Islamic Review of the Cypherpunk Manifesto

For a Muslim, our ‘manifesto’ or ‘code of conduct’ is Islam. Islam has given us guidelines of how we should conduct ourselves both in the public space and in private. The aim of this write-up is to discover how much this manifesto is in line with Islam and hopefully put forward ideals that all who read can benefit from.

Review by Mu’aawiyah Tucker

Privacy has been important for Muslims from the very start. In Islaam there is a very clear idea that “what is done in public returns to public scrutiny, but what is done in private is between the individual and Allaah”. There are many examples and demonstrations of this throughout the mission of the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم. One clear example of this is how the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم dealt with those known as the ‘Munaafiqoon’.

There were a collection of non-Muslims who outwardly claimed islam but secretly plotted to actively fight against Islam and the Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم knew exactly who they were due to revelation, but did nothing about it because it was done ‘in secret’. Another example is found in the Qur’aan where Allaah said:

“Oh you who believe, stay away from many examples of suspicion, because some types of suspicion is sinful, and DO NOT spy on one another…”

Here there is a distinction made between privacy and secrecy, and this distinction is important to fully grasp. In the real world, privacy is the default position of all information in relation to human beings. Their actions, beliefs, and even interactions are known to only themselves or a few, and an active decision has to be made to publicise it. A secret is the intent to keep that private information private and to actively prevent what is private to become public. Another way of phrasing this is:

Privacy is the state of affairs before a decision is made to make public,

Secrecy is the decision to maintain privacy.

This distinction becomes increasingly important as we progress to what I believe is the purpose behind this manifesto.

This is the nature of human interactions in the real world.

From an Islamic paradigm, there are some important nuances to note. The most important of this is the domain of speech, and the impact of that speech on others. This is where modern day liberalism and ‘freedom of speech’ doctrine are at odds with Islamic values.

According to Islamic values, each person is free to hold whatever views they wish, and even express those views to those who share those views in private as much as they want. However once those views and that speech is made public, it is not free from the law. There are restrictions on what can be said publicly, in relation to how that speech impacts others and the wider society. So in Islam, there are strict rules that forbid, backbiting, slander, insulting, belittling and harming other people.

Allaah says in the Qur’aan:

O you who have believed, let not a people ridicule [another] people; maybe those being ridiculed are better than those doing the ridiculing; [likewise] let not women ridicule [other] women; perhaps they may be better than them. And do not insult one another and do not call each other by [offensive] nicknames. Wretched is the name of disobedience after [one's] faith. And whoever does not repent -  then it is those who are the wrongdoers.

The main purpose for the ‘freedom of speech’ doctrine is to allow and facilitate public dialogue. This includes clarification of incorrect ideas and actions done in public. Islam protects such public conversations, and is protected, even if it may upset someone. An open place where ideas can be shared, and discussed openly, and Muslims have a long tradition of such public conversation. What is forbidden is public insults, and making public what is private.

An example of how public discussion is protected is demonstrated with Umar, a successor leader of the prophet Muhammad, where he said in a public sermon that women should not take large marriage dowries and should instead take small modest amounts. A woman from the crowd stood up and rebuked Umar and reciting the verse of the Qur’aan:

If you wish to replace one wife with another and you have given one of them a Cantar (of gold i.e. a great amount of gold, the like of a mountain) as Mahr (marriage dowry), do not take any of her bride-gift back; would you take it wrongfully without a right and (with) a manifest sin?

Umar didn’t rebuke her for making this public correction, but rather he said his famous statement “Umar was wrong and this woman was right”. So public dialogue is protected, as long as it doesn’t involve breaching the peace with offensive speech.

Here is where we arrive at the purpose behind this manifesto. How do we as humans, navigate this new domain of ‘electronic communications’. We now have a domain whereby such communication, that used to be private, is now by design public. Before electronic communication, a conversation between two is by design private, and between those involved, but now those who people who wish to have a private conversation by design becomes public.

Public by the sending of data packets across a public network which can be viewed by uninvolved parties. This is where this manifesto becomes important and opens up a valuable discussion. Does such speech maintain its private nature, or enters into the public domain?

In the real world, the people we interact with only have access to what is made visible at that moment and time. Everything else is private by design. But in the electronic world, should we emulate those same properties?

This manifesto also now delves into how one should behave, and codes of conduct. It now enters into the world of being ‘prescriptive’ of ones behaviour. The prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم said:

“Two parties who conduct a business transaction have the right to cancel that transaction as long as they dont part company, so if they make clear necessary information for the transaction and is truthful, then blessing is placed in their transaction, but if they hide necessary information, and deceive, then the blessing is removed from the transaction”

So just like this manifesto suggests, being honest and clear in transactions is necessary, and in Islamic law deception in transactions is sufficient to warrant cancelling a transaction, but Islam doesn’t encourage or mandate privacy. It just preserves it if one chooses to maintain it.

