Nineteenth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

The status of the sinful in Muslim society has long attracted the interest of scholars. There has been much debate over the life, destiny, social status, and moreover the duty of Muslims towards sinners. Most of the scholarly works have been carried out to scrutinize the theological, legal, and jurisprudential approaches towards those who disobey the rulings of Shari’ah. These works mainly deal with particular issues such as punishments and penalties. At the same time, there are some traditions which portray the moral approach towards sinners and explain the personal and moral duty of Muslims encountering a sinner. This moral approach is rarely discussed as a separate subject. Based on a remarkable number of Shīʿī Ḥadīth, moral approach with sinners is different from what is seen by outside observers in the court of law, which reminds people of rough penalties. According to these narrations, we can clearly see boundaries between sin and sinner, law and morality. From one side, certain sins may deserve punishment, and on the other side, righteous people have moral responsibility towards such people. This study sheds new light on the moral approach towards sinners based on Shīʿī Ḥadīth. An analysis of these narrations forms the bulk of this paper. In the final section, an attempt is made to explain how certain moral values should be observed with respect toward those who have committed sin - and how these moral values are reconciled with the legal punishments in Islamic laws.