Daily Times

Allah Al Mighty has outlined several events of the near and distant past in The Quran about the perished nations who were involved in societal crimes. While the disobedience of the Prophets of Allah was a common reason, the societal crimes also included unethical and unnatural practices and even cheating in measurements. In this short article, certain ills and violations of Allah’s Good Orders will be reminded, whereas, in Part II, a detailed analysis of our societal ills and possible recovery measures will be discussed.

Despite stern warnings from Allah that societies will perish if they do not adhere to societal values as ordained by Allah in The Quran, people from different races and at different times continue to ignore these warnings, either deliberately or out of ignorance. Interestingly, ignorance of Allah’s Directives about societal values is not pardonable anymore after these were revealed in The Quran.

Allah mentions in The Quran that once the direction had arrived and the human being had been given the freedom to choose right and wrong, the issue of being ignorant has been settled. Likewise, the deliberate defaulters also will have no space for an argument about the violations of societal values and norms that have been repeatedly defined in The Quran.

Patience, charity, forgiveness, and keeping promises are a few of the societal values that have simply vanished from our society.

Present-day societies have a fair amount of knowledge about these fundamental values and norms as ordained by Allah, mainly due to the abundance of information sources. Since these values relate to our daily living and lifestyles, these range from being righteous to equality, truthful to caring towards parents, neighbours, animals, women, and children, justice to rightful witnessing, honesty in doing business to fairness in inheritance distribution among the children. Every aspect of daily life has been deliberated upon in The Quran and clear directives are available for the people to practice regardless of religious affiliations, caste, and colour.

Unfortunately, the violations of the fundamental values which are similar to nearly all religions are deliberate and perhaps due to the very nature of humans: greed for power, selfishness, egoism, and unfairness.

Without going too far away, let’s examine the ills of our society which are punishable as per the Quranic teachings.

The first and perhaps the most disliked violation by Allah in our society is injustice (Al Quran 5: 8). Allah has insisted on the essentiality of justice and fairness in society for the people to live with dignity and honour. Allah has laid great emphasis on the rightfulness of the witnesses when required for justice, even if it goes against your dear and near ones.

If we look around we find that most of the societal ills relate to the gross violations of Allah’s Diktats on justice and fairness. There is little doubt and no justification for a weak judicial system which is rated at rock bottom in the global ranking. If only our judicial system starts to deliver justice to the needy, most societal ills will be taken care of. However, a sincere and dedicated effort will be needed to accomplish that goal from the position we are presently in. That does not mean that it is not doable.

While each societal value carries an equal weight, fairness and equality also stand out like justice. Allah has directed you to be fair in your business dealings either with partners or customers. Everybody must treated as equal regardless of caste and creed. An unequal treatment due to nepotism and personal interests will only earn the anger of Allah and no gains to the perpetrators. Once again we need to look inward. The gap between rich and poor is increasing with every passing moment and hence the unequalness in society has reached an alarming level. The people seem to lose hope in the governance systems and the institutions that are responsible for looking after people’s daily affairs. Like the judiciary, bureaucracy also needs to understand that they are public servants who get paid from the taxpayer’s money. However, the bureaucracy in Pakistan behaves like a master with every common Pakistani who reaches out to them to meet his/her legal requirements. Yet, bureaucracy will not change itself until the judiciary changes gears because the fear of punishment can bring changes in the attitude of the master.

Likewise, due emphasis is given to the treatment of the parents, neighbours, children, women, and even the animals and plants, with the utmost care (Al Quran 7: 199, 17: 23). On the day of judgment, perhaps we will not be able to answer the questions related to such violations.

Patience, charity, forgiveness, and keeping promises are a few of the societal values that have simply vanished from our society, thus causing discontent and disconnect among different segments of society.

In Part II, we will, In ShaAllah, discuss possible remedial actions to recover from the present-day morass that our society has fallen from the period of a glorious past.

(To Be Concluded)

The writer of this article has authored three international books: “Nuclear Deterrence and Conflict Management Between India and Pakistan” “South Asia Needs Hybrid Peace” and “Understanding Sun Tzu and the Art of Hybrid War.”