The Mahdi Times The Mahdi Times, Issue #22, September 2014 | Page 28

His power to attain its purposes and complete its acts. Blessed be Allah,
the Best of creators.
Oh Mufaddal! Take what (the knowledge) I have given you, and keep
what I have presented you, and be to your Lord grateful, and to His
blessings a praiser, and to His guardians an obeyer. I have explained to
you a part from the whole and a little from plenty of evidences of
creation and proofs of the right management and ordinance. Think of
them deeply and take a lesson.”

Criticizing the Divine Ordinance
Excerpt from ‘Tawheed Al Muffadhel‘
Imam Jafar Sadiq (a.s) said:
“A criticizer may criticize the divine ordinance from another point of
view and say: is there ordinance in this world while we see that
powerful persons oppress, transgress and rape, the weak are wronged
and humiliated, good people are poor and afflicted with distresses, bad
people are sound and wealthy, sinners and criminals are not punished
immediately? If there is in fact planned ordinance in the world, affairs
should happen according to analogy: good people should be blessed,
bad people should be deprived, powerful people should be unable to
wrong the weak, and sinners should be punished immediately. It is said
in answering this: if it were so, doing good, with which man has been
preferred over other creatures, would disappear. People would not do
good or benevolence expecting to be rewarded and trusting in what
Allah has promised in return. People would be like animals that are led
by whip and fodder. No one would act due to the certainty of being
rewarded or punished until people would emerge from humanity into
animality. What is not seen (the unseen) would not be known and no
one would act except for the present pleasures of the worldly life. Even
good people would act to earn livelihood and wealth in this worldly life
only and those who refrain from oppression and sins would do that just
for fear of immediate punishment until all people’s deeds would be done
only for the present and with no certainty of what is with Allah, and
they would not deserve the reward of the hereafter or the eternal bliss
in it; nevertheless, these things that the criticizer has mentioned –