Historical and Conceptual Foundations of Justice Discourses in Islam
A Divine rule can be established only by a man, who, where justice and equity are required, neither feels deficient nor weak and who is not greedy and avaricious.
—ʿALI IBN ABI TALIB (Jafri, Peak of Eloquence)
The second Caliph ʿUmar is best known for his iconic legacy as an ardent pursuer of justice. History books and folk culture are replete with stories that venerate his acts of justice. It is reported that in a letter sent to the governor of Basra, he said: “When people come to you for a hearing or when you gather a council, treat people equally. In this way, the weak will not despair of your justice. And the strong will not get the feeling that you may oppress others for your own gain.”1 In addition to pursuing political justice in his administration, he also set an example for future generations in economic justice through charitable acts and distributive policies. Being a just ruler in ʿUmar’s image has been an aspiration of many caliphs and sultans over the centuries. The mazalim courts, an administrative court designed for hearing ordinary people’s grievances, were inspired by ʿUmar’s administrative style. It was not uncommon for the rulers to show acts of generosity or check on their subjects by joining the crowds in the marketplace or wandering around the streets at night while hiding their true identity, also a practice of ʿUmar. Sultans aspired to be just rulers, impartial in their administration and caring for the welfare of their subjects following his example.
Political and religious authorities eventually separated in the Muslim world as the Islamic empires expanded. Religious values still mattered in politics to the extent that rulers used them to legitimize governance.2 Justice principles exactly provided such validation. Inspired by the exemplary conduct and policies of ʿUmar, scholars developed guidelines for the rulers to help them fulfill this ambition. These guidelines, known as goals of Islamic law, concerned the implementation of Islamic justice and included the protection of religion, life, mind, offspring, and property.3 Implementation of these guidelines was vital for pursuing general welfare or public interest (maṣlaḥa).4 In effect, a ruler abiding by these principles was demonstrating forbearance, a norm that provided an impression of political legitimacy.
Shahab Ahmed argues that the interplay of justice and provision of welfare was the essence of Muslim politics.5 For example, Islamists of the modern era explicitly tied the notion of justice to the divine law and popular sovereignty. Two well-known intellectuals of the nineteenth century, al-Afghānī and Kemal, argued that despotism and foreign intervention—not Islam—were the main reasons behind injustices and that Western political institutions could be conducive to implementation of public interest in accordance with the Islamic law.6 In the same vein, the democratic movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used the Islamic concepts to frame demands for accountable government and social justice.7 Contemporary Islamists like Qutb, Mawdudi, and Shariati grounded their theories of political justice in religious doctrine.8 Notably, the interplay of religious values and demands for justice was explicit in the chants of protesters during the Arab Spring. Protesters called for justice by voicing their concerns about corruption, economic decline, lack of economic opportunities, repression, and violation of human dignity. The language of these demands is, understandably, different from the jargon used by the group known as Kharijites protesting all parties during the first civil war in the seventh century. Similar differences will surface if one compares the chants of Arab Spring protesters demanding justice to the demands of the Ottoman constitutionalists who were mainly concerned with the state decline and constitutional government.
It is only natural that religiously inspired justice values and their relation to political reality would differ across contexts. However, despite differences in the language and style, we can observe certain continuities in the legacies of Islamic conceptions of justice throughout the centuries. These conceptions are significant markers of political legitimacy and pluralistic ideals in Muslim political experience. For example, the development of political and social justice trajectories was visible in competing conceptions of justice between the ethical and the realist views of politics9 or this distinction resurfaced in the cleavage between traditional and modernist Islamists in the modern era.10
This chapter illustrates the evolution of “justice” as a normative principle in Islamic political theory. Throughout Islamic history, political struggles, social welfare, and unjust rule have been the fundamental problems of politics. These struggles triggered profound debates about the politics of justice, including state legitimacy, obedience to authorities, right/duty of rebellion against tyranny, and popular sovereignty. The subsequent analysis neither provides a detailed historical treatment of the subject nor attempts to present a literal analysis of justice as a scriptural concept.11 It is rather selective in its scope. It aims to understand the development of conceptions of justice within the plurality of Muslim political experience. Since Muslim political experiences are not static,12 the analysis explores historical ruptures and continuities. This approach helps depict the linkages between various conceptions of justice and contemporary political preferences of devout Muslims from past to present.
