Injustice (zulm)

Injustice (zulm), for many scholars, is placing a thing in other than its proper place. Others defined it as acting on another's property without his permission. Ibn Rajab presents it in his commentary on the twenty-fourth sacred hadith. ¹

Ibn Rajab relates the second definition from Iyas ibn Mu'awiya, and on this definition injustice is impossible for God, because everything He does is an action within His own dominion. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali answered Imran ibn Husayn in a similar way when he asked him about predestination. ¹

Ibn Rajab explains the phrase as God having withheld injustice from His servants. On the first definition, the hadith shows that God is able to do injustice but does not do it, out of grace and generosity. He notes that His creating the acts of the servants, among which is injustice, does not require that He be described as unjust, since He is described only by His own acts. ¹

He cites a mawquf report from Ubayy ibn Ka'b, and a similar one from Ibn Mas'ud and Zayd ibn Thabit, that if God punished His creatures He would not be unjust to them. Ibn Rajab notes that its chain is open to question. ¹

The first is injustice to oneself, the greatest of which is polytheism, on which he cites Luqman 13, and then sins, great and small. The second is one servant's injustice to another, which is what is meant by his words "and I have made it forbidden among you, so do not wrong one another." ¹

He cites in support the sermon of the Farewell Pilgrimage on the prohibition of blood, property, and honour, the hadith of Ibn Umar "injustice is darkness on the Day of Resurrection," and the hadith of Abu Musa on God's respite for the wrongdoer. ¹

Ibn Khaldun makes it a herald of the ruin of settlement. See injustice heralds the ruin of settlement. ²

The Sheikh says injustice is transgression against others' rights, like a flood that leaves its banks (needs_source). ³ He says that injustice and disobedience to parents bear fruit in this world before the next, that no tyrant in history goes unpunished, and recalls the Meccan persecutors of Bilal and Ammar (needs_source). ^{4 5} He says that whoever takes a span of land unjustly is punished, that judges decide by arguments, and that what a person takes of his brother's right without cause is a piece of the Fire (needs_source). ^{6 7} He holds that the tyrant's fire returns to him, since he planted fire in people's hearts and is consumed by it (his view). ^{8 9} He says each person's account is like the goods he takes from the supermarket, for which each is held to account (his view). ¹⁰

The Sheikh says that whoever bears injustice fails, whether it is injustice to the children of Adam, to society, to the community or to Islam, that his end is disappointment, and he asks God that we not be among the disappointed ¹¹.

The Sheikh holds that any oppressor or criminal who kept before him on his desk the verse that tells of the request to return to the world after death might perhaps be restrained by it ¹².

The Sheikh cites a sacred saying in which God says: "O My servants, I have forbidden injustice to Myself and made it forbidden among you, so do not wrong one another" ¹³. He warns against wronging the weak, and names among them the orphan, the widow, the divorced woman, the wife and the sister ¹³.

He defines injustice as exceeding what is right, and urges people to measure themselves against the Qur'an and the Sunna, since many people do not know that they are wronging others ¹⁴. He holds, as his own opinion, that answering ignorance with ignorance and injustice with injustice makes us ignorant and unjust ourselves ¹⁵.

He holds, as his own opinion, that the oppressor sees only himself, and does not imagine that the child he shelters will grow up to confront him; he gives the example of Pharaoh and the child of the Israelites ¹⁶.