8. Amar Bil Ma'roof wa Nahi anil Munkar (Enjoining Good, Forbidding Evil) — Islamic Studies

Book reference: Q.17 (Question Bank, p.viii) — "Discuss the concept of Amar Bil Ma'roof wa-nahi An-Al Munkar and highlight its importance. Discuss possibilities and hardships in today's real world scenario to implement this concept."

Definition

Amr bil Ma'ruf: commanding/enjoining what is right and good.
Nahi 'anil Munkar: forbidding/prohibiting what is wrong and evil.
Together they form a foundational collective religious-social duty in Islam, closely linked to Hisbah (see Theme VI).

Qur'anic Evidence

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وَلْتَكُن مِّنْكُم أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْخَيْرِ وَيَأْمُرونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَيَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ

اردو: اور تم میں سے ایک جماعت ایسی ہونی چاہیے جو بھلائی کی طرف بلائے، اور نیکی کا حکم دیے اور برائی سے روکے۔

English: "And let there be among you a community calling to good, enjoining right and forbidding wrong."

— Surah Āl-'Imran 3:104

كُنتُم خَيْرَ أُمَّةٍ أُخْرِجَتْ لِلنَّاسِ تَأْمُرونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَتَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ

اردو: تم بہترین امت ہو، جسے لوگوں کے لیے نکالا گیا، تم نیکی بات کا حکم دیتے ہو اور بری بات سے روکتے ہو۔

English: "You are the best nation produced for mankind, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong."

— Surah Āl-'Imran 3:110

Hadith Evidence

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مَنْ رَأَى مِنْكُمْ مُنْكَرًا فَلْيُغَيِّرْهُ بِيَدِه

اردو: جو شخص کوئی برائی دیکھے تو اسے چاہیے کہ اپنے ہاتھ سے اسے بدل دے، اگر طاقت نہ ہو تو زبان سے، اگر یہ بھی نہ ہو سکے تو دل سے (برا جانے)، اور یہ ایمان کا سب سے کمزور درجہ ہے۔

English: "Whoever among you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue; if he cannot, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith."

— Sahih Muslim 49

Importance

Preserves the moral fabric of society and prevents collective corruption.
Functions as an internal self-correcting mechanism for the Ummah, independent of state enforcement alone.
Explicitly credited (3:110) as what makes the Ummah "the best nation."

Possibilities and Hardships in Implementation Today

Hardships:
- Risk of vigilantism/moral policing without proper scholarly qualification.
- Tension with individual privacy and modern legal norms in plural societies.
- Potential for the concept to be politically weaponised.
Possibilities:
- Institutionalised, state-regulated Hisbah-style bodies (consumer protection, media regulation) as a modern, lawful channel.
- Civil-society and educational campaigns rather than individual coercion.
- Emphasis on the Hadith's own graded, proportionate approach (hand → tongue → heart) as inherently moderate and non-coercive at the lowest level.

CSS Exam Tips

Explicitly address both "possibilities" and "hardships" as the book's question demands — do not only describe the concept.
Cross-reference: System of Accountability (Hisbah) (Theme VI).

20-Mark Enrichment — Analytical Material

Core Argument

Amr bi'l-maʿrūf wa nahy ʿan al-munkar is the constitutive duty of the Muslim community — the clause in 3:110 by which the ummah is declared "the best nation raised for mankind" is not belief alone but taʾmurūna bi'l-maʿrūfi wa tanhawna ʿani'l-munkar. The 20-mark thesis: it is a collective obligation (farḍ kifāyah) of civic vigilance, graduated in its means (hand, tongue, heart), bounded by knowledge, wisdom, capacity and the avoidance of greater harm — and its distortion by vigilantes, who seize the "hand" without authority or knowledge, is the principal contemporary problem this sub-topic must address.

1. Definition and Scope

Maʿrūf: literally "the known/recognised good" — what is established as right by revelation and sound human recognition.
Munkar: "the disowned" — what revelation and sound nature reject.
The pairing is significant: the good is familiar, evil is alien; a healthy society finds virtue recognisable.
Scope extends from personal morality to public policy — corruption, adulteration, encroachment, injustice in office, environmental harm and abuse of power are all munkar within the doctrine's reach. Confining the doctrine to private vice is the commonest weakness in student answers.

