Archive for category: Philosophy of Islamic Laws

The need of human to religion can be described from different angles.

We all know that mankind is a social being and it is almost impossible for him to live alone, because of different needs that he has and he cannot make everything that he needs prepared, especially nowadays due to the different needs, so he has to live within a society. In the society there are different people with different emotions and various needs and wishes, and if everyone wants to look after his/her wishes, in a lot of cases, it will lead to collision.

So it is obvious that such a society needs a law to prevent the rights of its citizens from being transgressed. And this is the reason that is mentioned for the need of human to law, but the question here is that who can make a law for the society and individuals? Can the individuals of the society make it? We agree that the wise and knowledgeable individuals of the society who are expert in different fields, can make it, but we know that the intellect of the people is not able to understand everything from this world well, and this is one of the main reasons that the man-made laws differ from the previous ones and something new is added to them or deleted from them, so we need a source which is more thorough than the intellect and no one is more knowledgeable for such issues than the one who has created us and for this very reason, He is more aware to all aspects of our personalities. For example the introducer of a product is more aware to that product than anyone else. It must be added to it that because we have accepted by logical reasons and we believe that the human does not have just material aspects and there are other complicated aspects that can never be understood even through the consult with the wise people, and our creator is aware of all of our aspects.

So the laws of our creator is not only for welfare and perfection of this material world, but He also has showed us the path to the eternal and everlasting welfare, because we believe that there are realms after death and this short life compared to those worlds, is nothing. And the religion is a way to the perfection of the life in this material world and the hereafter.

It must be added that we are not against man-made law like the laws which are made for driving, we respect them and observe them, but we say such laws are incomplete and not enough and they just talk about some aspects of the life of human, but the complicated personalities of man is not just these material aspects.

We believe that religion is a kind of guidance, the guidance toward perfection, and this guidance has some parameters that one of the most important of them is “knowledge” that contains some items like:

-Knowing God and His attributes.

-Knowing the world and the reason beyond its creation.

-Knowing the mankind and the reason beyond his creation.

-Knowing the path toward that goal of the creation.

-knowing the equipment for this journey and the way to obtain them.

-knowing the dangers of the path of perfection and the ways to overcome them.

And religion is a complex which contains these items. And the reason that religion is forever is because the religion is a way for fulfilling our needs and as long as our needs are there, religion is needed.

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Source:

Tahoor.com

One of the obligations of the religion of Islam is joining good and forbidding evil.

The holy Quran says about the importance of these two obligations in chapter Ali- Imraan verse 110:

كُنتُمْ خَيْرَ أُمَّةٍ أُخْرِجَتْ لِلنَّاسِ تَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَتَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ وَتُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللّهِ

“You are the best nation ever to be brought forth for people. You order honor and forbid dishonor, and you believe in Allah”.

The importance of these two obligations is to the extent that Imam Baghir peace be upon him said:

إِنَّ الْأَمْرَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَ النَّهْيَ عَنِ الْمُنْكَرِ سَبِيلُ الْأَنْبِيَاءِ وَ مِنْهَاجُ الصُّلَحَاءِ فَرِيضَةٌ عَظِيمَةٌ بِهَا تُقَامُ الْفَرَائِضُ وَ تَأْمَنُ الْمَذَاهِبَ …

“Verily the joining good and forbidding the evil is the path of the prophets and the procedure of the righteous, the great obligations that with them, the obligations are raised and the religions become safe …”

The holy Prophet of Islam describes the philosophy of our topic within an interesting example. He said:

A sinner among the people is like someone that gets on a ship with a group, and in the middle of the sea, he starts to hole his place in the ship. If others do not prevent him from doing this dangerous act, the water will penetrate the ship and all will be sunken.

From this meaningful likening, we understand the necessity of the observance of the society members on each other and the members of the society are free till their freedom does not harm others or harm the religion or personality of others.

The history of the importance of our discussion refers to the creation of Adam, because he was the first one to join good and forbid evil, because these two are the main missions of the prophets throughout the history.

Allah said in the holy Quran in chapter Aali- Imraan verse 104:

وَلْتَكُن مِّنكُمْ أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْخَيْرِ وَيَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَيَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ وَأُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ

“Let there be one nation of you that shall call to righteousness, ordering honor, and forbidding dishonor. Those are the prosperous”.

There is a Narration from Imam Ali peace be upon him that says:

“The one who leaves denying (being unpleased with) the evil (act) with his/her heart and hand and tongue, he/she is (like) a dead among the alive.”

Everything that we do as our religious duties, is given and taught to us through teachings of our parents and teachers or Islamic scholars or the mass media, or books etc. and all of these matters are different ways of our subject.

