Absolute Justice, Kindness and Kinship — Page 59
— Part I 58 Conclusively if we believe that this attribute has been granted to mankind by God, it logically follows that the guidance on what he should do or should not do must also come from God, through His revealed guidance. However, this argument needs to be elucidated with the help of some illustrations. For instance, a lion’s natural instinct will tell him to go and kill an animal for the satisfaction of his hunger, but his ability to determine that his animal should be killed in the least painful manner is beyond his creative limitations. It is God who has intuitively taught him ways to kill his prey in a mode that would be least painful, in the sense that the affliction of unnecessary pain is avoided. Over a long period of gradual implementation, the process of Taqw i m resulted in a slow but definite and well oriented transformation, whereby animals gradually gained awareness of the pain and suffering of others. Among humans, it began as a first step with the closest kith and kin and gradually it extended to the wider family circles and ultimately into the much larger sphere of all fellow human beings. Then came the turn of feeling for the suffering of lower forms of life as well. This attribute was born out of the same sense of belonging to one another as observed in the entire animal kingdom. At the time of crisis, animals of the same species flock together. This intuitive tendency is perhaps responsible for the group