Amar Bil Maroof wa Nahi Anil M

Amr Bil Maroof Wa Nahi Anil Munkar | Mufti Muhammad Shafi Usmani

Amr Bil Maroof Wa Nahi Anil Munkar امر بالمعروف و نہی عن المنکر

Muḥammad Shafī‘ ibn Muḥammad Yāsīn ‘Us̱mānī Deobandī (Urdu: محمد شفیع بن محمد ياسین عثمانی دیوبندی‎; Arabic: محمد شفيع بن محمد ياسين العثماني الديوبندي‎, Muḥammad Shafī‘ ibn Muḥammad Yāsīn al-‘Uthmānī ad-Diyūbandī; c. 25 January 1897 – 6 October 1976),[note 1] often referred to as Mufti Muhammad Shafi, was a Pakistani Sunni Islamic scholar of the Deobandi school of Islamic thought.

A Hanafi jurist and mufti, he was also an authority on shari'ah, hadith, Qur'anic exegesis, and Sufism. Born in Deoband, British India, he graduated in 1917 from Darul Uloom Deoband, where he later taught hadith and held the post of Chief Mufti. He resigned from the school in 1943 to devote his time to the Pakistan Movement. After the independence he moved to Pakistan, where he established Darul Uloom Karachi in 1951. Of his written works, his best-known is Ma'ariful Qur'an, a commentary on the Qur'an.

Main points:

- Muslims today do bad deeds, even though Islam forbids it. This is because of the Nafs (Carnal Self) inside them which, according to the Quran, pushes man to do bad deeds. Until the Nafs is purified, man is inclined towards sinning.

- ‘Amar bil Maroof wa Nahi anil Munkar’ is a phrase widely misinterpreted. This statement was made for the Qalb (spiritual heart) and the Nafs. People have applied this to the body: they think it means to force people to do good and to forcibly stop people from doing bad. However, this is wrong. Its actual meaning is to incline towards the thing that pushes you to do good things, the Qalb; at the same time, you must purify the entity in you that pushes you to do bad, the Nafs.

- Today people are forced to read Salat (prayer) in countries like Saudi Arabia, but what does that achieve? Goodness is not achieved by forcing people. The inclination to do good comes from the heart, when Noor (divine energy) enters it.

- The Quran tells Muslims to become complete in Islam. This happens when your Qalb and Nafs are purified, and when the subtlety of Akhfa in you (the prophethood of which was given to Prophet Mohammad) is revived. Whilst your Nafs is impure, you won’t be able to understand the Quran or Islam. The Quran guides pure ones only, meaning those who have managed to purify their Qalb and Nafs through spirituality.

- As long as you do not have Noor in your heart, you have not fulfilled the first requirement of being a Muslim: declaration by word of mouth and affirmation by the heart. The Quran says that Salat stops worshippers from immodesty and bad deeds; however we see that this doesn’t apply to worshippers today: this is because they do not have Noor in their hearts. This happened when spiritual knowledge was rejected by Muslims.