20. This refers to those widespread social evils whose baneful effects are
not confined only to those addicted to them, but which affect even those who,
although they might not be addicted to those sins, are a part of that society.
For example, if filth is found at just a few places in a locality it will possibly
affect only those who have not kept themselves or their houses clean. However,
if it becomes widespread and no one is concerned with removing uncleanliness
and maintaining sanitary conditions, then everything including water and soil
will become contaminated. As a result, if epidemics break out, they will not
only afflict those who were responsible for spreading filth and themselves lived
in unsanitary conditions, but virtually all the residents of that locality.
What is true of unsanitary conditions in a physical sense, also holds true for
filth and uncleanliness in a moral sense. If immoral practices remain confined
to a few people here and there but the overall moral concern of the society
prevents those practices from becoming widespread and public, their harmful
effects remain limited. But when the collective conscience of the society is
weakened to a point whereby immoral practices are not suppressed, when people
indulge in evils without any sense of shame and even go around vaunting their
immoral deeds, when good people adopt a passive attitude and are content with
being righteous merely in their own lives and are unconcerned with or silent
about collective evils, then the entire society invites its doom. Such a society
then becomes the victim of a scourge that does not distinguish between the grain
and the chaff.
What God's directive seeks to impress upon people is that the reformatory mission
of the Prophet (peace be on him) and the cause he was inviting people to was
the source of life and well-being for them both individually and collectively.
People should bear in mind that if they fail to participate wholeheartedly in
the task to which they were invited and remain silent spectators to rampant
evils, that would invite a scourge that would embrace all. It would afflict
even those individuals who neither themselves committed evils nor were instrumental
in spreading them and who might in fact have been righteous in their personal
conduct. This point was emphasized earlier see (al-A'raf 7: 163-6)and was illustrated
by reference to the Sabbath-breakers, and constitutes the underlying Islamic
philosophy for waging war for purposes of reform.