An Analysis of the Views of al-Ghazali, Ibn al-Arabi and Mawlana Rumi on the Concept of Justice

Abstract

Several prominent Muslim philosophers in the past, such as al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Abu Miskawayh, and Nasır al Din Tusi, devoted a significant segment of their political and ethical writings to the subjectmatter of justice, which they treated and examined more or less in a similar fashion as the ancient Greek philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle, had done. Like them, they developed a rational conception of justice, which is generally viewed as natural, eternal, and immutable and ethically as the most comprehensive virtue. Muslim theosophers or Sufi philosophers, such as al Ghazali, Ibn al-‘Arabi and Mawlana Rumi, have initially conceived justice in the same form as the philosophers just-mentioned above and, as will be seen in this study, elaborated it further mainly within the context of metaphysical wisdom that is eternally implanted by God in the universe. Then later, on the basis of their own interpretations of the relevant verses of the Qur’an and the Prophetic sayings, they developed their conception of justice