Living The Quran
Freedom
Al-Zumar (The Crowds) - Chapter 39: Verse 41  "We have revealed to you the Book in truth. Whoever decides to be guided by it does so to his own credit. Whoever goes astray, does so to his own discredit. O Muhammad, you cannot do more than to convey and warn."
The social order of Islam is free. If it is built by force, or if it executes its programs through coercion of the people, the social order would lose its Islamicity. Regimentation may well be necessary, but it can be legitimate only if it is restricted to the area of implementation. Prior to that, Islam requires shura (mutual consultation) on the very instituting of regimentation which can, at any rate, only be temporary and pertinent to specific projects. Where regimentation is the rule and coercion is recoursed to on principle, the outcome may well be a successful actualization of the divine pattern, but it is an actualization whose value is utilitarian, not moral. For it to be moral, it would have to be entered into by its subject voluntarily, as a free decision taken out of personal commitment to the value, or divine pattern in question. Were humans like angels, incapable of evil, their deeds would fulfill every divine desire or imperative, but they would not be moral. Throughout the heaven and earth, the will of God is actualized with the necessity of natural law; the creatures of heaven and earth are not free to do or not to do. Hence, their actualization is not moral. Only man's is moral, because only he is free before the divine imperative. To cause humans to actualize value, if it cannot mean to coerce them into such actualization, must mean to persuade them to do so of their own accord. This means that for value-actualization to be moral, it has to mean no more than teaching and convincing humans that values are values, that divine commandments are the desirable patterns. This makes of the social order of Islam a seminar or school on a large scale where the business of government and leadership is to teach, to educate, to convince, to persuade, to enlighten and to guide. Compiled From:
"Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life" - Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi, pp. 110, 111 |
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