Our God — Page 102
102 careful study will reveal that everyone in that nation would feel that if reformation requires harshness and punishment while forgiveness and mercy is detrimental, then one should resort to harshness as the appropriate punishment rather than forgiveness and mercy. In short, at times this knowledge of good and evil is also found at odds with a nation’s condition and indigenous traditions, and this is so because that is the part of fi t rah which may be suppressed by circumstances but can never die. That is why it is observed many a time that the family and national cir- cumstances mould someone’s disposition into a kind of a new nature that can be called a ‘second nature’. Even then, fundamen- tal nature, when stirred, erupts through the veils of the second nature like a pent up volcano. To summarise, indeed the circumstances and traditions lead to the development of a kind of nature, but that is a second nature and not the basic nature, or fi t rah. The latter has nothing to do with national circumstances, traditions, or experiences but is part of human constitution. Fi t rah, which has been bestowed with the knowledge of good and evil in an extremely judicious manner, is clear evidence that there is a rational Creator of this fi t rah who has inscribed this element in it with a definite purpose. The Holy Quran says: 1 اَهَمَهْلَاَف اَهَرْوُجُف َو اَهىٰوْقَت God has invested the fi t rah of every man with the knowledge of 1. S u rah ash-Shams, 91:9.