Islam and Peace: A Preliminary Survey on the Sources of Peace in the Islamic Tradition
İbrahim Kalın
Source: İslam Araştırmaları Dergisi, Issue 11, 2004, pp. 1-37
This paper investigates the sources of peace in the Islamic tradition. Positive peace is defined as a continuous state of harmony and equilibrium and is distinguished from negative peace, which is based on the temporary absence of violence and disorder. The Islamic tradition has a long history of building mechanisms for the promotion and sustenance of positive peace. In contrast to reducing religion to juridical law, this paper examines the question of peace in four interrelated areas: spiritual-metaphysical, philosophical-theological, political-legal, and socio-cultural contexts. These contexts are interdependent and feed off one another. They reveal the intricate relationship between text and history in the Islamic tradition. The paper concludes that the Islamic tradition contains the core values of a culture of peace and that contemporary Muslim societies should utilize this tradition to combat all forms of violence and disorder.
Key words: Islam, Peace, Jihad, Tolerance
Peace as a Substantive Value
Peace as a substantive and positive concept entails the presence of certain conditions that make it an enduring state of harmony, integrity, contentment, equilibrium, repose, and moderation. This can be contrasted with negative peace that denotes the absence of conflict and discord. Even though negative peace is indispensable to prevent communal violence, border disputes, or international conflicts, substantive-positive peace calls for a comprehensive outlook to address the deeper causes of conflict, hate, strife, destruction, brutality, and violence. As Lee states, it also provides a genuine measure and set of values by which peace and justice can be established beyond the short-term interests of individual, communities, or states.[1] This is critical for the construction of peace as a substantive value because defining peace as the privation of violence and conflict turns it into a concept that is instrumental and accidental at best, and relative and irrelevant at worst. In addition, the positive-substantive notion of peace shifts the focus from preventing conflict, violence, and strife to a willingness to generate balance, justice, cooperation, dialogue, and coexistence as the primary terms of a discourse of peace. Instead of defining peace with what it is not and forcing common-sense logic to its limit, we may well opt instead to generate a philosophical ground based on the presence and endurance, rather than absence, of certain qualities and conditions that make peace a substantive reality of human life.[2]
Furthermore, relegating the discourse of peace to social conflict and its prevention runs the risk of neglecting the individual, which is the sine qua non of collective and communal peace. This is where the ‘spiritual individualism’ of Islam versus its social collectivism enters the picture: the individual must be endowed with the necessary qualities that make peace an enduring reality not only in the public sphere, but also in the private domain of the individual. The Qur’anic ideal of creating a beautiful soul that is at peace with itself and the larger reality of which it is a part brings ethics and spirituality right into the heart of the discourse of positive peace. Peace as a substantive value thus extends to the domain of both ethics and aesthetics, for it is one of the conditions that bring about peace in the soul and resists the temptations of discord, restlessness, ugliness, pettiness, and vulgarity. At this point, we may remember that the key Qur’anic term ihsan carries the meanings of virtue, beauty, goodness, comportment, proportion, comeliness, and ‘doing what is beautiful’ all at once. The active particle muhsin denotes the person who does what is good, desired, and beautiful.[3]
In this regard, peace is not a mere state of passivity. On the contrary, it means being fully active against the menace of evil, destruction, and turmoil that may come from within or from without. As Collingwood points out, peace is a ‘dynarnic thing,’[4] and requires consciousness and vigilance, a constant state of awareness that one must engage in spiritual and intellectual jihad to ensure that differences and conflicts within and across the collective traditions do not become grounds for violence and oppression. Furthermore, positive peace involves the analysis of various forms of aggression including individual, institutional and structural violence.
