Women (Al-Nisa’)

Commentary

(a) Living along with others is a need felt by every human being. It is this need that creates the nation or the community. A man has his strength enhanced a thousand times by association with his own community. However, something which initially came into existence as a human need for social cohesion, gradually takes on the status of a social religion. The community or the nation becomes a goal in itself. This leads to the mentality, ‘My community right or wrong. It is my community, whether based on truth or falsehood.’ Thus people consider their own circle as important and that of others as unimportant. It is considered that a man belonging to their own circle, even if he is in the wrong, must be supported, while another associated with a different group or community, though right and justified, receives no support. A group with this mentality can be said to have taken communal expediencies and group bias as the criteria by which to judge right and wrong. On the contrary one should regard God’s command as the standard by which to make judgements. If someone errs, he must be checked without prejudice or favouritism. If someone stands for truth, he must be supported—even though associated with another group. Even in a situation where two persons are involved, one from one’s own group and the other from some other group, matters must be looked into on the basis of truth and untruth, ignoring all other considerations. One should always associate oneself with the truth. (a) Abandoning the truth is like abandoning oneself. A man is dishonest to himself before he is dishonest to someone else. This is so because, in the hearts and minds of every human being, God has implanted a conscience as His representative. Whenever any individual intends to go against the truth, he is stopped by this invisible representative of God. He has first to suppress and ignore this inner voice, and only then is it possible for him to leave the path of justice for that of injustice. All too often he lends support to some erring person due to importance having been attached to him. Social relations and expediencies lead him to turn a blind eye to the other’s misdeeds and, therefore, knowing full well that the other is not on the right path, he becomes his supporter. Refusal to distance himself from a person known to be following the path of untruth happens at the cost of distancing himself from God. When one supports untruth to seek the esteem of another human being in this world, one loses God’s company in the Hereafter.