Conceptual Continuities and Variations of Islamic Conceptions of Justice
Research on religion and politics has widely explored religious identity, belief, and behavior to explain the interplay of faith and political attitudes.13 This study adds to this research program by focusing on the relationship between religious values and political preferences. Religious values are likely to have substantial effects on individual attitudes and behavior.14 Of Islamic values, justice is best situated to help scholars understand how religion shapes individuals’ preferences, especially those concerning politics. This is because justice as a core value of Islam concerns prescriptions about the self, the community, and the government at the same time. It is no coincidence that the doctrinal principle of the oneness of God (tawhid), the discourse about the role of man as vicegerent within the cosmology of divine order, and the general theory of Islamic governance are all, in one way or another, connected to the concept of justice.15
Conceptions of political and social justice originate from the beginning of Islam, particularly the political struggles and debates about selecting a community leader as early as the seventh century. During the medieval period, social justice was defined in terms of security, order, and welfare of society.16 As the first Islamic Empire expanded and various rulers started to create an independent body of legislation (qānūn) next to the vast religious rulings, justice came to be associated with the ruler’s qualities and the compatibility between qānūn and sharia.17 Much later, following the first Muslim encounters with a triumphant West, traditional Islamists began to associate justice with the renewal of religion (tajdīd). Modernists turned to Western ideas such as popular sovereignty and constitutional government to provide prescriptions for removing the injustices in their societies.18 In these examples, we see the evolution of conceptions of justice in response to the changing social and political problems of the age.
We need to consider various interpretations of faith principles to explain the formative effect of values on pious Muslims’ preferences. In this vein, studying the conceptual evolution of justice will help elucidate its implications for individual attitudes and behavior. Before providing the analysis of conceptual variations in justice trajectories, a quick note about its literal meaning will be helpful: the Arabic word for justice stems from the root ʿadl, which in its verb form means to straighten, depart from one path to the other, be equal, or balance.19 Several other concepts are used in the Koran and hadiths to highlight the different aspects of justice. Some of these include qisṭ (installment, fair share), mіzan (balance), wasaṭ (middle), and istiqamā (direction).20 In Arabic, the opposite of ʿadl is jawr, literally oppression or tyranny. There is no lack of words for articulating the opposite of justice, including ẓulm (wrongdoing, tyranny), ṭughyān (extremity), and inḥirāf (deviation).21 The word ʿadl is mentioned twenty-four times in twenty-two verses in the Koran.22 Some of these verses refer to divine justice and others to just dealings in social life.
Building on this rich semantic field, scholars used different conceptions of justice to address the tension between the idealized interpretations of divine justice and its practical applications in human societies. A classic interpretation of Islam states that God is the ultimate sovereign, the legislator, the protector, and the sole provider. Since divine justice emanates from these principles, the faithful believe that God’s justice is perfect. The challenge, however, arises when individuals try to implement the ideal justice in this world. The disparity between the idealized notions of sacred justice and the real-world conditions restricting its realization, here and now, forms the main background for the endless intellectual debates in Islamic political theory.23 One needs to closely examine the special moments in the history of Islam, some of which could be viewed as critical junctures, to better grasp the political and social implications of this divergence.
The analysis proposes two such moments to explain the development of justice trajectories and their long-lasting influence on devout Muslims’ attitudes. The first of these moments occurred in the seventh century when the first civil war broke out to create political divisions in the early Muslim community, eventually giving way to the sectarian separation into Sunni and Shia camps.24 The second moment took place during the decline of the Abbasid rule and the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century. The interaction of the scholarly and practical political fields at these critical moments resulted in two distinct justice trajectories, political justice and social justice. Various debates and struggles around these trajectories continued into the modern era, creating continuities and variations in the notion of justice and its strategic deployment by political actors. Through the analysis of such historical foundations of concepts, we can better understand Muslim political preferences.
