إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يُحِبُّونَ أَن تَشِيعَ ٱلْفَٰحِشَةُ فِى ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ فِى ٱلدُّنْيَا وَٱلْءَاخِرَةِ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ وَأَنتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ
Commentary:
In the foregoing few verses, the Quran has severely condemned scandal-mongering. It has taken as serious a view of the spreading and circulation of false accusations as that of crimes in the community, thus shaking the whole moral foundation of society. It is this sense of pessimism which the verse under comment seeks to eradicate. Whereas on the one hand the Quran has severely condemned scandal-mongering and has enjoined that sexual misconduct should be reported to the concerned authorities and not freely talked about in public, on the other it has encouraged that good and virtuous acts should be given wide publicity and proper appreciation. These Quranic injunctions conduce to the creation of a very healthy atmosphere and to the eradication and extermination of the evil of sexual immorality.
The words "Allah knows and you know not" signify that God alone knows the sources of evil and it is He Who alone can direct us as to how an evil can be successfully resisted and eradicated. It is not given to man to find out the genesis and source of evil. Moral philosophers and psychologists have discussed and debated as to what is vice, but none of them has been able so far to trace out its real source. It is the revealed word of God that has done so. The Quran has not only dealt with the various forms of evil and laid down directions and injunctions to meet and conquer it but has also shed light on how evil originates and takes birth and how it develops. In this verse we are told that scandal-mongering leads to the prevalence of vice.
Islam has taken as serious a view of the spreading and circulation of false accusations as that of crimes against chastity. It has condemned and prescribed punishment for both the crimes—for scandal-mongering even a severer punishment since it is calculated to produce more grievous consequences as far as the prevalence of sexual immorality in a community is concerned than the stray acts of sexual misconduct. If scandal-mongering is allowed to be indulged in unchecked in a community, it will come to lose all sense of horror and abhorrence at the commission of immoral acts with the result that immorality will become rampant and a sense of pessimism with regard to its future will begin to prevail in the community, thus shaking its whole moral foundation.