Justice as a Political Principle in Islam

Any detailed description of a particular set of facts of the religion and civilisation of Islam should be prefaced with introductory comments specifying its frame of reference. If this is not done, any statements made about, for example, the situa­tion of women, children, farmers, craftsmen, traders, court officials or rulers ‘in Islam’ is apt to be misleading.

It is the statements of the Quran and the traditions of the early age of Islam on which the Sharia rests, a code that was developed essentially during the first three centuries. The Sharia is a monumental system of rules on ritual, social, eth­ical and legal questions, which is however rent by denominational disputes and partly ossified. How important is the Sharia for any general statements about conditions in Islam? Or, to put it differently: What is the current and former sta­tus of its detailed regulations vis-a-vis the legal and social realities past and pres­ent in a territory that ranges from Morocco to Chinese Turkistan? Moreover: When we make statements about ‘Islam as such’, are we talking only about the religious and legal norms that were developed by jurists or also about the discourses written down in Arabic or any other language of the Islamic culture by Muslim theologians, philosophers, historians, geographers or poets? What value do we accord to observations by Muslim and non-Muslim travellers, eth­nographers and other observers regarding the diversity of ideas and religious practices followed by certain groups in the ‘Islamic reality’ of the present? What is the scientific import of the content and manifestations of what is called ‘popular Islam’? Does it really have nothing to do with ‘true Islam’, as today’s fundamentalists and their followers would have us believe? Is it admissible in the first place to include in a consideration of the essence of Islam the partially syncretistic ideas of heterodox communities? And when it comes to the some­times discriminatory judgements to be found in traditional entertainment litera­ture, to what extent may or should these be considered in describing certain phe­nomena, such as the way the various human ethnicities are regarded? Is it not enough merely to say that neither the Quran nor the Hadith contains statements that might be interpreted as justifying racial discrimination on religious grounds? And if so, what about the fact that racism was and is present in the thoughts and actions of Muslims?

The above shows how very problematic it is to make generalised statements about ‘Islam as such’, for any statement necessarily relates to a limited field of observation.

Be that as it may: Both Muslims and non-Muslims should steer clear of any undifferentiated (or, to use a modern buzzword, essentialist) statements when talking about Islam or any other religion. In our case, this refers to generalised statements like ‘Islam as such is tolerant/intolerant’. Those who make such gen­eralised judgements pretend that there is a single subject named Islam that is capable of talking and acting. They dispense with comprehensively addressing all the different things that can be subsumed under Islam, things that are regard­ed as Islamic in the narrower or broader meaning of the word by many Muslims as well as many outsiders. To quote one example: The followers of Sufism and Wahhabism widely differ on essential points of their own religious interpretation and practice. From their respective points of view, many of the convictions and phenomena that characterise the religious life of the other side are nothing but false doctrines from the fringes or even from outside true Islam. At the same time, any holistic representation of Islamic civilisation that strives to be objective will never be complete without including these two manifestations of Islam, once again differentiated by space and time. Of course, it is not necessary for such considerations to be free from criticism.

What I have said so far is intended to provide a historical and geographical context for the following, necessarily sketchy remarks about concepts of ‘justice in Islam’. There can be no serious doubt that such concepts do exist and that they have played an eminent role in the thinking of many Muslims since the dawn of Islam.

After the dispute that arose over who should succeed Muhammad as leader of the community after his death (632 CE), the debate centred on questions relat­ed to finding and confirming a ruler, the conditions under which he should ex­ercise power and his personal justice.

The idea that misdirected developments began early naturally begs the ques­tion of who should be blamed for the wide spread of injustice.

This is literary fiction, to be sure, but it is nevertheless impressive, for in (Sunni) tradition, ‘Umar is seen as an unbending man of strict beliefs and great integrity. Now, if even such a person cannot be sure that everything within his responsibility has been handled properly, and if he begins to cry at the thought, this highlights the discrepancy between ideal and reality that, accord­ing to a widespread conviction, appeared very early in the history of Islam. (By and large, the term king (malik) began to be used in the Islamic world to describe a monarch in a positive vein only in the 20^th century, mainly because of endeav­ours to appear on an equal footing on the international stage.)

