Enjoining good and forbidding wrong

Enjoining good and forbidding wrong (Arabic: ٱلْأَمْرُ بِٱلْمَعْرُوفِ وَٱلنَّهْيُ عَنِ ٱلْمُنْكَرِ, romanized: al-amru bi-l-maʿrūfi wa-n-nahyu ʿani-l-munkari) are two important duties imposed by God in Islam as revealed in the Quran and Hadith.

[3][4][5][6] Pre-modern Islamic literature describes pious Muslims (usually scholars) taking action to forbid wrong by destroying forbidden objects, particularly liquor and musical instruments are haram.

[7] In the contemporary Muslim world, various state or parastatal bodies (often with phrases like the "Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice" in their titles) have appeared in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia,[8] Nigeria, Malaysia, etc., at various times and with various levels of power,[9] to combat sinful activities and compel virtuous ones.

[17] Scholars have provided a number of reasons why the obvious reading of this verse is incorrect, such as that it refers not to the present but "to some future time when forbidding wrong will cease to be effective.

[19] According to historian Michael Cook (whose book Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought is the major English language source on the issue),[23][24] a slightly different phrase is used in a similar hadith -- 'righting wrong' (taghyir al-munkar) instead of 'forbidding wrong' (an-nahy ʿani-l-munkar) -- but "scholars take it for granted" that 'the two "are the same thing, ..."[25] Sunnis, Ibadis and Twelver (also called Imami) Shia schools of Islam "made extensive use of" the "schema" set out by this hadith [26] Phrases similar to forbidding evil and commanding good can be found examining texts of ancient Greek philosophers -- Stoic Chrysippus (d.207 BC) and Aristotle (d.322) -- and the founder the Buddha.

(Psalm 34:14) However, Michael Cook finds no "serious precedent" for use of the phrases "forbidding wrong" and "commanding right" in the literature of the immediate predecessors of Muhammad his companions, pre-Islamic Arabian traditions and poetry.

[31] Scholars opinions and ideas on forbidding wrong are found in legal literature such as collections of fatawas, in theological handbooks, monographs devoted to the subject, and in commentaries on the Qur'an and Hadith.

[33] It could be said that some Sunni works of jurisprudence do not specifically cover the topic of Forbidding Wrong, but Twelver (Ja'fari school of thought) scholars along with others among Zaydis and Ibadi branches of Islam do.

"[36] He wrote: Every Muslim has the duty of first setting himself to rights, and then, successively, his household, his neighbours, his quarter, his town, the surrounding countryside, the wilderness with its Bedouins, Kurds, or whatever, and so on to the uttermost ends of earth.

[40][41] Scholars argue that free (non-slave) adult male Muslims are obliged to forbid wrongdoing, and that non-Muslims are excluded from the duty.

[42] However, scholars are generally "reluctant to restrict the range of those for whom forbidding wrong is a duty",[43] and so usually include two other groups not possessing the rights of free adult male Muslims—namely slaves[44] and women.

[55][56] In practice, as far as can be determined, the people who went around commanding and forbidding in pre-modern Islam, were "overwhelmingly scholars", according to Michael Cook.

According to Michael Cook, "a trend" in early exegesis (tafsir) indicated the duty referred to affirming the basic message of Islam—and so commanded only the "unity of God" and "veracity" of his prophet, and forbade polytheism and denial of Muhammad's prophethood.

[26] Al-Ghazali believed the use of a group of armed fighters to combat wrongdoing did not require the permission of the ruler if good Muslims thought it necessary to escalate the fight that far.

[75] A step between use of the tongue and a "purely mental act" of the heart in fighting evil is showing disapproval by "range of behavior running from frowns to turning away from the offender to formally ostracising him (hajr)".

[77] In Islamic literature on the subject, an "ubiquitous theme" is attack on forbidden objects—the overturning of chessboards, the destruction of musical instrument and sacred trees, defacing of decorative images.

Cook writes that "according to a thirteenth-century geographer, a custom was observed each year in Gilan in the north of Iran, [whereby] scholars would seek permission from the ruler to command right.

[86] An argument for commanding right and forbidding wrong and against the concept of "minding ones own business" comes from Hanafi jurist `Ismat Allah of Saharanpur who writes: were it pleasing to God to leave people alone, He would not have sent prophets, nor established their laws, nor called to Islam, nor voided other religions, but would rather have left people to their own devices, untroubled by divine visitations; ...[87]The issue is relevant to situations scholars examined (and disagree on) where an enforcers saw what could be a "bottle of liquor or lute" hidden under a robe, or a man and woman that looked like they might be unmarried, or heard music coming from a home.

[91] (Cook questions whether this suggestion is a contemporary attack on "the entire apparatus of religious enforcement in the Islamic Republic" and influenced by "Western conceptions of rights".

[92][93][94] Some of the challenges to Al-Ghazali's concept of individual Muslims forbidding wrong in the modern world include the influence of "universal" western values, and the growth of the strength and reach of the state.

[96] Among the new wrongs fundamentalists have identified in the modern world are cafes, playing cards, cinema, music on radio and television, and the shaving of beards.

[96] Hence some scholars (such as former Mufti of Egypt from 1986 to 1996, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy) either insist use of "the hand" is reserved for the state—a quietist position that is a "flagrant divergence from the mainstream of traditional Islamic doctrine"[105]—or should only be applied to things and not people.

[106] Taking the standard view that the permission of the ruler not is required to use physical force against wrong doers, was Abd al-Qadir Awda and Jalal ad-Din Amri.

[39] Among many contemporary Twelver Shia clerics, "wounding and killing" require the permission of a qualified jurist or specifically the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.

[109] Islamic religious police have arisen in some Muslim majority states and regions (Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Aceh province of Indonesia, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran).

Article 8 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran makes enjoining good and forbidding wrong mandatory in accordance with Chapter 9, verse 71 of the Quran.

In Egypt, the Human Rights group Freedom House complains, "hundreds of hisba cases have been registered against writers and activists, often using blasphemy or apostasy as a pretext".

[119] In one high-profile case, Nasr Abu Zayd, a Muslim scholar "critical of old and modern Islamic thought" was prosecuted under the statute when his academic work was held to be evidence of apostasy.