Peace as a substantive concept is also based on justice (’adl), for peace is predicated upon the availability of equal rights and opportunities for all to realize their goals and potentials. One of the meanings of the word justice in Arabic is to be ‘straight’ and ‘equitable,’ i.e., to be straightforward, trustworthy, and fair in one’s dealings with others.[5] Such an attitude brings about a state of balance, accord, and trust, and goes beyond the limits of formal justice dispensed by the juridical system. Defined in the broadest terms, justice encompasses a vast domain of relations and interactions from taking care of one’s body to international law. Like peace, justice is one of the Divine names and takes on substantive importance in view of its central role in Islamic theology as well as law. Peace can be conceived as an enduring state of harmony, trust, and coexistence only when coupled and supported with justice because it also means being secure from all that is morally evil and destructive.[6] Thus, the Qur’an combines justice with ihsan when it commands its followers to act with “justice and good manner” (bi’l-‘adl wa’l-ihsan).[7]
The Spiritual-Metaphysical Context: God as Peace (al-salam)
The conditions that are conducive to a state of peace mentioned above are primarily spiritual and have larger implications for the cosmos, the individual, and society. Here I shall focus on three premises that are directly relevant to our discussion. The first pertains to peace as a Divine name (al-salarn).[8] The Qur’anic concept of God is founded upon a robust monotheism, and God’s transcendence (tanzih) is emphasized in both the canonical sources and in the intellectual tradition. To this absolutely one and transcendent God belong “all the beautiful names,”[9] i.e., the names of beauty (jamal) , majesty (jalal) , and perfection (kamal). It is these names that prevent God from becoming an utterly unreachable and “wholly other” deity. Divine names represent God’s face turned towards the world and are the vessels of finding God in and through His creation.
The names of beauty take precedence over the names of majesty because God says that “my mercy has encompassed everything”[10] and “God has written mercy upon Himself.”[11] This is also supported by a famous hadith of the Prophet according to which “God is beautiful and loves beauty.” In this sense, God is as much transcendent, incomparable, and beyond as He is immanent, comparable (tashbih), and close.[12] As the ultimate source of peace, God transcends all conflicts and tensions, is the permanent state ofrepose and tranquility, and calls His servants to the “abode of peace” (dar al-salam).[13] “It is He who from high on has sent [sends] down inner peace and repose (sakinah) upon the hearts of the believers,” says the Qur’an.[14] The proper abode of peace is the hearts (qulub) , which are “satisfied only by the remembrance of God (dhikr Allah)”[15]By linking the heart, the center of the human being, to God’s remembrance, the Qur’an establishes a strong link between theology and spiritual psychology.
In addition to the Qur’anic exegetes, the Sufis in particular are fond of explaining the ‘mystery of creation’ by referring to a sacred saying (hadith qudsi) attributed to the Prophet of Islam: “I was a hidden treasure. I wanted (lit. ‘loved’) to be known and created the universe (lit. ‘creation’).” The key words ‘love’ (hubb, mahabbah) and ‘know’ (ma’rifah) underpin a fundamental aspect of the Sufi metaphysics of creation: Divine love and desire to be known are the raison d’etre of all existence. Ibn al-‘Arabi says that God’s “love for His servants is identical with the origination of their engendered existence … the relation of God’s love to them is the same as the fact that He is with them wherever they are [Qur’an, 57:4] , whether in the state of their nonexistence or the state of their wujud … they are the objects of His knowledge. He witnesses them and loves them never-endingly.”[16] Commenting on the above saying, Dawud al-Qaysari, the 14th century Turkish Sufi-philosopher and the first university president of the newly established Ottoman State, says that “God has written love upon Himself. There is no doubt that the kind of love that is related to the manifestation of [His] perfections follows from the love of His Essence, which is the source of the love of [His Names and] Qualities that have become the reason for the unveiling of all existents and the connection of the species of spiritual and corporeal bodies.”[17]
The second premise is related to what traditional philosophy calls ‘the great chain of being’ (da’irat aI-u›ujud). In the cosmic scale of things, the universe is the ‘best of all possible worlds’ because, first, it is actual, which implies completion and plenitude over potentiality, and, second, its built-in order derives its sustenance from the Creator. The natural world is in a constant state of peace, because according to the Qur’an it is ‘muslim’ (with a small m) in that it surrenders (taslim) itself to the will of God and thus rises above all tension and discord.[18] In its normative depiction of natural phenomena, the Qur’an talks about stars and trees as “prostrating before God” and says that, “all that is in the heavens and on earth extols His glory.”