Even the Thief Had Honour

What the Muslim will do is stop everything, five times a day. In Muslim countries, traditionally, people left their shops. This is less so now, because Muslims are being secularised like everybody else; but traditionally — and one can still find this in some countries — Muslims will leave their shops, and often they did not lock them. They would literally put drapes across them, because for somebody to steal while somebody was praying — even a thief had a sense of honour there; that was not a good thing to do.

And it is interesting that traditionally many, many court cases were decided based on what is called an oath, where the judge would say: do you swear by God that you are telling the truth, or lying? Historically, many, many court cases were solved because people were quite literally afraid of bearing false witness or lying, and they would say: I cannot say that. And that would literally end the trial. There were many, many cases like that historically. So traditionally people did have a sense that there were certain things one did not do; even the thief had honour.

There is a famous story of Imam al-Ghazālī, the great theologian and scholar, who was from Ṭūs in Persia and had studied in one of the great Persian cities. He had spent two years transcribing all these books by hand, because there were no printing presses: if one wanted books, one had to write them out. He went to the library and spent two years doing that, and on the way back the caravan was attacked by brigands. They were taking his books, and he begged the chief of the thieves: you cannot take all my knowledge. The thief laughed and said: what kind of knowledge do you have, when somebody like me can steal it? And al-Ghazālī said that he realised that God had made the man say that, to let him know, and to remind him, that true knowledge was not in books.

To set out the five once more: there is maghrib, ʿishāʾ, fajr, ẓuhr, and then ʿaṣr is the last prayer, which means the afternoon prayer.