Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues — Page 115
Social Peace 115 Islam treats this question more comprehensively. The primary stress is on the elders of the family to minimise the social waste so that more goodness than evil is contributed towards society. Secondly, Islam fixes the responsibility on society to launch, individually as well as collectively, a holy war against evil, not with the help of the sword and restrictive legislation, but more so by constant admonition, advice and wise counsel. Admonition and persuasion with patience is the best instrument, according to the Holy Quran, to cleanse the society of social evils: Let there be among you a body of men who are always devoted to admonishing people to do good and who invite to goodness, and enjoin equity and dissuade people from indulging in evil. And it is they who shall prosper, (i. e. such societies shall survive. *). 41 It should not be inferred from the aforementioned verse that the Islamic approach of the maintenance of public health and well-being is entirely non-governmental and the state has no part to play in it. Of course, the areas of legislation and its application are the prerogatives of states. But what I have been trying to emphasise is merely the fact that according to Islam, the state machinery alone is inadequate to suppress, discourage or minimise crime. Once criminal tendencies are permitted to grow and flourish in homes and societies in general, the best a government can do is to wipe out the symptoms from time to * The word mufli hu n here could also be translated as those who are fittest for survival.