The Qur’an For All Humanity
God’s Command
~ 29 ~
should go hand in hand with justice. In human
dealings, generosity and compassion, going beyond
the call of legality, should be brought into play.
Man should have the courage to be willing to
receive less than the share due to him and to give
others more than their share.
His third duty is to respect the rights of relatives.
That is to say that a man should be as sensitive to
his relatives’ needs as he is to his own. No man of
resources should think that his wealth is to be spent
only on himself and his immediate family. To his
list of responsibilities he should add the paying of
dues to relatives.
Three vices prohibited in this verse are indecency,
wickedness and oppression. Indecency means
flouting the dictates of one’ s conscience in order to
indulge in known moral evils. Wickedness
(munkar),
the very opposite of virtue
(ma’ruf),
consists of those
practices disapproved of in every society as failing to
measure up to moral standards. Oppression — the
tyrannising and coercion of others, is a serious
deviation from the path ordained by God.