Another point here is that if we see someone who is doing something wrong, if no one notifies him/her of the wrongness of that action, he/she may never get aware of that and it can harm him/her as the danger of this material world or the hereafter. Yes, in some cases if someone does not have any knowledge about religious duties and he/she does not perform that, he/she will be excused, but it is not in every case and for everyone especially in today’s life that in a lot of situations there is not any excuse for leaving the investigations about our responsibilities towards Allah, so if someone joins him/her that good acts or forbids him/her from that evil, the reminder has done a favor to such a person.

You know observing and keeping a civilization safe, sometimes is more important than its establishment, so we see that in our Narrations, there are a lot of mentions of what makes the Islamic society to collapse, and among them is our topic.

Imam Ali peace be upon him said:

“Those who perished before you, were committing sins and their good people were not forbidding them.”

And we know that although a sin especially a sin which is done by tongue, which is committed by one individual, might seem little, but it is like the epidemic illness that can transmit to the others, and if someone joins good and forbids evil, it is a kind of defense from the society members.

Of course these two obligations must be done in a gentle way, not in a way that makes the addressee to run away from the religion.

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Source:

Hawzah.net

“Hajj” or pilgrimage of the Ka’bah( the house of Allah in the city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia) is one of the five pillars of Islam.

If we look deeply at the different deeds of Hajj, we will learn various interesting lessens from that.

Imam Ali peace be upon him said in one of the sermons of the book of Nahj Al-Balaghah: Hajj which is done in the desert of Saudi Arabia is a test from Allah who tests His servants through that and He has assigned this worship in a desert that has very little grass and full of sands and villages which are far from each other etc. and Allah ordered Prophet Adam and his sons to come here from different cities and villages and circle the Kabah(the house of Allah) with untidy hair and full of dust and to take off their shirts which are the sign of prestige, for purifying their souls and Allah has put this as a path for the servants to reach to His mercy and Paradise.

And if Allah had put His house in a very delightful place surrounded with gardens and plains and full of trees and fruits, the reward of that, would have been less, as much as this test was easy.

And Allah tests His servants trough different difficulties to make the arrogance come out from the hearts of the servants and instead of that, to make humility enter in their hearts and to open the door of His mercy to His servants.

The beauties of Hajj are so much, for example if you look at pilgrims, you see different people from different parts of the world from different lifestyles and cultures and different languages, they are in white dress and they ask one God and they believe in one book and they perform their prayer to one direction and they circle one building.

If someone wants to take lessons from Hajj, he/she can remember the day of judgment, the day that like Hajj, he/she will leave everything like the wealth and the family behind and will gather in a place which is full of different peoples or another lessen can be this note that there is not any difference in the appearance of the pilgrims, because you cannot differentiate a wealthy man from a simple man or a professor from an illiterate. And you know the Islamic teachings have taught us that no one has priority over others except through Taghwa( being God-fearing and being observant of the presence of Allah).

Hajj is a symbol of unity among Muslims, because different people with different branches of Islam gather there.

And the last point is that Hajj is a place that helps the economic situations of Muslims to grow, because of the different trades that can be done there. Of course it is better not to be so much busy with economic matters in such a holy land.

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Source:

Islamquest.net

One of the obligations in Islam is the payment of “Zakat” to the poor, of course this ruling is not obligatory for every property, and in fact it is applied to nine things and even in these nine things, if their amounts reach to a specific limit, paying Zakat is obligatory, otherwise the payment of Zakat is not obligatory.

And these nine things are: wheat, barley, date, raisin, gold, silver, cattle, camel and sheep. And there is another kind of zakat that is paid at the end of the month of Ramadan.

We leave the jurisprudential dissection to its appropriate place, but now let’s talk about the philosophy behind this ruling,

In Islam, helping the poor and needy is so much recommended, in a lot of cases this helping is not obligatory but there are some obligatory kinds of helping as well, like what is mentioned in Islamic rulings as the penalty for breaking the fast. There is a Narration that is narrated from the Prophet of Islam who said:

“The one, who makes the heart of a believer happy, has made me happy and the one, who makes me happy, has made Allah happy.”

Imam Reza our 8^th Imam peace be upon him said:

“The best life is for the one, that the life of others is supplied and made prepared beside his/her life. (It means the one that helps the other to have a better life)”

The same Imam said:

“The one who removes from a believer, a sorrow from the sorrows of the material world, Allah will remove a sorrow from the sorrows of the hereafter.”

And there are a lot of verses and Narrations that can be mentioned as guides for us in this regard and we don’t mention them here.

