ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that to understand Islam and human rights appropriately we should first understand the Islamic concept of the human being according to the Qur'an and Sunna. We have to understand some principal aspects of Islam in such a way as to delineate what this religion normatively says about the nature of human beings and how such human nature relates to religion and the civil life of human communities. The chapter provides the basis for human rights in the fundamental concepts of the human being in Islam, as they are expounded in the Holy Book and in the Tradition of the Prophet Muhammad. Since the time of the Umayyads, the Muslim world has not known any political system except the hereditary genealogical dynasties until the reintroduction of the concept of the republic and open elections by the West in modern times.
