The concept of freedom in Islam (Studies in the problems of terminology and its dimensions in Arab Islamic heritage)

It is almost impossible to "date" a specific concept or term "throughout ages," such as the term "freedom" in medieval Islamic thought, especially if this concept has not yet been studied in any of its aspects or periods of its life; not because Muslims have lacked interest, as the author of the book, Franz Rosenthal, and others have hinted, but because the current question is of a completely different nature. Thus, any such attempt is doomed from the start to turn into a superficial presentation with no depth, or into a documentary study that opens the door for others to research the same topic. The study before us on "the concept of freedom in Islam" is a documentary study that gathers the most material on the subject, and this process of sifting through is not an easy task; the author relied on more than two hundred sources and references where the word "freedom" appears, sometimes once, and sometimes not at all. He did not limit himself to published works; he also carefully examined several manuscripts that address the same topic, albeit superficially. Thus, his book is very useful in this regard, as it accurately collects rare documents about "freedom"—its vocabulary, existence, concept, and reality in medieval Islamic societies. However, this investigation has its limits, and some important matters have been overlooked. Some of these are due to the methodology he followed; others are due to the vast amount of material he had to sift through and extract what relates to his topic. While he engaged in a lengthy discussion about "prison" as an obstacle to freedom, he ignored the "five jurisprudential priorities" that the jurists repeatedly mention; had he included them, it would have spared him the risks of theoretical reflections on the existence of concepts of civil freedom among Muslims. The same applies to social freedom; if the discussion on the topic had continued and led to its logical conclusions, he would have needed to briefly address the concept of the nation in Islam, the relationship of the Imam with the nation, and the role of the state in social and economic life.