The Quran and the religious literature that is based on it contain quite a number of other terms that (more or less precisely) mean ‘just’ and/or ‘justice’ or their opposites, i.

As Muslims generally understand the Quran, it is the ruler more than any­body else who is called upon by Allah to act with moderation and justice. Thus, chapter 38:26 says: ‘David, we have made you master in the land. Rule with justice among men and do not yield to lust, lest it turn you away from God’s path!’ In the Muslim exegesis of the Quran, truth (haqq), the principle by which King David (one of God’s emissaries) is to rule as a successor (khalifa, hence the word caliph) by the order of God, implies nothing but justice in the exercise of power combined with the control of personal inclinations. In Islamic legal literature, this Quranic verse has been cited — together with others — again and again as a condition of legitimate good governance. In that context, observ­ing the Sharia and defending it against usurpers, violent warlords and alien ‘in­fidel’ conquerors became the crucial criterion by which the justice expected of a ruler was assessed. Moreover, there are words of the Prophet to point the way. Thus, he is said to have proclaimed once, ‘One hour of justice is worth more than sixty years of divine service.’

In addition to the numerous religious law treatises about the caliphate that were written, enlarged and commented on over the centuries (often in the service and interest of a particular dynasty), there are certain literary genres that de­scribe the rights and duties of a ruler and the conditions of successful gover-

nance. In some of these works, there are passages that criticise the misdemean­ours of certain rulers and their confidants relatively openly. Most notable among them are writings that resemble the ‘mirrors for princes’ that were popular in the Occident.

Concerning the content of the term justice, the Sharia — with the support of the Quran, the Hadith and the practice of the early caliphs — addresses a society in which, to name but a few examples, slavery and strict corporal punishment prevailed, capital interest was banned and the deposition of one man in court could be outweighed only by that of two women. Female judges were unknown, and no Muslima was allowed to marry a non-Muslim man. These and many other regulations are entirely ‘just’ within the meaning of the Sharia, a code that essen­tially dates back to the period from the 7^th to the 9^th century CE. Some present-day Muslim apologists maintain that these regulations are not as strict as they might appear at first glance. Many of them point out that Muslim jurists did and still do give consideration to certain exemptions, mitigating circumstances, etc. in their rulings and/or legal opinions (sing. fatwa), although this was and is not done uniformly across all fields covered by the Sharia. By differentiating their inter­pretations from one case to the next, jurists wanted to adhere to justice without endangering the validity of the system. One often-quoted example of a practice that is flexible and reflects social reality is the way the implementation of pun­ishment for theft (severing the right hand) is circumscribed by conditions. And indeed, the number of cases in which this punishment was actually carried out in the history of most Muslim societies is, by and large, much lower than one might suppose, given the theoretical background and the social conditions described by historians and other authors. (For the contemporary debate about this question, see below.) In saying anything definite about actual legal practice, therefore, it is necessary to differentiate, as mentioned above, on the basis of his­torical developments and regional peculiarities. While some of the latter spring from pre- or non-Islamic traditions, others are the result of separate develop­ments based on denominational features. Especially the unceasing complaints and polemical comments of ‘orthodox’ Muslim scholars reveal that, almost ev­erywhere, cases abounded in which the provisions of the Sharia were not imple­mented consistently. Though nominally Muslim, some groups of the popula­tion — nomads, for instance — hardly knew them at all. In many ways, these provisions were (and sometimes still are today) pervaded by elements of custom­ary law that had nothing to do with the Sharia. Such local codes appeared and still appear ‘just’ to the members of the group in question, serving, for example, to justify so-called honour killings.

