The Guidance of the Prophet

for our bodies, drink is the mother of evil, for our thinking faculties, the mother of evil is biased reporting. It corrupts our thoughts with negative ideas and then one evil follows another. Pervasive Evil Chapter 8 of the Quran states: Beware of an affliction that will not smite exclusively those among you who have done wrong. . (8:25) In this verse of the Quran fitna (affliction) does not mean divine fitna, but human fitna . That is, the provocative situation (fitna) which is produced on account of the unwise actions of one man or of a group. When such a situation prevails in a society, then the brunt of the resultant anarchic situation will have to be borne not only by those members who were responsible for it, but by the whole of society in general. Let us take the example of a place of worship belonging to nonMuslims where they organize a programme in which a loudspeaker is used. Now if some Muslims disapprove of this, they approach the organizers and ask them to switch off the loudspeaker. But the organizers do not listen to them. This refusal angers the Muslims and they destroy the loudspeaker system. In this and other such cases, the story will not end there. Such news spreads like wildfire, and the whole community thus affected, reacting violently, will turn against the Muslim community. Now their violent retaliation will be directed against not only those who destroyed the loudspeaker, but also against every member of the whole community. Here is another example to illustrate this point. Let us suppose some non-Muslims lead a procession through a locality which houses a mosque. Now a group of Muslims gather to demand that the route of the procession be changed, so that the mosque will not be dishonoured. When the non-Muslims refuse to do so, the Muslims demand that the police intervene and get the route changed. But the police fail to do so. This further angers the Muslims and they hurl stones at the police. Provoked, the police open fire to scatter the Muslims. This shooting affects both kinds of people, those who took part in throwing stones at the police, and also those who did not. The same is the case in those places where a similar situation