Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Christopher Melchert, “The Transi-

tion from Asceticism to Mysticism at the Middle of the 

Ninth Century 

c

.

e

.,” Studia Islamica 83 (1996): 51–70; 

Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); 

Michael Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Quran, 

Miraj, Poetic, and Theological Writings (Mahwah, N.J.: 

Paulist Press, 1996), 251–265.

Junayd, Abu al-Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Junayd al-Khazzaz al-Qawariri al-

  

415  J

---

justice

 

(Arabic: 

adl, qist, haqq, sidq, ihsan)

Justice is a fundamental principle concerned with 

the fair allocation of rewards and punishments, 

together with the rectification of wrongs. It is a 

key concept in the Abrahamic religions, where 

human beings are called to act in justice or righ-

teousness, and where God is seen as its ultimate 

dispenser, especially on J

Udgment

 d

ay

.

In Arabic one of the key words for justice is 

adl, a noun based on the verb adala, which means, 

among other things, to straighten or modify; to 

depart or deflect from one (presumably wrong) 

path to the other (presumably right one); to 

equalize; and to balance, weigh, or be in equilib-

rium. Among its numerous suggestive synonyms 

are  nasib and qist, share; haqq, truth or justice; 

qistas and mizan, scale; and taqwim, straightening. 

Other synonyms imply the classical Greek virtue 

sophrosyne: temperance, harmony, self-mastery, 

and with respect to action: balance, proportional-

ity, and judiciousness, or the Aristotelian principle 

of the (Golden) Mean between extremes. The 

semantically rich metaphorical image of the scale 

(mizan) is used in the q

Uran

 with reference to 

divine justice on Judgment Day.

Justice is one of the foremost themes in the 

Quran. Indeed, it is part of the metaphysical ratio-

nale for creation: “God created the heavens and 

earth with what is true and just (haqq): to reward 

each soul according to its deeds. They will not be 

wronged” (Q 45:22). Humankind alone is respon-

sible for whatever justice—or injustice (zulm)—is 

in the world (Q 10:44). Divine justice is more 

than a quid pro quo exchange, at least with regard 

to merit-based principles, for God “doubles any 

good deed and gives a tremendous reward of his 

own” (Q 4:40). The quranic concern for justice 

reiterates one of the fundamental demands (as 

“righteousness”) made by God upon humans in 

revelations to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. 

This continuity with earlier revelations might be 

inferred from the fact that “the Quran often refers 

to terms such as adl (equitable, just), ihsan (benef-

icence) [and] maaruf (a generally accepted good) 

without defining them, as if the Quran assumes 

a pre-existing relationship to justice, equity and 

morality—a relationship that precedes the text” 

(quoted in Abou El Fadl 60).

Perhaps the best expression of the importance 

of justice in the Quran is:

You who believe, uphold justice (qist) and be 

witnesses to God, even if it is against your-

selves, your parents, or your close relatives. 

Whether the person is rich or poor, God can 

best take care of both. Do not follow your 

selfish desire, so that you can act justly. If 

you pervert or neglect justice, God is fully 

aware of what you do. (Q 4:135)

The call to justice is complemented by numer-

ous admonitions against injustice (zulm) in the 

Quran.

Divine justice is by definition perfect, eternal, 

and ideal. People are urged to make every effort 

to approximate and reflect this metaphysical fact 

in their lives. Reward or punishment in the next 

life is allotted in accordance with the sincerity 

and strength of a person’s efforts to follow this 

ideal, one reason for the association of justice with 

ihsa¯n, beneficence or moral excellence, that is, 

doing the utmost good. The imperative of justice 

is both an individual and a collective obligation 

for Muslims, so that while we may distinguish 

between personal and social virtues, they are nec-

essarily tied together.

