So the Lord took two viziers to help Him carry out the command: one was the Name the Director and the other the Distinguisher. God Most High said, “He directs the affair and sets out the signs in detail, so that you may be certain of meeting your Lord” [al-Raʿd 13:2], who is the imam. Consider the precision of God Most High’s speech, how its wording corresponds to the way the affair ought to be ordered.
(The Ordinances of the Sages and Their Limits)
The Name the Lord set limits for them and established ordinances for them, to set the kingdom in order and to test “which of them is best in deeds.” God made this of two kinds. One is called governance according to wisdom. He cast it into the innate constitution of the souls of eminent people, who set limits and established ordinances through a power they found in themselves. They did so for each city, district, and region according to the temperament of the locality and the dispositions of its people, for they knew what wisdom calls for.
Through this the people’s property, lives, households, kinship bonds, and lines of descent were preserved. They called these ordinances nawāmīs, meaning means of good. In customary technical usage, a nāmūs is one who brings good, while a jāsūs is spoken of in connection with evil. These, then, are the ordinances of the sages, established by people of sound reason through an inspiration from God of which they were unaware. They serve the welfare, order, and cohesion of the world in places where the people had no revealed divine Law.
The framers of these ordinances had no knowledge of these matters as means of drawing near to God, and their ordinances conferred no Garden
Notes
Translator’s note TN1307-1: The two divine Names are al-Mudabbir, “the Director,” and al-Mufaṣṣil, “the Distinguisher.” They correspond to the actions of directing the affair and setting out the signs distinctly in 13:2. The author’s explanation of nāmūs and jāsūs is a distinction in customary usage, which he applies here to ordinances and their beneficial effects.
