The first teaching of Islam in ethics is that every human being has certain obligations which he owes and must discharge to the best of his ability, not only to God, but also to other human beings, including people of other religious traditions.
In Islam, man has well-defined duties even toward animals and inanimate things.
To quote Fazlur Rahman again, the Quran primarily exhorts to virtue and a strong sense of moral responsibility.
A comprehensive sense of responsibility can very well take care of all human rights; but the converse is not so true.
Indeed, a society that begins to understand rights in terms of permissiveness and lawlessness spells its own inevitable doom.
Permissiveness and lawlessness are the effects of the deliberate failure to grasp the moral truth.
God criticised men who have hearts, but understand not with them; they have eyes, but perceive not with them; they have ears, but they hear not with them (al-Araf, 7:179), and consequently, are deaf, dumb, blind (al-Baqarah, 2:18) of what is ethical and what is not.
In relation to Gods guidance, men are equipped with the faculties of reason and perception, but some of them have deadened them with hypocrisy toward others and self-deception, to the extent that those faculties do not function anymore.
Inasmuch as they are heedless, they are like cattle nay, rather they are further astray seeing that animals follow only their instinct and natural needs, and thus, are not conscious of morality or religious guidance (al-Araf, 7:179).