One aspect that cannot be discussed in greater detail in this paper is the jus­tice of God. This was quite a controversial question in the formative phase of Is­lamic theology. Complicated disputes arose about the characteristics of God to which the Quran bears witness (compassionate and merciful as well as wrathful and threatening), about man’s free will as a prerequisite for being punished or rewarded and about similar points. The view that ultimately gained acceptance after a prolonged struggle was that God is absolutely just, even though mankind may be unable to perceive his justice every time and everywhere. In the religious and political programs of present-day Islamic and/or Islamist movements, this dogma manifests itself in an avowal of the ‘justice of God in creation and legis­lation’, as in Article 2 of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

As mentioned above, disputes about the religious and legal legitimacy of Is­lamic rule arose very early on. The denominational groups (some of them short­lived) that emerged in Islam in the course of these confrontations largely justified their ambitions by the claim that injustices committed by usurpers had to be atoned for and that the righteous and religiously mandated cause of their party had to be helped to victory. In the process, each of these groups developed its own specific view of the events in the early age of Islam, ranging from the lifetime of the Prophet to the bloody upheavals of the internal Islamic ‘civil war’, the death of the fourth caliph, ‘Ali, and the assumption of power by the Umayyads, the first hereditary monarchy in Islam (661 CE). These views inform not only the theories these groups hold about governance, but also their ideas about justice in government and society. Together with other events that occur­red later, Islam’s first internal ‘civil war’ (656 - 661 CE in the narrower definition), in which companions of the Prophet, all persons of great merit, fought on both sides, induced large segments of the population to adopt a quietist attitude. While revolutionary religious movements, some of them extremely militant, did manage to gather a following every now and then, the bloody events associ­ated with revolts motivated many true believers to bow to the bitter insight that ‘a century of tyranny is better than a single day of civil war’. This insight turned into a kind of conventional wisdom that is evoked to this very day whenever the occasion arises. Not a few Muslim (especially Sunni) jurists and theologians en­deavoured to turn this into an argument for recognising, at least superficially, rulers who are illegitimate and, therefore, unjust. Ultimately, it is all about choos­ing the lesser evil. Thus, the great theologian and legal scholar al-Ghazali (d. 1111) drew a parallel between submitting to a tyrant and the emergency of a man who has to eat carrion (banned under Sharia law) to avoid dying of hunger. In this sense, al-Ghazali demands allegiance even to an unjust ruler.

The Shiites in general and particularly the community that is most powerful among them today, the so-called Twelver Shia, tend to take a critical and even polemical view of Islam’s early history. According to them, a number of compan­ions of the Prophet had plotted against him (and implicitly, against the will of God) in order to keep the Prophet’s blood relations away from power. They al­ready did this while Muhammad was still alive. They succeeded in doing so over centuries, not entirely but largely, and the consequences for true Islam and the Muslims were catastrophic. Since the death of the Prophet, therefore, justice has been largely absent from the world of Islam, which is why any rule that is or ever was could only be conditionally legitimate at best. According to Shiite scholars this does not rule out the possibility that there may be rulers who prove sufficiently just for people to submit to them and even enter into their service. What is more, this may apply to rulers who do not follow the Shiite or even the Muslim faith, provided they offer a certain degree of protection to the Shiites.

