بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

An Inquiry into Possessive Individualism, Islamic Stewardship, and the Grammar of the Self

Introduction: A Philosophical Fault Line

When Ayatollah Javadi Amoli—in his tafsir of Surah Al-Hamd—states that a human being possesses “real ownership, but limited” over their limbs and organs, he invokes a metaphysics that is profoundly at odds with the modern Anglophone understanding of bodily autonomy. At first glance, the phrase “real ownership” sounds Lockean, even capitalist. It seems to grant the self absolute dominion over its physical vessel. However, as Amoli develops his argument within the broader Islamic framework, it becomes clear that this “ownership” is a functional delegation of authority for moral accountability—not a property right for economic or existential exploitation.

This seemingly theological nuance is, in fact, the tip of an iceberg that reaches into linguistics, developmental psychology, and political economy. Why does the English language force us to say “my hand” while Spanish allows “las manos” (the hands)? Why do Islamic treatises speak of the “rights of the limbs” over the self? And why does capitalism, born in an English-speaking, Protestant milieu, treat the body as the first and most fundamental piece of alienable private property?

This article traces a speculative thread from grammar to ethics, arguing that the way we linguistically relate to our bodies prefigures how we treat them—and, ultimately, how we judge acts of suicide, self-harm, and mutilation.