2. The Qur'anic Basis

Āl-ʿImrān 3:110 — the identity verse: the community's excellence is functional, not automatic.
Āl-ʿImrān 3:104 — وَلْتَكُن مِّنكُمْ أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْخَيْرِ — "And let there be [arising] from you a nation calling to good" — a specialised group must exist for this purpose, which is the textual basis for institutionalising it (ḥisbah, ombudsman, regulators) rather than leaving it to individuals.
al-Tawbah 9:71 — believing men and women are awliyāʾ of one another, enjoining good and forbidding evil: the duty is explicitly shared by women.
Luqmān 31:17 — وَاصْبِرْ عَلَىٰ مَا أَصَابَكَ — "And be patient over what befalls you" — patience over what befalls you as a result; the doctrine anticipates that the duty is costly.
al-Māʾidah 5:78–79 — the Children of Israel were cursed because "they did not forbid one another from the wrong they were doing": the failure to prohibit evil is itself punishable, and this is the strongest verse for the doctrine's urgency.
al-ʿAṣr 103:3 — mutual counselling in truth and patience as a condition of not being in loss.
al-Aʿrāf 7:165 — when punishment came, only those who forbade evil were saved.

3. The Prophetic Framework — the Three Levels

مَنْ رَأَىٰ مِنْكُمْ مُنْكَرًا فَلْيُغَيِّرْهُ بِيَدِهِ، فَإِنْ لَمْ يَسْتَطِعْ فَبِلِسَانِهِ، فَإِنْ لَمْ يَسْتَطِعْ فَبِقَلْبِهِ، وَذَٰلِكَ أَضْعَفُ الْإِيمَانِ (Muslim)

By hand (physical change): belongs to those with authority and capacity — the state, the regulator, the employer, the parent within the household. It is not a licence for private citizens to enforce law on strangers; that is ḥirābah or assault, not amr bi'l-maʿrūf.
By tongue: advice, teaching, writing, journalism, litigation, protest, parliamentary questions — the field of most citizens.
By heart: inward rejection where speech would cause greater harm — described as the weakest faith, not as permission for indifference.
Complementary text: الدِّينُ النَّصِيحَةُ — "the religion is sincere counsel" (Muslim), owed to Allah, His Book, His Messenger, the leaders of the Muslims and their common people. Counsel to rulers is thus a religious duty, not sedition.
أَفْضَلُ الْجِهَادِ كَلِمَةُ حَقٍّ عِنْدَ سُلْطَانٍ جَائِرٍ (Abū Dāwūd, Tirmidhī) — the highest form of the duty is speaking truth to power.

4. Conditions and Etiquette (the Section That Separates Answers)

Classical jurists (al-Ghazālī in Iḥyāʾ, Ibn Taymiyyah in al-Ḥisbah, al-Nawawī) set out conditions that most candidates omit:

Knowledge: the enjoiner must know that the act is genuinely maʿrūf or munkar; correcting on the basis of ignorance is itself munkar.
Certainty, not suspicion: the evil must be apparent — spying to discover it is prohibited (49:12); ʿUmar (RA) refused to act on evidence obtained by climbing over a wall.
Capacity and authority: especially for the level of the hand.
Wisdom and gentleness: بِالْحِكْمَةِ وَالْمَوْعِظَةِ الْحَسَنَةِ — "with wisdom and good instruction" — (16:125); 20:44 (Mūsā and Hārūn told to speak gently even to Pharaoh) — the strongest single argument against harshness in this duty.
Privacy in correction: advise in private; public exposure humiliates and hardens.
No greater harm (mafsadah): if forbidding an evil will cause a greater evil — riot, bloodshed, sedition, family destruction — it must be withheld. This is the decisive limiting principle.
Begin with oneself: 2:44 and 61:2–3 — why do you say what you do not do? — the rebuke to the moralist who exempts himself.
Gradualism and priority: greater evils before lesser; foundational goods before optional ones.