[19] By acknowledging God’s unity and praising His name, man joins the natural world in a substantive way -a process that underscores the essential link between the anthropos and the cosmos, or the microcosm and the macrocosm. The intrinsic commonality and unity between the human as ‘subject’ and the universe as ‘object’ has been called the “anthropocosmic vision.”[20] The thrust of this view is that the anthropos and the cosmos cannot be disjoined from one another and that the human-versus-nature dichotomy is a false one. Moreover, the world has been given to the children of Adam as a ‘trust’ (amanah) as they are charged with the responsibility of standing witness to God’s creation, mercy, and justice on earth. Conceiving nature in terms of harmony, measure, order, and balance points to a common and persistent attitude towards the non-human world in Islamic thought, and has profound implications for the construction of peace as a principle of the cosmos.[21]
The third principle pertains to the natural state of humanity and its place within the larger context of existence. Even though the Qur’an occasionally describes the fallen nature of human beings in gruesome terms and presents humanity as weak, forgetful, treacherous, hasty, ignorant, ungrateful, hostile, and egotistic,[22] these qualities are eventually considered deviations from the essential nature of humanity (fitrah), which has been created in the “most beautiful form” (ahsan taqwim),[23] both physically and spiritually. This metaphysical optimism defines human beings as “God’s vicegerent on earth” (khalifat Allah fi’l-ard) as the Qur’an.says, or, to use a metaphor from Christianity, as the ‘pontifex,’ the bridge between heaven and earth.[24] The fitrah,[25] the primordial nature according to which God has created all humanity, is essentially a moral and spiritual substance drawn to the good and ‘God-consciousness’ (taqwa’) whereas its imperfections and ‘excessiveness’ (fujur)[26] are ‘accidental’ qualities to be subsumed under the soul’s struggle to do good (al-birr) and transcend its subliminal desires through intelligence and moral will.
The Philosophical-Theological Context: Evil and the Best of All Possible Worlds
In the context of theology and philosophy, questions of peace and violence are treated under the rubric of good and evil (husn/khayr and sharr/qubh). War, conflict, violence, injustice, discord, and the like are seen as extensions of the general problem of evil. The Muslim philosophers and theologians have been interested in theodicy from the very beginning, and for good reason, because the basic question of theodicy goes to the heart of religion: how can a just and perfect God allow evil and destruction in a world which He says He has created in perfect balance, with a purpose, and for the well-being of His servants? We can rephrase the question in the present context as follows: why is there so much violence, turmoil, and oppression rather than peace, harmony, and justice in the world? Does evil, of which violence is as an offshoot, belong to the essential nature of things or is it an accident that arises only as the privation of goodness?
These questions have given rise to a long and interesting debate about evil among theologians. One particular aspect of this debate, known as the “best of all possible worlds” (ahsan al-nizarn) argument,[27] deserves closer attention as it is relevant to the formulation of a positive concept of peace. The classical statement of the problem pertains to Divine justice and power on the one hand, and the Greek notions of potentiality and actuality, on the other. The fundamental question is whether this world in which we live is the best that God could have created. Since, from a moral point of view, the world is imperfect because there is evil and injustice in it, we have to either admit that God was not able to create a better and more perfect world or concede that He did not create a better world by will as part of the Divine economy of creation. Obviously, the first alternative calls into question God’s omnipotence (qudrah) whereas the second jeopardizes His wisdom and justice (’adalah). Following another line of discussion in Kalam, we can reformulate the question as a tension between God’s nature and will: can God go against His own nature, which is just, if He wants to, or is His will not able to supercede His nature? Still, can God contradict Himself? If we say yes, then we attribute imperfection to God and if we say no, then we limit Him.
Even the most modest attempt to analyze these questions within the context of Kalam debates will take us too far afield. What is directly related to our discussion here is how the concepts of evil, injustice, oppression, and their variations are seen as the ‘accidental outcomes’ of the world of contingencies in which we live. True, the weaknesses and frailties of human beings contribute enormously to the creation and exacerbation of evil, and it is only reasonable to take a ‘situational’ position and attribute evil to ourselves rather than to the Divine. In fact, this is what the Qur’an holds vis-à-vis evil and human accountability: “Whatever good happens to you, it is from God; and whatever evil befalls you, it is from your own self/soul.”[28] The best of all possible worlds argument, however, shifts the focus from particular instances of individual or structural violence to the phenomenon of evil itself, whereby we gain a deeper insight into how evil arises in the first place.
