Islamic Intellectual Theology Lesson 13

1. Islamic Intellectual TheologyLesson 13 God is Just “AL-ADL”Lesson TwoJustice of God “ALA’DL ALELAHI” ELAHIYAAT [Summary] of Sh. Jaf’ar Subhani Creed of Sh Nasir Makarim Sherazi Edited: Jan. 19, 2010 - BHD

2. Why are people unjust? • Ignorance: A person may not know his act is indecent and does it. One of the reasons Allah can never be unjust is because he is All-Knowing, All-Wise. • Need: If some one needs something and cannot get it properly through justice, then he may try to get it through unjust means. Allah, however, is needless and omnipotent, so is never in need of something and never commits injustice in this respect. • Insanity: One may be driven to lose his touch with reality and commit an injustice. Allah is immune to this as omnipresent and All-wise. • Weakness: When one feels his right has been usurped or an injustice has been committed upon himself, he may retaliate disproportionately.

3. Justice vs. Equality • As mentioned previously, justice is keeping things in their proper position or place, and giving every one based on the possessed capacity. • Equality, however, is dealing with every single individual equally. • Equality might lead to injustice, because if the small and big, male and female, are dealt equally then it will be injustice in the rights of small and female. • Men and women can not be dealt equally due to their physical, biological, psychological , emotional, and mental differences. If they both are dealt equally in the laws then that will be injustice, which was an error made by modern lawmakers.

4. Logic vs. Logical Possibility • Logic is set unarguable facts which are agreed upon between the sound intellects, such as 1+1=2 or sun releases light and heat, where no two intellects disagree. • The logical possibility is an opinion which is drawn up by the intellect and, due to the lack of conclusive evidence, could have an opposed possible opinion as well. An example is the possibility of having life behind the black holes, which cannot be denied by logic and cannot be proven at this point. It therefore possess a logical probability (many scientific facts are probabilities which might change by time- theory of an atom, formation of fetus , CPR /CNR). • Many make the mistake of confusing logical possibilities for true logic. Examples will be presented in the next lecture.

5. The Justice of God is Logic… • …and not an opinion or a logical possibility. • The existence of God a logical necessity proven by logic: • Logic indicates that God is All-perfect by default, if He exists then He has to be omnipotent and all perfect otherwise He is not God. • Since justice is a sign of perfection, then God also has to be just without any doubt otherwise He is not God. • Those who deny God or His justice reject the simple logical facts such as the causality and necessity of existence. Their arguments are not based on logic but rather on language and debate: raising contradicting questions to the simple logic make it sound like they have strong argument, depending on their argument skills.

6. Arguments on Justice of God • If God is Just then: • Why does He allow innocent civilians to die in wars? • Why does He allow natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes? • Why do some people have defects or handicaps like blindness, etc? • Why do most of God’s servants live in a worse condition than those who disbelieve? • Why do His punishments seem unjust? Is it just to cut the hand just for a crime of seconds? Or death for adultery? • Why God is testing me? I did not choose to be tested!

7. Addressing God’s Justice • Why does He allow innocent civilians to die in pointless wars? • If this question was asked by atheist then we need to ask him to discuss the existence of God first, because we must first establish the premise that God exists before discussing his attributes. • Once the existence and Just of God is proven then the question above and the coming questions are answered. • God is not responsible for those who die in war and out of poverty or out of whatever results from the mistakes committed by human and their leaders. God has made laws for their happiness, but due to the violation of such laws, innocents end up being hurt or killed.

8. Addressing God’s Justice Why does He allow natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes? • Claiming that these things are evil, is based on the limited knowledge. Does anyone posses the knowledge of every thing in the universe? Are all the scientific discoveries stable? The theories of atom and conceiving the fetus have been constantly changing. • There are still so many things around us which are unknown, so however much we know about our physical realm and world, we lack more. So how can we with our limitations make conclusions related to the metaphysical realm?

9. Conclusions • Those who deny the existence of God or the justice of God have compound ignorance. What they present are probabilities and possibilities which have equally possible opposites. • There are lots of indications of metaphysical activities which cannot be seen but yet exist. Who has seen hate, love, anger, and embarrassment? They all exist with no concrete evidence. • Most of the logical claims are not logic but opinions and intellectual data or attempted reasoning. If such is concluded in a discussion, then the door of the constructive discussion opens up, and supportive evidence can be presented.

10. Narrowness of Mind and Vision • Why should we conclude that what happens in natural disasters is evil? Many things can be observed from different aspects. Is there some benefit or some alternative viewpoint that we have not taken into consideration? • Imagine a picture of a person holding a dagger in a stomach of another person. How can this picture be viewed? • He is killing an innocent • He is killing a murderer • He is killing in self defense • He is defending some one else • He is taking a bullet out of his stomach • The picture is one, and the evil or negative possibility is one, beside four or more positive probabilities.