A POST-MORAL WORLD
Societal degeneration followed by regeneration is the prophetic story.
Prophetic historiography indicates that morality has been slaloming since the beginning. As morality fizzled out, Divine intervention by prophetic guidance reoriented societies back to God and the truth.
The difference today is that since God placed the seal on prophethood, ethical standards compared to yesteryear have declined to the extent that virtue ethics have become alien to most.
We are witnessing the worst moral catastrophe of the modern era, and every honest witness with a modicum of intellect will attest that much of society clothes itself in threadbare morality.
No single community has been immune to the assault on ethics. However, ignorance of the ethical code may be the primary reason for its decline. How can we respond ethically to our world if we don’t have the operative ethics and vocabulary?
‘In the important decisions, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature’, said Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.
I agree with Freud but differ in how we realise our inner needs.
Freud believes we intuit them. I disagree. Intuition has value but is not the vehicle to higher wisdom and ethics and will never deliver edicts such as these: ‘You who believe, be steadfast in your devotion to God and bear witness impartially: do not let your hatred of others lead you away from justice but adhere to justice, for that is closer to awareness of God. Be mindful of God: God is well aware of all you do’ [5:8], ‘Do not consume your property wrongfully, nor use it to bribe judges, intending sinfully and knowingly to consume parts of other people’s property’ [2:188], and ‘Allah’s Messenger (s) said thrice, “Shall I not inform you of the biggest of the great sins?” We said, “Yes, O Allah’s Messenger (s)” He said, “To join partners in worship with Allah: to be undutiful to one’s parents.” The Prophet (s) sat up after he had reclined and added, “And I warn you against giving forged statement and a false witness; I warn you against giving a forged statement and a false witness.” The Prophet repeated the warning, and we thought he would not stop’ [Bukhari 5976].
Furthermore, modern living has so thoroughly denatured most of us that even if intuition were the source, we would not be able to access our primordial state.
For Muslims to fall victim to this malaise is an indictment of our migration from the two primary sources which deliver to us our ethics and fulfil our deepest needs: The Quran and sunnah (prophetic example).
If we wish to weather the decline, we must reanimate our lives with the Criterion (al-Quran) and the prophetic image and become the countervailing force in this post-truth, post-moral world.
But before we can access these sources repeatedly, we must activate the best habit in the world, which is also Islam’s first commandment: Read!
The Keys to Ethics Formula:
Read = Quran + Sunnah
THE ROAD TO CHARACTER
The road to character is indeed lonely.
But this is not how God intended it for us. In the chapter The City (90:17), God calls all the believers to assist each other in the highest virtues: patience, kindness, mercy and compassion, of which mercy is the highest.
The Prophet (s) promoted a culture of compassion and mercy. He (s) emphasised that it is essential to faith and critical for crafting human relationships.
During the reign of the Prophet (s), some Bedouin people visited him and asked, “Do you kiss your children?’ The Prophet (s) said: ‘Yes’. The Bedouin said: ‘But we, by Allah, never kiss (our children)’. The Prophet (s) said: ‘What can I do if Allah has taken away mercy from you?'”
In another Prophetic statement, the Prophet (s) said that Allah said, “I am the Rahman (Most Merciful One). I have created kinship, and I have given it part of my Name. So whosoever connects his family, I will connect ties with him, and whoever cuts himself from his family, I will cut My ties with him’ [Ibn Majah 3665].
These lessons invite us to advance on the road to character building with our kin and fellows, and always with mercy at the helm.
Current events are ominously painting a dystopian portrait: one eerily resembling Orwellianism.
Wikipedia defines the term Orwellian as ‘an adjective used to describe a situation, an idea, or a societal condition that 20th-century author George Orwell identified as destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, denial of truth (doublethink), and manipulation of the past, including the “unperson”—a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practised by modern repressive governments.’
To demonstrate the point, the President of the US, Donald J. Trump’s social media company Truth Social, resembles the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel 1984. The Ministry of Truth is a misnomer because, in reality, it is the Ministry of Propaganda. The Ministry upends reality and indoctrinates using the following slogan: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
In a recent post on Truth Social (Ministry of Lies), President Trump posted the following falsehood: ‘How could we be expected to go to South Africa for the very important G20 Meeting when Land Confiscation and Genocide is the primary topic of conversation? They are taking the land of white Farmers, and then killing them and their families. The Media refuses to report on this. The United States has held back all contributions to South Africa. Is this where we want to be for the G20? I don’t think so!’
We live in a post-truth political world where the President of the US can issue a post claiming a false genocide against whites in South Africa without any proof and deny a factual genocide of Palestinians in the face of ubiquitous and undeniable evidence.
The real genocide Apartheid Israel is committing is rejected because it does not align with the Masters of the Universe’s agenda.
Something is horribly wrong with the world, and there’s a sense that anything that undermines state fiction will be apprehended, just like in George Orwell’s 1984.
Until next week, InshaAllah
Zaahied Sallie
Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme
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