We may reasonably argue that evil is part of the Divine economy of creation and thus necessary. In a moral sense, it is part of Divine economy because it is what we are tested with.[29] Without evil, there would be no accountability and thus no freedom.[30] Mulla Sadra calls this a necessity of Divine providence (al-’inayeh) and the “concomitant of the ultimate telos of goodness (al-ghayat al-khayriyyah).[31] In an ontological sense, it is a necessity because the world is by definition imperfect, the ultimate perfection belonging to God, and the world is not God. That is why God has not created “all beings as pure goodness.”[32] Evil as limitation and imperfection is an outcome of the first act of separation between the Divine and the non-divine, or what Muslim theologians call ma siwa’l-lah (“all that is other than God”). Ultimately, however, “all is from God.”[33] This implies that evil as the “contrastive manifestation of the good”[34] ceases to be evil and contributes to the “greater good,” which is what the best of all possible world argument asserts. In a rather paradoxical way, one cannot object to the existence of evil itself because this is what makes the world possible. But this does not absolve us of the moral duty of fighting against individual cases of evil. Nor does it make evil an essential nature of things because it was God’s decision to create the world with a meaning and purpose in the first place. In short, evil remains contingent and transient, and this assumption extends to the next world.[35]
The notion of evil as an ontological necessity-cum-contingency has important implications for how we look at the world and its ‘evil’ side. From a psychological point of view, the acceptance of evil as a transient yet necessary phenomenon prevents us from becoming petty and bitter in the face of all that is blemished, wicked, imperfect, and tainted.[36] It gives us a sense of moral security against the onslaught of evil, which can and must be fought with a firm belief in the ultimate supremacy of the good. It also enables us to see the world as it is and for what it is, and strive to make it a better place in terms of moral and spiritual perfection. From a religious point of view, this underscores the relative nature of evil: something that may appear evil to us may not be evil and vice versa when everything is placed within a larger framework. Thus the Qur’an says that “it may well be that you hate a thing while it is good (khayr) for you, and it may well be that you love a thing while it is bad (sharr) for you. And God knows, and you know not.”[37] Mulla Sadra applies this principle to ‘natural evils,’ and says that even “death, corruption (al-fasad) and the like are necessary and needed for the order of the world (al-nizam) when they occur “by nature and not by force or accident.”[38]
The best of all possible worlds argument is also related to the scheme of actuality and potentiality which the Muslim philosophers and theologians have adopted from Aristotle. The argument goes as follows. This world in which we live is certainly one of the possibilities that the Divine has brought into actuality. In this sense, the world is pure contingency (imkan) and hung between existence and non-existence. From the point of view of its present actuality, however, the world is perfect and necessary because actuality implies plenitude and perfection whereas potentiality is privation and non-existence.[39] The sense of perfection in this context is both ontological and cosmological. It is ontological because existence is superior to non-existence and whatever is in the sphere of potentiality remains so until it is brought into actuality by an agent which itself is already actual. It is cosmological because, as stated before, the world has been created with care, order, and beauty, which the Qur’an invites its readers to look at as the signs of God (ayat Allah or vestigia Dei as it was called by the Scholastics). The perfect state of the cosmos is presented as a model for the establishment of a just social order. It then follows that evil is a phenomenon of this world but not something that defines the essential nature of things.
