THE CONCEPTION OF SIN IN ISLAM

THE CONCEPTION OF SIN IN ISLAM

M. Aftab-ud- Din Ahmad

As the idea of sin is fundamentally connected with the idea of evil, it is necessary to know the attitude of Islam towards the question of evil. Islam does not recognize any absolute existence of evil. There is no evil as such either in the mind of man or in the outside world. Speaking of the objects of the creation the Holy Qur'an says:

رَبَّنَا مَا خَلَقْتَ هَٰذَا بَاطِلًا سُبْحَانَكَ فَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ 

Our Lord! Thou hast not created all this in vain. (Ale-Imran: 191)

 In other words, everything in creation has a purpose to fulfill. This purpose is further explained in the words:

We have made subservient to you all that is in the heavens and the earth.

 That is to say, everything in creation is to assist man in his self-unfoldment, in attaining the object of his life.

And as for man's own constitution, we are told:

We have created man with the best of potentialities.

 Thus there is nothing basically wrong in human nature. All the faculties of body and mind are potentially good.

 Neither is man inherently disobedient to God and His Commandments. Thus speaking of his inner nature God says in the Holy Qur'an:

I have breathed My spirit into it. If it is inspired by God, it cannot be vicious in nature. Further with reference to the original natural response of the human nature to the Divine call, God describes the position in the form of a dialogue. It is written:

 Am I not your Lord? They {the souls} said, ”Yes" l which means that so far as the inner nature is concerned every soul is ready to obey the commandments of the Lord.

 Proper measure of natural faculty

Sin is thus no inalienable part of human nature. Now if there is nothing wrong in things and acts as they are and if there is no sin in the mind of man either, wherefrom come sin and evil? The Holy Qur'an has a wonderful and perfectly satisfying reply to this question. It lays down the principle that everything in the outside world and every faculty of body and mind has an ordained measure wherein it is good and beneficial and that evil or sin consists in either deficiency or excess in this appointed measure:

 Who created everything, then ordained for it a measure.

 Further:

 And He made the measure that you may not be inordinate in respect of measure.

 And again,

 And keep up the balance with equity and do not make the measure deficient.

 Thus everything in nature, every emotion, every faculty of body and mind, is good unless it is used in a wrong measure. But the moment one commits any inordinacy or deficiency, one becomes guilty of sin and acquires evil.

 It is the persistent and unfailing use of the proper measure that constitutes the right path (Siratal Mustaqim) spoken of in Muslim Lord's prayer Al-Fatiha.

 Any deficiency in this measure leads one to Maghzubiyah or the state of being visited by the wrath of God. Whereas any excess or extravagance in this matter opens the door for Dzalalah or the state of going astray. Against both these errors the Holy Qur'an warns its followers in the very concluding words of this immutable prayer for light, because both of them lead to sin and perdition.

 The wisdom of the Holy Qur'an in respect of this rule of measure has been testified by the sciences of Physics and Chemistry, Medicine and Dietetics. The powers of observation and experiment in man enables him to discover the right measure of things in these realms. We can rely on our intellect to a great extent in this matter. We say to a great extent advisedly; because experience shows that there are rules of hygiene and medicine which have eluded the scrutiny of the most advanced intellect. The subject of alcoholic drinks, for instance, has divided the doctors of medicine into two antagonistic groups, but with the latest and most complete religion, we mean Islam, it is a clear case of prohibition admitting of no relaxation. Some of the delicate points of personal hygiene, regarded as preliminaries in religious cleanliness, are still debatable questions with the experts of Medical science. These include certain questions of sex relationships, matters of common knowledge among the Muslims.

 Thus, when the intellectual powers of man are proved insufficient even in the physical plane of existence, it must prove much more defective in the social and moral spheres — spheres far subtler for intellectual comprehension.

 Super-intellectual light

We must need some super-intellectual light to comprehend the laws working in these planes. In other words, we need the light of revelation, even revealed Dispensation. The claim of the Holy Qur'an in this respect is very striking. It touches the rest of the question. The Qur'an claim to be an exposition of the Nature made by God on which He has made man.

 Indeed, the only function which revealed religion is expected to perform and to perform satisfactorily is to enunciate and define the laws of our mind in relation to our social and moral behaviour, and it is this that the Holy Qur'an undertakes to set forth. It gives us the proper measure of every social and moral action — the right occasion for and the proper manner of displaying each social and moral faculty with which we are endowed.

 But while we must have revealed rules for our guidance in social and moral affairs, such rules should neither" go against the canons of reasoning nor should they be belied by experience. No doubt, revelation is a higher light than reason but a higher light supplements but never nullifies the lower light. lf, therefore, any rule claiming to be revealed contradicts any established rule of reasoning or nullifies experience, it cannot be a genuine piece of revelation. The manner and method of displaying any particular faculty of body and mind as prescribed by religion must appear reasonable on the face of it and prove beneficial when adopted in practice.

