God’s Rationality

The cornerstone of early Hanafi legal theory, crucial for understanding their con­ception of justice, is that there exists a radical disconnect between the mind of God and the minds of humans.

In the face of this insurmountable handicap, humans are left to simply trust that God acts according to some divine wisdom, and must accept that they will never understand it. This is central to the early Hanafi notion of divine justice, because the incomprehensible nature of divine wisdom means that humans are forever denied knowing the reasons behind God’s actions.^[29] Any attempt to understand why God acts one way or another, early Hanafis believed, is an ex­ercise in futility.

Hanafis reasoned that humans should not try to figure out the divine wis­dom behind God’s actions, and that they are not expected to do so, since God does not task humans with what is beyond their ability, as per Q. 2:286. Humans should leave off wondering why, for instance, God created the universe, or sent down laws for people to follow.^{[30] [31] [32] [33] In the Hanafi conception, humans can never really know the answers to these questions. Since they cannot know God’s rea­soning, and are not tasked with doing what is beyond their ability, humans must simply believe that God acts according to some divine wisdom and according to some divine standard of justice that transcends human reason.u For whatever reason God created the universe, humans should believe that it was done with justice.12 They will never understand that justice, but can trust that it is there.}

The Hanafi approach to divine justice runs counter to some popular ideas about the enchantedness of the world in Islamic thought. Many now argue that God acts and creates according to a beautiful, discernible logic, and that un­derstanding that logic leads to enlightenment and salvation. With respect to cre­ation, for instance, contemporary Muslims and non-Muslims alike are quick to provide definitive reasons for God’s creative action, like that God created the uni­verse to test human beings, or to be known, or to be worshipped?³ Indeed, Q. 51:56 states, ‘I did not create jinns and humans except that they worship me.’ That sounds like a clear reason for why God created the universe: so that God would be worshipped. The early Hanafis, however, read this verse quite dif­ferently, and maintained that God’s rationale for creating the world is unknow­able.

Early Hanafis argued that Q. 51:56 should be read as God passively narrating the process of creation, rather than providing a rationale for creation itself. That is, the verse should, in their opinion, be read, ‘I created [humans and jinns] knowing that I would command them to worship me and acknowledge the unity of my being.’¹⁴ In that reading, humans have no idea why they were created, just that God knew, at the moment of creation, that humans would be commanded to worship God and accept monotheism. The reason behind God’s act of creation itself is unknowable and irrelevant.

If God’s actions are beyond any human rationality, then they are also above any human ideas about justice and fairness. If God wishes to create a seemingly evil action, or send a decent person to hell, that is God’s prerogative, and that action will certainly be just, even if humans do not understand how. God’s ac­tions, therefore, define justice, and humans are not expected to understand how, but only to acknowledge that God’s actions are, indeed, just. This early Hanafi belief is not, on its own, that controversial. Many Muslims believe that God’s conception of justice is beyond human rationality. Many also add that hu­mans must therefore adhere to revealed laws, whether they understand them or not. Some argue that just as one cannot fully understand how God’s actions are just, one also cannot understand how God’s revelation and laws are just. In that way of thinking, believers must have faith that the laws contained in the Quran are just, and they must enact them whether the laws make sense or not. Early Hanafis, however, did not follow that line of reasoning. They had a more com­plex understanding of revelation, which made it difficult to say that God’s justice can be found in adhering to the injunctions found therein.