Mohamed Ousman
An Islamic society is modeled on the Qur’an and Sunnah. It has its precedent in the age of Allah’s Prophet and blooms from the depth of Islamic morals, from the core of Islamic ethics, and from the fiber of Islamic manners.
Allah is the one who extends moral values into social laws. Divine laws that take their social course are indispensable because the world cannot live in justice and peace if morality or the belief in morality remains abstract and notional.
Not only is Allah the only one recognized in that capacity but, in addition, the laws He gives are fine-tuned within a flowing system, otherwise referred to as the shari‘ah. And all these divine laws occupy their functional position within a divine value system that is meant to be practical and durable.
There is a notion in the secular world that if you can break the law and get away with it, then do it. This notion or idea cannot exist in an Islamic milieu because the public conscience is deeply embedded in a sense of what is right and what is wrong. No person can hide from their moral self or from Allah.
Even the Ansar, who supported Allah’s din and His Prophet, with all merits in their favor could not avert the watchful eye of Allah when they tried to accuse an innocent Jew of wrongdoing. When they, who gave Muhammad (pbuh) a safe haven from persecution and threat of death, backpedaled on the principle of justice, Allah told his Prophet to not stand up, even for them.
Some Ansaris thought they could get away with “dumping on a Jew” if no one knew about it. What they should have known is that Allah knew about it, therefore, they could never have gotten away with it. These tricksters failed the first lesson of taqwa: they thought they could get away with a crime if the legal process could not catch up with them. A conscientious Muslim knows that he is already caught because moral accountability is something no sane person can run away from.
This heightened awareness of Allah’s power causes man to cease doing what is wrong even when he thinks he can get away with it as far as people are concerned. Taqwa is not people-specific; it is Allah-specific. Therefore, if one cannot hide anything from Allah, then he cannot get away with anything, even though he may be able to hide it from people and their legal system. Thus, a society cannot survive by laws alone and a legal system itself cannot survive without this element of taqwa.
This series of articles was based on The Ascendant Qur’an: Realigning Man to the Divine Power Culture by the award winning mufassir, Imam Muhammad Al Asi.
