Absolute Justice, Kindness and Kinship — Page 392
The Teaching of Justice and Kindness Regarding Relatives 383 In both these verses, the word 'murder' does not imply physical murder. It is a metaphorical expression meaning, among other things, that you should not bring them up in a manner which is tantamount to their spiritual murder. Again it is implied, do not exercise any family planning fearing you will be overburdened by providing for them for the same reason as has been mentioned before viz. , that Allah provides for them as well as for you. In this verse, Allah prepares humans for a universal holy war against family planning in the latter days, where it is carried out for the fear of shortage of food. Sometimes people abort their children fearing poverty. Such abortion is mentioned here as killing of children. This has many implied meanings. The first right of as yet unborn children is that they should never be aborted for the fear of poverty. Unfortunately the world today is not only ignoring this right, but is taking every measure to oppose it. All these world- wide family planning schemes which are widely spread are a demonstration of the same. Some people erroneously believe that these verses apply only to the earlier times when some Arabs used to kill their children. This is certainly wrong. It does not refer to the Arab custom of murdering daughters which was never done for the fear of poverty. In their false pride, they thought that to give birth to daughters was shameful. This practice was only rarely exercised by an extremely small number of Arabs. Had it been a