Forty Gems of Beauty — Page 102
102 giving rise to mutual suspicion, dissension and discord. The deceptiveness and fraudulence which characterises si h r in common parlance are too well known to need further exposition. Also, si h r means mischief and disruption and the evil of si h r in this shape is a manifest and clear feature, and in the following paragraph, the reference to murder bears a supporting testimony to it. The third evil to which attention has been invited is murder without just cause. Islam lists murder among serious offences and prescribes death for murder with intent, which can be changed into blood money compensation only when the parties, as well as the concerned authority, agree. The wisdom underlying this concession is that if the affected families of the parties hope for a true reconciliation, they may be saved thereby from the continuing cycle of vendetta. The stipulation of “ without just cause” with “ murder” has been appended as an exception to such killings as take place in war or as a result of due process of law. Murder without “ good and just cause” also applies to murders committed by people who lose their heads and fanatics who kill someone in the belief that they are meting out a deserving punishment, without the sanction of a legal court, in defiance of the prescribed course of law. Islam strictly forbids such high-handedness and forbids taking the law into one’s own hands. For without such an injunction, peace of the land could not be maintained. In fact, Islam considers “ murder without just cause” a most heinous crime, so much so that the Holy Quran observes: W 5 W S | m6V W X+F" 3 W YN