In summarising Major Themes of the Qur’an, Fazlur Rahman says that religious truths which the secular societies of our own day find very difficult to accept are the doctrines of tawhid, scriptural revelation, the day of divine judgment, moral responsibility, and “ends” of life.
Some of these skeptics believe in some parts of religious truths, and deny the truth of other parts as if revealed truths can be broken up into parts. They act in accordance with only those religious principles which suit their subjective inclinations and the prevalent social trends, and disregard the other principles as if part of religion is invalid.
Some members of such societies fall into intolerant ways and tend to deride God, His message and messengers, and scoff at all that are sacred in religion. Mocking attitude is most characteristic of them-nay, religious mockery is their fundamental state of mind and legacy.
Toshihiko Izutsu illustrates the point very well in his Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an. He states: “for those who saw nothing beyond the present earthly life, a religion preaching the eternal future life could in any way be no more than a laughing-stock.”
To believers, religious faith is a very serious matter which underpins ultimate values of human acts. To adherents, religion refers to all the good which God has implanted in human nature that must not be corrupted.
As religious truths touch the inner springs of one’s life intimately, religious life is a higher life that must be taken seriously.
If this weighty personal responsibility is not taken in earnest, false motives, pretence, deception and hypocrisy will flourish, and man will treat religion and faith as a jest.
Indeed, to such cynics, religious truths are only a joke. They take religious fundamentals lightly, sneer at God, laugh at the Prophet, and ridicule his followers.
They not only laugh at the Prophet, but they heap blasphemies when God’s teachings are mentioned.
God mentions in the Qur’an that “they made My messages and My messengers a target of their mockery” or in another verse “when they become aware of a divine message, they turn it to ridicule” (18:106 and 37:14, respectively).
Those skeptics and cynics give religious truths false names; nay, they call religion a fraud. They state religions “are of the Devil” which is “violent and oppressive”. They depict the Prophet as a terrorist, conjurer, magician, fool, womanizer, homosexual, child abuser and religious fake. They insult the wives of the Prophet by having whores use their names and vilify the companions of the Prophet by calling them-for example-“bums from Persia”. They portray Muslims as “savage killers hungry for wealth and bent on killing women and children.”
It is the same habits of mind throughout history which has been recorded by God thus: “And, indeed, even before your time have messengers been mocked-but those who scoffed at them were in the end overwhelmed by the very thing which they mocked” (6:10). Or in another verse: “Evil is bound to be the end of those who do evil by rejecting God’s messages and mocking at them” (30:10).
According to interpreters such as Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Muhammad Asad, the above-mentioned verses warn that the logic of events would always turn the tables; evil often brings about its own ruin.
Sooner or later, the scoffers will find that a derisive rejection of spiritual truths inexorably rebounds on themselves.
First and foremost, as mocking at the Divine Message implies that the individual is so absorbed in selfish, narrow and material concerns, it has a disastrous long-range effect on their lives after death.
As self-abandonment to worldly pursuit is the cause of their scornful disregard of God’s messages, their pursuit of exclusively materialistic values will result in spiritual frivolity, aversion to all moral exhortation, and consequent refusal to be guided by moral considerations.
Such an attitude of mind mistakenly identifies worldly riches, temporal power, and material success with one’s being of right and correct ideology.
Secondly, at the social level, if persisted by a critical mass within a permissive community, such habits of mind also destroy the moral fabric of society, their earthly happiness, economic equilibrium, social equalities, and sometimes even their physical existence.
“But you made the religious truths a target of your ridicule,” God cautions against such a haughty attitude, “to the point where it made you forget all remembrance of Me, and you went on and on laughing at them.” (23:110)
God warns that their ridicule of religion and faith made them forget His message while they were laughing at them.
The secularists’ worldly-minded attitude would become the unconscious cause of their forgetting the warnings declared by God against those who do not treat religious truths earnestly and are heedless of the “end” of life (al-akhirah).
In the end, Truth will outlast all mockery. “Verily, We defend you from the mockers….” (15:95).
On the contrary, Islam promotes that inter-ideological arguments must be handled with discretion and skill without vilification whatsoever which may make matters even worse.
In the verse, “Do not revile those [objects] whom they invoke instead of Allah, lest they revile Allah out of spite, and in ignorance” (6:108), Muslims are prohibited from abusing the objects deemed sacrosanct by other people, hurting thereby the latter’s feelings, and provoking a hostile reaction.
Furthermore, as far as other fellow men are concerned, there is a prohibition against slander, calumny, being sarcastic, insulting by offensive nicknames, or deriding other men. It is beautifully expressed in the Qur’an that “it may well be that those whom they laugh at in ridicule are better than themselves.” (49:11).
