Equality of Human Beings

Islam not only recognizes absolute equality between men
irrespective of any distinction of color, race or nationality, but makes
it an important and significant principle, a reality. The Almighty God
has laid down in the Holy Quran: “O mankind, we have created you
from a male and female.” In other words all human beings are brothers
to one another. They all are the descendants from one father and one
mother. “And we set you up as nations and tribes so that you may be
able to recognize each other” (49:13). This means that the division of
human beings into nations, races, groups and tribes is for the sake of
distinction, so that people of one race or tribe may meet and be
acquainted with the people belonging to another race or tribe and
cooperate with one another. This division of the human race is neither
meant for one nation to take pride in its superiority over others nor is it
meant for one nation to treat another with contempt or disgrace, or
regard them as a mean and degraded race and usurp their rights.
“Indeed, the noblest among you before God are the most heedful of
you” (49:13). In other words the superiority of one man over another
is only on the basis of God-consciousness, purity of character and high
morals, and not on the basis of color, race, language or nationality,
and even this superiority based on piety and pure conduct does not
justify that such people should play lord or assume airs of superiority
over other human beings. Assuming airs of superiority is in itself a
reprehensible vice which no God-fearing and pious man can ever dream
of perpetrating. Nor does the righteous have more privileged rights over
others, because this runs counter to human equality, which has been
laid down in the beginning of this verse as a general principle. From the
moral point of view, goodness and virtue is in all cases better than vice
and evil.

This has been exemplified by the Prophet in one of his sayings thus:
“No Arab has any superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a non-Arab
have any superiority over an Arab. Nor does a white man have any
superiority over a black man or the black man any superiority over the
white man. You are all the children of Adam, and Adam was created
from clay” (al-Bayhaqi and al-Bazzaz). In this manner Islam established
equality for the entire human race and struck at the very root of all
distinctions based on color, race, language or nationality. According to
Islam, God has given man this right of equality as a birthright. Therefore
no man should be discriminated against on the ground of the color of
his skin, his place of birth, the race or the nation in which he was born.
Malcolm X, the famous leader of African Negroes in America, who had
launched a bitter struggle against the white people of America in order
to win civil rights for his black compatriots, when he went to perform
the pilgrimage, and saw how the Muslims of Asia, Africa, Europe,
America and those of different races, languages and colors of skin,
were wearing one dress and were hurrying towards God’s House-the
Ka’bah and offering prayers standing in one row and there was no
distinction of any kind between them, then he realized that this was the
solution to the problem of color and race, and not what he had been
trying to seek or achieve in America so far. Today, a number of non-
Muslim thinkers, who are free from blind prejudice, openly admit that
no other religion or way of life has solved this problem with the same
degree of success with which Islam has done so.