44. The command not to make mischief in the earth means not to vitiate the
right order of life. What basically, constitutes 'mischief-making' is to surrender
oneself to one's lusts, to commit acts in subservience to other human beings
and to subscribe to base morals, social orders, civilizations, principles and
laws derived from sources other than God's Guidance. This is the essential mischief
from which innumerable evils issue and which the Qur'an seeks to eradicate.
The Qur'an also emphasizes that sound order is the original condition, and disorder
and mischief occurred later as accidents resulting from man's ignorance and
transgression. In other words, man's life on earth did not start with ignorance,
savagery, polytheistic beliefs, rebellion against God and moral disorder whereafter
reforms were gradually introduced. On the contrary, man's life began with good
order and was later corrupted because of man's perversity and folly. God sent
Prophets from time to time in order to eradicate the disorder that had set in
and to restore the original, good order. These Prophets constantly ehorted people
to refrain from disrupting the original order and creating mischief.
Thus the Qur'anic view on this question is altogether different from that of
the proponents of the false doctrine of evolution, who postulate that man has
gradually come out of darkness into light; that life has advanced in a unilinear
fashion, towards increasinly better conditions. The Qur'an rather postulates
that human life began in the full light of Divine Guidance, that the original
state of affairs was in accord with the Right Way prescribed by God. The blame
for corruption goes to man who, failing victim to Satan's allurements, veered
towards darkness and corrupted the right order of human life again and again.
As for God, He continually sent Prophets in order to summon men from darkness
to light, and to ask them to eschew evil and wickedness. (See Towards Understanding
the Qur'an, (al-Baqarah 2, n. 230, pp. 165-6 - Ed.)