An important outcome of this point of view is to identify evil as a rationally discernible phenomenon. This may appear to be a simple truism. Nevertheless, it is a powerful position against the notion of evil as a mysterious, mythical, or even cosmological fact over which human beings have no control. Evil is something that can be discerned by the intellect and correct reasoning and, of course, with the help of the revelation,[40] and this places tremendous responsibility on our shoulders vis-a-vis the evil that may come from within or from without. One may disagree with Mu’tazi1ite theologians for pushing the sovereignty of human freedom to the point of endangering God’s omniscience and omnipotency. In fact, this was what prompted at-Ash’ari, once a Mu’tazilite himself, to carry out his own i’tizal and lay the foundations of Asha’rism. He and his followers believed that good and evil were ultimately determined by the Divine law (al-shari’ah), leaving no space for the independent judgment of human reason (al-‘aql). Paradoxically, however, the moral voluntarism of the Ash’arites agrees with Mutazilite rationalism in underscoring the relative and contingent nature of evil: whether determined by reason or revelation, evil is the privation of good and does not represent the essential nature of things.
The Muslim philosophers assert the same point through what we might call the ontological argument. In addition to the fact that actuality is perfection over potentiality, existence (al-wujud) is pure goodness (khayr mahd, summon bonum). All beings that exist partake of this ontological goodness. Since God is the only Necessary being (wajib al-wujud) by its essence and ‘in all regards,’ this perfection ultimately belongs to Him. According to Ibn Sina, evil has no enduring essence and appears only as the privation (’adam) of goodness:
Every being that is necessary by itself is pure goodness and pure perfection. Goodness (al-khayr), in short, is that which everything desires and by which everything’s being is completed. But evil has no essence; it is either the nonexistence of a substance or the nonexistence of the state of goodness (salah) for a substance. Thus existence is pure goodness, and the perfection of existence is the goodness of existence. Existence is pure goodness when it is not accompanied by nonexistence, the nonexistence of a substance, or the nonexistence of something from that substance and it is in perpetual actuality. As for the existent contingent by itself, it is not pure goodness because its essence does not necessitate its existence by itself. Thus its essence allows for nonexistence. Anything that allows for nonexistence in some respect is not free from evil and imperfection in all respects. Hence pure goodness is nothing but existence that is necessary by its own essence.[41]
Elaborating on the same idea, Mulla Sadra argues that good and evil cannot be regarded as opposites, for “one is the nonexistence of the other; therefore goodness is existence or the perfection of existence and evil is the absence of existence or the nonexistence of the perfection of existence.”[42] By defining good and evil in terms of existence and nonexistence, Sadra shifts the focus from a moralistic to a primarily ontological framework. Like Ibn Sina, Sadra defines goodness as the essential nature of the present world-order for it is an existent, viz., something positive. This leads Sadra to conclude that goodness permeates the world-order at its foundation. In spite of the existence of such natural evils as death and famine, “what is more and permanent is the desired goodness in nature.”[43] Once evil is relativized, it is easier to defend this world as the best of all possible worlds. This is what Sadra does when he says that “the universe in its totality (bi-kulliyatihi) is the most perfect of all that may be and the most noble of all that can be conceived.”[44]
Endnotes
[1] Cf. Steven Lee, “A Positive Concept of Peace” in The Causes of Quarrel: Essays on Peace, War, and Thomas Hobbes, ed. Peter Caws (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 183-84.
[2] Gray Cox, “The Light at the End of the Tunnel and the Light in Which We May Walk: Two Concepts of Peace,” in Causes of Quarrel, 162-63.
[3]The celebrated hadith jibril confirms the same Qur’anic usage: “Ihsan is to worship God as if you were to see Him; even if you see Him not, he sees you.” For an extensive analysis of ihsan as articulated in the Islamic tradition, see Sachiko Murata and William Chittick, The Vision of Islam (New York: Paragon House, 1994) , 265-317.
[4]R. G. Collinwood, The New Leviathan (Nexv York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1971), 334.
[5]lbn Manzur, “‘adl,” Lisan al-‘arab and al-Tahanawi, Kashshaf istilat al-funun (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-‘ilmiyya. 1998), 3:288-89.
[6]cf. Muhammad Asad, The Message of the Qur’an (Maktaba Jawahar ul uloom: Lahore, n.d.), p. 179, n. 46 commenting on the Qur’an 6:54: “And when those who believe in Our messages come unto thee, say: “Peace be upon you. Your Sustainer has willed upon Himself the law of grace and mercy so that if any of you does a bad deed out of ignorance, and thereafter repents and lives righteously, He shall be [found] much-forgiving, a dispenser of grace.”