5. Institutional Form — Ḥisbah

The muḥtasib in classical Islamic administration supervised markets (weights, measures, adulteration, price gouging, fraud), public safety, sanitation, building standards and public morals.
Precedent: the Prophet ﷺ inspecting the grain heap — مَنْ غَشَّنَا فَلَيْسَ مِنَّا (Muslim); ʿUmar (RA) patrolling the market and appointing al-Shifāʾ bint ʿAbdillāh to market supervision — a woman holding the ḥisbah office.
Modern analogues: the Wafāqī Mohtasib (Federal Ombudsman), the Competition Commission, food and drug regulators, environmental protection agencies, the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee, and a free press.
Analytical point: 3:104 requires an organised body; this is a mandate to build regulatory institutions, not merely to exhort individuals — and a civil servant enforcing food-safety law is performing ḥisbah whether or not he calls it that.

6. The Contemporary Problem — Vigilantism

Mob violence, self-appointed enforcers and lynching in the name of forbidding evil violate every condition above: no authority, no due process, no verification (49:6), and catastrophic mafsadah.
Islamic law reserves punishment to the state; private punishment is a crime, and killing on suspicion is murder.
The Prophet ﷺ refused to authorise the killing even of a known hypocrite lest people say "Muhammad kills his companions" (Bukhārī) — reputational and social consequence as a limiting consideration.
Pakistan context: mob lynchings over accusations of blasphemy, attacks on minorities, and coercive "moral policing" are the clearest present-day violation; the required response is due process, verification, and the state's monopoly on enforcement.

7. Consequences of Abandoning the Duty

al-Māʾidah 5:78–79: collective curse for failing to forbid wrong.
al-Anfāl 8:25: وَاتَّقُوا فِتْنَةً لَّا تُصِيبَنَّ الَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا مِنكُمْ خَاصَّةً — "And fear a trial which will not strike those who have wronged among you exclusively" — a trial that does not strike only the wrongdoers; corruption tolerated becomes corruption suffered by all.
The ḥadīth of the ship: those on the lower deck wishing to bore a hole for water — if the upper deck lets them, all drown; if they stop them, all are saved (Bukhārī). The finest available metaphor for collective responsibility, and it should be in the answer.
The warning that if evil is not forbidden, Allah may send a punishment upon all and supplication will go unanswered (Tirmidhī).

8. Contemporary Applications

Governance: whistleblowing, audit, parliamentary oversight, judicial review and investigative journalism are nahy ʿan al-munkar in institutional form.
Anti-corruption: bribery is munkar; the enjoining duty falls on colleagues, auditors and citizens, not only on prosecutors.
Consumer protection and public health: adulteration, substandard drugs, unsafe construction — classical ḥisbah territory.
Environment: 30:41 makes ecological damage munkar; enforcement is the duty.
Digital space: correcting misinformation, refusing to forward unverified content (49:6), and reporting online abuse — while avoiding the pile-on that is itself munkar.
Civil service: for a CSS candidate this is the most directly personal application — the officer who refuses an illegal order and documents it is performing the duty at the level of hand and tongue simultaneously.

Qur'anic Evidence Bank

Āl-ʿImrān 3:110 — the best nation, enjoining good and forbidding evil.
Āl-ʿImrān 3:104 — let there be a group calling to good.
al-Tawbah 9:71 — men and women as mutual allies in this duty.
al-Māʾidah 5:78–79 — cursed for not forbidding wrong.
al-Anfāl 8:25 — a trial that strikes more than the wrongdoers.
Luqmān 31:17 — enjoin, forbid, and be patient over what befalls you.
al-Naḥl 16:125 — wisdom and beautiful preaching.
Ṭā-Hā 20:44 — speak gently, even to Pharaoh.
al-Baqarah 2:44 / al-Ṣaff 61:2–3 — do not enjoin what you do not practise.
al-Ḥujurāt 49:12 — do not spy.

Hadith / Seerah Application

مَنْ رَأَىٰ مِنْكُمْ مُنْكَرًا فَلْيُغَيِّرْهُ بِيَدِهِ... (Muslim) — the three levels; the defining text.
الدِّينُ النَّصِيحَةُ (Muslim).
أَفْضَلُ الْجِهَادِ كَلِمَةُ حَقٍّ عِنْدَ سُلْطَانٍ جَائِرٍ (Abū Dāwūd, Tirmidhī).
The ḥadīth of the ship and the two decks (Bukhārī).
مَنْ غَشَّنَا فَلَيْسَ مِنَّا — the grain-heap inspection (Muslim).
ʿUmar (RA) inviting correction from the pulpit; al-Shifāʾ (RA) appointed to market supervision.

