Opinion: Legitimate Crimes

When we hear the word “crime,” our minds immediately turn to murder, theft, or fraud—those tangible, physical acts that prompt police intervention, open courtroom doors, and bring lawyers to line up, so that a judge may ultimately deliver a verdict of retribution. Yet, deep within human relationships, there exist crimes of a different kind: hidden offenses committed daily with unbearable cruelty, which turn the lives of victims upside down. Nevertheless, the perpetrators remain free and unshackled, smiling broadly, because these are, simply put, crimes not punishable by law.

The law of the land demands witnesses and evidence of physical assault, but it is deaf to the inner cries of a victim facing the ingratitude of a loved one or the betrayal of a friend. It is a legal system that stands completely powerless to prosecute those who steal years of your life, distort your beautiful perception of life, and reduce your burning passion to cold ash. This terrifying void is precisely what emboldens offenders to persist without restraint.

If we wish to grasp the bitterness of these crimes, it suffices to reflect on what Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in his novel “The Idiot.” In those passages, we do not find a criminal offense punishable by the courts, but rather “Myshkin,” that pure, kind, and profoundly honest man, whom fate cast into a society tainted by selfishness, manipulation, and narrow self-interest. Instead of embracing his purity, this world devoured him. They exploited his kindness as a weakness, manipulated his emotions, and ruthlessly drained his psychological energy, ultimately driving him to madness and loss of reason.

Society committed a fully constituted act of murder against Myshkin, but one that targeted his spirit and mind rather than his body. In a passage that encapsulates the pain inflicted by those to whom you have opened the doors of your heart, Dostoevsky writes: “The thing that tortures and destroys me is that I was a stranger to them, a complete stranger to all this world that smiles at me while tearing me apart.”

This “moral decline” that shattered Myshkin is the same daily anguish swallowed by millions of people in our lived reality. It is a hidden weapon, licensed behind closed doors, manifesting in the falsification of emotions, the wearing of fake masks of love, bitter abandonment, sudden flight in the darkest hours of need, and the depletion of others’ energy before discarding them on the roadside without a single glance of remorse. These are lawful crimes that legal texts cannot encompass, and which jurisprudence cannot uncover. The genius of the judiciary stands baffled before them, because they are committed in spaces where the law cannot reach, where harm hides behind faces not condemned by any statute, even if truth condemns them.

The most dangerous form of moral degradation occurs when a person commits a crime against others without realizing, nor does society around him realize, that he is a criminal. When acknowledgment of the crime is absent, persistence becomes its natural extension, and harm becomes a behavior for which its perpetrator is not held accountable. Society instead coexists with it, even growing accustomed to it.

Although the Holy Quran has urged us toward noble ethics, calling us to benevolence, respect for others, and the preservation of their dignity, the painful paradox of this modern age is that many now fear violating the law more than they fear violating the values the Quran advocated. They comply with regulations out of fear of punishment, yet they transgress moral boundaries without blinking, as if the absence of human oversight grants them the right to harm others.

Victims of this type of crime have nothing left but to await the justice of heaven and find solace in the consolation of time.