Shiites accept the fact that they are in a minority almost everywhere in the Islamic world. Living in an environment that is basically hostile and dangerous, the best course for a Shiite is to remain quiet and merge with the background even to the extent of denying his own convictions. This principle of dissimulation (taqiya) is not only admissible for members of the Twelver Shia, but even regard­ed as highly meritorious, because it serves to protect one’s own life and to de­fend, albeit indirectly, one’s brothers in faith. Ultimately, however, it can be un­derstood only as a stratagem employed in a world that is threatening and unjust. The only source of hope is the prospect of a messiah, a mahdi, who will appear one day to ‘establish a realm that is as just as it was filled with injustice before’. While this formula has cropped up also among the Sunni ideas about a mahdi ever since the early age of Islam (see above), its spread and formative influence among the Twelver Shiites is extraordinary. The reason for this lies in a close as­sociation between the figure of the mahdi and the concept of the Imamate. The idea is that throughout history, Allah has provided his true followers, the Shiites, with a leader (Imam) endowed with superhuman abilities, a manifestation of his goodness and justice towards mankind. Twelver Shiites firmly believe that the twelfth of these Imams was removed to a mysterious place of secrecy in 874 CE, that he is alive today, and that he will reappear some day in the future. Mil­lions of Shiites profess their hope for this event, a hope embodied, for example, in Article 5 of the 1979 constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the lan­guage of agitation that was used during the upheavals in Iran, the expected re­appearance of the messiah was called a ‘revolution’. While this was in keeping with the spirit of the times, it also tied in with the centuries-old legends about the mahdi who was to come: his appearance in Mecca, his progress to Iraq via Medina, his fight against the Antichrist in which he is supported by Jesus Christ and the apocalyptic events that will lead up to his ultimate victory. Describing all this in great and sometimes gruesome detail, the voluminous Shiite literature on the subject revolves around the idea of taking revenge on the enemies of the Shi­ites (especially those who were responsible for the deaths of its Imams). To break the ground for the realm of justice that will be established by the mahdi, there­fore, all evildoers past and present must be punished without mercy. This in­cludes taking retrospective revenge even on those companions of the Prophet who are revered by the Sunnis but, according to the conviction of the Shiites, once sinned against the will of God. We are here looking at the downside of the cult of mourning that surrounds the twelve Imams of the Shiites who, it is said, all died as martyrs, except for the twelfth. For their sake, people whip themselves or at least shed floods of tears in the month of Muharram each year. This cult may be one of the reasons why Shiite believers become politically paralysed and passive in the face of blatant injustice. Indeed, this was so for a long time. In certain circumstances, however, the mood may change, so that masses rise in readiness to take up arms to fight for justice and sacrifice them­selves. This is exactly what the world has witnessed in the last few decades in Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere. Everywhere, the language of words and images used by the political Shiite movements is fraught with references to religious metaphors and symbols. Thus, for instance, the Quranic term used to describe an unjust ruler is taghut (meaning approximately ‘idol’ and by extension, ‘ty­rant’, ‘despot’, etc.). During and after the Iranian Revolution of 1978/79, the term nezam-e taghuti (meaning ‘the pagan tyrannical system’) was commonly used to describe the overthrown regime of the Shah.

Not only in the Shiite but also in the Sunni world, has the revival of the con­cept of justice and its exploitation for political purposes assumed yet another di­mension, that of a call for social justice as one of the key concerns of Islam. Al­ready since the 19^th century, Muslim thinkers and politicians tried to launch social and political reforms in a modern sense. This they did with reference to the precepts of the Quran and the practices of the Prophet. To gain acceptance, the theoretical justification of these reforms in a modern sense must create the impression that the changes envisaged could be reconciled with Islam without difficulty. Many of these reforms aim to adapt Western institutions that are re­garded as successful to the needs of an Islamic society. Thus, the system of par­liamentary democracy may be made to appear harmless and even worthy of imi­tation by evoking the principle of mutual consultation (shura), which the Quran commends. Some modernist politicians and writers regard the so-called statutes with which the Prophet tried to regulate conditions in Medina as the precursor of a constitution and a few even call it ‘the first written constitution in the history of the world’. One remarkable example that illustrates the general trend to forge links between the political values of Western modernity (the French Revolution in this case) and the heritage of Islam is that of Rafiq al-‘Azm, a politician and journalist from Syria who campaigned for reforms in Turkey from his Egyptian exile in the early 20^th century. In the preface to his book, which appeared in Cairo in 1903, about famous personages in Islam he spoke of Muhammad as the prophet ‘who established the Sharia on the pillars of freedom, justice and fraternity’. It is probably not by chance that the author (a member of a notable Syrian family) named justice instead of equality, which one might normally ex­pect to be included in this triad.

