Reply Question:28

The sentence: يملأُ الأرض عدلا كما ملئت جورا has come down in traditions in various forms. In the noble book ‘Bihar-ul-Anwar’ alone, 31 cases have been recorded with slight variations in their expressions. However, the contents and contexts of expression of none of these traditions reveal that oppression is pre-condition to ‘Zuhoor’. Rather it expresses one of the two positions: The first position is the position of goodness and piety and the second one the position of oppression and corruption. Position or background is one thing and pre-condition another thing. The below example brings nearer the concept of tradition:

You inform your friend, ‘I will visit you on Friday evening.’ Does this sentence imply that your visit depends on Friday and if you fail on Friday, your visit is cancelled or it implies that Friday is the course (of time) and not pre-condition of your visit with your friend? Thus, there exists the possibility and probability of visit on another day and if we wished to set conditions we would say,“My condition for visiting you is approach of Friday.”

Secondly, there exists a clear difference between man’s duties and the natural and forcible occurrences. From the viewpoint of Islam, Qur’an, traditions of Ahl’ul -Bayt and reason, prevention of corruption, training and development on the path of servitude, observance of piety and purity, recognition of God, prophethood, Imamate and Ma’ad and acting on one’s creed are man’s duties. Thus, numerous traditions have come down concerning man’s duties during the concealment period and these traditions lay great emphasis on acting upon these aforesaid duties.

To sum up, the matter of earth getting filled with oppression and corruption is one of the two courses of Imam Mahdi’s ‘Zuhoor’, and not a single course, nor a pre-condition. It is our duty to create the other course i.e., goodness and piety. In other words, these traditions reveal the state and common social events at the time of ‘Zuhoor’ and the traditions about ‘Entezar -e -faraj’ determine an individual’s responsibility during ‘Ghaibat’ (concealment) where the person doing ‘Entezar’ (awaiting) must be good and pious and it is never right to mingle these two matters together.