LESSER EVIL

A wise person is able to distinguish between the lesser evil and the greater evil, and is willing to endure the lesser evil so that he can be saved from a bigger evil.

There is a saying of the second Muslim Caliph, Umar Farooq: ‘Intelligence is not who knows good from evil, but intelligence is one who knows the lesser of two evils’ (Al-‘Iqd al-Farid, Vol. 2, p. 109 -10). From this saying, one learns that if a person possesses theoretical knowledge of things that are good and things that are bad or evil, he may be a scholar, but he cannot be said to be a wise person. In order to be a wise person, one must possess an additional quality, and that is knowledge of which among two evils is a lesser evil and less destructive.

To understand this issue, consider a hypothetical situation. Suppose a group of people are raising objectionable slogans outside your house. In this case, one evil is this sloganeering of theirs. Another possible, evil is that if you try to stop them or enter into an argument with them, they might get more aggressive and might even resort to violence and cause loss of life and property. Now, a wise person is one who, thinking with a cool mind, understands which of these two evils is the bigger one and which is the smaller one. Following this, he agrees to tolerate the smaller evil so that he does not have to face the bigger evil.

In their affairs, ordinary people know only two things—the aspect of good and the aspect of evil. But the wise person is he who can also distinguish between the two types of evil, and then agree to tolerate the lesser evil so that he can be saved from a bigger evil.