The original concept of freedom for all of humankind is that it is the opposite to slavery or enslavement. This is the real meaning of the term that has been mentioned in the linguistic heritage of humankind, since the term was first used. Then, over time, its connotation extended to other matters. So the term was used to express metaphorical meanings that express the paradox state of slavery according to the languages, cultures and civilizations of the nations.

In the dictionaries of the West, the word freedom comes with the meaning of opposite to slavery. Jacqueline Russ states in Methods in Philosophy (French: Les methodes en philosophie), states, “The list concerning the term freedom is even more significant and richer: dependence, slavery, servitude, subjugation, constraint, hindrance, oppression, determinism, fate, fatalism, etc., are all terms or concepts to be defined.” (French: La liste concernant le terme liberte est encore plus significative et plus riche: dependance, esclavage, servitude, assujettissement, contrainte, entrave, oppression, determinisme, destin, fatalite, etc., sont autant de termes ou concepts a cerner). It has the meaning of the absence of external constraints. Westerners have noticed in it the meaning that gives the absence of constraints or necessity or coercion, over a choice or action. It is also used amongst Westerners with the meaning of independence and sovereignty. Thus a free man is the one who is not subjected to external constraints or coercive force from outside of him. He follows no master.

From the linguistic usage of the word, amongst almost all of humankind, it is apparent that the consensus meaning of the word freedom is the emancipation from constraints, whether they are material or moral. Since ancient times, its concept has been associated with the specifics of the civilization and culture prevalent in any society. Despite that, the term was defined only with its opposite i.e. slavery. Its derivative or generated or modern meanings were only built by observing the meaning of emancipation, as opposed to slavery. As Aristotle states in his Politics, by saying, “What does this mean but that they distinguish freedom and slavery, noble and humble birth, by the two principles of good and evil?”.

Humanity has perceived the meaning of freedom only after observing the meaning of slavery or other similar meanings attached to it such as oppression, coercion, compulsion and force, according to some of the philosophers. Western philosophers and thinkers of the Enlightenment era did not deviate from this method when they adopted the idea of freedom, with its modern intellectual and political concepts, in the eighteen century CE. They depicted their life in the Middle Ages as the life of slaves who have no will or power. They depicted the Church, with its religious authority, and kings, with their political authorities, as masters who enslave people, usurping the people’s will to think, express, possess and enjoy life.

Thus, their struggle was for the sake of will and sovereignty. They sought liberation i.e. the emancipation from the constraints of the Church and its teachings, as well as the emancipation from the shackles of the rulers and their tyranny. So the word freedom encapsulated all of this. Freedom became one of the pillars of the Western civilization. Andrew Heywood states in his book, Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations, that, “Freedom is often considered to be the supreme political value in Western liberal societies. Its virtue is that, attached to the idea that human beings are rationally self- willed creatures, it promises the satisfaction of human interests or the realization of human potential. In short, freedom is the basis for happiness and well-being.”.

However, the West, in its era of Enlightenment, did not focus on absolute freedom. Instead, it focused on a personal freedom in harmony with the idea of individualism, which settled upon the launching point of man in this worldly life is through isolating him from the Hereafter, as he is the master of the universe. Accordingly, the freedom known to be natural liberty or personal freedom that was sought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE, is distinct from the connotations of previous freedoms, such as freedom known by the Greeks. It is apparent, for example, in the writings of Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Adam Smith and Bentham. This is strongly emphasized by Benjamin Constant in his famous speech, “The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns” of 1819, highlighting the stark difference between ancient and modern freedom.

Thus, according to the Western concept of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE, freedom is to lift restrictions upon an individual, by leaving his affairs to his self, to exercise his natural rights and to realize his personal interests in a way that he wishes. This can only be possible by curbing the hegemony of the state and limiting its interference in his intellectual, economic, social and political affairs. If there have to be laws to transform man from the state of nature into the civil state, regulating his behavior in a civil society, then they must be only to the extent that they are absolutely necessary. Based on this concept, the rights of the individual were established in the Western charters and constitutions, after the French revolution, in a manner that preserves individual freedom (liberty), in a form that is closer to absolute freedom. An example of this was France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 (French: Declaration des droits de I'homme et du citoyen de 1789) which states, “Article IV - Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the fruition of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.”.

In fact, this concept of natural or individual freedom is like the idea of individualism. It was only a reaction to the oppression suffered by the Western individuals. It was not a deep and crystallized intellectual perception that takes account of the reality of man, society and the nature of relationships between them. Man cannot live within society, without restrictions, otherwise, society would turn into a jungle, where the strong would dominate the weak. This matter was realized by the West and so it abandoned the concept of freedom as perceived during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries CE. It coined the term negative liberty as opposed to a newly theorized positive liberty. Andrew Heywood states in his book, Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations, that, “modern liberals and socialists have tended to subscribe to a positive view of freedom that justifies widening the responsibilities of the state, particularly in relation to welfare and economic management. The state is regarded as the enemy of freedom when it is viewed as an external constraint on the individual, but as a guarantee of freedom when it lays down the conditions for personal development and self­ realization.” In the twentieth century CE, after the change of global political, societal and economic conditions, with the outbreak of the First World War and the success of Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, as well as the emergence of various crises, the West began to review the concept of freedom. It settled on another concept called civil liberty, which in turn includes personal, religious, economic and political freedom.

