“God commands justice, kindness and giving their [due to] near relatives, and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and transgression. He admonishes you so that you may take heed!”
16:90
Tree things have been prohibited in this verse. The first thing is moral evil (fahsha’), which is clearly judged to be such by the human conscience and universally considered shameful. The second is the perpetration of such deeds as are judged improperly by common moral standards. This includes all those things which are considered as evil by man and which man’s nature refuses to accept. Munkar is the opposite of ma‘ruf. Ma‘ruf consists of such things as are considered good in every society. The third thing is transgressing all limits (baghi). This includes arrogance when a man exceeds his recognised limit and attacks another person; his engaging in sinful behaviour in order to harm another’s life, property and honour; his making use of his strength and influence to gain an illegitimate advantage.
A new human generation comes into existence with each child born of a man and a woman. This child, cared for and nourished by its parents, grows up to be a fully-rounded human being. This is a system devised by nature for the nurturing of human life. Its purpose is to teach man a proper sense of rights and duties, to produce such feelings within man that will make him grateful to his benefactors and pay homage to them. This feeling tells man, on the one hand, to fulfil his obligations to those who have helped him to grow up and, on the other, to pay the far greater dues to his Creator and Sustainer.
Those who learn such lessons from nature, which make them thoroughly aware of what is due to their parents and to God and act accordingly, are the people who will deserve God’s eternal blessings in the life to come.
Home serves as the first training ground for man, and this training, which starts with the parents, later extends to the whole of society. If man fully accepts such training from the outset, he will be morally equipped not only to give human beings their due but also to render to God what he owes Him in the vaster sense.
