Adl e Ilahi (The Justice of God) in Islam [Part 1 of 4] PDF
Preview Adl e Ilahi (The Justice of God) in Islam [Part 1 of 4]
j : o I o o » p -‘‘i X % %‘V 'V' If:. ■ H' A*K .$' " vj St4 /; •V& i ' ,‘1' , I I ' : I Martyr Murtada Mutahhari Divine Justice CAdlellahT) Translated by Sulayman Hasan ‘AbidI Murtada ‘Alldlna Shuja’ ‘AIT MIrza : 1 . J Contents Foreword ix Preface to the Translation xi About the Author xvii Introduction 1 Predestination and Freewill 6 The Issue of Justice 7 Essential Goodness and Essential Evil 8 Rationally Derived Realities 9 The Motive and End of Divine Acts 11 Lines of Demarcation 13 Justice or Divine Unity? 14 The Effects of Islamic Theology on Islamic Philosophy 19 The Shia Intellectual School 20 The Idea of Justice in the Field of Jurisprudence 23 The Traditionalist-Analogist Dispute 24 The Shia Jurisprudential Method 26 The Idea of Justice in Society and the Political Forum 28 ; The Real Origin 29 Conceptual Outline of the Subject 38 Human vs. Divine Justice 38 Various Lines of Approach 44 What is Justice? 50 A. Balance 50 B. Equality and Non-discrimination 52 C. Rights—Giving to Each Thing its Due 53 D. Emanation or Bestowal of Being on Merits 54 Objections and Criticisms 58 Justice as a Pillar of Faith and Principle of Religion 61 Justice and Wisdom 62 Dualism 63 Satan 70 Philosophical Pessimism 77 Coyness or Objection? 85 v Problem Solved 90 Islamic Philosophy 90 Methods and Approaches 91 Discrimination 94 Is the Order in the Universe Inherent? 99 A Pleasant and Lasting Memory 102 Differentiation not Discrimination 104 The Secret of Differences 106 The Vertical Order 107 The Horizontal Order 112 Divine Precedent or Way 116 What is the Law? 120 Exceptions 120 Divine Decree and the Issue of Compulsion 124 Summary 125 Evils 127 Three Aspects of the Discussion 127 Our Method 128 The Issue of the Duality of Existence 128 Evil is Non-existential 129 Evil is relative 134 Evils from the Aspect of the Principle of Justice 139 Benefits of Evils 142 The Issue of Separation of Good and Evil 143 The Total Order 145 Ugliness as the Manifester of Beauty 147 Society or Individual? 149 Differences of Capacities 151 Calamities, the Source of Felicities 154 Tribulations for Divine Friends 160 Pedagogical Effect of Calamities 162 Contentment with Divine Decree 165 Adversity and Blessings are Relative 166 Reconciliation of Contradictories and Opposites 171 The Philosophic Basis of Opposition 177 Summary and General Conclusion 178 vi Death 183 183 The Phenomenon of Death 184 Anxiety of Death 186 Death is Relative The World is a Womb for the Soul 186 World as a School for Man 189 Basis of the Objection 191 Death is an Extension of Life 196 Retribution 201 Reward of Deeds 201 Differences between the Two Worlds 202 A. Constancy and Change 204 B. Pure and Tainted Life 204 C. Sowing and Reaping 206 D. Individual and Collective Destiny 207 The Correlation between the Two Worlds 211 Three Types of Retribution 213 Warning and Reprimand 214 Worldly Consequence 216 Punishments of the Hereafter 219 Reminiscences of a Teacher 226 Summary 228 Intercession 232 Objection and Question 232 Weakness of the Law 234 Types of Intercession 237 Violation of Law 237 Safeguarding the Law 240 Intercession of Leadership 241 Intercession of Forgiveness 246 Precedence of Mercy 246 The Principle of Purification 248 The Principle of Equilibrium 248 Universal Mercy 249 Connection between Intercession and Mercy 251 Conditions for Intercession 252 Intercession Belongs to God Alone 254 i Taw hid and Tawassul 257 Response to the Objections 258 vii Good Deeds of Non-Muslims 260 Outline of the Discussion 260 1. The General Aspect of the Discussion. 263 2. No religion except Islam is accepted. 266 Good deeds without faith 269 Two ways of thinking 270 The Third Logic 271 The so-called Intellectuals 272 The Rigid Group 278 Value of Belief 283 Being Held Accountable For Unbelief 283 Levels of Submission 284 True Islam and Regional Islam 287 Sincerity, the Condition for the Acceptance of Actions 290 Quality or Quantity? 297 The Mosque of Bahlul 299 Belief in God and the Hereafter 300 Belief in the Prophecy and Imamate 307 Affliction 311 Below the Zero Point 319 The Incapable and the Powerless 320 From the View of the Islamic Sages 330 The Sins of Muslims 333 Creational Conditions and Conventional Conditions 341 Summary and Conclusion 348 Endnotes 351 Index 365 vm Foreword The issue of Divine Justice is an important one in the history of Muslim intellectual thought, and it has given rise to impor tant works in different periods of Islamic thought in areas like theology, law, and Islamic politics. Because of the importance of the issue to Muslims, Muslim thinkers authored numerous works about the topic and various Islamic schools of thought gave it special importance. Thus, the topic of Divine Justice and researching the various views of different Islamic sects with respect to it has great importance in terms of the history of Islamic thought. In addition, the prolif eration of atheistic and anti-religious movements in the modem era has bestowed renewed importance on the topic. Divine Jus tice can be studied from various dimensions. One of the most important contemporary challenges facing belief in God is the issue of evil, such that some philosophers of religion in the West mention evil as proof of the nonexistence of God. Utiliz ing the heritage of Islamic philosophers and relying on the tran scendental philosophy of Mulla Sadra, the author has striven to present Divine Justice in a logical way; and with attention to the issues of free will and predestination and the ill effects of predestination, he has tried to explain it in a such a way that natural evils—unpleasant things like illness, floods, earth ! quakes, and so on—find a logical place in the edifice of theist thought and are no longer portrayed as evidence for atheism. In the author’s view, Christian and Western theology has weak nesses that render it unable provide fitting answers to objec tions about Divine Justice. Thus, he has dealt with the topic of Divine Justice and its various dimensions and corollaries in numerous works, and by explaining the authentic Islamic belief he has aimed to prevent intellectual deviation in the young gen eration. He has dealt with this and related topics like the Ar gument from Design in the books Man and Destiny and Causes of Inclination to Materialism as well as in the lessons on “Ilahi- yyat” of al-Shifa. The summation of his efforts in the present I work—as he himself has said—is to present the issue of Divine ix
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