man-made laws and Islam

[ajazali]

Re: man-made laws and Islam

@kakaballi

No.

I wanted to know how much emphasis is there in Islamic teaching regarding obeying rules which a society forms for various reasons like traffic rules or customs or income tax or immigration. It is just anecdotal evidence but I see that more ‘learned’ a person in in religious (not specifically Islamic) knowledge, less regard that person generally has for other regulations. Somehow, just like financially elite of Pakistani society, the religious elite considers themselves beyond such regulations.

Scholars are not playing their role for building the society. instead they want “societies” within society as they are only concerned with their own sect’s people. So there is absence of common interest and sectarian war is on even on intellectual front. Your point is valid and there no emphasis on teachings for making people socially better. I believe that is the reason it is hard to justify why one should use Islam as governance system.

So the questions are like this:
Is there much emphasis on following rules framed by society while one goes through religious teachings in religious schools?
Do schools teaching religion find it their duty to ‘teach’ citizens to follow societal and civil laws?

Although societal laws are same nature but they do vary from region to region. So there is general guideline for following what is agreed. A Muslim cannot breach contract or agreed rules. I believe that if scholars focus on how important doing justice and being truthful toward society is, it could make a difference. A Salfi guy offers prayer 5 times a day following teachings of Islam and goes to jihad when it is demanded from some scholar. A sunni guy is somewhat same. Sunni barlevi would donate chanda to Mehfil e naat and mazar and religious festivals. But all these type of muslims can be found guilty of not paying tax or violating social moral rules, infact we see them around us. Scholars teach people it is sawab to spend on rituals but they dont tell the that it does more harm than good while doing tax chori. Not to speak of following the societal rules, a lot of people get interests from banks and donate chanda to mosque and mehfil e naat etc.

Remember that I am not criticizing religion or religious schools but just would like to know if such attitudes are because of lack of emphasis on importance of civil laws by religious scholars or because of our general attitudes of not being concerned about them.

As i said scholars are fighting for sects. since we know society was not that huge and laws were not complex in time of appearance of Islam so general guidelines should be followed. for example if you are in a contract you cannot breach it or take care of haqooq of others and your responsibilities.