In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Freedom
Author: Abdul Basir Sohaib Siddiqi
Republished on: 08.11.2025
Translation by: Tahleel Team
Note:
This article is a reconstructed version of my old literary and philosophical essay written about 30 years ago. After much effort, I recovered half of it through my respected brother, an active advocate for law and peace, Sadiq Mansur Ansari. The other half, which I could not retrieve, I rewrote using new expressions and phrases while preserving its original ideas from memory. I now present it to readers who seek thoughtful reflection.
The Call of Freedom
O Freedom, where is your land and your home?
Where is the city in which you shine like a bright candle — where your warmth reaches those imprisoned in the cold cells of captivity?
Where you rise against oppression and tear down the dark curtains of slavery with your strong and mighty hands?
In which golden pages of human history is your name written?
What image of you remains?
Are your hands — stained with the blood of oppression and bondage — still colored so today?
Which nation loves you?
Over which land do you rule?
Which part of the world do you call your kingdom?
O Freedom! The moment I try to describe you or give you a name, you flee — hiding your beautiful face.
For to define you is to confine you, and confinement is your death.
If you were ever fully defined, you would be hanged by the ropes of limitation upon the scaffold of words.
The Realm of Freedom and Its Enemies
Your kingdom lies where captivity is defeated — where chains cannot rise again.
But if you fail to suppress captivity, your very existence is threatened.
Paradoxically, this struggle for survival becomes the cause of your pain and your death.
In communist philosophy, no trace of you is found.
In the class struggle between the tools and relations of production, your bloody body is carried by the servants of historical determinism to the graveyard — where the will and freedom of humankind lie buried.
Your lovers weep and tremble beside your grave.
Communism does not stop there.
It builds tall prison walls of historical necessity around your friends — to silence the intoxicating cry of freedom.
And whether you appear as a concept or a living movement, your followers are killed in the name of history’s “inevitable law.”
Thus, with your warm blood and that of your companions, the darkest and most soulless philosophy is completed.
From the shadow of Hegel’s thought, philosophers draw their bloody swords and attack you.
Your death sentence is also written in the seductive smiles of those who turn bodies into merchandise — breaking the moral chains that restrain lustful men.
In the battle for survival, where the strong crush the weak, you come once again to the edge of death.
You die on the poor man’s table, in the marketplace of greed and exploitation, and on the gallows woven from corruption and injustice.
You are murdered in the traditions of ignorance and domestic violence, where human dignity is strangled daily.
Freedom Through the Ages
In ancient times, even the philosopher Plato saw you as an obstacle to his ideal City of Virtue.
He imagined a utopia built upon your exclusion, dressing his perfect city in the chains of obedience and control.
When Prophet Yahya (John the Baptist) was beheaded at the request of a seductive dancer, I saw your blood gush forth.
You were the one slain that day.
Upon the bloody page of history, written with the ink of his martyrdom, you inscribed in bold letters: “Freedom, Freedom!”
Later, during the time of Prophet Isa (Jesus, peace be upon him), your voice again echoed across the earth — shaking the foundations of tyranny.
Yet the wicked narrowed your space until your presence could no longer endure.
When Isa (peace be upon him) was raised to the heavens, a period of freedom came to an end, and the oppressors sealed it with their cruelty.
The Spiritual Meaning of Freedom
O Freedom, my soul longs for you!
When I read history, I see you in every age — for history is the greatest school, and as my Lord said: “By Time!”
You are the nature of every noble-hearted human being.
In the struggle between truth and falsehood, you have always been the voice of the righteous.
You revealed yourself in the patience of the prophets — a crown made of morality, placed upon humanity through the message of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.
That crown is human dignity itself.
Your color is red — the color of the martyr’s blood.
For within the martyr, your spirit lives.
The martyr embodies your three dimensions — faith, morality, and justice — the pillars of a peaceful society.
When the martyr defends human dignity, he defends freedom itself.
Freedom in Islam
Yes, Freedom — I hear your gentle voice.
The calm and beautiful tone of your speech.
I heard it from the pages of history when you stood before Umar ibn al-Khattab (RA), the one whom the Prophet ﷺ called the “lock of tribulation.”
You took a sword in your hand and declared:
“If you turn away from truth, I will straighten you with this sword.”
O Freedom, you appeared in three forms throughout Islamic history:
- In the belief of Tawheed (Oneness of God), your beauty shines — for it frees humankind from the worship of other humans.
- In the realm of morality and law, where ethics define the boundaries of action, you appear again as the protector of human honor.
- And in the world of affection and love — beyond command or prohibition — you express yourself through beauty, creativity, and the colors of human life.
Thus, in all these meanings, we come closer to understanding you.
Freedom Between Choice and Destiny
The human being stands between two realities — freedom and compulsion.
True human freedom must therefore be understood in two dimensions:
- The Natural (Creation-based) Dimension
- The Moral and Legal Dimension
In creation, human life follows natural laws — here man has no choice.
For example, he cannot breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen, live underwater like a fish, or fly like a bird.
But within these limits, God has given humans potential and ability to act freely — to build, to learn, to shape the world.
And within the moral and legal sphere, these potentials are guided by ethics and divine law.
Here lies the balance — freedom defined by moral duty.
Freedom without ethics becomes chaos.
Thus, in human society, absolute freedom turns into positive freedom — freedom based on moral responsibility and the protection of human dignity.
🕊️ Translation by Tahleel Team