Lineages of Political Justice
The political justice trajectory contains some essential issues, including political succession, qualities of rulers, and sources of legitimate authority. The intellectual debates dedicated to resolving these issues, especially the tension between the necessity of obedience and the duty of rebellion against an unjust ruler, undergirded the central tenets of the political justice trajectory. This debate’s main parameters resurfaced in times of crisis (ruler succession, wars) with significant adjustments to the justice discourse.25
Of primary importance for understanding the connections between the trajectory of political justice and the preferences toward government is the prophetic community and the first civil war (A.D. 657). As stated above, the first civil war followed a disagreement about political succession upon the passing of Prophet Muhammad. The prophetic community was essentially a political organization, yet its members were bound by religious and moral principles. Patricia Crone describes this unique model with the metaphor of a caravan, where the whole community moves toward one direction (rightful path) under the guidance of the Prophet.26 Upon Muhammad’s death, umma’s unity—inextricably linked to the Prophet’s persona—came to an abrupt end. The debates about political authority and succession loomed large in a divided community, searching for new directions amid the unfolding turmoil. At this moment in history, conceptions of political justice informed much of the political theory, still in its infancy, that speculated on such issues as legitimacy, the duty of obedience, the right to rebellion, the selection of a just ruler, and benevolent absolutism.
The prophetic community as an example of social organization was elevated to a special status, an ideal vision, or the golden age to be followed by subsequent generations of believers.27 In sharp contrast to this utopian vision, the reality brought about deep political divisions.28 When ʿAli accepted arbitration in the first civil war to resolve the issue of political leadership against the claims of Muʿāwiya, a group known as Kharijite (or Khawarij, those who defected or left) took a unique position disagreeing with both parties. For Khawarij, arbitration meant the violation of the main principle of God’s rule, namely, there is no sovereign other than God (lā ḥukma ilā lillāh). This group protested the arbitration method for the resolution of the leadership crisis. According to Khawarij, this method was illegitimate because sovereignty belongs to God, who is the sole authority for selecting the imam.29
This early schism’s long-lasting legacy is the division between Shia and Sunni sects that initially concerned the political succession problem.30 The Shia believed that being a member of the Prophet’s family is necessary for becoming the leader of the umma. They argued that the Prophet designated his son-in-law ʿAli to be his successor and passed him the vital knowledge for this task. Through blood ties to the Prophet and other qualifications, the rightly designated imam would be infallible and is the only one who could implement justice in this world. In contrast, the Sunni doctrine argues that choosing the imam is the responsibility of the whole community based on consensus.31 The community’s agreement on selecting the leader is the principal prerequisite for implementing justice because popular sovereignty is considered a foundation of just government.32 The Kharijite position firmly adhered to this argument. They argued that since sovereignty belongs to God, its exercise cannot be a privilege of a few men. Since everyone is equal, all umma members should have a right to participate in a leader’s selection. However, Khawarij went one step further by contending for the community’s right to remove a corrupt and unjust imam. For them, God could not have willed such an injustice.
The debates on predetermination, free will, and justice resulted in various political approaches about selecting and deposing the imam (or sultan, caliph).33 The Khawarij were the first to raise the question of qadar (power) as a quality that all believers possess, including the ruler. For them, it was critical to hold any individual responsible for the injustices that he may commit because man has to bear the consequences of his free will. In contrast, the Jabrī School supported the idea of predetermination, attributing all acts of creation, including both just and unjust acts, to God. This school of thought viewed the ideas of human choice and responsibility as irrelevant or nonissues.34 The intellectual controversy about predetermination and free will has been the foundation of political divisions throughout Islamic history.35
This debate has significant implications for the notions of justice and political legitimacy. According to the Qadarī School, free will makes it incumbent on the ruler to act justly. For the ruled, it is their responsibility to elect a just imam and depose an unjust ruler. The Qadarī School took the implications of free will and human choice to its logical extremes to develop the conceptual foundations of popular sovereignty and political accountability. The proponents of the Jabrī School, in contrast, inferred legitimacy from the premise of predetermination insofar as the logical implication of their theory concerned the legitimacy of all acts of the ruler regardless of justice.36
The duality between Qadarī and Jabrī Schools was only the beginning of future incarnations of the dichotomies concerning free will and predetermination, reason and revelation, justice and oppression, and democracy and tyranny. These dualities were concentrated in creedal and philosophical spheres, leading to endless debates among kalam scholars, philosophers, Sufis, and theologians.37 However, such dualities are also clearly visible in the parallel universe of practical politics. As with theological positions, political behavior was also informed by conceptions of justice. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, who believes that a specific tension came to define Muslim politics from the very beginning, wrote an account of Muslim political history that succinctly captures these dichotomies.38 For El-Affendi, the ethicalists held a puritanical worldview and called for the implementation of a social order reminiscent of the ideal prophetic community (i.e., Medina model), whereas the realists, championed by the Umayyad rulers, aimed to grab the political power at the expense of the ideal communal vision (i.e., Damascus model).39 This cleavage consolidated at the height of the Umayyad Empire (A.D. 692–750). The growing size of non-Arab and non-Muslim populations in the first Islamic Empire brought about the questioning of the jamāʿa model,40 which stemmed from the notion of Arab tribal allegiances. Depicting this division as a schism between Marwani caliphs and the piety-minded opposition, Marshall Hodgson argues, “Gradually the ideal of benevolent absolutism attached itself to the caliph’s court, confronting the ideal of Islamic egalitarianism in the opposition.”41 In effect, Hodgson’s characterization of the political divisions in the Islamic Empire is no more than the projection of creedal duality between Qadarī and Jabrī positions into the realm of practical politics.
