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The term ‘environment’ refers to both the natural world as well as the surroundings of and influences on a particular thing. The environment plays a major role and influence on human beings and their lives. This article discusses the influential role the environment plays in relation to human rights. Today, human rights is a global issue and the rights that are advocated range from the basic human needs of food and shelter to the right of freedom of speech to the more religiously contentious gay rights. This paper contends that the issue of human rights is closely connected to the environment or the social conditions of a particular community; specifically the values and principles which dominate and determine the worldview of that community or society. In the context of our global society, the issue of deciding the content and nature of human rights is extremely challenging, especially to religious societies and communities, since religious principles and values are no longer a dominant factor in determining what is right or wrong, good or bad. This is the situation faced by the Muslim ummah. Many of the rights advocated by the modern West which it considers to be fundamental, universal and human are contrary to Islamic principles and values. For example, the right of freedom of speech to insult and mock the sacred tenets in religious teachings, the right to gay marriages which run contrary to natural laws, and the right to exploit natural resources for economic development without regard to the rights of other creatures which also inhabit this world. Thus, the Muslim ummah is in a dilemma as to whether to adapt itself to the modern and secular global environment or change its environment to advocate its Islamic worldview and understanding of human nature, rights, responsibilities and freedom.

‘Human rights’ are the basic rights and fundamental freedoms. Today’s human rights movements also concern on nature in resolving the environmental crisis. Within the freedom of thought and expression, this trend has extended dramatically in recent years, as many people have been surrounded by massive pollutions such as global warming and water crisis. Many environments have been greatly altered by human activities. On the right track, scholars and scientists have taken risks to test so many ideas and approaches that could lead to exponential changes to improve or even preserve the natural environment. Although ‘human rights’ has been used popularly in recent decades, Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that the term should be blamed for the environmental crisis we are presently facing. As one of the most important and foremost Muslim philosophers in the world today, Nasr emphasizes that the environmental crisis is created by the crisis of human value in their philosophy of human rights based on human ‘freedom’. Nasr’s writings on human rights can be observed in his Islam and the Environmental Crisis (1990), Islam and the Challenge of the 21st Century (1993) and Religion and the Order of Nature (1996). This semantic study is to show that human rights’ philosophy is too dangerous to nature, tracking on the unconditional absolute rights. Through semantic analysis, the study finds that ‘human rights’ are related to secular philosophy which enthrones the unlimited human freedom, and at the same time against the order of nature as Divine Order.