This specifically encourages privacy, whereas islam is indifferent about it. You can be private if you want and you can reveal what is private if you choose.

In most cases this is true, but one cannot ignore the virtue of building a social network of trust through the combination of fair trade and good character. One could say that knowing who you interact with is as necessary as having fair and sound money. But its not a requirement for trade. Its just the lubricant that facilitates it. The manifesto seems to suggest that privacy is a must, whereas Islam simply suggests that privacy should be respected if one wishes to have it.

This is where I feel the meat of his manifesto begins. Communication between two is by definition private. Whether that be face to face, via a written letter or sign language. This is how we communicate, and by default this is a private interaction. Likewise, if someone is able to hear a conversation between two people, that doesn't necessarily invite them into the conversation. Their privacy is still protected, and should be respected.

But when communicating over long distances or via an electronic medium, this communication doesn’t by necessity invite others who were not invited into the conversation. That includes all of those who help carry these messages between the involved parties. That would mean that ‘end to end encryption’ would be an important tool to emulate the same level of privacy we have through real world interaction.

The use of electronic communication should not strip away ones right to private interactions. If an application makes it clear that a 3rd party will have access to this private conversation and both parties agree to this, then thats fine if they agree to these terms, but that doesn’t mean that one should be stripped from this option if they indeed seek to get it, such as banning the use of encryption in online communication. Just like someone has the right to invite someone into their home to have a private conversation, likewise that right should be made available online.

This is where I see the main purpose of this manifesto. A declaration that what happens face to face should be the same online.

This is in reference to the inherent nature of using electrical forms of communication. Whether it be via radio, telegram, over the internet or over a cellular network. The very nature of the technology means that those who interact with it broadcast themselves and reveal information, and this manifesto suggests that this need not be the case.

We could rephrase this by saying “Just like in the real world privacy is necessary, likewise in the cyber world, this should be the same”

ie the physical world has included privacy by default and by design. Gold and Silver has no memory of who owned it and what reason it was exchanged. This is the nature of money in the real world, and this is what we should have in the cyber world.

Making a private payment system simply means that if one wants to reveal who they are, they have that choice to make when they want to, as oppose to the active intention for concealing information. This is much like Bitcoin transactions. We can all see the transactions but have no idea by design who is behind that. We can choose to reveal that information, who are the owners of the UTXO, if we want to.

In contrast, with Monero or Liquid Bitcoin, where a conscious decision has been made to hide amounts, and in the case of monero, obscure the sources and destinations. But even if secrecy is desired from a monetary system, Islam is not opposed to that. If someone chooses to use that to conduct criminal acts, then they no doubt have fallen into sin, but privacy and secrecy doesn’t always equate to criminal activity, and criminality should not be used to justify infringing ones right to privacy.

In an open society on a digital network where information packets move across multiple 3rd party servers and platforms.

Like in the real world.

To encrypt means to take back the right given to us by Allaah to direct our speech to those intended, and to announce to 3rd parties that they are not involved in this conversation.

Meaning, to reveal that private speech requires active permission in the form of a cryptographic signature. The signature is the ‘permission to read’.

This is the nature of mankind. Wherever the opportunity arises to infringe someone’s rights, they take it. Information is power over someone, and by design people will always seek power over others. This is why Islam preserves those rights, so as to preserve that balance between individuals in society and to prevent any oppression.

Information is the complete opposite of the ‘tangible real world’. Real things can only possess a single point in space and we can therefore use that quality to enforce property laws and possession. But information infinitely spreads without limitation. This is the problem that Bitcoin solved as it relates to using ‘information’ as ‘money’. How do you make something that is information based ‘possess-able’? How do you allow the transfer of ownership of ‘information’ without the need for a 3rd party? Thats the innovation of Bitcoin.

The enforcement of possession of information through privacy (of ones private keys) and cryptography was made possible through Bitcoin. It solved the ‘double spend’ problem in the cyber world, and by virtue of that, Bitcoin is a tool that can be used to allow for the simulation of real world rights in the cyber domain. The use of ‘Proof of work’ is an additional tool used to enforce that tie between the ‘cyber’ and the ‘real’ by requiring real world activity to add ‘value’ to the system and protect it.

The social consensus is the collective approach to enforcing these rules and ideals and if Bitcoin is the only way to achieve this censorship resistant, private borderless money, then Islamic rules of ‘ordering the good and forbidding the evil’ would come into play and mandate the participation, development and support of that system. Support such as running a node, developing publicly available wallets and applications, acceptance of this currency as payment and resistance of all that seeks to destroy this system.

