The Conclusive Argument from God

The major work of the eighteenth-century Delhi scholar Shāh Walī Allāh, written in Arabic. Its title, taken from the Qur'an, refers to God's conclusive argument. The work sets out to explain the wisdom and purposes behind the rulings of the religious Law, a discipline he regarded as among the highest of the religious sciences. The first part lays down general principles: human nature, the reasons for divine reward and punishment, the bases of right and sin, the meaning of worship, and the irtifāqāt, the stages by which human society develops from simple subsistence to towns, states and finally a universal caliphate. Religious law, he argues, corresponds to human nature and perfects these social arrangements. The second part works through the teachings of the Prophet on belief, worship, ethics, family, trade and government, giving reasons for each. Throughout, he joins legal, rational and mystical approaches and seeks common ground between the legal schools.

It is the most ambitious premodern attempt to explain Islamic law as rational and socially purposeful, and it influenced almost every later reform movement among South Asian Muslims.