Representing the main opposition and building on the discourses of injustices committed against the family of the Prophet, the Shia groups were instrumental in developing political justice theory. However, the weight of various Sunni groups in this development should not be ignored. As the Umayyad Empire expanded and the Muslim rulers aimed to build social solidarity according to an Arab-dominated aristocratic order, and, hence, introducing hierarchies and inequalities, the new political reality was put under scrutiny by individuals who “envisaged a society which should embody justice on earth, led by the most pious among the Muslims.”42 Most notably seen within the Shia tradition, such piety-minded leaders bred the idea of rebellion against unjust rulers. They introduced a theology of legitimacy by linking political behavior to Islam’s ethical values.43 Consequently, the emerging justice principles of piety-minded opposition, next to egalitarian social commitments, included such values as human dignity, denunciation of corruption, and the necessity of rebellion against unjust rulers.
Piety-minded opposition, or ethicalists in El-Affendi’s framework, can be viewed as one of the first religiously informed political groups striving to constrain the ruler in Islamic history. At times, this opposition led to rebellions against the oppressive rulers.44 In other cases, pious leaders used their religious authority to constrain the oppressive and corrupt elite.45 Therefore, this ethical dimension of political behavior somehow introduces a democratic quality into Muslim political discourse, constraining the executive for the sake of justice.46 Simultaneously, an alternative vision restricted collective action against the ruler to encourage obedience for avoiding political chaos, regardless of injustices. Throughout the centuries, this tension, or duality to be more precise, inspired social revolutions and protests, on the one hand, and legitimization of authoritarian governance, on the other. The ideologies developed regarding the first schisms in Islam became potent ideals informing the notions of political justice, its application in practical politics, and political attitudes of the devout until today.
The historical origins of political justice trajectories have implications for Muslim political attitudes. For example, the dichotomies of justice versus tyranny or rebellion versus obedience have resurfaced in the modern age with references to religious values, but these concepts also utilized modern political language. Nineteenth-century Tobacco Protest and the subsequent constitutional revolutions in Iran combined the religious terminology of justice with the modern notions of popular sovereignty and constitutional government. One can trace the lineages of justice discourses in the language of popular resistance to domestic dictators or the fight against imperialism, as presented by ʿAli Shariati, one of the ideologues of the Iranian Revolution. It is possible to trace the reconstruction of legacies of justice discourses also in the ideologies of the 1960s Islamist movements in Turkey. These ideologies propagated political obedience for the sake of establishing public order (kamu düzeni). In the 1990s, the Turkish Islamists shifted their preferences toward an ideology of resistance, followed, after 2010, by another shift involving religious-nationalist justification of obedience to an authoritarian regime with Turkey’s democratic backsliding under an Islamist party. The lineages of political justice constitute one side of the coin in the study of justice and democracy. On the flip side, the social justice trajectory completes the full picture.
