Discussion on "Spreading Evil the Indirect Way"

Question:
In your article titled, "Spreading Evil the Indirect Way", the main concern you raise is that of extra marital relations resulting as a consequence of movies or dramas. The point I wish to raise is that before we address this issue today, let us step back and look at the societal fabric.

In the entertainment genre one would have poetry, novels, movies, music, paintings, sculptures apart from other stuff.

1) Let us forget movies for some time and look at the other forms of entertainment. The poetry of Ghalib and many other poets is infested with the mention of wine, fleeting loves, and if I dare proclaim, some of the poetry can be categorized as quite X-rated. In this category not even the likes of Maulana Rumi resist themselves;

Look at Afzal Iqbal's book on Rumi (in the LUMS library), and on the last chapters, you would find mention of sodomy and bestiality;

Now consider paintings and sculptures, the nudes of Mrs. Hashmi and the other painters;

Novels and women digests, full of love stories that many Pakistani women gorge on;

Music on love themes, songs, etc. The very few are on patriotism are played only around the 14th of August. All our Pakistani bands have songs mainly on love.

Recapitulating, poetry, music, novels, paintings et al (mind you, I have not, as yet, included movies) are all about love, man-woman relations, etc. Given all this, tell me whether this promotes promiscuity and leads one to extra marital affairs or not.

If yes, then our society should have been full of fornication crimes. I am not aware of the statistics, but I do not think that, as a consequence of all these things which have been there for quite some time now, our society has become infested with fornicators.

Dramas and movies are just another addition to the above. They do not change anything.

Now, you might argue that opposing forces have been at work i.e. the tablighi jamaat, Islamization, etc. And in that case, I would respond with the following.

2) Marquis De Sade, as I learnt form a movie, was the father of Sadism. He used to write X-rated stuff. His washerwoman used to read all of them, but the abbot under whose care he was, was always critical of him. Eventually, however, the washerwoman died a virgin while the abbot spent his time fantasizing and romancing!

So you see, even in a mud pool could grow a lotus e.g.: Muhammad Asad; and even in a mosque could child molesting be done, as has happened in mosques in Pakistan.

For Muhammad Asad, the wine was not strong enough to sway him and for 'that' maulvi, the Qu'ran was not strong enough to sway him from molesting.

I believe that belief is based soundly on some other thing rather than on rituals. Rituals do not stop you from backbiting, ogling et al.

The examples of fornication you provided were of those who never knew whether it was forbidden or not. Their parents would never have taught them against it, as I am sure of it.

3) I know from my personal experience - my Chinese roommate has gone for hanky panky on several nights but that did not compel me to go out and do the same. I must have watched hundreds of movies but that has never made me go out for gratification.

Now, I do not offer my prayers 5 times a day, even the four that I do offer are, occasionally, just to get the fardh done. I do not think that it was all these prayers that have stopped me from fornication, to date, but, in fact, I have had my strength from a very deep understanding and appreciation of the Islamic code of conduct imbued in me by my father and mother.

Some of my friends have even watched all that X-rated stuff and yet, they remain, in agreement, against committing what they believe is quite heinous.

After seeing all this, I can only conclude that it is something else that protects one from extra-marital relations, and it is one's upbringing and not rituals.

Rituals only confirm what already lies within our hearts.

4) I guess I have digressed, so coming back to movies. The only thing I want to say is that one can watch a hundred movies and remain a virgin or see no movie and molest children in mosques.

5) Finally, I do not perceive a more religious society following a ban on movies since the world is fast becoming a global village. I hope you remember Iran. See what has happened there. Khomeini had his intentions but he tightened the spring so tight that it bounced.

In the end, a quote from Gautama Siddharta Buddha:

'If you tie the string too tight it will break'.

Response:
Whatever you have mentioned is well taken, but I would want to mention the following points for your consideration:

1) It is not just fornication that is prohibited in Islam, even coming near it as well as participating in what constitutes 'fahhashi' (obscenity), are also strongly condemned. The real evil is the filth that is associated with obscenity that expresses itself in many forms: evil thoughts, evil talks, evil views, and obscene acts. Fornication and sodomy are the ultimate acts of obscenity, but most certainly, not the only ones. The problem with all such acts is that they corrupt your soul and deprive it of its original purity. When you lose the natural purity of your soul, you are unable to remember God Almighty the way He deserves to be remembered. That explains why some people say that even though they pray, they don't get anything out of their prayers. The reason being that while prayer has an outer form, its real essence lies in the kind of appreciation of the Almighty you are able to achieve while getting involved in the process. That appreciation is done by your heart that, if it gets degenerated by sin (obscenity being one of them), refuses to provide you with the facility to properly remember God.