In his book, Principles of Political Science, Robert Niven Gilchrist states of civil liberty that “it may mean the Rule of Law, that is, the limitation of the powers of government by established law, whether it be in the form of a constitution which contains fundamental principles to guide and limit the government, or, as in England, the fact that law applies equally and impartially, to all, to the greatest and humblest alike. This sense of the term may be, called Civil Liberty.” The meaning of this statement is that the West abandoned the idea of freedom, as conceived in the era of Enlightenment. The West began to see the necessity of imposing restrictions by the state with regulatory laws, even if they became many laws. Ramsay Muir said in his essay “The Prospect for British Liberalism” that “the freedom of the individual to live his own life in his own way depends upon the existence of a system of law, enforced by the common will, which can restrain the strong from abuse of their strength at the expense of their neighbors.”.

In this way, the freedom in the West became subject to a social order, which allowed individuals to exercise their actions and activities within limitations. It became a conditional or restricted freedom, limited by its connection with the laws and the state. Harold J Laski in his book, Reflection on the Revolution of Our Time, states “This is the reality for the mass of humankind which our present social order bids the common people accept as freedom; and even this reality must be defended by war against a nightmare even more hideous.” Montesquieu advocated, in his book, The Spirit of the Laws, the idea of constraint upon freedom saying, “The freedom of commerce is not a power granted to the merchants to do what they please: This would be more properly its slavery. The constraint of the merchant is not the constraint of commerce.”.

In fact, this modern Western conception of freedom is not just aversion to the old formal conception. Instead, it is in fact an aversion to freedom itself. It is completely contradicting the essence of freedom, even though the West denies that. Freedom is in fact the emancipation from constraints. Freedom can only be called such in this sense. Thus, when a slave is emancipated from his master, he is said to be free. When a land is liberated from colonialists, it is said to be free. This is the meaning that comes to every mind when the word freedom is uttered. It is the quoted meaning in the dictionaries of the West. It is also the meaning intended by the thinkers and philosophers of Europe, for which they fought during their conflict with the Church and kings.

Hence, the current stance of the West, that freedom does not mean the absence of restrictions and emancipation from them, destroys the basis upon which the Western civilization was built, erasing its history based on an Aristotelian struggle for the Western individual to do whatever he wishes, liberating himself from the shackles of the law that restrained his desires and aspirations. If the current freedom in the West, called civil liberty, is defined as sovereign law, as mentioned in the books of Western political science, i.e. if freedom is subjected to the law and conformity with the law, then what is the difference between such a freedom and the freedom of the Romans for example?

Is it not the Roman freedom as defined in The Digest of Justinian, in its Volume 1, Book 1, under “Human Status,” which states that, “Freedom is one’s natural power of doing what one pleases, save insofar as it is ruled out either by coercion or by law.”? Does this mean that Roman civilization is the civilization of freedom? Does it mean that European people were already free, before the outbreak of the revolution for liberty? Does it also mean that kings and Caesar used to defend freedom, by making people submit to the law and fighting thinkers who challenged the law? If freedom in the modern Western tradition is to mean sovereignty of the law, then it means that all the people of the world are free and they enjoy freedom. So why adorn the capitalist world alone with the title of the free world? What is there to boast about, when all civilizations are equal in this? Moreover, why did the Western revolutions for Enlightenment take place in the first place?

The term freedom, within the history of its usage amongst humankind, is unachievable in the actions of the created, whatever is said about its definition. It is not possible for an individual to exist in a society without imposing restrictions upon his behavior called law, order, rules, customs, responsibility or others. It is not possible for an individual to exist in a community, whilst living in a state of emancipation from the restrictions that organize the relationships, unless he chooses isolation and living alone. As such, absolute freedom exists only in the sense of an imaginary natural state.

As for the real state of man, whether it is ancient or modern, whether in the East or the West, it is the state of discipline i.e. in the state of non-freedom. Accordingly, the concept of Western freedom is not credible. It is possible to determine its semantic validity only by linking the Western thought itself to freedom, meaning that Western freedom is not defined on its own absolute terms but is qualified within a context. Indeed, it is a relative idea defined by its particular context, which is the idea of the West and its concepts or the Western ideology and its civilization. Thus the free man in the west is the one who adopts secularism and lives according to the Western model, as limited and restricted by the barons of finance, media and sex. The delusion of freedom is known even amongst the Western man himself who is restricted by not hundreds, but thousands of laws. The hardest and heaviest of them are the tax laws. Thus, the West has unleashed pornography as a distraction to cover the contradiction within the West, preventing people from searching for the alternative.

Since the reality of man is that he is a social being living in a community, it is impossible for him, both rationally and practically, to be liberated from the restrictions of the system, or regulatory laws, in order for him to live with others. Islam has diverted man from looking after the impossible into accepting the possible, which is servitude to Allah (swt) alone. So the subject of study is not related to the possibility of living without restrictions, as it is not possible. Instead, it is related to who places such restrictions. Accordingly, Islam liberates man from the servitude of humans, by granting him the submission to the Sovereignty of Allah (swt). Islam raises man to the sublimity of servitude to the Creator of humans. So servitude is only to the Creator and not to the creations. Islam ensures man’s submission to the Creator. Abidance and obedience to the system of the Creator are of the highest value and raises man to the highest ranks. Islam alone realizes the wisdom of why man was created. Allah (swt) says,

“And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.” [TMQ Surah Adh-Dhariyat 51:56],