Absolute Justice, Kindness and Kinship — Page 67
— Part I 66 us with an excellent opportunity to understand the relationship between ‘Adl, I h s a n and I t a ’i Dhil-Qurb a and their respective merit in relation to each other. It is said that once a holy man was sitting in an open field when suddenly an exhausted dove who was being chased by a falcon fell into his lap. He gave protection to the wretched dove but the falcon protested bitterly saying it was against the principle of justice and that it did not behove a holy man to deprive him from the hard earned fruit of his labour. He said, 'This is how nature has provided me the means of my sustenance. ' The holy man accepted this argument but his benevolence would not permit him to hand over the helpless dove to the falcon. As the story goes, he decided to cut a portion of his own flesh and offer it to the falcon, saying that he justly deserved a portion of fine meat, but his insistence that he must eat the flesh of that dove had no logic. He said, 'Nowhere has nature specified the dove for you. The meat you need is the meat I offer and that should suffice. ' This story is amazingly appropriate in illustrating the subject under discussion. It explains the true meaning of justice and the principles of its implementation in relative terms and in situations where one’s life depends on the death of another. In this scenario, an explanation of the principle of Taqw i m and justice would be that each animal has been granted provisions for his livelihood and the