As we have seen, forbidding wrong is a prominent Islamic value. But is it peculiarly Islamic? Or are values that resemble it to be found in other cultures? If so, how close do they come to the Islamic value, and in what ways are they different? Such parallels, if they exist, could validly give rise to two projects that are in principle distinct. One is genetic: here the questions are whether the Islamic conception of forbidding wrong has identifiable pre-Islamic origins, and how far it has influenced non-Islamic cultures. The other is comparative: it is often illuminating to compare and contrast analogous, perhaps genetically unrelated, phenomena in different settings. In what follows, however, I have not formally separated the two projects. What begins as an inquiry into the origins of the Islamic value will end up as an attempt to identify and explain what is distinctive about it. But before embarking on this quest, it may be prudent to narrow the field somewhat.

What are we looking for?

It is not hard to find non-Islamic parallels to the expression ‘command right and forbid wrong’. Thus a German legal document of 1616 offers the phrase ‘recht gebieten und unrecht verbieten’ with regard to the conduct incumbent on the judge of a certain court. In the next century William Blackstone (d. 1780), in his celebrated treatise on the laws of England, defines municipal law as ‘a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state, commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong’.