When the concept of development was introduced to intra-Islamic discourse, it was possible to put certain legal constructs of the Sharia in their historical per­spective and to mitigate them indirectly. By the same token, it became possible to reinterpret related social institutions as well as norms and behaviour patterns that had been regarded as legitimate and just for centuries. In the case of slavery, for instance, the argument ran as follows: While early Islamic society had accept­ed slavery as a social fact, based in part on statements in the Quran, Islam had improved the slaves’ situation considerably compared to older and contempo­rary societal orders, demanding that they should be treated justly. The manumis­sion of slaves had always been seen as an act that was pleasing to God. While the Prophet had been unable to abolish slavery entirely and immediately, all sorts of former justifications for it have become obsolete by now. Together with develop­ments in international law, a progressive interpretation of Islam demanded that the slave hunts that were conducted in Black Africa well into the 19^th century should be rejected and, consequently, suppressed by the governments of Islamic countries.

Muslim modernists in the late 19^th and throughout the 20^th centuries used a similar rationale to justify a demand for improving the social status of Muslim women, up to and including equality. In a highly condensed form, the train of thought ran as follows: In its early age, Islam had brought about enormous im­provements in the legal status of women compared to pre-Islamic times, but the process had been neglected later on over a long period. Thus, the claim to edu­cation for women that was embedded in Islam had not been realised in general. Currency had even been given to a false Hadith that was supposed to prove that the Prophet himself had recommended teaching girls and women neither read­ing nor writing, but only how to use a spinning wheel and how to recite a certain chapter of the Quran, the 24^th. According to the modernists, present-day Muslims are called upon to join in helping to victory the original intention of Islam, which is to promote justice for women in education as well as in other respects.

Referring to episodes in early Islamic history (whose veracity we are not dis­cussing at the moment) may also serve to mitigate the severity of punishments under Sharia law. Thus, tradition has it that the previously mentioned Caliph ‘Umar, in a year of famine, had suspended amputation as a punishment for theft. Now, seeing that large parts of the population are currently suffering from want to an extent that is always bitter and sometimes life-threatening, we might conclude that this punishment for theft should not apply today. It would be unjust in view of the fact that most Muslims presently are not living in a truly Islamic society. While this would not imply the permanent abolition of this punishment, its modern interpretation obliges judges to impose retaliato­ry punishments only in recognition of the prevailing circumstances.

The process of re-Islamization that has been taking place for some decades in quite a number of countries has considerably hampered and sometimes totally perverted these attempts to adapt the Sharia and render it more flexible. Radical Islamic fundamentalists accord little or no value to instruments like the Human Rights Charter (HRC) of the United Nations that are widely recognised (although not always consistently observed) on the international level. To their minds, the introduction of legal regimes and constructions that began to be imported from Western culture in the 19^th century is nothing but a consequence of European col­onialism. Since the latter was entirely pernicious, being unjust in the eyes of Islam, all traces of it in legislation and jurisdiction have to be obliterated. How­ever, even the fundamentalists’ thoughts revolve around justice of a kind, al­though the way they interpret its content differs not only from the HRC but also from the understanding of the Muslim modernists and even more from that of the secularists. What the Ayatollah Khomeini is alleged to have said about punishment by whipping and/or stoning is characteristic in this respect. Expressing himself unequivocally in favour of these punishments, he neverthe­less demanded moderation, saying that not a single stroke of the whip should be administered beyond the number prescribed in Islamic law. He also said it was forbidden to humiliate the guilty. According to Khomeini, the role model in this case was the Imam ‘Ali, who was in the habit of treating with benevolence and sensitivity those who had lost a hand in punishment by his order, thus win­ning their hearts afterwards. On the other hand, he is said to have been quite ca­pable of drawing his sword and hacking incorrigible criminals to pieces. ‘Such was the way of his justice,’ Khomeini concluded.

Yet current developments in Iran do not necessarily follow the direction that might be implied in Khomeini’s statements. There as well as elsewhere, the dis­pute about how Islamic justice should be rightly interpreted is not resolved yet. To the Taliban in Afghanistan, the apartheid of the sexes that they proclaimed and largely implemented in their territory is entirely just in the context of ‘true’ Islam. Conversely, they regard the equality demanded by modernists for Muslim women as well as their appearance in public as the work of the devil. However, it is anything but certain that this policy will help the Taliban to win over the majority of the population.