Lineages of Social Justice
The social justice trajectory has primarily concerned welfare provision and security. As proposed by Khadduri47 and Ahmed,48 these policy issues, especially from the thirteenth century onward, preoccupied the intellectuals and religious scholars seeking to remedy the ills of a declining society. One implication of the Islamic social justice conception is the installation of a just ruler who could be a guarantor of order and prosperity. Given such historical origins, it can be argued that governance styles that consider human dignity and accountability and those that prevent arbitrary rule would be more appealing. Since general welfare and egalitarian policies are more likely to occur under democratic institutions, it is likely that Islamic social justice values would increase the appeal of democracy vis-à-vis an authoritarian regime among the devout Muslims. On the flip side, the same conception may lead to the justification of authoritarian rule. Economic justice and rulers’ generosity in charity toward his subjects could be primary justifications for benevolent absolutism.
Historically, Islamic rulers tended to prioritize order and security as preconditions of welfare provision over freedom to gain legitimacy as benevolent but authoritarian rulers. This tendency has been and is still being used by authoritarian rulers in contemporary Muslim politics. Middle Eastern states, for example, deployed Bismarckian welfare policies in the 1960s and 1970s to aid authoritarian survival.49 The rentier states frequently utilize distributive policies to quiet dissent.50 Notably, the oil-rich monarchies have upped their game of welfare provision in the wake of the Arab Spring, including improvements to social security to buy citizen loyalty and quell the demands for democracy.51 Religious justifications of these regimes are also not uncommon as exemplified by the Wahhabi scholars’ support for the Saudi rulers or Sheikh Bin Bayyah’s fatwas legitimizing the authoritarian policies of the United Arab Emirates.52 By and large, then, examining the Islamic social justice trajectory may help us comprehend the extent of linkages between various social justice interpretations and political preferences tilted toward favorable views of democracy or authoritarianism.
The intellectual origins of Islamic social justice theory can be found in the medieval era corresponding to the period of political fragmentation of Islamic states starting in the tenth century. Khadduri explains these origins with two factors.53 First, the central power of the Abbasid state was weakened with the emergence of smaller states that ruled stretches of the vast Islamic Empire. Second, the Mongol invasion and the destruction of Baghdad in A.D. 1258 had devastating effects on the well-being of Islamic society. These conditions necessitated a positive definition of justice that could ensure public order.
The practical origins of social justice, in contrast, can be traced back to the pre-Islamic notion of the circle of justice, an idea that created perceptions of political legitimacy in the Middle East for many centuries.54 The circle of justice refers to the harmony among the sovereign, the army, the law, and the subjects in a just society. While all of the elements within the circle matter, the ruler’s right to make the law and political accountability became especially important during the medieval Islamic period. The welfare provision according to Islamic law is particularly relevant to the idea of the circle. The ruler’s law is conceived as the embodiment of the goals of divine law, which are the same as the maṣlaḥa itself, according to Abdelkader.55 As Ahmed succinctly says, “The ruler’s siyasat [politics], then, is precisely the making of laws in accordance with the general principles of shariat by observation and reason of what is necessary for the goal of human welfare in the context of the needs of the time and place.”56
In general, politics revolved around the notions of security, order, and the provision of welfare services during the classical Islamic period.57 Whenever deviations occurred, these acts were seen to be outside the realm of Islamic justice.58 This synergy between Islamic law and just governance continued to be relevant when the economic and political decline in relation to the West became visible in the seventeenth century. For example, this condition gave way to intensified internal reform efforts in the Ottoman Empire. As early as 1631, the Ottoman statesman Koçi Bey prepared a report for Sultan Murad IV addressing corruption, nepotism, and domestic reform to rehabilitate the rotten state institutions.59 This first report marked a series of reform efforts continuing with the nineteenth-century Tanzimat60 and culminating into the first Ottoman constitutional government in 1876. These reforms highlighted the need for effective state institutions, eliminating corruption, and welfare provision to remove injustices. The primary legacies of the Islamic social justice trajectory were among the main reference points in these reform efforts.