By the use of these tools, the cypherpunk ideology can better simulate real world interactions on a public system. But like all tools, they shouldn’t be used for illegal acts. But just like Islam doesn’t forbid someone from owning a knife, just because it can be used for murder, one cannot forbid tools for privacy because it can be used to protect criminal behaviour.

There was an example of this from one of the successors of the prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه و سلم , who’s name was Umar. One person walked by someone’s home and heard music playing and laughter. So he went to look into his home to see what was this about. What he found was a man enjoying himself with a woman who was not his family or wife. Such an act is forbidden in Islam due to its strict laws to preserve the family unit. So he went to the leader Umar and told him about what he saw requesting he be punished.

However Umar refused and rebuked him for invading his privacy and exposing his sins. What can be taken from this is that surveillance into peoples private lives is not justified to prevent what we consider sins. The government only has jurisdiction on the public domain and on protecting the individual, their wealth and their intellect in the private domain.

What can be understood from this is that ‘code’ is simply a collection of instructions. Code in a program or computer is no different than a manager giving his employees tasks to do, or a poet reciting his poetry, and as ‘speech’ is to be protected at all costs according to this manifesto, then likewise so should code.

But from an islamic perspective, words have consequences, and those consequences enter into Islamic jurisdiction. So a person who authors code with the intent to steal money would carry the same ruling as if they instructed someone else to steal on their behalf or stole directly themselves. Code itself would be protected speech, much like actual speech, but the use of it to harm others would likewise warrant the watchful glance of the law.

So Nostr, an open platform where anyone can use it to anonymously post their speech online, is perfectly fine to use, but that doesn’t then give permission to the users to harm others with it.

When one encrypts data that traverses the public network, it draws it back into the private space. To remove encryption is to force private speech into the public space against the wishes of the one speaking. As this manifesto seeks to state that the realm of electronic communications should be treated the same as real world communications, then restricting the use of tools of privacy is the same as mass surveillance and whole sale abuse of ones right to privacy.

Even if someone built a communication application, and informed its users that their speech would be surveilled, this would not remove ones right to privacy, and inherent within that is the promise not to make public what they’ve seen or heard.

The role of government fundamentally is the use of violence to establish justice. Allaah says in the Qur’aan

“We have already sent Our messengers with clear evidences and sent down with them the Scripture and the balance that the people may maintain [their affairs] in justice.”

So Allaah informed us that one of the purposes of revelation is to establish justice. Mankind is incapable of achieving this goal due to the inherent shortsightedness in a limited created being. Allaah describes the revelation as establishing fairness and balance. In the middle between being too strict to the point of oppression, or being too free so as to infringe on individual rights.

“And We sent down iron, wherein is great military might and benefits for the people, and so that Allah may make evident those who support Him and His messengers unseen. Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Exalted in Might.”

Then Allaah continues by indicating that the gift of metals, iron, sent down to earth, can cause harm to mankind but also many benefits to society. The scholars have highlighted the purpose of mentioning the sending down of iron (either in meteorites or whatever, who knows) right after mentioning justice is that Iron can be a tool used for establishing justice. Justice and force are not mutually exclusive. One needs the other.

Any useful tool and all knowledge have the property of spreading by its nature. As stated above, Islam has no negative stance towards tools and knowledge, except in how it is used.

And as we have demonstrated above, privacy was already in the social contract of Islam and the islamic environment from the start.

This stands shoulder to shoulder with the islamic principles of ‘ordering the good and forbidding the evil’. In an Islamic society, enforcement of justice has been decentralised to all individuals in accordance to their abilities. Allah’s Messenger صلى الله عليه و سلم said:

“Whoever amongst you who sees an evil, then let him change it with his hand, and if he is unable, change it with his tongue, and if he is still unable to change and stop it, then he must at least [change] it with his heart, and that is the lowest state of faith”

This is why you find in Muslim societies, Muslims are active in preventing evil, even if all they can do is speak. And if we are not even able to speak, then we shouldn’t allow the prevalence of that evil to change us from who we are, we need to resist in our heart and soul. We are even ordered as muslims to leave the land where we reside if the evil is too overwhelming and if that evil is forced on our limbs and speech. Muslims are ordered to stand for justice on an individual level before the government level, as justice is decentralised. So there is no reason to believe this does not extend to preserving the privacy of the individual.

And so it should be that we are open to discover the true merit of our views, ideals and ideas.

But we, as Muslims, much like the cypherpunk movement, will not compromise in our ideals that we know to be divine and sanctioned by Allaah.

And let us Muslims join in fulfilling our shared goal of transferring the rights given to us in the real world, to the realm of electronic communication.

Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>

Mu’aawiyah Tucker,