Assistant Professor, University of Judicial Sciences
Abstract
A question always arising in the Islamic society is as follows: “Can one legitimately force people to do well and avoid evil?” the society still faces various jurisprudential answers to this question. Since according to the primary principle compulsion is not legitimate, its exceptions such as legitimate compulsion requires proof. To prove the legitimacy of ‘compulsion to do religious obligations and avoid illicit deeds’, one may use arguments for enjoining good and forbidding evil. However, extracting and evaluating those evidences will leads us to the conclusion that those evidences are short of proving the legitimacy of compulsion and what can ultimately be used of them is “legitimacy of denying evil by hand” which does not mean forcing one to give up evildoing, and cannot be a permission for compulsion. The shortness of evidences for ‘legitimacy of compulsion in enjoining and forbidding’ suggests the possibility of its illegitimacy, because enjoining and forbidding along with compulsion leads to one’s being annoyed.
