for our bodies, drink is the mother of evil, for our thinking faculties,
the mother of evil is biased reporting. It corrupts our thoughts with
negative ideas and then one evil follows another.
Pervasive Evil
Chapter 8 of the Quran states:
Beware of an affliction that will not smite exclusively those
among you who have done wrong. . (8:25)
In this verse of the Quran
fitna
(affliction) does not mean divine
fitna
, but human
fitna
. That is, the provocative situation (
fitna
)
which is produced on account of the unwise actions of one man or of
a group. When such a situation prevails in a society, then the brunt
of the resultant anarchic situation will have to be borne not only
by those members who were responsible for it, but by the whole of
society in general.
Let us take the example of a place of worship belonging to non-
Muslims where they organize a programme in which a loudspeaker
is used. Now if some Muslims disapprove of this, they approach
the organizers and ask them to switch off the loudspeaker. But the
organizers do not listen to them. This refusal angers the Muslims
and they destroy the loudspeaker system. In this and other such
cases, the story will not end there. Such news spreads like wildfire,
and the whole community thus affected, reacting violently, will turn
against the Muslim community. Now their violent retaliation will be
directed against not only those who destroyed the loudspeaker, but
also against every member of the whole community.
Here is another example to illustrate this point. Let us suppose
some non-Muslims lead a procession through a locality which houses
a mosque. Now a group of Muslims gather to demand that the
route of the procession be changed, so that the mosque will not be
dishonoured. When the non-Muslims refuse to do so, the Muslims
demand that the police intervene and get the route changed. But
the police fail to do so. This further angers the Muslims and they
hurl stones at the police. Provoked, the police open fire to scatter
the Muslims. This shooting affects both kinds of people, those who
took part in throwing stones at the police, and also those who did
not.
The same is the case in those places where a similar situation
38
The Dawn Over Kashmir
