Enjoining good and forbidding wrong (Arabic: ٱلْأَمْرُ بِٱلْمَعْرُوفِ وَٱلنَّهْيُ عَنِ ٱلْمُنْكَرِ|al-amru bi-l-maʿrūfi wa-n-nahyu ʿani-l-munkari) are two important duties imposed by God in Islam as revealed in the Quran and Hadith.[1] [2]
"The term that best helps us to understand the nature of Qurʾān ethical prescriptions is maʿrūf, a word that appears repeatedly (in slightly varying forms) in the Qurʾān, yet that seems to require little explanation from either the Qurʾānic text or from commentators."[3] Maʿrūf and munkar are widely discussed because of the duties the Quran imposes on believers through these concepts. Maʿrūf is seen as a key word in moral understanding of the Quran, and traditional commentators oppose the association of maʿrūf with its cognate urf, "custom."[4]
Although most common translations of the phrase is "good and evil", the words used by Islamic philosophy in determining good and evil discourses are ḥusn and qubh. In its most common usage, maʿrūf is "in accordance with the custom", while munkar, which has no place in the custom, as its opposite,[5] singular (nukr). In today's religious expression, maʿrūf sunnah (this concept was not different from custom in the beginning[6] [7]), munkar is meant as bid’a. (a related topic: Istihsan)
This expression is the base of the classical Islamic institution of ḥisba, the individual or collective duty (depending on the Islamic school of law) to intervene and enforce Islamic law. It forms a central part of the Islamic doctrine for Muslims. The injunctions also constitute two of the ten Ancillaries of the Faith of Twelver Shi'ism.[8] [9] [10] [11]
Some jurists classified human behavior according to their understanding of sharia and made this ahkam understanding part of the "duty of enjoining good and forbidding evil".[12]