Intellectual Property in Islam: A Lost Principle in Our Culture

This post is a translation of the original Arabic article.

"Indeed, it is We who sent down the Reminder, and indeed, We will be its guardian." And: "Convey from me, even if it is one verse." And: "Whoever deliberately lies about me, let him take his seat in the Fire."

When our first teacher, peace be upon him, establishes from his Lord — may He be glorified — the principle of intellectual property at the very foundation of the religion, it becomes clear that our faith is built on this principle. From the start, a core problem of early Christianity was the failure to distinguish between the word of God, the word of man, and the words of followers. Islam, by contrast, centers the principle of intellectual property — a right that God Himself guaranteed for His Book — and this principle was then firmly embedded in the hearts of the leaders of the Islamic renaissance, who built a civilization that encompassed diverse sciences, religions, nationalities, and cultures.

Hadith Science: Establishing the Intellectual Property of the Prophet

One of the most beautiful fields of knowledge developed in this area is what I like to call "the codification of the Prophet's intellectual property" — known in brief as the science of Hadith (Ulum al-Hadith). I see this entire discipline as founded on nothing other than this principle: preserving the sayings of the Prophet, peace be upon him, protecting them from loss, and preventing any saying from being attributed to someone other than its speaker.

The revolution that Hadith science accomplished rests on two main pillars:

First: The method of collection and codification, which includes written recording, transmission from narrators, and verification of the chain of transmission.

Second: The philosophy on which the principle of intellectual property in Hadith science is built. This philosophy offers a comprehensive view of what is today called Intellectual Property (IP). In Hadith science it encompasses the Prophet's intellectual works, his speech, his actions, his deeds, and even his approvals and disapprovals. This great framework ensured that a thinker's knowledge could not be credited to another, nor could something be wrongly attributed to him.

Where Are We Today?

Let us look at how intellectual property rights are treated in our world today. We find a striking absence of awareness, particularly regarding intellectual property rights for intangible things, such as engineering designs, software, blogs, music, art, games, and even hardware.

People view intellectual property narrowly, confining it to books, copying them, distributing them, and quoting from them. But they ignore the thinker's right to own their thought, and the idea of violating that right has become acceptable to many. The culture of infringement is taught and reinforced from childhood. Parents teach their children to buy counterfeit games, and as the child grows they learn to buy pirated software. In school, they see the computer teacher more often than not using pirated programs without hesitation.

The Right Way to Think About This

The usual justification is high prices. But the internal monologue running in their minds is:

Shall I buy 10 pirated programs for the price of one genuine one?

The right monologue that should run in everyone's mind is:

Shall I violate 10 people's work and ideas in exchange for what I could honor with one genuine purchase at the same price?

The framing changes entirely — and it should be noted that the comparison is ethically unsound to begin with.

What also strikes me is the mindset of those who distribute pirated software: they show no respect for others' rights, yet want their own rights protected. These days, in what is known as "computer auction" forums, people compile pirated software packages, present them under their own brand name, and then post a warning inside swearing by the most solemn oaths that the buyer is getting an original copy.

Conclusion

I believe we need to reconsider the principles that have taken root not only in our children but in our parents before them, and revisit the issue of infringement and rights violation. The issue is too large to be resolved by laws and deterrents alone. It starts in homes before schools, in schools before civic institutions, and at the level of governments as well.

Wael Kabli