Critical / Analytical Angle

The doctrine is simultaneously the most empowering and the most abused principle in Islamic public ethics, and a first-class answer holds both facts together. It is empowering because it makes every citizen a stakeholder in public morality and makes silence before injustice a sin — 5:79 does not condemn the Children of Israel for committing evil but for failing to forbid it. It is abused because the level of the "hand," which classical jurists restricted to those holding authority, is the level self-appointed enforcers claim. The corrective is to argue that the doctrine's conditions are part of the doctrine: knowledge, certainty, capacity, gentleness, privacy, avoidance of greater harm, and self-application. Strip those away and what remains is not amr bi'l-maʿrūf but fasād fi'l-arḍ wearing its clothes. Framed institutionally — as audit, regulation, ombudsman, free press and judicial review — the doctrine is precisely what a well-governed state does, and that is the framing a CSS answer should adopt.

Model 20-Mark Answer Skeleton

Introduction (2) — definition; 3:110 as the identity verse; scope includes public policy.
Qur'anic basis (3) — 3:104, 9:71, 5:78–79, 8:25, 103:3.
The three levels (3) — hand, tongue, heart; naṣīḥah; truth before a tyrant.
Conditions and etiquette (5) — knowledge, certainty, capacity, gentleness, privacy, no greater harm, begin with self.
Institutional form — ḥisbah and its modern analogues (3).
Vigilantism as distortion (2) — due process, state monopoly on punishment.
Consequences of abandonment and contemporary application (2) — the ship ḥadīth; conclusion (1).

✍️ Full Model Answer — Exam-Ready Prose

Introduction (2 marks): Amr bi'l-maʿrūf wa nahy ʿan al-munkar, the enjoining of what is right and the forbidding of what is wrong, is the constitutive duty of the Muslim community rather than one obligation among many. The point is settled by the verse of identity itself: كُنتُم خَيْرَ أُمَّةٍ أُخْرِجَتْ لِلنَّاسِ تَأْمُرونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَتَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ — "You are the best nation produced for mankind, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong" (3:110) — where the excellence claimed is functional and earned, not automatic or inherited. The terminology reinforces the claim, since maʿrūf means the known and recognised good and munkar the disowned, so that a healthy society is one in which virtue remains familiar and evil looks alien. Its scope extends far beyond private morality to public policy, for corruption, adulteration, injustice in office, environmental harm and the abuse of power are all munkar within its reach. The argument advanced here is that this is a graduated collective obligation, bounded by knowledge, capacity, wisdom and the avoidance of greater harm, and that its seizure by vigilantes who claim its highest level without authority is the central contemporary problem.

Qur'anic Basis (3 marks):

Beyond 3:110: "there be among you a community calling to good, enjoining right and forbidding wrong" (وَلْتَكُن مِّنكُمْ أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْخَيْرِ وَيَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَيَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ, Aal-e-Imran 3:104) — textual basis for institutionalising the duty rather than leaving it to individuals.
Obligation shared by women as much as men (9:71); urgency underscored by the Children of Israel being cursed "because they did not forbid one another the wrong they were doing" (al-Ma'idah 5:78–79) — failure to prohibit evil is itself punishable.

The Three Levels (3 marks):

Prophet ﷺ's graduated framework: "whoever among you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue; if he cannot, then with his heart, and that is the weakest of faith" (مَنْ رَأَىٰ مِنكُمْ مُنكَرًا فَلْيُغَيِّرْهُ بِيَدِهِ، فَإِن لَمْ يَسْتَطِعْ فَبِلِسَانِهِ، فَإِن لَمْ يَسْتَطِعْ فَبِقَلْبِهِ، وَذَٰلِكَ أَضْعَفُ الإِيمَانِ, Sahih Muslim 49).
Change by the hand belongs only to legitimate authority (state, regulator, parent within household) — never private citizens acting on strangers.
Counsel to rulers is elevated: "the best jihad, a word of truth before a tyrannical ruler" (أَفْضَلُ الْجِهَادِ كَلِمَةُ حَقٍّ عِندَ سُلْطَانٍ جَائِرٍ, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi).