The benefits of helping others can be as followings:

1) It decreases the distance between different levels of the people of a society, or social gap. If the levels of society differ so much from each other and the wealthy do not care for the poor, in many cases the poor will refuge to different corrupted works, like stealing or selling the narcotic or addiction to it or -God forbid- adultery etc. of course we do not say that every poor is so, but all of the poor are not in the same level of moral issues and they might commit such mentioned sins, and if the wealthy help the poor, it can be a way for the security and the health of the society which its benefits reach to the wealthy people as well,

2) If the wealthy people do not help the poor, it is something against their conscience and humanistic emotions, for example how they can sleep comfortably while in their neighbor, there are some people that have no enough place to live and rest? or how they can eat the best meals and don’t help the poor, while there are hunger individuals in their vicinity?

3) It is a way for increasing the sustenance; there is a verse in the holy Quran in chapter Al-Bagharah verse 261 that says:

مَّثَلُ الَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ أَمْوَالَهُمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللّهِ كَمَثَلِ حَبَّةٍ أَنبَتَتْ سَبْعَ سَنَابِلَ فِي كُلِّ سُنبُلَةٍ مِّئَةُ حَبَّةٍ وَاللّهُ يُضَاعِفُ لِمَن يَشَاءُ وَاللّهُ وَاسِعٌ عَلِيمٌ

“The example of those who give their wealth in the way of Allah is like a grain of corn that sprouts seven ears, in every ear a hundred grains. Allah multiplies to whom he will, Allah is the embracer, the knower” .

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Source:

Tebyan.net

In the Islamic calendar or lunar calendar, four months are known as Haram months,

Allah said in the holy Quran chapter Toabah verse 36:

إِنَّ عِدَّةَ الشُّهُورِ عِندَ اللّهِ اثْنَا عَشَرَ شَهْرًا فِي كِتَابِ اللّهِ يَوْمَ خَلَقَ السَّمَاوَات وَالأَرْضَ مِنْهَا أَرْبَعَةٌ حُرُمٌ ذَلِكَ الدِّينُ الْقَيِّمُ فَلاَ تَظْلِمُواْ فِيهِنَّ أَنفُسَكُمْ

“The number of the months, with Allah, is twelve in the book of Allah, the day when he created the heavens and the earth; of these, four are sacred. That is the right religion. Therefore, do not wrong yourselves in them”.

As the description of the meaning of sacredness in these months, we say that it means that people leave war and the security spreads in the lands.

There are some rules regarding these months. For example the fines for some crimes committed in these four months are more than what happens in the other months,

At first we say that the reasons of some of the religious rules in Islam might not be very clear for us, for example we don’t know why we are ordered to perform two Rak’ats for morning prayer, but the philosophy of some rules have been mentioned in the holy Quran or in the Narrations and some of the philosophies of Islamic rulings can be understood by intellect, or scientific researches, but any way it is not necessary for us to understand the philosophy of every action before its performance and it is very logical for us to perform our religious deeds even though the philosophy of some of them might not be so clear for us, because after proving the preliminary matters of a rule like the existence of God and the prophecy of the prophets and revelations etc. there is no any need for knowing the philosophy of each rule in detail. But of course in our topic some philosophies can be mentioned for the sacred months.

The sacredness of these months refers to the time of Prophet Abraham, and in the time before the emergence of Islam this rule was there and when Islam emerged, accepted and continued this custom like some of the rulings of Islam that are the same as what they were before Islam.

Let’s talk about some of mentioned philosophies for this rule:

It can be a means for ending the war because of finding the opportunity for reflection, or a way for showing the importance of peace, or as opportunity for performing the rituals like Hajj or business etc.

You know the importance of ceasefire even for a single day and it shows the spirit of seeking peace in Islam that for four months in every year, there is a kind of ceasefire.

Now let’s talk about the increase of some fines in these months. It is seen in around the world that there are some factors that reduce a fine or increase it, due to the time or place or the some mental situations etc. for example the fine and punishment of the one that repeats a crime in some cases is more than the one who has committed that crime for the first time.

In Islam we see some factors of reduction or enhancement of the reward or punishment in this world or in the hereafter and it is obvious that the factors of enhancement of the rewards in Islam, is so much more than the enhancement of punishment, and it shows that Islam is a religion that is based on mercy, for example the rewards of prayers in some places like mosques are more than the other places.

So we described that some places or times have effects on the amount of some punishments, for example the punishment of some crimes that are committed in the holy city of Mecca is more than the other places because of its sacredness or some crimes that committed in these four months have more punishments than what happens in the other months, and it can be because of the sacredness of these months and committing the crimes like murdering is against this sacredness.

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Source:

Pasokhgoo.ir