Page 86 - The Debased Culture of Superficiality

84 THE DEBASED CULTURE OF SUPERFICIALITY

breaks out, women, children and elderly living in a country
could find themselves in difficult straits. A person who is
not interested in finding out why this situation has arisen or
what he can do to remedy it will do everything he can to
protect himself.
Such an individual lacks sufficient awareness to see the
chaos that absence of the fear of Allah inflicts on the world.
He does not strive, beginning with himself, to make the
morality of the Qur’an prevail in people’s lives. He wants
only the welfare of himself and his family. For him, it’s
enough if he can supply his own needs and live without anx-
iety and difficulty. He’s not very concerned about the condi-
tions that others live in.
However, someone with a keen sense of moral awareness
looks at the general course of world events and—even if he is
not in the kind of situation described above—will immedi-
ately know that the world needs a morality based on the fear
of Allah. He knows that any society composed of insensitive,
selfish and heartless individuals who do not care about oth-
ers will draw everyone into a frightening world of no reli-
gion. He sees that in societies that do not practice the moral-
ity that pleases Allah, deep wounds are opened, and that the
only way to heal them is to ensure the dominance of religious
morality. Then he will strive to establish this high morality
and become the means whereby others may come to it.
Allah tells us about such people in the Qur’an:
Then when they forgot what they had been reminded of,
We rescued those who had forbidden the evil . . . (Surat
al-A‘raf: 165)