Conclusion

Islamic law, like other legal systems, seeks to offer justice. Theoretical explana­tions and specifications of this term are rare. Instead, the search for justice is documented in the treatment of concrete legal issues.

New issues still await broader debates: Can non-Islamic secular states and their legal systems offer justice to Muslims and non-Muslims alike? Is justice in a Muslim perspective universal in the sense that non-Muslim institutions can fulfil its prerequisites, once the contents of justice are offered by the respec­tive legal order? A European-Muslim answer has been given: The prominent Bos­nian scholar Enes Karic emphasised,^{[260] [261] based on the ground-breaking work ‘Islam and the Foundations of Governance’ (al-Islam wa usul al-hukm) by the Egyptian scholar 'Ali 'Abd al-Raziq in 1925/20, that the caliphate, i.e. the secular governance by a Muslim ruler, was not a part of the religion of Islam. The Sharia (the Islamic norm system) was a compendium of rules achieving moral objec­tives which could be implemented by secular states alike. A state with an appro­priate system of social care, e. g. financial support for students and senior citi­zens, that planned to establish economic and social justice and respected and implemented human rights, was an Islamic state in such sense. He quoted in this context the proverb “adl al-dawla ιmanuha, zulm al-dawla kufruha, — the faith of a state is justice, his its unbelief is injustice. On the basis of this maxim, Islam and a secular constitutional state can be convincingly reconciled in an overlapping search for justice.}