The Medina Constitution

Abstract

The first Islamic state was founded not in the shadow of swords, as is commonly believed in some circles, but in the security of a social contract, called the Constitution of Medina. By all counts, the Medina Constitution lit the torch of freedom by establishing a Free State for a pluralistic community composed of Muslims, Jews, and pagans. This unprecedented Free State, the first of its kind in the intellectual and political history of human civilization, was founded by none other than Prophet Muhammad himself in the Gregorian year of 622, that is, more than thirteen hundred years before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) envisaged a modern pluralistic, religiously tolerant Free State.

Keywords: Free State, Jews and Muslims, Prophet Muhammad, Medina Constitution