OK, so even though your parents are members of group 1 and 4 on your list, their membership in group 1 supercedes their membership in one of the “lower” heirarchies? So non-Muslims have more rights than Muslims as long as the non-Muslims are immediate family members of yours? Sorry to keeps harping on this, but it is very foreign to me. I really am trying to understand the reasoning here.
I don’t understand why everyone can’t just have the same rights, regardless of their religion. This goes back to the question in my previous post. If you see all human beings as created in the image of God and recipients of the same God-given rights, then heirarchies like the one you are describing seem very strange.
First of all, everyone has the same rights. Let’s start with this statement. Certain, God-given rights, simply because they are a human being (although Muslims do NOT say that mankind was created in the “image of God.”) So every human being has certain rights. The rights to their life, to their property, to their dignity for example.
Now, a Muslim also has a few more rights on a Muslim. Let me be very specific here, so you understand exactly what rights I mean. There are
five specific rights which a Muslim has on other Muslims which the rest of mankind does not have: (1) returning the greeting of salaam, (2) visiting the sick, (3) accepting invitations, (4) saying “yarhamukallah” on sneezing, and (5) attending their funeral.
More general “rights” include love and respect, that the Muslim conceal the mistakes of his brother, and other more general things.
Ultimately it doesn’t mean that Muslims are obliged to treat Muslims better than non-Muslims, although I’m afraid you have that impression. What it means is actually that
all human beings have certain rights which the Muslim must honor and respect.
Now, one step further, a person’s neighbors also have specific rights on him, which non-neighbors do not have. This doesn’t depend on religion at all. And in fact, they are pretty much the same rights the Muslims have on each other, like returning greetings, visiting when sick, concealing faults, congratulating at times of joy, giving gifts, lending him money when he needs it, and so on. Remember, this is regardless of religion.
A person’s parents have, however, even more rights than this. Every human being has rights, but a person’s parents have more–they have the right that the child obeys them. And I am not talking about a child who is young, but their children even when fully grown are still supposed to obey their parents, respect them, be humble towards them, spending a portion of their wealth on them and treating them well. And between the mother and father, the mother has even more rights than the father.
So perhaps the best way to explain this (and please, forgive me for the shortcomings in my explanation) is to say first that every human being has rights on the Muslim, but because of a relationship they might have with a person, it’s possible that they have even MORE rights.
continued below
