So What is an Honest Muslim to do?

A friend of mine had a dilemma. Should he insist the police do their job or not?

To back up a little bit… the other morning, his cousin called him and said that a thief had broken into their house and stolen two cell phones and a thousand dollars worth of product. His cousin wanted my friend (TT) to go to the police. Obviously, TT’s cousin was afraid to go to the police himself, but my friend TT was educated, and maybe he would go.

So TT called a friend of his from his University days, who was now in the police in a different city, and asked, “What should I do?’ His friend told him, “Go to the police.”

So TT went to the police to tell them what had happened.

In India, whenever you go to the police, for whatever reason, you have to fill out an FIR (First Information Report). This FIR is VERY important. TT told the local police officer what had happened, and requested an FIR.

The policeman leaned back and thought for a minute and then made a suggestion: Don’t file the FIR, because if we recover the stuff, you will have to go through the courts to get it back and that could take months. (“This is true,” thought my friend TT.) Instead, give us a bit of time, and see if we can recover the stuff for you without the FIR, and when we catch the guy, he is probably a serial thief anyways, and we can still send him to jail on other charges. (“That is probably also true,” thought my friend.)

So what should he do? If he fills out the FIR, it might take months to get the stuff back if it gets recovered.

On the other hand, if he doesn’t fill out the FIR, the policeman is likely to demand a percentage of the stuff, or a bit of cash, before he will give the stuff back.

What is an honest Muslim to do?