Absolute Justice, Kindness and Kinship — Page 19
— Part I 18 An 'unending reward' means a form of continuous unbroken moral and spiritual evolution. Literally, ' Taqw i m ' ( ) means straightening something into a continuously improving form and, according to al- Munjad (an Arabic Lexicon) it also means Ta ‘ d i l which can be translated as application of justice. These verses of the Holy Quran refer to the evolutionary process of animals leading up to its culmination in man. They also cover man’s intellectual and moral evolution. Animals with lower intelligence turn into more intelligent life forms as they evolve. It is essentially through the instrument of justice that God initiated the creation of life, and it is through the application of the same principle of absolute justice that life began to evolve, stage after stage, until it reached its final destination. The Quranic expression A h sani Taqw i m points to the fact that the evolution of life was carried out in the best of manners. At every stage it took a step forward in a way which could not be bettered. Evidently, blind evolution is ruled out by this term. This phenomenon when observed among humans, with their consciousness and voluntary decisions to take a just and equitable course, is referred to in the Quran as Ta‘d i l meaning application of justice. Hence, the entire evolutionary process which guides God’s creation from lower to higher stages, is dependent on Taqw i m and Ta‘d i l.