The Essence of Islam – Volume I — Page 376
376 which will destroy them. . Essence of Islam-1 [Chashma-e-Masīḥī, Rūḥānī Khaza'in, Vol. 20, pp. 346-347]. We had raised an objection to the current Gospels that the Gospels do not provide for the development of all man's faculties and that even the portions of them relating to moral qualities are taken from the Torah. This caused great humiliation to the Christian priests. To this some Christians replied that:. Divine Books are concerned only with morals and that the punishment of offences is not appropriate for a Book of. God, inasmuch as offences should be punished according to changing circumstances which are unlimited and it is not proper that there should be a fixed law laying down penalties. Every penalty should be such as is in accord with the times and is helpful for the warning and restraint of offenders. Fixed penalties are not beneficial for the reform of people. In the same way, civil, criminal and revenue laws should not be fixed and rigid, as they would create difficulties under changing circumstances. For instance, they might adversely affect commercial conditions which have become current and cannot be avoided, or a penal law might not be helpful where offenders have become accustomed to one kind of punishment, or may not be amenable to it. . I would say that this type of thinking proceeds from people who have not studied the Holy Qur'an with care. The directions contained in the Holy Qur'an with regard to civil, criminal and revenue matters are of two types. One, which lays down the details of punishment or of procedure, and the other which only prescribes the principle and does not lay down any specific direction. The purpose of the latter is to provide guidance for the meeting of new circumstances. For instance, at one place the Holy. Qur'an lays down the rule of a tooth for a tooth and an