“Aren’t you frightened of thieves, just throwing your belongings in the corner like that?”

His host answered: “We do not have any thieves here.”

The guest said: “We put our money in safes and lock them, but it is still frequently stolen.”

His host told him: “We cut off the hands of thieves as a Divine command and on account of the justice of the Shari‘a.”

Whereupon the guest exclaimed: “Then most of you must be lacking a hand!”

His host told him: “I am fifty years old, and yet in my whole life I have only seen one person with their hand cut off.”

The guest was ashamed and said: “Although everyday in my country we put fifty people in prison for theft, it does not have one hundredth of the effectiveness of your justice here.”

The host said: “You have been unmindful of an important truth and have ignored a strange and powerful fact, as a result of which true justice has escaped you. In place of general good, under an apparent justice, hatred and vicious and partisan currents intervene, destroying the effect of the judgements. The truth is as follows:

With us, the moment a thief stretches out his hand to seize another’s property, he recalls the punishment of the Shari‘a. The command revealed from the Divine Throne comes to his mind. Through the sense of belief and ear of the heart, he as though hears the verse: