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'Adalah (Justice): Difference between revisions
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The first significant formal theological school to emerge in the Islamic world was that of the Mu'tazilites, or rationalists. According to the Mu'tazilites, Allah was obligated to do justice to his creation and could not do otherwise. Thus, a good person was guaranteed a good fate in the hereafter, and a bad person a bad fate. Many early Islamic thinkers, however, found this notion to limit God's omnipotence to an unacceptable degree. This theological discontent ultimately manifested itself in the formation of rival theological schools, most famously Ash'arism, the school that became affiliated with Abu Hasan al-Ashari (d. 936). Ash'arism is still the most common theological school in the Muslim world today, and its stance on the doctrine of God being more powerful than he is necessarily just rings true through all major competing theological schools until today. | The first significant formal theological school to emerge in the Islamic world was that of the Mu'tazilites, or rationalists. According to the Mu'tazilites, Allah was obligated to do justice to his creation and could not do otherwise. Thus, a good person was guaranteed a good fate in the hereafter, and a bad person a bad fate. Many early Islamic thinkers, however, found this notion to limit God's omnipotence to an unacceptable degree. This theological discontent ultimately manifested itself in the formation of rival theological schools, most famously Ash'arism, the school that became affiliated with Abu Hasan al-Ashari (d. 936). Ash'arism is still the most common theological school in the Muslim world today, and its stance on the doctrine of God being more powerful than he is necessarily just rings true through all major competing theological schools until today. | ||
=== In the hadith === | {{Quote|Abu Hasan al-Ashari (d. 936), quoted in {{citation|author=Fazlur Rahman|title=Islam|edition=first|url=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo3632939.html|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=1970|page=91}}|“Let us imagine a child and a grown-up person in Heaven who both died in the True Faith. The grown-up one, however, has a higher place in Heaven than the child. The child shall ask God: ‘Why did you give that man a higher place?’ ‘He has done many good works’, God shall reply. Then the child shall say, ‘why did you let me die so soon that I was prevented from doing good?’ God will answer, ‘I knew that you would grow up into a sinner; therefore, it was better that you should die a child’. Thereupon a cry shall rise from those condemned to the depths of the Hell, ‘Why, O Lord! did You not let us die before we became sinners?’}} | ||
===In the hadith=== | |||
There are some authentic hadiths which convey stories immediately relevant to Allah's relationship with justice. While the messages found in these hadith are not always consistent and may not square perfectly or easily with the doctrines endorsed by the main schools of Islamic theology, they are important to consider. | There are some authentic hadiths which convey stories immediately relevant to Allah's relationship with justice. While the messages found in these hadith are not always consistent and may not square perfectly or easily with the doctrines endorsed by the main schools of Islamic theology, they are important to consider. | ||