Submitters Perspective, October 2006

Many Faces of Corruption

Plato in The Republic, written circa 390 B.C.E., wondered how a person could be courageous and gentlemanly simultaneously. Early philosophers considered these two behaviors to be mutually exclusive and incompatible with each other. They wanted ideal citizens and a utopian state. In those days, by courage was meant boldness flanking the shocking, and gentlemanliness stood for tender-heartedness. People generally agreed that these were two irreconcilables and that they could never be synchronized in one and the same person. Well, the Quran shows us that we can be kind and compassionate yet stand up for our rights and fight for justice and that we could achieve, insha Allah (God willing), a utopian life here and now.

When we look around us and especially at the so called “Muslim” world, we see retaliations,

seemingly motiveless and stray killings, bombings, hijackings, kidnappings, intentional mass murder, attacks on worshippers in mosques, incidents of blood, gore and brutality often sponsored, connived or condoned by “gentlemen” of “high social standing and breeding.”

The Quran terms such violence and bloodshed as “zulm” (tyranny and transgression) which stem from unhampered power exercised by a person or an authority which is bereft of compassion, benevolence and forgiveness. But who can be more powerful than the Almighty? Because He is Omnipotent, He is Omnipresent and because He is Omnipresent, He is Omniscient. We can confirm from the Quran that whenever His supreme power and ability is named, His attributes of kindness, wisdom, forgiveness and mercy have also