Conditions and Etiquette (5 marks): (classical jurists — al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah — set conditions most candidates overlook)

Knowledge, not suspicion: spying to uncover wrongdoing is itself prohibited (49:12).
Wisdom and gentleness: the command to Musa and Harun to "speak to him gently" even before Pharaoh (فَقُولَا لَهُ قَوْلًا لَيِّنًا, Ta-Ha 20:44).
Privacy: correct privately, not through public humiliation.
No greater harm: if forbidding an evil causes a greater one (riot, bloodshed, family destruction) it must be withheld — the doctrine's decisive limiting principle.
Begin with self: "why do you say what you do not do?" (61:2–3).

Institutional Form — Hisbah (3 marks):

The muhtasib supervised markets, weights, measures — guided by the Prophet's ﷺ own grain-heap inspection: "whoever cheats us is not one of us" (مَنْ غَشَّنَا فَلَيْسَ مِنَّا, Muslim); Umar (RA) appointed al-Shifa bint Abdillah to market supervision.
Modern analogues: the Federal Ombudsman, competition/food-safety regulators, a free press — a civil servant enforcing food-safety law performs hisbah, named or not.

Vigilantism as Distortion (2 marks): The contemporary abuse of the doctrine is the mirror image of its neglect. Mob violence, self-appointed enforcement and lynching carried out in the name of forbidding evil violate every condition set out above, proceeding without authority, without due process, without the verification required by 49:6, and with catastrophic mafsadah. Islamic law reserves punishment to the state, private punishment is itself a crime, and killing upon suspicion is murder. The Prophet declined to authorise the killing even of a known hypocrite lest people say that Muhammad kills his companions (Bukhārī), treating reputational consequence as a limiting consideration. In Pakistan the point is not abstract: mob lynchings following unverified accusations, attacks upon minorities and coercive moral policing are the clearest violation of the very doctrine invoked to justify them.

Consequences of Abandonment, Contemporary Application and Conclusion (3 marks): The cost of abandoning the duty is collective, and its finest illustration is the ḥadīth of the ship, in which passengers on the lower deck propose to bore a hole through the hull to reach water; if those above permit it, all drown, and if they restrain them, all are saved (Bukhārī). The tradition adds the warning that where evil is not forbidden, punishment may descend upon all and supplication go unanswered. The contemporary forms of the duty are therefore institutional as much as personal: whistleblowing, audit, parliamentary oversight, judicial review and investigative journalism are nahy ʿan al-munkar in modern dress; adulteration, substandard drugs and unsafe construction remain classical ḥisbah territory; ecological damage is made munkar by 30:41; and in the digital space the duty appears as the correction of misinformation and the refusal to forward unverified content. For the civil servant the application is direct, since the officer who refuses an illegal order and records his refusal acts at the levels of hand and tongue together. The conclusion follows: a community earns the description given in 3:110 not by the content of its creed but by what it declines to permit, and the vessel is lost less through the recklessness of the one boring the hole than through the calculation of the passengers who judge the matter none of their concern.

One-Line Conclusion for a 20-Mark Answer

A community is not "the best nation" because of what it believes but because of what it refuses to tolerate — and the ship sinks not when someone bores a hole, but when the rest of the passengers decide it is not their business.

📌 Past Paper Questions — CSS 2017–2026

Direct Part-II questions: None exclusively on this subtopic's title in the ten papers reviewed.

Related descriptive questions and solved-answer links:

2022 · Q7 — Reconstruction of Pakistani society in light of Islamic teachings. → 2022 — Islamic Studies (CSS)
2023 · Q7 — Remedies for extremism under Islamic teachings. → 2023 — Islamic Studies (CSS)
2025 · Q2 — Noble morals and social peace in Prophetic practice. → 2025 — Islamic Studies (CSS)

Exam pattern: FPSC tests this obligation indirectly through moral reform, prevention of injustice and remedies for extremism.