FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE***FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE Al Maidah (The Repast) - Chapter 5: Verse 92 Obey God, and obey the Messenger, and be ever on your guard. But if you turn away, then know that Our Messengers only duty is a clear delivery of the message [entrusted to him]. Complete social justice cannot be assured, nor can its efficiency and permanence be guaranteed, unless it arises from an inner conviction of the spirit; it must be claimed by the individual, it must be needed by society; there must be a belief that it will serve the highest purpose of mankind. It must also rest upon some material reality to which the individual may cling while accepting the cost involved and being prepared to defend it. No man will claim justice by law unless he has first claimed it by instinct and by the practical methods that ensure the preservation of instinct. Similarly, society will not persevere with such legislations, even when it exists, unless there is a belief which demands it from within and practical measures which support it from without. It is these facts that Islam has in mind in all its ordinances and laws. There is a way to achieve the realization of the powers latent in human nature together with the elevation of that nature above submission to the demands of material necessity; it is even the soundest and the safest way. This is what Islam aims to do - to integrate the needs of the body and the desires of the spirit in one unity and to satisfy by freedom of conscience the inner instinct as well as practical reality. So it is not unmindful of either side of the question. Where equality has its roots in a profound freedom of the conscience as well as in law and its implementation, and if the instinct for it is powerful among the strong and the weak alike, then it will be accepted as a rise in status for the weak and for the strong as humility. It will join in the soul with a belief in Allah, and with the unity and mutual responsibility of the community; more, it will inculcate, a belief in the unity and solidarity of humanity. Such is the aim of Islam when it grants complete and absolute freedom to the human conscience. Compiled From: Social Justice in Islam - Syed Qutb, pp. 53, 54
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 03:59:31 +0000
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