Bad
People

You know,

it's all very well saying that we we should be good

and that's good for everybody,

and we should avoid being bad

and that's good for everybody,

because we can change the way that we behave.

But what is harder to work out

is what we should do

if we see someone else doing something we think is bad.

Do we try to stop them,

or tell someone else about it,

or just keep quiet?

The answer will always depend on what is happening and where,

and will depend on what, if anything, you can do to change the bad into the good.

Are we strong enough in any way to be able to do something about it.

People can use force to impose their will,

and in the worst of cases this ends in war,

and sometimes people have to decide if they believe in something enough to die for it.

But people can struggle against injustice and tyranny in many different ways,

and dying for a cause is rarely the best way to achieve it.

Sometimes getting a lot of people together and making noise

can be enough to face down the force of a bully or tyrant.

Sometimes a quiet word can bring about a change from bad to good.

And we also need to remember that sometimes what we do might make things worse.

But if we are to live together as we need to,

we have to find ways to avoid the bad and keep it away from our community.

We have to control the behaviour of those who wilfully break public trust,

like those who steal and cheat.

And a community sets the limits of what they will allow,

and grades the severity of any breaking of those limits

by means of punishments.

And these laws and punishments can be quite different in different times and places,

with different groups of people enforcing them.

And the law tries to prevent Wrong Actions from happening

by threatening that those caught doing wrong

will be made to feel some kind of loss or pain.

And for those who insist on breaking the public trust,

and doing what damages the good of those around them,

the law threatens to keep them away from the rest of society,

and keep their hands away from what they want to do.

So the law has its force on which we can call in times of need,

and has the authority when force is needed.

But much more important than changing the world around us

is the struggle within our Deen to keep ourselves from what is bad,

and to show other people the way to behave by our example.

That struggle with ourselves is much, much harder

than telling other people what they are allowed to do.

That struggle is what we know as

Jihad.