reached by dividing humans into Muslims and infidels; while the principle of the correctness of the propositions of Western citizenship rights is the first point of contention.

But if we want to answer this question more sympathetically, we must say that yes, citizenship rights can also be depicted based on this division, but it is clear that this division, which is among the necessities and certainties of jurisprudence, definitely affects human rights.

For example, a non-Muslim woman can marry a Muslim man, but a non-Muslim man, according to some fatwas, does not have such a right. Non-Muslims do not have guardianship over Muslims; in fact, in some cases, they may not even have the right to life and are liable to be killed.

Here, the question may be raised as to why there is such a difference between the rights of Muslim and non-Muslim citizens and why their rights are not the same, while both live in the same country and even pay tribute and taxes?

The point is the same as I mentioned earlier: citizenship rights are reciprocal rights; therefore, citizens enjoy rights if they are committed to certain rulings and laws. Here, it is clear that non-Muslims are also deprived of some rights because they are not committed to certain Islamic rulings and laws.

In other words, since the obligations of non-Muslims and Muslims are different, their rights are also different.

What are the most important challenges facing research in the jurisprudence of citizenship rights?

Mr. Sarami: The answer to this question is clear from the previous material. An important challenge is the subject matter, which must be done accurately, both in general and in general discussions of citizenship rights, and in detail and in each of these rights. The second point is to observe the principles and criteria of the inference operation to obtain the propositions of Islamic citizenship rights.

It is also necessary to not take Western citizenship rights as a prerequisite in order to infer the propositions of the jurisprudence of citizenship rights; rather, we should proceed with the discussion freely and with caution on the rules and criteria of inference.

This conversation is part of the electronic magazine “Principles of the Jurisprudence of Citizenship Rights”, which was produced in cooperation with the Ijtihad Network website.