m

Uhammad

 (ca. 570–632), like the biblical 

prophets, was motivated by a strong sense of 

justice and protested the widespread inequity and 

oppression he found in Meccan society, where 

he had grown up. He sought to replace it with a 

new order and harmony within which the stan-

dards of justice would prevail. Whatever dimen-

sions of justice were part of the b

edoUin

 ethic of 

tribal manliness (muruwwa) in the jahiliyya (pre-

Islamic Arabia), they appear to have precipitously 

declined in the time and place of Muhammad, 

hence the Meccan revelations of the Quran regard-

K  416  

justice

---

ing the treatment of orphans and the plight of the 

poor. The Quran clearly evidences the urgency 

of addressing issues that fall under the rubric of 

socioeconomic or distributive justice, rebuking 

those who have greedily consumed their inheri-

tance while having a greedy passion for wealth 

(Q 89:19–20). Moreover, the enshrinement of 

zakat (

almsgiving

) as the third pillar of practice 

in Islam makes this duty integral to Muslim iden-

tity, effectively institutionalizing a “right” for the 

needy and deprived to a share in the community’s 

wealth. In addition to this compulsory obliga-

tion, Muslims of sufficient means are expected to 

practice voluntary charitable giving (sadaqa). The 

Quran’s ill-understood opposition to usury (riba) 

further illustrates the attempt to deal with prob-

lems of distributive justice.

Historically, questions of political justice were 

first broached in the Khariji opposition to the 

U

mayyad

  c

aliphate

 (661–750). The k

haWariJ

invoked the doctrine of qadar (power; 

Free

 

Will

,

thus the corollary proposition that each indi-

vidual is responsible for his or her acts) against 

the Umayyad rulers’ attempt to legitimize their 

rule through the principles of 

ijmaa

 (consensus, 

agreement) and bayaa (oath of allegiance), forti-

fied with the theological doctrine of jabr (lit., 

compulsion; predestination; here in the sense 

that Umayyad rule was seen as ordained by God). 

The absolute justice of God was one of the five 

tenets of Mutazili kalam (

theology

), unremark-

able in itself until we learn that it was bound up 

with debates over the nature of evil and injustice, 

including the metaphysical and ethical scope of 

man’s free agency. The Mutazila even took to refer-

ring to themselves as the People of Justice (adl) 

and Unity (tawhid). The pursuit and realization 

of justice for the Mutazila was determined and 

constrained by the powers of reason (aql).

“The Father of Arab Philosophy” and Islam’s 

first significant philosopher, Abu Yusuf Yaacub ibn 

Ishaq al-Kindi (d. ca. 866) held justice to be the 

central virtue owing to its balancing and coordi-

nating functions vis-à-vis other (principally clas-

sical Greek) virtues, thereby demonstrating the 

integration of Peripatetic and Neoplatonic ideas 

into a distinctively Islamic 

philosophy

. Islam’s 

first truly systematic philosopher, al-F

a

r

a

b

i (ca. 

870–950), envisioned the ideal Islamic polity 

portioning such goods as security, wealth, honor, 

and dignity according to a desert principle of 

distributive justice. Rational justice, formulated 

in terms of a social contract theory beholden to 

Plato’s  Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics, as well as 

the Islamic sciences generally, was the center 

point of Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna, 979–1037) politi-

cal scheme to secure the common welfare from 

a pool of basic resources. For Muhammad i

bn

r

Ushd

 (Averroës, 1126–98), justice was the sum 

and highest of all virtues of man as a citizen of the 

polity. Furthermore, it inheres in the fulfillment 

of responsibilities and duties in a social division 

of labor structured according to the standards and 

strictures of 

philosophy

 (falsafa). While some vir-

tues, such as wisdom and courage, are class-spe-

cific, justice was pertinent to all citizens, provided 

they performed the vocation for which they were 

fitted “by nature.”

Justice in jurisprudential terms entails, in 

the first instance, equal treatment of all before 

the law (

fiqh

). With the 

sharia

 as lodestar 

(recalling, with Abou El Fadl, that the sharia “is 

God’s will in an ideal and abstract fashion, but 

the fiqh is the product of the human attempt to 

understand God’s will” [Abou El Fadl 32]), both 

ethics and law in Islam approach justice through 

the doctrinal formula of “commanding right 

and forbidding wrong” (al-amr bi’l-maaruf wa’l-

nahy an al-munkar). In short, fiqh is a system of 

ethico-legal obligation formulated in imperative 

(amr) and prohibitive (nahy) terms, with all 

human actions exhaustively classified as manda-

tory (fard or wajib), encouraged (mustahabb or 

mandub), permissible (

halal

 or mubah), discour-

aged (makruh), or forbidden (

haram

). Procedural 

justice in Islam tends toward personalism rather 

than corporatism and administrative principles 

insofar as trust is placed in the “just judge” or