Islam and Western Political Thought: Differing Values
It is often asserted that a major distinction between Islamic values, culturally as well as religiously speaking, and those indigenous to most Western (i.e., Christian or non-Islamic) societies, is that the former places more emphasis on duty and the later on freedom. From the perspective of this writer, this is a valid distinction evident not only in the teachings found in the Qur'an, but also in the collectivist nature of most traditional Islamic societies. Islam, with its five pillars -- belief and witness, prayer, zakat or spiritual tithing or almsgiving, fasting, and the haj or pilgrimage to Mecca required of all Muslims able to make this journey -- is fundamentally centered on a series of duties that man woes not only to Allah, but also to his fellows (Fisher, 1999). Christianity, with its fare greater emphasis in individualism and free will, is less oriented toward duty despite the fact that it also values prayer, charitable works, belief or faith, and witnessing the faith (Fisher, 1999).
The purpose of any great world religion as described by Armstrong (2000), is to provide a set of teachings which make it possible for an individual to develop and maintain a meaningful relationship with God and to follow a set of dictums that are handed down by God for the purpose of ordering society. In Islamic countries, the Qur'an and the sharia law that has emerged from the examination of the teachings of Allah are the primary is not sole source of law; in the West, secular or civil law tends to predominate. Solomon and Higgins (1996) have suggested that civil law, unlike sharia law, identifies the individual and not the group as the center of its thrust. Consequently, one would anticipate that duty would be more significant a determinant of individual behavior in Islamic societies than in Western ones.
Many of these differences between the two "Peoples of the Book" as F...