The Harm Principle: 'Mein nay kisi ka nuqsan tou nahi kia'

'Mein nay kisi ka nuqsan tou nahi kia (I haven't harmed anyone) is a classical Urdu expression' that is often used to legitimize one's wrong doing, especially if it is a sin in the eyes of Islamic law.

What is interesting to note that the same thing is at the heart of secular moral paradigms, what we know as John Stuart Mill's invention of the harm principle. Harm principle was invented so as to replace God and religion from a being's life. That a being no more needs any religion to guide himself; the only guiding principle s/he needs is the harm principle, i.e., if his/her actions harm anyone, s/he must avoid doing it, but if s/he does something, e.g., watch a nude picture, that doesn't harm anyone else in the society, then it is perfectly moral and permissible to be done. He has not commited sin by seeing nudity, or such other acts which are condemned strongly by his/her religion. If a secular, God-less mentality follows this principle, it doesn't matter to me, but when I see a lot many believers following the same principle with such a conviction unimaginable, it treads my heart. But it should not.

Yet I have to ask: Whom do you harm as Muslim for those sins Mills would've perceived as perfectly ethical? I can tell you: You harm yourself, you harm your Prophet, saw. Does anyone else need to be harmed? But. As if to add the plight of human beings of modern age, such absurd principles are taught in an enchanting manner in our universities by professors whom we deem and welcome as great saviors, "He just did a Ph.D from (wherever)." Satan is most widespread than ever, it seems to be. May Allah save us from the ideologies and philosophies that legitimize sins. Aameen!