Dr. Reyaz Ahmad
It is often said that if the teachings of Islam were truly followed, society would witness justice, harmony, and peace, and much of the unrest that troubles the world would disappear. At one level, this claim is deeply persuasive. Islam does not merely offer rituals; it offers a moral and social order. It teaches justice, mercy, honesty, responsibility, restraint, compassion, respect for human dignity, and accountability before God. The Qur’an commands justice and forbids aggression, and it calls human beings to know one another across social and tribal differences rather than despise one another. It also treats the saving of life as a moral act of the highest order.
So, in principle, the claim is sound: a society that genuinely lives by such values would almost certainly be more peaceful than one built on greed, arrogance, hatred, and moral irresponsibility.
Yet the present world forces us to examine the claim more carefully. If the moral vision is so elevated, why do many societies that identify strongly with religion still suffer from corruption, injustice, violence, division, mistrust, and unrest? Why does a world full of religious language remain full of human conflict?
The answer lies in a distinction that is often ignored: there is a great difference between admiring a religion, performing some of its rituals, and actually living by its ethical demands. The real problem is not the poverty of the teachings; it is the poverty of human practice.
Islamic teaching, properly understood, does not reduce religion to prayer alone, fasting alone, or public displays of piety alone. It binds worship to conduct. A person cannot meaningfully claim devotion to God while oppressing workers, humiliating women, cheating in business, spreading lies, abusing power, breaking trusts, fueling sectarian hatred, or being indifferent to the suffering of neighbours. If prayer does not produce moral discipline, if fasting does not produce empathy, if charity does not reduce selfishness, and if religious knowledge does not tame ego, then religion has been performed outwardly but not internalized inwardly.
This is where present scenarios become important. The world today is not merely facing isolated incidents of disorder. Authoritative global reports describe a much wider crisis: violent conflict is at its highest level in decades, forced displacement reached about 123.2 million people at the end of 2024, and many societies are being destabilized by inequality, insecurity, distrust, and social fragmentation. These realities do not disprove Islam. They expose humanity.
In fact, the current condition of the world may be read as evidence for the very claim under discussion. Much of today’s unrest grows from the exact moral failures that Islam repeatedly warns against injustice, excess, dishonesty, oppression, tribal arrogance, unchecked anger, economic exploitation, and the worship of self-interest. When leaders rule without justice, when wealth circulates without compassion, when identity is used to humiliate others, and when power is freed from accountability, unrest becomes inevitable. Islam did not create these diseases; it named them long ago.
Take corruption, for example. A society may build mosques, hold religious gatherings, and celebrate sacred occasions, yet if bribery becomes normal, merit is ignored, and public office is treated as private property, social anger will accumulate. Young people will lose trust. Honest citizens will feel defeated. The poor will feel abandoned. Such a society may look religious on the surface, but its operating system is not Islamic justice; it is moral contradiction.
The same applies to family life. Islam honours parents, protects children, regulates rights between spouses, and teaches mercy inside the home. But where homes are ruled by cruelty, ego, silence, neglect, or domination, unrest begins at the smallest social unit and then spreads outward into the larger society. Social peace cannot be built by public slogans if private life is full of wounds.
Likewise, Islam teaches the dignity of all human beings and rejects superiority based on race, tribe, and lineage. Yet in many places today, prejudice survives under modern and traditional labels alike. Communities divide themselves into camps of sect, ethnicity, class, nationality, or language, and then wonder why trust disappears. A society cannot insult the Quranic principle of human dignity and still expect social unity.
However, intellectual honesty requires another important point: it is too simplistic to say that if individuals performed their religious duties properly, all unrest in the world would vanish. Human beings are not the only source of suffering. There are also structural problems: war economies, geopolitical rivalries, authoritarian systems, historical injustices, poverty traps, disinformation, weapons flows, and institutional breakdown. The modern world is shaped not only by personal morality but also by power arrangements. Even a morally serious population can suffer if institutions are weak and justice systems are captured.
But here again, Islamic teaching remains relevant. Islam does not speak only to private virtue; it also speaks to public order. It insists on justice in contracts, fairness in trade, protection of life, care for the vulnerable, fulfillment of trusts, and restraint in conflict. In other words, Islam’s societal impact becomes real only when its values move from the mosque to the market, from the sermon to the school, from the home to the court, and from personal conscience to public institutions.
This is why the phrase “properly followed” is the heart of the claim. Properly followed does not mean selectively followed. It does not mean being strict in ritual but careless in ethics. It does not mean public religiosity and private cruelty. It does not mean defending one’s group while denying justice to others. Proper following means that the believer fears God when angry, when wealthy, when powerful, when alone, and when no applause is available.
If that happened at scale, the societal impact would indeed be profound.
A businessman would not cheat.
A judge would not sell judgment.
A teacher would not neglect students.
A husband would not abuse.
A child would not abandon elderly parents.
A politician would not inflame hatred for votes.
A scholar would not trade truth for popularity.
A citizen would not remain indifferent to injustice done to others.
That kind of society would not become paradise on earth, because human beings remain imperfect. But it would be far more humane, stable, trustworthy, and peaceful than what we see around us today.
So the claim should neither be dismissed nor romanticized. It is true in moral substance, but often false in social application. Islam’s teachings are indeed of the highest order; the present unrest of the world does not show their failure. It shows how rarely they are embodied with sincerity, consistency, and courage.
The real lesson from present scenarios is therefore not that religion is irrelevant, nor that religious identity is enough. The lesson is sharper: peace does not come from carrying a religion’s name; it comes from carrying its values into life. Until justice is lived, mercy is practiced, dignity is protected, and accountability is embraced, unrest will continue to thrive under many flags, including religious ones.
And perhaps that is the most honest conclusion of all: the world is not suffering because moral guidance is absent. It is suffering because moral guidance is admired more than it is obeyed.
(The author is a freelancer and can be reached at [email protected])
