Moretza Motahari's theory of the right

In the modern age, socio-political affairs are organized based on the belief in universal suffrage. At the same time, governments interfere in all aspects of the people’s lives. After facing the significance of the people’s rights in the modern age and the demands for these rights in modern Iran, the Islamic philosophers started to think about it and reached the conclusion that in the Islamic thought, rights and obligations are intertwined and together, form the basis for organizing the affairs. However, in terms of priority, rights have precedence over obligations. Morteza Motahari puts the basis of his conception of the right with regard to two issues: first, the natural rights have been granted to all species, including the man, and this is the source of the people’s rights and obligations against each other. Second, the human rights are natural to the man and every natural capacity creates a potential right for the man. Therefore, what is among the inborn natural gifts, is the subject of a right, although not necessarily an actual one. He maintains that the function of religious rules and orders is to preserve the natural rights of the man, although due to the difference in principles, these rights do not fit the western declaration of human rights. He regards the right as the basis for understanding the practical reason and the foundation of interactions between the people in the society. In discussing the relationship between rights and obligations, he considers the right as taking benefits and the obligation as being bothered and believes that every benefit has its own bothering and these two concepts are correlated.