[7]Qur’an, 16:90. On the basis of this verse, the 10th century philologist Abu Hi1a1 al-‘Askari considers justice and ihsan as synonymous. Cf. his al-Furuq al-lughawiyyah, p. 194, quoted in Franz Rosenthal, “Political Justice and the Just Ruler” in Religion and Government in the World of Islam, ed. Joel Kraemer and Ilai Alon (Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University, 1985), p. 97, n. 20.
[8]See Qur’an, 59:23.
[9]Qur’an, 7:180, 59:24.
[10]Qur’an, 7:156.
[11]Qur’an, 6:12, 54.
[12]Like other Sufis, Ghazali subscribes to the notion of what Ibn al-‘Arabi would later call the “possessor of the two eyes” (dhu’l-‘aynayn). viz., seeing God with the two eyes of transcendence (tanzih) and immanence (tashbih) . Cf. Fadlou Shehadi, Ghazali’s Unique Unknowable God (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964) , 8-10, 51-55. For Ibn al-‘Arabi’s expression of the “possessor of the two eyes,” see William Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989) . 361-62. The Mutazilite and Ash’arite theologians have a long history of controversy over the three major views of Divine names and qualities, i.e.. tanzih, tashbih, and ta’til (‘suspension’). Cf. Michel Allard, Le probléme des attributes divins dans la doctrine d’al-Ak’ari et des ses premiers grands disciples (Beyrouth: Editions De L’lmpirimerie Catholique, 1905) , 354-64.
[13]Qur’an, 10:25.
[14]See 48:4.
[15] Qur’an, 13:28.
[16]Quoted in William Chittik, The Self-Disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-Arabi’s
Cosmology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998) , 22.
[17] Dawud al-Qaysari, Risalah fi ma’rifat al-mahabbat al-haqiqiyyah in al-Rasa’il, ed. Mehmet
Bayraktar (Kayseri: Kayseri Metropolitan Municipality, 1997), 138.
[18]Qur’an, 3:83, 9:53, 13:15, 41:11.
[19]See 55:6 and 59:24.
[20]The term was first used by Mircea Eliade and adopted by Tu Weiming to describe the philosophical outlook of the Chinese traditions. For an application of the term to Islamic thought, see William Chittick, “The Anthropocosmic Vision in Islamic Thought” in God, Life, and the Cosmos, ed. Ted Peters, Muzaffar Iqbal, and Syed Nomanul Haq (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 125-52.
[21]Cf. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Religion and the Order of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1996) , 60-63.
[22]Cf., inter alia, in Qur’an, 14:34, 17:11, 18:54, 22:66, 33:72, 43:15, and 100:6
[23]See Qur’an, 95:4.
[24]The classical Qur’an commentaries are almost unanimous on interpreting this ‘khalifah’ as Adam, i.e.. humans in the generic sense. Cf. Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli and Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, Tafsir al-Jalalayn (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Risalah, 1995) , 6.
[25]See Qur’an, fi0:30.
[26]See Qur’an, 91:8.
[27]Another formulation is laysa fi’l-imkam abda’ mimma kan. Loosely translated, this means “there is nothing in the world of possibility more beautiful. and perfect than what there is in actuality.” This sentence, attributed to Ghazali, has led to a long controversy in Islamic thought. For an excellent survey of this debate in Islamic theology, see Eric L. Ornsby, Theodicy in Islamic Thought: The Dispute over al-Ghazali’s “Best off all Possible Worlds” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1984) . Cf. Ghazali, ihya’ ‘ulum al-din, (Cairo 1968), 4:321. The earliest formulation of the problem, however, can be traced back to Ibn Sina. See my “Why do Animals Eat Other Animals: Mulla Sadra on Theodicy” (forthcoming).
[28]See 4:79; cf. also 3: 165.
[29]Cf. Qur’an, 21:36; 18:9.
