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In our day, the
world is forced to witness unprecedented violence, terror,
oppression, fraud, imposture, deceit, immorality, fighting,
bickering, poverty and hunger. It is obvious that these
evil-inspired happenings are more common in our day than
they were in the past days. For this reason, every man of
conscience and wisdom needs to avoid all lack of
responsibility and become more sensitive towards the
suffering and injustice taking place in all parts of the
world. The evil are in the majority and appear to be
powerful, causing distress and anxiety for many people.
Disbelief, or the religion introduced to man which is
entirely divorced from the teachings of the original
revelations, and non-adherence to the moral values of the
Qur'an, have created fertile ground for the proliferation of
corruption and all forms of wickedness on earth. God informs
man about the devastation brought about by disbelievers to
the world as follows:
"Among
the people there is someone whose words about the life of
the world excite your admiration, and he calls God to
witness what is in his heart, while he is in fact the most
hostile of adversaries. When he leaves you, he goes about
the earth corrupting it, destroying crops and animals. God
does not love corruption."
(Surat al-Baqara:
204-205)
The way to
bring about an end to cruelty and evil of people who have
lost all sense of morality and feelings of compassion, who
ignore and even ridicule such values, is through the unity
of good and conscientious people working for the
dissemination of goodness. The kind of environment which
will emerge, unless believers cooperate, is stated in the
following verse:
"Those who disbelieve are the friends and
protectors of one another. If you do not act in this way (be
friends and protectors of one another ) there will be
turmoil in the land and great corruption".
(Surat
al-Anfal: 73)
This is a heavy
responsibility upon the believers, each of whom must
strictly avoid contributing to such evil consequences. It is
time to stop concerning ourselves over self-centred problems
and to seriously strive for the good of other people. The
majority of people read the stories about prophets and the
lives of their companions in details, appreciate and praise
the moral perfection they displayed, and talk of their
courage and astuteness, their moderate attitude, as well as
their resilience which did not bend even under severest
hardship. These are the noble and self-sacrificing people
God loved and to whom He gave the glad tidings of His
paradise as a reward. Throughout their lives, they were
unflinchingly honest and righteous. However, in our time,
the good should not only talk of these noble people, but
also follow in their footsteps. All conscientious people
should compete with one another in attaining moral
perfection like that of the prophets and the true believers
who accompanied them. Otherwise, every conscientious person
will be held responsible for all the cruelty, corruption,
conflict and wars he witnessed in this world. This point is
also stated in many sayings of Our Prophet (pbuh). One of
them reads:
If
anyone of you sees something objectionable, he should change
it with his hand, but if he cannot, he should change it with
his tongue, and if he cannot he should do it in his heart,
that being the weakest form of faith.[1]
In this
century, when the evil have intensified their activities,
and the destitute, women and children are in need of so much
help, it is essential that Muslims unite and support one
another through any adversity, trouble and under other
negative circumstances. In Surah Ali 'Imran, God informs us
about the sort of brotherhood Muslims should maintain and
the attitude a Muslim should adopt toward another Muslim:
"Hold
fast to the rope of God all together, and do not separate.
Remember God's blessing to you when you were enemies and He
joined your hearts together so that you became brothers by
His blessing. You were on the very brink of a pit of the
Fire and He rescued you from it. In this way God makes His
Signs clear to you, so that hopefully you will be
guided."
(Surah Ali 'Imran: 103)
Indifference
is Equal to Being a Member of the Alliance of the Evil
As we have
discussed earlier, fear of the reactions of the evil may
lead to indifference to unjust practises. However, this is
not the attitude assumed by people of conscience. This
attitude is typical of those who are blindly addicted to
this world and who chase after short-lived worldly
interests.
Those who are
hesitant to join the side of the good need to know that
their silence and indifference will add to the corruption
experienced today all over the world. For instance, if the
poor and innocent are massacred in one corner of the world,
and the people who claim to be good keep silent and watch it
from a distance, they would actually be on the side of the
cruel ones. Those who remain silent for fear of the cruelty
and possible harm of the evil cannot hope to be rewarded in
the hereafter as those who displayed patience.
