When a powerful being is unable to resolve his own contradiction...

When a powerful being is unable to resolve his own contradiction, that is his inner conflict, his obsession will before long appear in the form of a social contradiction, which may take any shape or form and may be tagged with any law or cultural usage yet in the final analysis will be same form of contradiction between the strong and the weak. It does not make any difference if sometimes the strong is an individual by the name of Pharaoh, sometimes a class and sometimes a community or a nation.

All these are various forms of contradiction and the ruling spirit in each case it that of conflict and exploitation. In each case there is a clash between a weak individual and a strong man whose inner conflict and contradiction has remained unresolved and who consequently tries to exploit a weak individual to satisfy his own vanity.

We observe various forms of social contradiction along the line of man's contact with his fellow man, yet the spirit in each case is the same, and all contradictions spring, as we have just said, from one basic contradiction, that is man's inner conflict or the contradiction between a handful of clay and a flash of the desire to meet Allah. So long as one of these two tendencies does not completely suppress the other tendency, the contradiction will continue to exist in all circumstances.

Although both these tendencies are always present, yet one of them is usually predominant according to the actual condition of society and according to the level of the thinking and general education of the individual concerned. The viewpoint of Islam in regard to the problem of human relations is very vast and deep. No form of contradiction has been ignored by it. It takes into consideration all forms of contradiction, analyses them fully and finds out their common spirit.

So it has linked all contradictions to a more deep-rooted contradiction, that is man's own inner conflict. That is why Islam believes that one mission alone can solve the whole problem of human relations. It can simultaneously work on two levels. It can strive in the historical field to remove social contradictions and at the same time or even before it and after it, can resolve man's inner conflict. Thus it can dry up the social contradictions at their very source.