may know and love good, and know and hate evil, more fully than someone who has not known and tasted both as he has. Indeed, someone who has known only good may encounter evil without recognizing it as such; he may then either fall into it or fail to condemn it as someone familiar with it would. For this reason, ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb, may Allah be pleased with him, said: “The bonds of Islam are undone, one by one, only when people grow up within Islam without knowing pre-Islamic ignorance.”
It is just as ʿUmar said. Islam is perfected through enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong, and this is brought to completion through striving in Allah’s cause. Someone raised among what is right, knowing nothing else, may lack the knowledge of wrongdoing and its harm possessed by someone familiar with it. Nor will he strive against its practitioners as someone well acquainted with them would. Thus, a person familiar with evil and its causes, if his intentions are sound, takes precautions against it, restrains its practitioners, and strives against them in ways that others do not.
For this reason, the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, surpassed those who came after them in faith and striving: their knowledge of good and evil, their love of good, and their hatred of evil were more complete. They knew the goodness of Islam, faith, and righteous deeds, and the ugliness of disbelief and sins. Likewise, someone who has tasted poverty, illness, and fear is more eager for prosperity, health, and security than someone who has not experienced them.
Hence the saying:
“A thing’s beauty is revealed by its opposite.”