 It is a well-established fact that the law of measure is the very basis of our existence. A wrong measure makes even the most essential thing not only injurious but sometimes even fatal to our existence. The sunbeams, so essential to our physical health and vigour, cause sunstroke in the wrong measure. And what is true of things physical is equally true of things moral. Even such a highly valued act as speaking the truth, if exhibited on the wrong occasion and out of a bad motive, will undoubtedly be classed as a sinful act. Whereas non-exhibition of such an apparently evil passion as anger at certain moments of importance, constitutes positive sin. If a man's blood does not boil to see an innocent man oppressed before his very eyes or a chaste woman outraged in his presence, he must be regarded as guilty of the vilest sin.

 In Islam misuse of anything of creation, even of water, or any organ of the body or any faculty of the mind constitutes sin, whereas their proper use and right application is an act of virtue.

 Islamic hell equals undeveloped moral faculties.

 Quite in consonance with this view of virtue and vice the goal of man's spiritual struggle is characterized as falah, meaning literally ‘proper cultivation’, secondly success. The expression is significant. So many faculties of our mind and body stand in need of cultivation, and cultivation presupposes method and measure consequently what is called sin is only the adoption of a wrong measure in the exercise of our faculties and this results in retarded growth with consequent suffering implied in the term ‘hell’. Islamic hell is thus as state of undeveloped moral faculties. It is painful in as much as all suppressed or paralysed faculties cause pain and disability. And the cause of this defective growth is invariably the misuse or misapplication of the faculty concerned. There is another point of view from which the question of sin has been considered in Islam. Acts of virtue has been called Ma'ruf, i.e., such as are recognized by the nature of man, whereas acts that are sinful are called munkar, i.e., such as are repulsive to or are disowned by human nature. The nature of man may be unaware of a certain act of virtue but, the moment it is appraised of it; it will recognize it as good and beneficial. Similarly, one may go on committing a sinful act in ignorance. But once it is pointed out to him that it is sinful and injurious, his inner voice will agree that it is so and he will be unable to repeat it without some compunction and uneasiness of his soul.

 In short, the question of virtue and sin is a clear one. It is defined by true religion, supported by reason and verified by experience and what is more, its demarcations receive recognition by the intuitive sense of man.

 A false philosophy of a false civilization has been at pains to confuse even such a clear issue as this. But it is a vain attempt. Its attempts may succeed only so far as there is want of any clear light of religion. But where true religion happens to shine in full brilliance of revealed truth such attempts are bound to fail. Whenever such a religion makes it appearance people can no longer be persuaded to believe that there is no such thing as sin, that there is no rule of moral action, that the idea of sin is a product of convention. As we have seen even common sense ridicules such a view of sin. If there are inviolable measures appointed for things physical, it is only reasonable to assume, to say the least about it, that there must be similar inexorable laws in matters social and moral.

 Religion as the foundation of human laws

 In fact, all administrative laws tacitly assume such a system of law warranting their own experience. The English Law is still supposed to be based on the Ten Commandments. But although all administrative laws have, more or less, a religious back-ground, the former are not generally faithful to the latter. Nay, some systems of law with avowed religious foundation gradually slip off in actual practice to secular channels with the passage of time. And in so far as they do so they drag people imperceptibly in the quagmire of social disruption.

 Indeed, social peace and harmony in a nation depends on the measure of allegiance the administrative laws pay to the rules laid down by religion. If the two are identical the Kingdom of

God or Khilafat as it is called in Islam may be regarded as ushered in a given nation. An instance of the identity of the administrative law with the code of religion may be found in the legislation for suicide. All civilized laws agree in denouncing this act as a crime, while all religions agree in decrying it as sin. But this kind of identity becomes an exception rather than rule in all societies materially advanced. A glaring instance of such a departure is the attitude of the administrative laws in all progressive countries, towards the question of sexual misconduct. Whereas all religions hold it to be a major sin, our modern administrative laws have no punishment prescribed for this crime as such. It is such divergences which lie at the root of the present social chaos in the world. It is the reluctance of the secular mind to recognize in their entirety the measures defined by religion for faculties of body and mind at the time of their exhibition that lies at the bottom of such divergences.

 Sin is the violation of Divine law.

 It may be said in defence of this delinquency that the official religion of the leading nations of the world has very little of guidance in it for the advanced and complicated social life of our modern times. But the blame again goes to these people. They should have considered the latest revealed restatement of religion and compared it with the one which they call their own and which has actually outlived its time Islam, the latest statement of the eternal principles of religion should have been consulted before religion could have been justifiably pronounced as incapable of furnishing us with light and guidance in our social affairs. In any case we have to be enlightened on the immutable laws that work subtly on the social and moral planes of our existence and we must base our administrative laws on that knowledge if we are not to experience a social collapse in the near future. As a preliminary to this we must acknowledge that there are such laws actually in existence, that ‘sin’ implying a violation of those laws, is not an empty word and that we can bring about true social justice only if we recognize those laws and make sincere efforts to embody them in our administrative laws. In other words, we can get at the true social laws only when we have the knowledge of the whole range of social sins and we make our definition of crimes conformable to these sins. This is sin in its social aspects as viewed by Islam.