Divine Justice from the Perspectives of the Twelver Shi’ism and the Isma’ilism

Some of the philosophical teachings of the Qur’an are about God and His Attributes. The Shi’ism has rated justice as one of the Attributes of God on the rank of principles of religion; because it was on the issue of justice that the rational Shi’as have always had disagreement with the Sunnis. Does Divine justice, however, enjoy equal status among different Shi’a denominations? Justice has been studied on different levels in the works of the Twelver Shi’a scholars; but the Isma’ili works have been studied very briefly and implicitly. In this comparative study, it has been attempted to identify and analyze the
status of Divine justice and its peripheral discourses, such as rational good and evil and God in Twelver Shi’ism and Isma’ilism from the
perspective of the influential thinkers. With respect to the intellectual capabilities of Shi’ism, the issue of Divine justice emerges from within the discourse of determinism and free will because there is direct correlation between belief in determinism and justice on one hand and belief in free will and negation of justice, on the other. From a historical point of view, from the period of Fatimid Isma’ilis, in which the status of Imam was exaggerated, until the Alamut Isma’ilis, degrading the concept of Imam caused the degrading of the Isma’ilis’ rationalism; they distanced from the rational good and evil and thus dealt less with Divine justice. Being under the influence of the two main elements of “Anti-rational prestige of education principle” and “association with Sufism”, Isma’ilism places too much emphasis on the role of Imam in the creation system, in education and guidance, in political and social issues, in interpretation of sharia, in his infallibility and being the Lord of Resurrection (Qāʼim al-Qiyāma). One of the most important findings of this research is that because of this very exaggeration in “learning” from the Imam and impressionability from “Sufism” in specific periods, the Isma’ilism has inclined toward legal good and evil and has distanced from the basic teachings of the Twelver Shi’ism based on the principality of justice, reverence for intellect, and human free personality