Page 67 - Quranic Wisdom - New.indd

Quranic Wisdom

As the saying goes, ‘It requires a lot of history to make a
little tradition’. This means that if you want to establish a good
tradition in society, you need several precedents to make it a
social norm; moreover, if you have established a wrong tradition
in society, it again needs a long process of change to abolish this
wrong tradition and replace it with a healthy tradition.
A society does not abide by laws but by traditions. Laws have a
very limited role in social reform. The same is true of the family.
Both behave strictly according to traditions and not in obedience
to any kind of laws. Therefore, in the case of the family and also
in the case of a society—even in the case of a nation, one must be
very prudent in this regard.

One example of the lack of prudence is the fostering of the
present concept of freedom. In present times, people generally
take freedom as the summum bonum, or the greatest good. This
modern concept of freedom has broken all those traditions that
have been a part of every society for the past thousands and
thousands of years.

For example, whereas the ancient societies were based on
the concept of human duties, the present concept of freedom
has wiped out the former concept of human duties, replacing
it with an overemphasis on human rights. For this reason, we
see that everywhere people are rights-conscious rather than duty-
conscious. The entire fabric of society has been upset by this
change.
Be very cautious, therefore, about tampering with those
traditions which relate both to the family and to society.

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