Faithfulness Begins with Justice, Completes with Ethics
This is according to Mehdi Mehrizi, an Iranian university professor, who made the comments in a seminar recently. Here are excerpts from his speech:
What has been mentioned in religious texts can be divided into five categories. First, there are rituals that all religions have as in Islam we have prayer, fasting, Hajj, etc. The second category comprises faith issues such as monotheism and prophethood. Then we have moral traits such as humility, good behavior, etc. Another group relates to rights and legal relations between people that define a framework for agreement on job and trade for instance. The third category includes issues such as governance and politics.
Which criteria have more priority?
A principal question is which one of these criteria has more priority when it comes to evaluating the faithfulness of a society.
There are some 500 narrations that stress Imam Mahdi (may God hasten his advent) will come to establish justice on earth. Therefore, this is the most important task of the Imam. The Holy Quran also notes that justice has also been the aim of sending prophets.
Faithfulness starts with justice, completes with ethics
According to a frequently narrated hadith, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said: “I was sent to perfect morals.” One can say that faithfulness begins with observing justice and then perfects with observing ethics.
In the first sermon of Nahj al-Balaghah, Imam Ali (AS) says the goal of the prophets’ mission was to grow rationality in humans so that they ask questions. Accordingly, we can detect which one of the mentioned criteria is more important for measuring faithfulness.
