Islam’s confession, ‘There is no god except God’, dethrones the state as God. God is the true and sole sovereign of the ummah in law & morals. For Muslims, the test of divine sovereignty is the power to legally revoke, in the name of God, secular law itself.
Muslims charge that, in secular legal codes, God’s rights (huquq Allah) over his human servants are neglected in favour of absolute human rights (huquq Adami). Islam, as a juristic monotheism, claims to balance these sets of rights. The Quran is not fully compatible with a secular notion of human rights and does not deliver the same set of rights. Thus, for example, even the de jure rights of Muslim women – and these are remarkably extensive in Islamic law though not in Muslim practice – differ from those secured by a Western feminism determined to achieve maximal rights for women while, from certain viewpoints, potentially neglecting the rights of the family and the legitimate grievances of men.
Shabbir Akhtar, Islam as Political Religion: The Future of an Imperial Faith, p. 150.
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