Injustice (zulm)

الظلم

Injustice (zulm) for many scholars is placing things outside their place; others defined it as disposing of another's property without permission — a sense transmitted from Iyas ibn Mu'awiya — which makes it impossible for God since all He does is disposal within His own dominion, in the manner of Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali's answer to Imran ibn al-Husayn on the divine decree; commenting on 'I have forbidden injustice to Myself' in the sacred hadith, Ibn Rajab explains it as His restraining injustice from His servants, noting that on the first definition the hadith shows God is able to commit injustice but does not, out of grace, bounty, generosity and beneficence, and that His creating His servants' deeds — injustice among them — does not attribute injustice to Him, since He is described only by His own acts; he transmits a report halted at Ubayy ibn Ka'b and similarly from Ibn Masud and Zayd ibn Thabit — 'were God to punish the people of His heavens and His earth He would do so without injustice to them' — while flagging its chain; the injustice forbidden between servants is of two kinds: injustice to one's own soul, whose greatest form is association — 'association is indeed a tremendous injustice' (Luqman 13) — then sins great and small, and injustice to others, the subject of 'I have made it forbidden among you', witnessed by the Farewell Pilgrimage sermon declaring blood, property and honour sacred, by Ibn Umar's 'injustice will be darknesses on the Day of Resurrection' and by Abu Musa's 'God grants respite to the wrongdoer until, when He seizes him, He does not let him escape'.