Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues — Page 69
Social Peace 69 The direction of civilization, regardless of which region of the world or which era of human history, is always from the coarse to the refined. Human basic psychological urges, which work as underlying motive forces of human behaviour, remain unchangeable. What changes is the response to those changes. For instance, one’s hunger can be satiated by eating meat or vegetables. The quality and freshness of meat and vegetable varies. One can have them cooked and seasoned in so many ways or take them raw if one so prefers. As society develops, responses to the fundamental urges begin to evolve and become more and more refined and sophisticated. This process goes on and on, though its pace may be determined to a large extent by economic and political factors of the people. But the vanguard of a society always moves on—sometimes slowly, sometimes at a faster pace. When a civilization ripens or matures, over-sophistication and some other detrimental phenomenon begin to reverse the tide of this progressive trend. In decadent societies, the direction is reversed from the refined to the coarse. This is a subject of wide application and requires detailed study. I regret that it is beyond the scope of today’s address but I would like to elaborate a few points. When societies begin to degenerate or become top-heavy and lopsided with over-sophistication, they begin to topple down and return to the same crude animal answer to their urges. This may not be visible in every social and cultural activity, but it is almost always pronounced in human relation and style in the pursuit of pleasure. A brief study of man in his responses to sex will demonstrate the case in point. Around the basic instinct to reproduce through sexual regeneration, pleasures are associated by nature in the entire animal Kingdom. What we find different in human society is a gradual