Just imagine a fairy tale - a tale in which everyone starts to be good.

They may not be perfect, but they "be good".

That would be a wonderful world wouldn't it? Or would it?

If you are really security conscious and just one antivirus program for your PC is not enough, surely instally two will be twice as good, right? (wrong - they conflict and can cause great harm where they fight each other instead of viruses potentially allowing them trhough and slowing your system down greatly.)

Some times people can try too hard in things and this can lead to unnecessary hardship.

There is a case mentioned in the qur'an about a cow which comes to mind - it is the story after which surah Baqarah is named and I have probably mentioned this before in the forums. Its not a probably, it is a certainty, I have. But here I am using that same example in a different context.

Sometimes the pursuit of perfection can be the thing that leads to downfall too - in the case of the cow mentioned in the qur'an, the people weer asked a simple enough task - to sacrifice a cow. Instead of sacrificing any old cow, they started asking questions, asking for more specifics and in the end the requirements became so stringent that they could not find a cow that met the requirements.

In the same vein there is the story of Pakistan - the name meaning "the land of the pure"... so it is a muslim majority nation where the overwhelming majority of the people are Muslims... however with recent terrorism activity there you can also see that this has not lead to heaven on earth and there and in many parts of the world there are Muslims killing other Muslims - for not being of exactly the same mindset, or - in their minds of not being pure enough.

So instead of being "pure", they want people to be the "purest" and are unwilling to compromise and are intolerant of people merely being pure.

When looking at things, rulings, requirements, it is important to be aware that over medicating on Islamic principles can become unislamic of themselves - it is like the second strike by the Shaytaan - first stop a person from giving into the will of Allah (swt), but if he fails in that, he will try to get the people to voer exert and cause a nuisance that way.

So it is important to look at what is required and also make sure that when going after and implementing what is required, that it is done in the right way with the right ideas.

(Yes, this is somehow a response to the clothing blogs, but without the coherency that this post actually required. It is also more extreme and using examples and situations that are wholly unrelated...)

If balance is not kept, you get to a position where cases occur where eg in saudi a wife petitioned to divorce her husband because he tried to see her face after over a deace of marriage, or the case where an imam in saudi said women should only go out with one eye uncovered, not both (and some incorrectly say this is based on the views of Imam Ali (ra) - this is incorrect and the book they use is a fabrication and not authentic).

Or the case where, once again in saudi where gender segregation has generally been strictly enforced, another imam suggested that women breast feed strange men to get around the restrictions (the imam was once again wrong, as there is a hadith which mentions that such semi-familial relations can only be created when a foster mother breast feeds a child that is below the age where the child can eat solids.)

Over medicating can be dangerous and can push people into stopping perfectly acceptable behavious in fear of at some point going beyond the limits, but while even approaching something haraam has been warned away from.. at the same time eg with the example of alcohol, both eating grapes and consuming vinegar are known from sunnah to be allowed or encouraged even.