THEOLOGY DISTORTS MORALS

No wonder that such a sectarian and preponderantly theological approach should now and then teach us topsy-turvy morals.  Thanks to this approach, despoiling a whole people is meritorious if they are polytheists, but stealing booty once it is in the possession of Muslims is a mortal sin.  A slave of Muhammad died in a holy war, thus automatically earning a place in Paradise as a martyr.  But Muhammad saw �him in the Fire for the garment or cloak that he had stolen from the booty.� On hearing this, some people were greatly perturbed.  One of them who had presumably committed a similar act of pilfering, came to Muhammad �with a lace or two laces and said: Messenger of Allah, I found them on the day of Khaibar [name of a battle].  The Holy Prophet remarked: This is a lace of fire or two laces of fire� (210).  This means, as another text puts it, that like the two pieces of lace the man had stolen, there will be two columns of fire like unto these waiting for him in the hereafter.

To rob a whole people is piety, but to remove a paltry something from a looted treasure is moral depravity of a magnitude that deserves eternal fire.  Men driven by ordinary temptations indulge only in petty crimes and small lapses, but committing real enormities needs the aid of an ideology, a revelation, a God-ordained mission.

author: ram sawrup