Reward and Punishment
Al-Risala (English), December 1987, p. 17
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
Reward and Punishment
1987 12 December 17-18 Reward and Punishment (759) The ugly and ill-tempered hero of *Dostoievsky’s novel, “Crime and Punishment’ murders an old woman without heirs in order to further his education by means of her ever-increasing but unavailed of wealth. The other characters in the novel, and, of course, the reader, cannot but hold him guilty of a heinous crime. The old woman’s wealth was as tempting to the murderer as the flesh of a cleer is to a lion. But when a lion kills a deer to eat its flesh, a certain amount of sentimental concern may be shown, but no one would seriously raise this kind of killing as a moral issue. No one would feel the urge to frame laws prohibiting such acts. On the contrary, when a man commits a similar offence, society as a whole joins in protest and efforts are made to ensure that the murderer does not go unpunished.
This is because man, although often as instinctive in conduct as the predatory animals, is superior in moral status to them, in that he is capable of distinguishing between right from wrong, and is therefore expected by society to act in accordance both with the laws of the land and the dictates of his own conscience. If he fails to do so, he must expect, in his capacity as an ethical being, to be brought before a court of law.
The guilty of conscience, however, are not invariably brought to justice. This is because there exists no temporal court, with an all-seeing eye, which can unfailingly dispense justice on all the myriad occasions on which it is warranted. At best, the courts set up by human beings can try only a certain number of identifiable offenders, and many are the wrongdoers who go scot-free because their crimes are never discovered, because they are able to cover up their offences, because they find loopholes in man-made laws or because they are able to use their wealth in order to corrupt. Justice is only partially obtainable in this world: absolute justice is attainable only in the life hereafter.
Take the case of 34 year old Gerson Viloria, a Philippino Treasury clerk, who had a case registered against him for forgery. After lengthy court proceedings, he was held guilty in 17 cases by the judge, Mr. Romeo M Escareal. Since Philippine law lays down 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for each such crime committed, the accused found himself sentenced to 170 years Of rigorous imprisonment and a penalty of $ 4,625. If he was unable to pay the penalty, his term of punishment was to be extended. (The Times of India, 9 November, 1979).
* Dostoievsky, a celebrated Russian novelist (1821-1881).
The culprit at the time of sentencing was 34 years of age. Even if he lived to a ripe old age, there would still be about a hundred years left for him to serve. He would never, therefore, in the eyes of the law, fully expiate his crimes. Our world is too limited by human mortality for there to be any possibility of total justice.
In a similar case in Thailand, a case was filed against a policewoman, a Mrs. Phenphanchong Imsap, who had been posted in the frontier region of Pelchabun where she was in charge of the registration office for foreigners. The court found her guilty of earning $ 25,000 illegally over a period of 17 years by accepting bribes for registration. She was then sentenced to 1000 years of rigorous imprisonment, with no possibility of being released on parole or being granted mercy. In the judge’s view such punishment would serve as a preventive to others.
Clearly, this policewoman was not going to stay alive for one thousand years to serve her full term, but since it was felt that a criminal’s punishment should be in direct proportion to the magnitude of his crime, this verdict expressed the court’s desire for total justice.
In the present world, no judge, however well-intentioned, can ever hope for anything more than partial justice in a large proportion of the cases he presides over. If, to expiate his crimes, a criminal must serve a prison term of 1000 years, his death is going to provide him with an escape route. This inexorable reality calls for the existence of an unlimited world in which man is granted so long a life that he can never escape the full consequences of his deeds. Since, in human terms, this is an impossibility in the present world, we must seek true justice in the eternity of the after-life.
