Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi Since distant centuries, the human being has responded to his innate sense, which has not left him since the beginning of his creation, in drawing up conceptions of a world that swims above ideals, luxuriates in prosperity and soars in the sky of peace. This act has been referred to as utopia in scholarly literature since Thomas More (Thomas mor) (1478 CE–1535 CE). .
But this aim, which remained as conceptions and imaginings in the minds of scholars, was deeply rooted in antiquity: they have said that the first to set out this conception was Plato in his virtuous city (The Republic). The conceptions continued to weave a world luxuriating in prosperity (in systems and philosophy) until they reached the European Renaissance, through the most prominent constitution, by the Frenchman Jean Bodin (1530 CE–1596 CE) in his book (The Republic); then several cities followed in the same pattern, such as (The City of the Sun) and (The City of the Christians). Al-Farabi followed the approach of Plato and Socrates in his conceptions, in the book (al-Siyasa al-Madaniyya).
Scholars have understood the origin of this utopian tendency only as a reaction to corrupt reality, to practices of oppression, injustice and aggression, and to conditions of poverty and incapacity. But by contemplating the basis of creation and looking at the purposes of the divine messages, we conclude that this reaction is nothing but a revealer of the innate tendency deposited in the depths of the human being since Allah the Exalted created him—the aspiration to the virtuous life. All human beings share this feeling, but their means of expressing it differ according to the code and the path whose way they follow.
Allah the Exalted willed for the human being to live a life of prosperity and peace, not of misery and aggression. That purpose became evident in the dialogue of the angels with the Creator when Adam was made vicegerent on the earth. All the prophets (a) called their peoples to righteousness and uprightness to realize that hoped-for prosperity; and so the matter is clearest in the final Message, in which Allah the Exalted promised the good life to whoever follows the way of the believers through the systems and legislation that Allah the Exalted sent down from heaven to the people of the earth, as He, the Exalted, said: “Whoever acts righteously, [whether] male or female, should he be faithful, We shall revive him with a good life and pay them their reward by the best of what they used to do” (Qurʾan 16:97).
The term “the good life” is the Quranic expression that formulates the desired world for human reality in Islamic thought. With it the religious authority (marjaʿ) Grand Ayatollah Sayed Muhammad Taqi al-Modarresi (may his shadow endure) titled his book on the Jurisprudence of the Good Life. It is a juristic (legislative and legal) formulation of life, to realize the purposes of the Sharia in peace, security and justice, deriving the fundamental values that shape society and chart its course in its social life as a political, economic and societal system, and in personal and family life—values through which the detailed rulings are derived as branches, after the values have been founded on the firm foundation (the Noble Qurʾan, and the purified Sunna of the Prophet and his Ahl al-Bayt).
With this distinguished effort, the book The Jurisprudence of the Good Life went beyond the circle of human conceptions saturated with wishes that fall short of grasping all the dimensions of creation (the human being and what surrounds him). Moreover, its formulation through the science of jurisprudence gave it a practical dimension, so that it is closer to reality and to application—indeed, because the science of jurisprudence is the legislative form of the fundamental values of the religion, and it is the most prominent manifestation of founding the reality of nations—unlike the philosophical method (of legislation and codification) followed by Plato and al-Farabi, those between them and those after them.
From here the door opens before us to the question of the relationship between jurisprudence and development, since the term “development,” which came into circulation after the Second World War in its economic aspect, then developed into the political, then the epistemic, and came to encompass all aspects, is an expression more advanced than the conceptions of utopia, because of the will to progress and advancement that it contains.
The relationship that can be conceived between jurisprudence as an applied science and development as a desired aim is a relationship of founding the sound ground for launching progress and advancement on its correct course, which flows into the interest of the human being; and this was evident in the book (The Jurisprudence of the Good Life). The origin of this relationship is the nurturing condition and the realization of the nurturing environment in which development is generated. He, the Exalted, has said in His Noble Book: “The good land—its vegetation comes out by the permission of its Lord, and as for that which is bad, it does not come out except sparsely. Thus do We paraphrase the signs variously for a people who give thanks” (Qurʾan 7:58).
The good land (whose life was a good life) is the one that brings forth, produces and gives all things of its own kind and nature. Therefore Islam has emphasized this in the verses of the Mighty Book: the supplication of the prophets (a) is “My Lord! Grant me a good offspring from You” (Qurʾan 3:38), so that it may practice good relations among its members; He made lawful to them the food that suits their aspirations: “Say, ‘All the good things are lawful to you’” (Qurʾan 5:4); He guided them to the ideas that build that reality: “They were guided to chaste belief” (Qurʾan 22:24); and their relations among themselves: “a salutation from Allah, blessed and good” (Qurʾan 24:61).
The good word has a firmly grounded and steady root; it is the fundamental values that shaped the jurisprudence of the good life for Sayed al-Modarresi. Through this methodology, Islamic jurisprudence can take a new path in contributing to the development of the life of societies at all their levels and in all their varieties.
