Azam Ali, Ahmadi Moslem
Chapter 16 – Peace Maker
Raised Bribe-haters
Rule of Universal Application regarding bribes does not change from one country or code to another. It’s bad everywhere. The Holy Qor-aan stated it clearly. Bribing in any form is prohibited. Judiciary is the most obvious arena where it is more prone to be violated.
Honesty, integrity and impartiality are basic elements of honest judiciary. Have them and see peace in society. Extend them around and see world peace (See Commentary World Peace through Law). Get them away from any group and see how quickly chaos settles in.
Wa laa tau-ko-loo um-waa-la koom bai-na koom bay il-baa-tay-lay Wa tood-loo bay-haa aiy-lul hook-kaa-may lay tau-ko-loo free-qaun Min um-waa-lay in-naa-say bay il-ith-may wa un-too tau-la-moo-n سُوۡرَةُ البَقَرَة – Ch: 002, Verse 189
And you do not eat up your assets among you with falsehood Or turn it over to the authorities for you to eat up part From other peoples’ assets with sin and you know that. 002:189
Father considered any gifts to him or his family as bribes. He shunned them as filth. He believed and rightly so that all these gifts were sent to his home only because he was a Judge and with the intent to influence his judgement from remaining impartial.
Father treated such attempted gifts tantamount to bribes and such gift-giving as an ugly effort to bribe. The intent behind those gifts was what Father understood, and he wanted us his children to also do the same.
Such gifts usually came after Father had arrived in a new judicial district upon a transfer that routinely occurred nearly every 2 years as a part of the Punjab Provincial Civil Service and before people learnt of Father’s extremely militant hostility towards these gifts.
Father wanted his children to also understand what he knew well. Sending these so-called gifts to our house were obviously arranged not so innocently by some lawyer, litigant or layman and left as gifts with servants at our house.
Some gifts came anonymously. Boxes of fruits and candies and baskets of food smelt temptingly delicious. Father ordered them immediately discarded, destroyed, given away or thrown out. We the children learnt very early in life his rationale for doing so.
Creating hate in another person’s mind about anything is not easy. Abba Ji did that job well by ingraining his children with real abhorrence against bribes, no matter in what form, shape or place one came and how genuine or innocent it looked.
Father knew how strong and stern resistant he was against any type of bribe even entering his household. But he also knew that he had ten (10) vulnerable 1 to 15 years old children he had to prepare from being or playing any part of the bribing.
The Holy Qor-aan prohibited the giving of bribe. The result is there’s no taker of bribes. The Holy Prophet, s.a.w., further clarified the prohibition for better understanding by an undeveloped mind: Both the giver and taker of a bribe are destined to burn in Hell.
Ur raa-shee wa ul-moor-ta-she ho-maa fee un-naa-r Hadeeth Both the Giver of a bribe and the Taker of bribe will be in Fire.
Peace Maker
The dilemma is that a gift is the best means to befriend. It ties strangers into a bond of closeness. It’s an effective instrument to make peace between conflicting individuals and warring factions. Giving and receiving gifts makes peace.
Gifting quickly dissolves enmities and cements friendship. But the wonderful technique to bring people together is also the most effective lure to dissolve and evaporate honesty by its use to practice bribery. Crooks are good at it, but some crook-catchers know how to avoid it.
When, where and how to draw a line between one’s honest activity pursuant to a divine Command and a well-known methodology of pursuing, promoting and practicing one of the most heinous crimes of corrupting equity, fairness and justice? Father was a master of this art.
Abba Ji acted upon the Command. He used his God-given talents and spiritual knowledge to reduce the feudal frictions when he saw them. He gifted away generously the rightness, but stayed away from personal gifts. He didn’t let gifting tilt balance of justice in court or at home.
In-na-mul-moe-may-noo-na-ikh-wa-tool-fa-us-lay-hoo-bai-na-aa-kha-wai-koom سُوۡرَةُ الحُجرَات – Ch: 049, verse 011 Believers are brothers. So, make peace among your brothers. 049:011
He orchestrated marriages between Buttar cousins-turned-enemies-clans and patch up litigant factions and their supporters. He spread goodwill where formerly blood-thirsty enmity swayed. He encouraged people to be genuine friends and exchange gifts. Yet he never accepted any gift of any kind from anybody.
He urged all parties to forgive, forget and bury old hatchets and exercise self-restraint rather than continue harboring old hostilities, generation after generations. He turned his relatives, friends and others he could into being Ahmadi. He continually practiced what he believed to be the following principle of the Holy Qor-aan.