Islamic conceptions of social justice also have their roots in scriptural emphasis on benevolence and charity. Just as in the political justice trajectory, the prophetic community serves as an ideal model to be emulated by the devout Muslims. Although such idealized versions of prophetic benevolence and charity or ʿUmar’s example have been important elements of social justice theory, the medieval paradigm of social justice was based on the notions of Islamic law and welfare provision. Notably, medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya developed an elaborate social justice theory focusing on the provision of public goods, security, and distributive policies.61
The Islamic social justice paradigm was mainly a practical political project to be carried out by a just ruler holding particular virtues and who is bound with the principles of Islam. Social justice rested on three pillars. Legally, it relied on intellectual vibrancy in the area of law (sharia vs. qānūn).62 Theoretically, it drew liberally from Islamic ethics and law to define the characteristics of the just ruler. Practically, this paradigm proposed a government model based on a division of labor and cooperation between the legal scholars (ulema) and rulers.63 In practice, however, as Kuru argues, the last condition resulted in the encroachment of secular law into the religious law and the ulema’s subordination to the sultans.64
The social justice paradigm does not solely rely on the work of legal scholars. Like the developmental trajectory of political justice, the social justice paradigm was also influenced by philosophers and scholars of ethics who focused on the virtues of rulers and social justice. Al-Farabi’s masterpiece, On the Perfect State,65 had been the definitive source for the scholars of ethics, including the highly influential work of Nasir-ud-Din Tusi, Akhlāq-i Nāsirī, the main text that inspired future generations of scholars of Muslim politics. For al-Farabi, a just ruler should have certain qualities, including wisdom, love, fairness, good memory, and physical health. The ruler’s most important function is to uphold the law toward justice and happiness in his utopian virtuous city. One of the most important qualities of the just ruler is his knowledge of religious law and his ability to create and implement it for the public interest.66
Building on al-Farabi’s ideas, a lively political advisory literature, mirrors for princes, became widespread to guide rulers in the virtues of ruling.67 The essential wisdom of this literature concerns the application of religious law and the implementation of justice. In this approach, a ruler can govern effectively by providing security and public goods.68 General welfare and happiness of the umma were seen as the most significant issues also according to scholars like Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Khaldun. They correctly identified the instrumental value of law in solving the crisis of the Islamic world. Although Taymiyya was a jurist and Khaldun was a sociologist, both were concerned about social welfare.69 They searched for religiously justified, positive rules to facilitate the implementation of social justice. According to the overarching goal of justice, rulers’ engagement with the law seems to be the most significant element for these scholars. As Khadduri states in his account of Ibn Taymiyya:
The unity of Religion and Law (state), which exists in principle, must be carried out in practice. Without the effective power (shawka) of the state, he [Ibn Taymiyya] held, religion and Law would be in danger. Conversely, without the constraints of the Law, the state (presided over by despotic rulers) degenerates into an unjust and tyrannical organization. Only in the pursuit of justice can the state be expected to fulfill the ends for which it was established. The justice that Ibn Taymiyya strove to achieve was obviously a new concept enshrined in the Siyāsa Shar’iyya which might be called social justice, as its aims were to serve the public interest.70
Although the proposed constraints on the ruler, whether through law or the activism of ulema, introduce a democratic quality into Ibn Taymiyya’s model, this approach may also be conducive to the justification of authoritarian politics. Insofar as the ruler maintained the religion, prevented the vice, and provided public goods, it would not be appropriate to rebel against him even if he was unjust. In practice, Ibn Taymiyya’s theory proposing to place constraints on the ruler by the power of law was not realistic. This theory relied on the norms of forbearance,71 which were not always closely followed by the rulers who relied on the divine right discourse. It assumed that the rulers who claim to have a divine right to power would follow religious norms and not transgress or violate the religious norms of governance. In reality, as the secular rulers increasingly came to define religious law, ulema became the servants of the rulers.72 Rather than checking the executive using religious authority, the ulema were at the mercy of the rulers. In fact, they had no choice but to assume the rulers would follow the norms of forbearance. This development undermined the democratic potential implied in this medieval model in the longue durée.73
The devastating effects of the Mongol invasion accelerated the implementation of this authoritarian model. The classical Islamic state was replaced by the absolutist state models that relied less on ethical concerns than on the discourses of order and security. The codification of religious law and experimentation with new constitutional orders in Iran and Turkey74 deemed both the Taymiyyan model and absolutist incarnations of state obsolete. Encounters with the West and modernity gave way to new ideologies replacing this elitist classical model with a populist project in the hands of intellectuals, rulers, and Sufi orders,75 a development leading to Islamism’s appeal in the twentieth century.76 Riding on the power of Western democratic ideals such as popular sovereignty and constitutional government, legacies of social justice resurfaced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the demands for domestic reforms and calls to ending injustices. Despite widespread democratic movements, enlightened despotism using religious justifications and co-opting the religious scholars became the dominant model in many Muslim-majority societies.77
Justice Trajectories and Political Preferences
This chapter presented a stylistic description of political and social justice trajectories in Islam. The analysis relied on a selective reading of Islamic history to flesh out the main elements of justice theory related to Muslim political preferences. Critical historical moments during the early period of Islam formed the foundations of the political justice paradigm, primarily revolving around leader selection and qualities of the rulers. Informed by the philosophical arguments about predetermination and free will, political theory attempted to resolve issues like imamate, political obedience, executive constraints, and rebellion. Communal divisions and violence shaped the politics on the ground. Different intellectual traditions came up with explanations to make sense of the emerging divisions and violence within the Muslim community. The philosophical debates concerned man’s role within a cosmological order. One camp proposed that man is free, whereas the other believed that everything is predetermined. In the long run, the first path of the political justice trajectory provided religious justifications for modern ideas such as popular sovereignty, executive accountability, and constitutional government. These justifications relied on the assumption that man is rational and free as a vicegerent of God. This assumption implies that man has the power and responsibility to correct injustices. This includes the right to elect a just ruler and the duty to depose an unjust one. Therefore, this first path of the political justice trajectory introduces a democratic quality into Islamic political theory.