2) The analogy of traffic rules helps me a lot in understanding some of the finer issues in man-woman relations. You are quite right in observing that many individuals never get indulged in fornication despite watching dirty movies and remaining in a filthy environment. However, that, in itself, is not a good enough reason to conclude that a filthy environment does not contribute to adultery and therefore, should be acceptable to us; quite as much as it would be wrong to conclude that since some expert drivers are able to control their vehicles even while driving at speeds far beyond the legally allowed limits, they, as well as all others, should be allowed to indulge in over speeding. Rules of a society are decided on the basis of the abilities of an average individual. Indeed, individuals do have different temperaments, and therefore, you are bound to come across exceptions to most rules concerning humans.

I can also understand that an individual who is regular in his prayers is found involved in things that are obscene. However, that is because the chap is not considering his prayers seriously or else his prayers would, at least, admonish him on what he is doing. Another person may be staying away from obscenity simply because of his different personality. Such stray examples, however, do not prove anything except the fact that when it comes to humans, there could always be exceptions to the rule.

3) The problem with stuff like movies is that it is able to slow poison the society. Since the themes of most of the 'decent' movies is good, even decent people get involved in the process of experiencing objectionable stuff without even realising it. The end result is that the moral fabric of the society gradually begins to fall apart. I am a witness to the phenomenon of moral degeneration in our society with regard to man-woman relations in the last three decades. The Satanic trick in this regard is to mix good with evil. The result of this strategy is that when an evil aspect of the package is pointed out, the good part of it is highlighted by the defenders of the idea and thus, evil manages to survive and to thrive.

Although, on the face of things, slow poisoning does not appear to be desperately wrong, the net effect in the long run is a huge benefit to the evil ways. The defence mechanism of the society is gradually eaten away.

To give you an example, in our childhood days, it was normally very difficult for a young boy to talk to a young girl. It is still the case with many youngsters today. But because of the growing popularity of more openness, that natural hesitation -- that God-designed 'first line of defence' -- has been demolished. As a consequence, flirtation is commonplace in our society. Now, all those who flirt don't end up doing zina, but some of them most certainly do. Had these opportunities not been available, the frequency of such crimes would have been much lower.

4) The works of Ghalib and other poets and prose writers also illustrate essentially, the same process of slow poisoning. I cannot imagine how stuff like Ghalib's poetry or Manto's fiction could be acknowledged as Islamically acceptable. I hope you will not object to my claim by stating that Ghalib has always been a popular poet amongst Muslims of the sub-continent. We are talking about what is desirable in Islam and not what Muslims have been desiring. The damage caused by Ghalib and his likes to the moral fabric of our society is immeasurably huge. Since his poetry is otherwise a classic of Urdu literature, it has caused its damage in an indirect way, influencing many more people than what cheap obscenity would have done. Likewise is the case with all other works of fine arts that promote obscenity.

5) There are at least two important differences between poetry and dramas/movies, which make the latter even more damaging. While poetry, by its nature, is less accessible to the people, given the effort it takes to read and appreciate it - even though its impact on the society in the long run is profound - it is relatively limited in the short-run. Movies and dramas, on the contrary, by their very nature are available to a larger audience and since the only effort required to get involved in them is to passively receive them, the number it is able to influence is considerably large, and the time it takes in inflicting its damage is much less.

The other, more important difference in the two forms of expression lies in the fact that poetry, literature and the rest are just ideas - pure or filthy - so long as they are exppressed in the print media; on the other hand, when fiction starts getting translated into dramas and films, you are moving into the real world. There, you witness two men and women engaged in transforming the ideas of the scriptwriters into a real audio-visual experience. That is what makes it more effective; and that is what makes it more objectionable.

When you say, in a novel, that 'A' fell in love with 'B', you are just mentioning a thought. When you are showing 'A' as a real, young man who is romancing a young lady 'B', as a Muslim, you have to ask yourself whether the two are allowed to do so, and whether you would allow your sister to do so. If the answer to these questions is "no", then neither can you yourself can act like 'A' nor are you allowed to see 'A' involved in his romantic adventurism with 'B'. This is so because the least part of the faith, we have been told by our prophet, alihissalaam, requires us to condemn crime at least in our hearts. If you are enjoying a drama/film, you cannot possibly condemn it for being partly un-Islamic. I am sure you would agree that there could be no threat more serious than the one that targets your faith. That is what alarms me the most. I just want to know exactly what do you do when such scenes appear in films you watch. Probably, you ignore them. How can you remain neutral to an un-Islamic act? They are a part of the plot of the enitre film: a woman playing the role of a wife of a perfectly stranger (na-mahram) man. If one were to watch movies and dramas, one should stop reading, at least, surah Nur and surah Ahzab, because some parts of these two surahs are not important to people involved in the process of entertaining themselves with movies and dramas. Maybe, a workable idea is to not to go deep into their meanings and just go through their recitation. That is exactly what many Muslims are doing today.

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