Permitted and Forbidden

 

Permitted and Forbidden

 

Islam lays a clear foundation that serves both individuals and society. This foundation is God’s oneness and its correlative: that God alone is the One who deserves to be worshipped and obeyed in all that He commands and legislates.

Every Muslim believes in the divine will and whatever it brings. What occurs in your life is inevitable and cannot be avoided, and what you have missed could not have ever been yours.

 

Every Muslim believes that God knows what benefits him or her most, and what serves human society best. Therefore, a Muslim obeys God, even though His commands may be at variance with their own wishes.

 

It is a human weakness that many of us imagine that whatever they desire is wholesome and whatever they dislike to be foul.

Thus, a person may imagine that using drugs is fine and pleasurable even though it means the loss of rational thinking while under the influence of such drugs.

Likewise, a person may imagine that homosexuality, which is contrary to upright human nature and proper logic, is a proper practice.

Islam, on the other hand, considers it a betrayal of what has been given to us in trust, which is our bodies, requiring us to keep them in the best of health.

The same applies to destroying one’s liver with alcoholic drinks, or one’s entire body with junk food, or wasting one’s money through gambling and usury. All these are evils that Islam strictly prohibits.

God makes lawful for us all the good and wholesome things that benefit us, or benefit the earth we live on.

He rewards us for keeping sexual intercourse within marriage only. Islam does not look down on the sexual desire; indeed, its proper and lawful fulfilment earns God’s reward and draws us closer to heaven. 

God has made lawful to us all wholesome food and He has only forbidden us carrion, blood and the flesh of swine. He commands us not to be excessive in our eating habits, even though we eat only what is lawful.

God also makes lawful for us all wholesome drinks, but forbids us intoxicants that adversely affect our minds.

He permits us to do business, buying and selling and making profit, and He urges us to maintain proper values, such as truth and honesty..

but forbids us usury, which is the main cause of finding people who are filthy rich living alongside those who are in dire poverty.

God permits us all that is wholesome, giving it a reward in this life, which is good living, and a reward in the life to come, which is admittance into heaven.

God forbids us all that is evil, and attach to it a clear punishment. Thus He ensures that the law in Islamic societies is different from what it is elsewhere. There, everything is acceptable if you are not caught.

Under Islam, everything is acceptable except what God makes forbidden.

God says in the Qur’an:

My grace encompasses all things; so I will confer it on those who steer away from evil, and spend in charity, and who believe in Our signs – those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet whom they shall find described in the Torah and the Gospel that are with them. He commands them to do what is right and forbids them to do what is wrong, and makes lawful to them the good things of life and forbids them all that is foul. He lifts from them their burdens and the shackles that weigh upon them. Those, therefore, who believe in him, honour and support him, and follow the light that has been bestowed from on high through him shall indeed be successful. (7:156-7)