The Islamic View on Human Dignity

Intellectual trends called fascism and nazism, legal positivism, and some other philosophical schools believe that man inherently lacks dignity and seeks the origin of his dignity in such things like his correlation with a certain state, government, race, ideology, and religion. Islam, however, believes that as a human being, man has inherent dignity. This dignity is based on a set of concepts and fundamental moral and religious values; namely," freedom and freewill” rationality and reasoning”, and “possession of divine blast and prestige". Islam believes that in addition to inherent dignity, man has “acquired dignity” the most important criterion and basis of which are piety and faith. The present paper studies the meaning and principles of inherent and acquired dignity according to Islam.