Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 164
164 The Second Object of Religion Morals The second object of religion set out above is in fact a corollary of the first. A man who attains to a complete realization of God would naturally eschew immoralities and evils of all kinds and, conversely, the more a man is involved in vice the farther away from God he drifts. The Holy Quran says, 'Those who sin in ignorance,' 72 meaning that the real cause of sin is lack of true knowl- edge and realization of God, which is a self-evident truth. A sensible man will not knowingly thrust his hand into fire; he will not eat food which to his knowledge contains poison; he will not enter a house which he is certain is about to fall; he will not thrust his hand into the hole of a serpent; nor will he enter the den of a lion unarmed. Men being so much afraid of fire, poison, serpents, and lions, how can it be supposed that they would rush into and revel in vices and immoralities if they had a perfect realization of God and knew that these things were more deadly than poisons and more dangerous than serpents and lions? It is, therefore, clear that sin is the result of ignorance and lack of true reali- zation of God, and that a religion which leads to cer- tainty of faith and true realization of God will necessar- ily perfect the morals of its followers. But as the subject is in itself a vital and interesting one, and most people 72 Al-Nis a ’, 4:18.