The Supreme Leader's View of Freedom

The Supreme Leader's View of Freedom
26/07/2008

The Supreme Leader's View of Freedom

First of all, we ought to recognize that freedom does not mean being free from all limitations and obstacles. Neither does it imply that everybody can do whatever they like. This absolute freedom has not been advocated as an ethical principle in any school of thought and culture, or in any social and philosophical approaches. Nobody has ever advocated absolute and unrestricted freedom, nor is it possible that individuals could be given this kind of freedom. If everybody could do whatever he or she wished and if everybody enjoyed unrestricted freedom to do whatever he or she wanted in a society, the very existence of this freedom would naturally impose limitations on the freedom of other people living in the same society and would threaten their security and freedom.

Freedom in its sublime sense - meaning freedom of the human soul from impurity, carnal desires, iniquities, and material limitations - is unique to divine faiths, and Western and European schools of thought are totally ignorant of it. The type of freedom, which was proposed during the French Revolution in the 18th century and was subsequently ushered into the Western world, was far more insignificant, far limited in scope, and far less valuable than the type of freedom that divine prophets and divine schools of thought have introduced.

In Western culture, the limits of freedom are determined by the law, which applies to social affairs. To be precise, the law stipulates that nobody's freedom must threaten the freedom of the others or endanger their interests. This is not the only limitation in Islam. In other words, the law, which imposes limitations on individuals' freedom, stipulates that in order to have the right to freedom, not only one must not threaten the freedom of the others and endanger their interests, but also one must not endanger one's own interests. Just because one is free and has freedom of choice does not give one the right to endanger even one's own interests.

In Western liberalism, man's freedom is independent of a reality called religion and God. Therefore, they never think of the origin of freedom as a God-given right. None of them believes that freedom is given to man by God. They are seeking a philosophical origin for it.

Freedom is believed to have a divine origin in Islam. This is a fundamental difference and is the source of many other differences. According to Islamic thought, acting against freedom is synonymous with acting against a divine phenomenon. Freedom, as it is conceived in Western liberalism, is in conflict with 'obligations'. This kind of freedom implies absence of obligations. In Islam, however, freedom and obligations are two sides of the same coin. Basically, man is free by virtue of the fact that he has obligations to fulfill. There would be no need to conceptualize freedom if there were no obligations to meet.

By nature, man embodies a host of conflicting motivations and instincts, and he is obliged to tread the path of perfection in the presence of these contradictory motivations. Man has been given freedom so that he can tread the path of perfection. Freedom, as defined above, is for the sake of self-actualization.

Take the uproar that has been caused about hijab in Europe. Contrary to the slogans they shout, they cannot tolerate a single instance of other ideological tendencies. They cannot tolerate a limited manifestation of a view that is contradictory to that of their own. When we protest against a writer who insolently insults what a billion Muslims hold sacred, they suddenly turn into advocates of freedom and expression of individual views. But when a Muslim, woman, or girl wants to observe her religious dress code, her individual right to freedom is either forgotten or a different label is attached to it, equating all antipathy to morality, freedom, and individual rights with 'fighting reactionary attitudes'.

Islam has given all nations the right to independence and freedom, both freedom within their country - freedom from autocratic powers, superstitions, ignorance, bigotry, and malevolence - and freedom from the yoke of the economical power and political pressure of the arrogant powers. Freedom is the gift of God and the Revolution. Freedom belongs to the people and is their fundamental need.

The freedom of choice offered by the Islamic Republic is barely found in the Middle East and even in other parts of the world. This nation and this government are the ones that held an election within a month of the victory of its Revolution. The people went to the ballot boxes and voted for the Islamic Republic.

Abusing freedom and doing whatever one wishes must not be equated with freedom. This has already happened in the world, and major crimes have been committed in the name of freedom. As a result, generations of people have suffered from moral and sexual corruption. In Western culture and schools of thought, there is an illusion of freedom which has been gained at the cost of true freedom being erased from the minds of the Western people. Many crimes have been committed in the name of freedom: that is what our enemies are currently doing.

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