The examples cited above are situated on a plane of discussion where the arguments employed are ‘Islamic’ in the narrower or broader meaning of the word. However, we should not overlook that, in the 20^th century, the Islamic countries were influenced by ideologies whose foundations were non-Islamic and whose proponents even adopted attitudes that were more or less hostile to­wards Islam. These include Kemalism in Turkey (with a grain of salt), the com­munist parties that temporarily gained considerable influence in Iran, Iraq, In­donesia and elsewhere and — with certain limitations — the Baath Party. The reasons why some of these movements had so much success with some parts of the population are many and varied. One of them is that they may have suc­ceeded, at least to a certain extent, in tying their propaganda in with the wish for more social and political justice, albeit with ‘Islamic’ connotations. The term ‘adala, meaning justice and derived from ‘adl (see above), turns up in the name of Iran’s first communist party, the Hezb-e ‘Adalat which was founded shortly after the First World War. Non-Marxist socialist regimes, parties and movements in the Islamic world made similar or even more forceful attempts to underpin their programmes with eclectic references to the Islamic heritage, in­cluding the Quran. The Egyptian president Nasser’s ‘National Charter’ of 1961, together with the relevant official commentaries, quotes ‘Islamic’ reasons for the need to establish social justice. However, on the subject of parties and their self-chosen names, those more or less ‘moderate’ Islamist parties whose name includes the word justice (surely not by accident) are more important at present. One such party exists in Morocco, for example — the Hizb al-‘Adala wal-Tanmiya (Parti de la Justice et du Developpement). Another party that is con­siderably better known in the West is the Turkish AKP, which attained govern­mental powers under Recep Tayyip Erdogan: The letter A in the acronym stands for ‘Adalet’.

Prompted by the success attained by some left-wing (or pseudo-left-wing) parties, movements and regimes in certain Islamic countries in the 1950s and 1960s, Muslim scholars tried to counter the ideologies of their opponents, which, in their opinion, were alien to Islam, by establishing an economic theory that was modern, just and conformable with the Sharia. While the theoretical quality of their writings is not always impressive in the judgement of experts, there is no mistaking the earnestness of their endeavours to find an Islamic ra­tionale for reforms. Whereas the practicability of a ‘truly Islamic’ system (includ­ing interest-free banking, etc.) may be regarded with scepticism, the wealth of ideas developed by the proponents of these experiments appears considerable.

At a rather lower but highly practical level, attempts are being undertaken to establish Islamic welfare organisations in order to mitigate social distress at least in part, thus establishing justice of a kind. By way of justification, their initiators may refer directly to the demands for charity (especially towards widows, or­phans and other socially deprived persons) that are to be found both in the Quran and the Hadith. Throughout the last few years and decades, Islamist or­ganisations especially distinguished themselves by founding and (relatively) suc­cessfully operating welfare institutions, such as hospitals, orphanages, kinder­gartens, schools (often directly connected to a mosque) and other facilities, which also helps them to gain political influence. In this, they are succeeding not least in those suburbs where farmers and workers from the rural regions gather and settle together with other destitute persons.

These welfare institutions, whose names show Islamic connotations almost without exception, are funded mainly by donations, voluntary gifts and ‘pious endowments’ (awqaf). Governmental control of many of these institutions is ei­ther non-existent or limited. Potentially, the resultant autonomous networks may engage in far-flung international activities that in some instances have little to do with the original purpose of the welfare organisations from which they originat­ed.

The idea that Islam aims at a just society that Muslims entirely or partially failed to establish so far was and is widespread among Muslims. As history teaches us, this idea may engender a fundamentally pessimistic attitude towards any chance of improvement in the present situation or, in other words, it may lead to passivity. On the other hand, there are certain circumstances in which it may help to mobilise certain parts of the population in support of religious and political objectives. At the moment, the Islamic world is undergoing a phase in which many are inspired by the desire for revenge for injustice suffered (purportedly or actually), by thoughts of revolt and by utopian hopes.

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