Beautiful Islamic Stories

- Rooting Out A Problem

Once upon a time an emperor bought some very old chinaware which he liked very much.

One day a slave of his dropped one of the china dishes which of course broke into pieces.

The emperor became very angry and shouted: "Hey, executioner. Come quickly and kill this slave, for he has broken my precious dish!"

There was a man in the palace who, noticing what happened, turned to the emperor and said: "Your Majesty, please forgive him.

I have a special kind of substance which, if applied to broken china, can restore it to its former state."

"Really?"

"Yes. But I must first see the rest of your precious china ware. Then I shall start sticking together the broken pieces of china for you."

"All right, here are the rest of my precious china dishes."

"Fine! Now I'm going to mend it."

But instead of mending the china bowl, he started breaking other dishes as well.

"What are you doing? You have broken all the china ware! I must give orders for you to be killed too, but first tell me why you have done this?"

"As I was sure that these dishes would cause the death of many other innocent people, I decided to break all the china ware so that you would only kill me. This way one would be killed instead of many."

The emperor thought for a while and realized that he was right. So he forgave the slave too and set them free.