AN ANALYSIS OF THE VIEWS OF AL-GHAZALİ, İBN AL-‘ARABİ AND MAWLANA RUMİ ON THE CONCEPT OF JUSTICE

Özet

Abstract: The concept of justice has always been one of the central issues that have occupied the minds of many philosophers, social scientists and political writers from the ancient to the modern times. So far most of the studies appear to have focused on the meaning and definition of this pivotal concept, as well as its social, economic and political implications. Several prominent Muslim philosophers in the past, such as al-KindÊ, al-FÉrÉbÊ, Ibn SÊnÉ, Ibn Rushd, AbË Miskawayh, and NaÎÊr al-Din ÙËsÊ, devoted a significant segment of their political and ethical writings to the subject-matter 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-GhazÉlÊ, Ibn al-‘ArabÊ and MawlÉnÉ RËmÊ, 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.