Wa au-ta-say-moo bay hub-lay il-laa-hay ja-me-un wa laa ta-fur-ra-qoo Wa uz-ko-roo nae-ma-ta ul-laa-hay alai koom iz koon-toom au-daa-un Fa ul-la-fa bai-na qo-loo-bay koom Fa us-bauh toom bay nae-ma-tay he ikh-waa-naa سُوۡرَةُ آل عِمرَان – Ch: 003, Verse 104
And you all hold fast the rope of Allah and don’t be divided. And remember the blessing of Allah upon you when you were enemies. Then He created love among your hearts So, with His grace you became brethren. 003:104
Gifts making peace Vs. Bribes
The Holy Qor-aan explained the phenomenon by mandating: Do not eat your wealth among yourselves with falsehood (misrepresentation, false excuses, false notion, false practices) or offer that to the authorities so that you can devour a part of other people’s property in sin and with knowledge, as stated above in 002:189.
The Command in the Holy Qor-aan and its interpretation in Hadeeth (a saying of the Holy Prophet Mohammed, s.a.w.) had led Father to unequivocally declare and consistently enforce his personal aversion against bribe.
I read in the Webster’s Encyclopedia of Dictionaries the definition that bribe was “Anything bestowed with a view to influence judgment and conduct; v. t. to influence by gift; v. t. to practice bribery.” I guess the United States Supreme Court needed to see that definition when their majority decided that gifts valued up to $13,000.00 were acceptable.
The absolute prohibition of bribery, or any act with even the remotest possible semblance, never came close to benefiting Father’s family members, and as far as humanly possible his ever so extensive staff in and around his court.
From very early childhood we were ingrained with the concept that bribes were not just an amount of cash but included any gift someone offered to a child to reach a parent to obtain a favorable decision by causing injustice to the opposite side. And all that was bad.
With my mother having passed away when I was 13 and my stepmother being busy memorizing the Holy Qor-aan, to us our father’s words were the sole words of guidance, words of command, words of advice and really the only thing that carried credentials as true.
It was normal at that time for judicial officers’ children to be the initial contact-point to receive kindness, friendship and attempted gift-giving by their teachers, neighbors and even Father’s own staff in a new judicial district where he arrived after a routine transfer.
Material things were easy for us kids to recognize as red herrings. Immediate refusal to them being manifestly against Islam and Father’s policies was easy. But subtle acts of kindness, apparent friendship and professed sincerity were not easily discernable – until a few days or weeks later they got plainly verbalized as “Would you tell your father that…”
Father taught us well. Our tutored response to those dirty, filthy, nasty and illicit demands were so clear and crude that they instantaneously pushed away the requesters. The sudden and total evaporation of all former enthusiastic devotion bewildered us kids.
In the early stages such conduct confused us kids and we doubted and distrusted the motives of all strangers. Suspecting intended injustice from Father’s court and destined loss of friendship eventually cultivated hate against bribery as the root-cause. The process culminated in raising Father’s children as bribe-hater adults.
My experience
When I started practicing law years later I found myself hating bribery even more. I was in the first year of my law practice. A magistrate was hearing me argue in a case. He stopped in the middle of the hearing and called me into the side-chamber of his courtroom. In plain words he then asked for money as the cost of doing business. I was appalled.
I could hardly control my extreme disgust. I asked Mr. Naqvi to adjourn the case. He did it for a couple of days. Outside the courtroom, I told my client that the magistrate had demanded money to grant bail and that is why I was refusing to be his Attorney any longer.
I never ever returned to that Magistrate’s court. Sometime later he was raided and arrested by anti-corruption police which moved into action because of similar demands he had made on young lawyers promising each that uplift in the practice of law which every inexperienced lawyer needed. He obviously did not know Abba Ji and how he had raised us.
I know other Ahmadi families who like my Father had raised and educated their children who did not fit in the corrupt structure in Pakistan. An internationally read Digest in an article published in 1970 had recognized Pakistan as “World’s Most Corrupt Country.”
May be that anti-bribery culture and reputation of honesty aggregated into forming the background that led to corrupt politicians from top to toe of Pakistan to collectively amend the country’s Constitution in 1974 and declare Ahmadis as non-Muslim although every other country in the world treats them as Moslems which they really are.
No wonder that Justice Shafi investigating a complaint against Father that he had turned district headquarters into an Ahmadiyya colony by settling so many Ahmadi refugees there had found the complaint frivolous. He concluded his report by saying that he could wipe corruption away from the country if he could find just two honest Judges like my father.
Yes, I am proud of being a son of the man who was the master of distinguishing peace-making gifting from bribes. He raised seven children who all as grandparents are raising in many countries a huge number of similar peace spreading, bribes killing people