[30]Plantinga’s “free will defense” is based on this premise. Cf. Alvin Plantinga, “The Free Will Defence” in Philosophy in America, ed. Max Black. reprinted in Readings in the Philosophy in America: An Analytical Approach, ed. Baruch A. Broody, (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974) , p. 187. See also his “God, Evil, and the Metaphysics of Freedom” in The Problem of Evil, ed. Marilyn M. Adams and Robert M. Adams, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) , 83-109.
[31]Mulla Sadra, al-Hikmat al-muta’aliyah fi’l asfar al-‘aqliyyah al-arba’ah (Tehran 1383, A.H.), II, 3, p. 72. Hereafier cited as Asfar.
[32]Mulla Sadra. al-Hikmat al-muta’aliyah, 78.
[33]Qur’an, 4:78.
[34]Frithjof Schuon, In the face of the Absolute (Bloomington: World Wisdom Books, 1989) ,
p. 39.
[35]This is the main reason why a good number of Sufis, philosophers, and some theologians believe that the hell fire will be terminated whereas paradise will remain eternal. For the debate between the Mu’tazi1ites and the Ash’arites on this issue, see Sa’d al-Din al-Taftazani, Sharh al-maqasid (Beirut: ‘Alam al-Kutub, 1989) , 5:151-40.
[36] Cf. the following verse: “Man never tires of asking for the good [things of life]; and if evil fortune touches him, he abandons all hope, giving himself up to despair. Yet whenever We let him taste some of Our grace after hardship has visited him, he is sure to say, “This is but my due!” — and, “I do not think that the Last Hour will ever come: but if [it should come, and] I should indeed be brought back unto my Sustainer, then, behold, the ultimate good awaits me with Him” (41: 49-50; M. Asad’s translation).
[37] 2:216.
[38] Sadra, Asfar, II, 3, pp. 92-93: also p. 77.
[39]Cf. Plotinus, The Enneads, V. IX, 5, p. 248, and Mulla Sadra, Asfar, I, 3, pp. 343-44. Baqillani considers the potential (bi’l-quwwah) as non-existent. See his Kitab al tawhid, 34-44, quoted in Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970) . 216.
[40]As the “leader of the skeptics” (imam al-mushakkikin) Fakhr al-Din al-Razi disagrees. His objection however, clarifies another aspect of the discussion of theodicy in Islam. As Razi points out, there is no dispute overthe fact that some actions are good and some others bad. The question is “whether this is because of an attribute that belongs [essentially] to the action itself or this is not the case and it is solely as an injunction of the Shari‘ah [that actions and things are good or badl,” Razi hastens to add that the Mu‘tazilites opt the first view and “our path,” i.e.. the Asha‘rites believe in the second. Cf. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, al-Arba’in fi usul al-din (Cairo: Maktabat al-Kulliyat at-Azhariyyah, 1986) , 1:346. For a defense of the same Ash’arite position. see Taftazani, Sharh al-maqasid (Beirut 1989) , 4:282 where it is asserted that human reason is in no place to judge what is good (al-husn) and what is evil (al-qubh). For Sabziwari’s defense of the Mutazilites, the philosophers, and the “Imamiyyah” on the rationality of good and evil. see his gloss on Sadra’s Asfar, II, 3, pp. 83-84.
[41]Ibn Sina, Kitab al-najat, ed. Majid Fakhry (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadidah, 1985) , 265; cf. also Ibn Sina, al-Mubahathai, ed. Muhsin Bidarfar (Qom: Intisharat-i Bidar, 1413 AH), 301.
[42] Sadra, Asfar, II, 1, p. 135.
[43]Asfar, II, 3, p. 76. The intrinsic goodness of things in their natural-ontological state has given rise to a number of popular formulations of the problem, the most celebrated one being Merkez Efendi, the famous Ottoman scholar. When asked if he would change anything were he to have the ‘center’ of the world in his hands, he replied that he would leave everything as it is, hence the name ‘markaz’ (center).
[44]Sadra, Asfar, 111, 2, pp. 114. See also II, 2, p. 114, Ill, 1, p. 256, Ill, 2. pp. 106-154. Sadra employs two arguments to defend the best of all possible worlds argument, which he calls the ‘ontological’ (inni) and ‘causal’ (limmi) methods (manhaj).
