The Epistemological Foundation of Conceptions of Justice in Classical Kalam: A Study of lhringAbd al-Jabbar's al-Mughni and Ibn al-Baqillani's al-Tamhid

Abstract

This article inquires into socio-historical implications of theological conceptions of justice in early Islam through an examination of ʿAbd al-Jabbār's al-Mughnī and Ibn al-Bāqillānī' s al-Tamhīd. It argues that differences in their conceptions of justice were founded on varying theories of knowledge, since they—and presumably their audience—assumed that the way in which one interprets one's intuitions and internal experiences is directly related to the way in which one understands one's relation to God and other humans. Consequently, by affecting the way in which individuals understood what knowledge is, these theologians sought to determine not only what is just but also who could act justly in society. Insofar as individuals disagreed about how knowledge is constituted, they could not trust one another to know how to act justly in society. The centrality of the individual as the locus of knowledge through which human beings was related to God, to one another, and to the world, in the works of these two influential theologians stands in contrast to the prevailing tendency in Islamic studies to read Muslim conceptions of justice in terms of theories of government and state politics. It may thus be worthwhile to keep the epistemological foundation of classical kalām theories of justice in mind when we engage in larger discussions of how justice has been conceived in Islamic history.