Chief-in-Editor  Prof. Badria A. Al-Awadi

The practical and daily applications of contemporary laws and legislations show immense and increasing problems and dilemmas which are mainly manifested by how legislation and enactment of laws and decisions are made, by methods of implementation and enforcement, and by their results and effects alike. The facts that are taking place on a daily basis in the areas which are directly and indirectly related to local and international laws and legislation, and to those who work on them, reveal an unprecedented decline and regression, with the announcement in many developing countries of rampant corruption in administrative, governmental, educational and teaching bodies, and bribery in parliaments and judicial bodies, as well as old and new announcements of cheating, fraud, and deception in the field of food and basic foodstuffs committed by unscrupulous people without regard for the health and safety of the public, as well as other crimes which eat away at the entity of society and pose a threat to the safety of the community’s buildup and to the future of its children.

It has been widely believed for a long time that man-made, legal rules are sufficient to regulate and control human societies, since binding rules organize the conduct of individuals in society, and are accompanied by a material penalty to be enacted if these rules are violated. This belief is based on the fact that man-made positive law came after a historical development which benefited from the legal schools that preceded it. It looked like the best formula that mankind had come up with to codify coexistence, and that the laws and legislations that regulate the various aspects of society create systems and institutions that gain strength as they are applied; and that their loopholes are filled and put into practice by executive regulations, administrative decisions, and accumulated legal and jurisprudence rules. This would consecrate the participatory setting of these rules and regulations, and confirm the concept of the rule of law, thus recognizing the public›s supremacy as emanating from it and as beneficial to it in people’s daily life. To this end, some strict positive legal systems aimed to exclude any role for religious, social, intellectual, or cultural systems and values were enacted.

However, this belief in the sufficiency of positive legal rules and the feasibility of the systems that established them and their effectiveness in ensuring the security and prosperity of societies, faced real challenges for a long time, reflected in the large number of crimes of financial and administrative corruption committed by legislators, politicians, administrators, economists, jurists, judges, merchants, doctors, nurses and others in developed and developing countries. Both, in addition to the escalation of violent crimes, murder and brutality committed by individuals, gangs and states alike to fulfil private interests founded on false allegations and false claims. These criminal acts have developed into social phenomena that pose a threat to social security and peace at the local levels, as well as a threat to global peace and security, given that regional and global societies are interconnected units and are influenced by each other.

Many legal and sociological specialists attribute the reasons for the afore-mentioned crimes committed by these officials to weak moral scruples, lack of respect for professional and social values, and the predominance of greed, opportunism, selfishness, and other factors.

In light of this, these challenges faced by the legal systems in our contemporary Arab and Islamic societies, and their apparent shortcomings in addressing the rampant social crimes, call for the need to activate the role of professional and ethical principles and values ​​in all areas, legislative and legal in particular, through committees and councils of professional values ​​in Parliaments, governments and judicial councils first and foremost, because they are actors and influencers, in addition to promoting freedom of expression, media freedom and integrity as basic guarantees for the proper functioning of the authorities and respect for the rule and supremacy of law.

There is also an urgent need to enhance the moral and ethical dimension in the educational and study curricula at various educational levels, and to rehabilitate the institutions of religious upbringing and education. Moreover, we need to activate the role of the various social, professional and media institutions and civil society organizations with regard to the need to reinstate professional and ethical principles and values ​​in their work and in their performance.

In this context, we evoke the following translation of well-known verses composed by the Arab poet Ahmed Shawqi about morals, which deeply confirm the pivotal role of these morals in human societies:

«But nations remain as long as their morals remain.

If their morals disappear, they shall disappear.

Your goodness rests on your morals,

A dose of morals shall regulate the soul.

If people are hit in their morals,

perform a funeral and mourn them.”