In the modern era, Islamists built the intellectual foundations of Islamic democracy using the religious philosophies of rationality, freedom, and equality while also utilizing different conceptions of justice to make a case for democratic ideals in Islam.78 Islamists were not merely reacting to the West’s ascendance; they were also motivated to reverse the state’s decline through deep reforms. Their main solutions were popular sovereignty and constitutional government because they believed these institutions were inherent to Islam and closely related to the conception of justice. For example, al-Afghānī believed that the grave injustices harming the public interest in the Muslim world were the result of despotism and foreign intervention.79 He proposed that domestic reform and participation of people in public affairs through elected bodies could bring justice. Ottoman Islamists, al-Afghānī, and later his disciple Muhammad Abduh were trying to reconcile the popular demands of the democratic protests with Islamic principles.80 Since the nineteenth century, the constitutionalist movements of the modern era and widespread mass protests were inspired by the conceptions of political justice like freedom, human dignity, and popular sovereignty. Some examples include the Urabi Revolt in Egypt, the constitutional revolutions in Iran and Turkey, anticolonial independence movements, and, most notably, the Arab Spring. Consequently, with its continuities and variations extending over centuries, the political justice trajectory has significant potential for engendering contemporary political preferences that could be conducive to democracy.
The political justice trajectory, however, is Janus-faced. It could be used to justify obedience and legitimize the authoritarian government. This statement follows the implications of predetermination perspective. Insofar as God predetermines every aspect of life, leaving little or no room for individual choice, whatever happens in the political sphere must be “just” by definition. Since God will not ever desire injustice, a ruler’s reign, regardless of how he comes to and maintains power, reflects God’s justice. By the same token, any act of the ruler is also just. Thus, obedience to the ruler is not only required but a duty upon the believers.
Consequently, individuals who hold religiously orthodox beliefs stemming from the predetermination doctrine will be indifferent toward any political system, democratic or authoritarian. This attitude is likely to swing toward proauthoritarian attitudes when a benevolent dictator provides order and security. Research shows that dictatorships that implement popular economic policies, mostly providing material benefits for citizens, survive longer.81 The rentier states of the Gulf region combining Islamic values and oil monies are examples supporting this proposition. Research also shows that religious individuals with communitarian views prefer the authoritarian government to democracy due to social and political benefits they may obtain from the state-sanctioned religious participation of others.82 Together, these research findings demonstrate that the implications of the political justice trajectory may lead to political indifference or support for the authoritarian government among the devout.
The roots of social justice ideals, on the other side, are related to Islam’s emphasis on charity and benevolence. Rulers may utilize Islam’s doctrinal focus on charity and benevolence to give distributive policies a sacred quality. Exaggerated acts of generosity by the authoritarian leaders or charitable acts of Islamist political actors in settings where electoral competition matters provide examples of utilitarian exploitation of Islam’s emphasis on charity.83
During the medieval period, social justice was hardly concerned with developing a religious ideology to propagate distributive policy. At that time, the Islamic social justice paradigm concerned the general welfare of society.84 The authorship and guardianship of religious law were the central problems of politics. One interpretation gave the upper hand to the religious scholars who created and guarded Islamic law. However, in reality, religious scholars were subservient to the secular authority and provided the religious justification for his supremacy. In both conditions, general welfare or public interest played a crucial role. Today, various Islamic states, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, are political arenas where the struggles over the nature and extent of the social justice policies concerning wealth distribution, social security, public goods provision, and Islam’s role in these policies constitute the primary political issues.
