What is Justice?
Justice contains two varying meanings. The extensive meaning of justice is “to put everything in its place,” or in other words, being in balance and equilibrium. This meaning or sense of justice rules over the entire created universe – in the galaxies, within an atom, in the structure of a human being’s existence and in all plants and animals. This is what the famous tradition of the Holy Prophet refers to when he says:
“It is by means of justice that all of the heavens and the earth exist.”
For example, if the powers of attraction and repulsion of the earth lose their sense of balance and one of these two is removed or destroyed, the earth will be drawn towards the sun, set on fire and destroyed or it will leave its orbit and wander in the endless space of the universe until it is destroyed.
Another meaning of justice is “following individual rights.” The opposite of justice, then, is oppression in the sense of taking the rights of some and giving them exclusively to others or to take away someone’s rights and give them to another, or to discriminate in the sense that some people are given their rights and others are not.
It is clear that the second meaning is a particular one and the first one is general. It should be noted that both meanings are truthful in relation to God, even though the second meaning will be more emphasized here.
The meaning of God’s Justice is to neither remove the rights of a person nor give the rights of one to another or to discriminate between people. He is Just in all senses of the word and the reasons or proof of His Justice will be mentioned in the next lesson.
Oppression whether it is by way of taking away a person’s rights or by way of giving the rights of one to another, or by waste and discrimination, does not exist in the pure Essence of God. He never punishes a person who does good and He never encourages a person who does evil. No one will be held responsible for the sins of another. He does not burn the wet and dry together.
If everyone is in error in a community except for one person, God separates the accounts of that one person from that of others and does not punish that person along with the sinners.
And the fact that the Ash’arites said, “Even if God sends all of the prophets to hell and all of the criminals and sinners to heaven, it is not oppression,” is vain babble and baseless. The intellect, which is never polluted with superstition and discrimination, will not listen to these ugly words.
