ABSTRACT
You can’t go to heaven if you don’t believe in God (Allah cc) and you can’t believe in God (Allah cc) if you don’t love each other.1
Müslim, Îmân, Hadith: 9; Tirmizî, Et’ıme 45
The Argument
This chapter tries to clearly and briefly discuss a much-debated argument that can be stated in two steps. Despite the long and historically apparent examples on a local and global scale as evidenced by today’s disappointing picture, the first step deals in historical sequence with three main religious systems – that is, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which have both the same grounds and more common elements than popularly thought. The second and logical conclusion of the first point is that, apart from the huge extent of discussion about the universality or the universal validity of ethical concepts, Western (Judaeo-Christian) and Islamic concepts of justice are very similar concepts in their ethical origins. The two steps merge into one argument because they are inherently and logically connected with each other. Furthermore, in order to support and strengthen its argument, being very different from earlier works, this chapter uses an approach or method that is completely Western in style. It takes on religious matters as if they are only philosophical and sociological matters so as not to deny or to diminish their
1 Ahmed Şemsüddin (1998) Dâru’l-Kütübi’l-İlmiyye, Beyrut; Muhammed Sıdki Muhammed Cemil (1994) Dâru’l-Fikr, Beyrut. The translation from Turkish to English is mine; one of most the beautiful expressions of Islamic justice and its relation to Allah is Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan: ‘Justice (adl) is apportioned to each one(‘s) wills(will) who is the just alone. Name his hundred names, and then be this name lauded high! Amen.’ Wolfgang Von Goethe (1914) The West-Eastern Divan, I. Book of The Singer, Trans. Edward Dowden, J.M. Dent and Sons, p. 5, brackets are mine.
