We all know the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments are the basis for morality and for the sharī‘at or the cannon law or the chalacha of the monotheistic religions. However, the Ten Commandments don’t say, thou shalt love. It is not a commandment. In various religions when a child reaches a certain age, they become accountable for adherence to the laws. There is a huge controversy in Christianity about when this happened and there are the ones who were baptized at birth and then there were the Anabaptists who were against baptism at birth because a child had to have the mental capacity to make a decision on their own, that they were going to accept the religion and accept the rules and regulations. So some began to baptize children when they were eighteen years old, when they had the opportunity to actually know what they were doing. Jews do it when kids are around thirteen years old. Boys in Islam in most of the Middle East countries aren’t circumcised until the age of eight to twelve.
The point being that there comes a time in your life when you’ve matured to a certain extent so that now you become responsible for your actions, you become responsible to God, and you become responsible for following the law. But the law doesn’t include, thou shalt love. You see loving takes more than being able to know what is right and what is wrong. And love changes the equation because now only don’t you understand or you do understand what is right and what is wrong, you also have the discretion to act appropriately in situations using the law as a guideline, but using also compassion and mercy and love in order to do what is right for that situation. It gives you the ability to differentiate between each moment. It gives you the ability to know what is right for the moment.
In Islam we have different prayers for different times, a different prayer is appropriate for a different moment. You don’t do fajr in the evening, and you don’t do the evening prayer in the afternoon. You do what is appropriate for the moment. Now, all of you know that I was with Bawa Muhaiyaddeen for an extended period of time. And people would ask me what is it that Bawa Muhaiyaddeen did and the answer is in three simple words. The right thing. He always did the right thing. In the moment he did what was correct for that moment. Whoever came before him, he did what was correct for that person. He was able to differentiate and to bring forth that which was appropriate for the exact situation that we were in. The problem with the law is, lawyers. The reality is that clerics of all religions are lawyers. And the law can be changed to fit the situation as you want it to be. In other words the political necessities that you find at the moment, the personal motives that you have at the moment, the real estate inclinations that you wish to have at the moment, the real estate inclinations that you wish to gather, whatever inclinations you may have you can interpret the law the way you want it to be. And that can lead to some very, very severe consequences. And it has. All of the atrocities that have happened in the world in the name of religion have come because of various interpretations of the laws which were considered appropriate interpretations at that moment. And the entire society accepted those specific regulations as if they had to be adhered to. And if they weren’t adhered to, consequences came. And consequences were severe.