For example,
the people of the Prophet Moses (as) and his brother the
prophet Aaron (as) abandoned them to their enemies. Only
because of their fear of disbelievers, they became so
insensitive that they deserted a man who devoted all his
life to the way of God, put his life into jeopardy to save
the oppressed, left behind an opulent life in the Pharaoh's
palace, strove for the good pleasure of God, and stood
bravely against the most cruel man in history. Furthermore,
the Prophet Moses (as) and the prophet Aaron (as) were men
of courage and faith who resisted all this calamity and
hardship only to save their people from the cruelty of the
Pharaoh and the torment in hell. The contemptible and
cowardly attitude of the people of the Prophet Moses (as) is
revealed in the Qur'an as follows:
"Two men among those who were afraid, but whom God
had blessed, said, 'Enter the gate against them! Once you
have entered it, you will be victorious. Put your trust in
God if you are believers.' They said, 'We will never enter
it, Moses, as long as they are there. So you and your Lord
go and fight. We will stay sitting here.' He said, 'My Lord,
I have no control over anyone but myself and my brother, so
make a clear distinction between us and this deviant
people." (Surat al-Ma'ida: 23-25)
One point
deserves special mention here; the sincere and true
believers striving for the way of God receive His support,
whether they are alone or not. This is the promise of God to
believers. God makes this clear in the following verses:
"If you
do not help him, God did help him when the disbelievers
drove him out and there were two of them in the cave. He
said to his companion, 'Do not be despondent, God is with
us.' Then God sent down His serenity upon him and reinforced
him with troops you could not see. He made the word of the
disbelievers under most. It is the word of God which is
uppermost. God is Almighty, All-Wise."
(Surat at-Tawba:
40)
"Before
you We sent other Messengers to their people, and they too
brought them the Clear Signs. We took revenge on those who
did evil; and it is Our duty to help the believers."
(Surat ar-Rum: 47)
This being the
case, taking every opportunity to support the alliance of
the good with one's best effort is vitally important to
attain a blissful afterlife for those who say "I am a
conscientious and good person". God's Messenger, the
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), also stated that this will have a
reward in the hereafter for a believer:
Whoever removes
an anxiety of the world from a believer, God will remove an
anxiety on the Day of Resurrection from him. Whoever makes
it easy for someone in difficulty, God will make it easy for
him in the world and the Next Life.[2]
In the Qur'an,
God informs us that those who turn their backs to the good
in times of trouble, or do nothing when they are oppressed,
will say "Weren't we with you?", when the good
will attain felicity and when their rightness will be made
clear to everyone:
"Those
who anticipate the worst for you say, 'Were we not with
you?' Whenever you gain a victory from God, but if the
disbelievers have a success they say, 'Did we not have the
upper hand over you and yet in spite of that keep the
believers away from you?' God will judge between you on the
Day of Rising. God will not give the disbelievers any way
against the believers." (Surat an-Nisa': 141)
In such a
circumstance, impartiality would not be an acceptable
attitude. On the contrary, as mentioned in the verses above,
it is a trait peculiar to hypocrites.
In the face of
such cruelty, everyone claiming to be among the good must
give all the support they can offer. In this regard, they
should first make clear with which party they side. That is
because dubious is the sincerity of a person who remains
silent about cruelty and fails to lend himself to the
oppressed. As stressed numerous times earlier in this book,
supporting the evil ones is not necessarily being side by
side with them. Remaining indifferent to them serves the
very same purpose. God warns man in the Qur'an thus:
"And incline not to those who do wrong, or the Fire
will seize you."
(Surah Hud: 113)
Being silent is
another form of supporting cruelty. In his works,
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi describes this situation as follows:
The
consent given to ignorance is no different than ignorance;
the consent given to error, ignorance and cruelty is
erroneous, ignorant and cruel.[3]
The consent
given to oppression is no different than oppression; anyone
who sides with the oppressor is an oppressor. Anyone who
tends to oppression is subjected to the verse "Do not
incline to those who do wrong".[4]
Therefore, if a
man is really a conscientious person, then he should
resolutely associate himself with the honest and the good. A
contrary attitude would imply being on the side of the evil.
If someone does not inform the police about a thief, we
cannot call him impartial. This man clearly supports the
burglar. Alternatively, watching someone who commits cruelty
and turning one's back to evil, saying, "If I try to
prevent him, he may also harm me" is simply support of
the oppressor. Besides, we must remember that one day one's
own house can also be broken by this same thief, or one may
be subjected to the same cruelty by the same oppressor. In
this sense, the virtuous thing to do is to involve oneself
in a concerted effort to prevent the cruelty of such a
person even though he does not threaten personal harm.
Otherwise, willingly or not, one would be co-operating with
the evil. God gives an account of the people on the Day of
Judgement who take sides with the good and who take sides
with the evil.
"Those
who perform good actions will receive better than them and
will be safe that Day from fear. Those who perform bad
actions will be flung head first into the Fire: 'Are you
being repaid for anything other than what you did?'"
(Surat an-Naml: 89-90)
References
[1]
Muslim, Sayings of Muhammad, by Prof. Ghazi Ahmad
[2]
Imam an-Nawawi, The Complete Forty Hadith, p. 125
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