The legacies of social justice may shape contemporary political preferences in two different ways. First, Islam’s emphasis on charity and benevolence necessitates the implementation of religiously inspired welfare policies in Muslim-majority societies where devotion remains at significant levels. Since democratic institutions are more conducive to egalitarian policies to benefit the largest group of people relative to the authoritarian institutions,85 it follows that the best path to society’s general welfare is the implementation of policies upholding Islamic justice. As such, democracy should be more acceptable to the devout who cherish charity and benevolence ideals. This idea is compatible with Carles Boix’s86 and Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s87 theories, who argue that democracy is more acceptable to the poor, because egalitarian distribution is more likely to take root in democratic systems. This is because the leaders who impose a tax policy can be rewarded or punished in the polls based on the extent of distributive returns to the public.
Second, Islamic social justice discourses may also inform authoritarian preferences. In the medieval Islamic period, either religious scholars had the responsibility to ensure political accountability mechanisms or the abstract notion of the supremacy of religious law constituted the main constraints for the rulers’ policy execution. This is what would be implied by the forbearance norm that is invoked in contemporary social science research as an important condition preventing the erosion of democracy.88 However, during the medieval period, religious authority was transformed into a tool of authoritarian government insofar as it created an alliance between the religious scholars and the rulers where the latter commanded the former.89 Thus, justification of authoritarian policies by religion resulted in a discourse of obedience to an unjust ruler in the name of order, security, and common good. This would imply a preference toward authoritarian rule insofar as the subject of obedience was a benevolent dictator who managed to ensure social order and provide an acceptable level of social welfare. Consequently, Islamic conceptions of social justice may generate support for authoritarian regimes.
Conclusion
What makes democracy more acceptable to ordinary Muslims is its potential to uphold human dignity and social order because democracy has a relative advantage in implementing political and social justice. At the same time, democracy allows Muslims to affect policy making through political participation according to their religious beliefs90 or by hosting institutions conducive to the implementation of Islamic justice.91 This argument relies on the assumption that democracies have an advantage, compared to autocracies, in participatory policy formulation compatible with Islamic religious values. It also assumes that, given the opportunity, pious Muslims should understand the comparative advantage of democracy in both political and economic justice fronts. Evidence suggests the feasibility of the first assumption. Many studies find that Muslim religiosity and values are not hostile to democracy.92 We also know that Muslims living in the West prefer democracy and actively engage in democratic life.93 The demands of the protesters in the Iranian Green movement or the Arab uprisings since 2010 are also suggestive that Muslims do prefer democracy for its potential in implementing economic and political justice.94
The subsequent chapters further develop these insights and provide empirical evidence to explain the associations between Islamic conceptions of justice and Muslim political preferences. To examine the continuities in justice trajectories, Chapter 4 traces the theories of political and social justice in the works of contemporary Islamists Sayyed Qutb and ʿAli Shariati. This chapter demonstrates that the tensions inherent in the development of social and political justice trajectories such as free will versus predetermination and the duty of obedience versus the right to rebellion resurface in the contemporary manifestations of Muslim political outlooks. This book also brings significant empirical evidence to test several hypotheses about various conceptions of Islamic justice and Muslim political preferences. For example, in Chapter 5, the content analysis of the Islamist writings reveals a tension between discourses of order and discourses of freedom in Islamic political theory. Chapter 6 demonstrates that lineages of justice continue to shape Islamic worldviews among the Islamist youth. It provides evidence from in-depth interviews to show how Islamists continue to use some of the same arguments developed over centuries to inform their preferences about democracy and other regime types. Chapter 7 tests the individual-level implications of social and political justice trajectories related to support for democracy and authoritarianism using public opinion surveys conducted in the Muslim-majority societies. Finally, Chapter 8 examines the protests as a manifestation of the right to rebellion and a call for just government during the Arab Spring.