What is justice? What are its dimensions and facets? Whose justice is it? Is justice an individual or a communal pursuit? Is it a virtue? If so, is it a natural, artificial or conventional virtue? Where can justice be found? Is it in the fabric of the cosmos? Does it even exist and has it ever existed? Is it in plain sight or is it embedded in the inner psyche of humans and a virtue closely linked to the natural law, as Cicero claimed in his De Officiis? Is it a moral flame that burns in the heart of all humans or is it simply a human creation? Is it timeless or does it evolve and change with the passage of time? Is justice defined as a state of affairs, set of principles, a practice or a system? Is justice a contract for mutual advantage between individuals in a society or in a country? Is justice simply the way humans want to assess important facets of life—fair or unfair? Why do most humans yearn for justice but never find it? Why do people want to be seen as just? Why has justice, something not easily defined, mattered so much throughout human existence on this planet?

Can there be true justice without simultaneously considering the interests of all of humanity and that of all generations to come? Can there ever be justice without a sea change in individual morality, ethics and values? No matter differing human capabilities, are humans of equal worth and thus deserve equal justice? While some posit that justice means equality, or at least a measure of equality, but equality in what? Equality before the law? Equality of freedom? Equality of opportunities? Equality of wealth or income? Is a theoretical, abstract or philosophical perception of justice sufficient or does humanity need an idea of justice that can be put into practice? Is the practice of justice defined by only a set of institutions or do social conventions and customs matter too? Are the institutions of justice and supporting social conventions and customs all or nothing, or are they targets to be reached over time?

We hope to address how philosophers and other thinkers have addressed some of these questions and issues from the dawn of time, with special reference to Islamic teachings, which as we will see is a system that emerges in a society whose members internalize and follow a set of rules extracted from the Qur’an and interpreted by the Prophet Mohammad (sawa).

The evolution of the conception of justice has been shaped by religion, philosophy and economics. While the role of religion and philosophy is readily recognized, the role of economics ideology in the conception of justice may be less so. But religion, philosophy and economics have shaped, and will continue to shape, economic and social rights and thus our conception of justice. In our modest contribution, all three play a central role, and as for religion our principle focus in this contribution is on Islam.

However we define or perceive justice, for centuries it has perhaps been seen as the greatest of virtues, the virtue of all virtues. Where justice prevails, humans have hope; they know that with perseverance they can succeed; the disabled among them would be provided for; peace and harmony are more likely to prevail; and societies are more likely to thrive. In the absence of justice, humans are likely to be set against one another; instead of productive competition, aggression and destruction, turmoil is likely to become the order of the day; and societies are unlikely to thrive. If there is any truth to these assertions, then justice may be at the foundation of a harmonious and thriving society, country and world. Throughout recorded history, many societies have deemed justice a virtue independent of religious belief and one that all governments should uphold. A just person is defined, in the Oxford English Dictionary, as one who “does what is morally right” and is inclined to “giving everyone his or her due”; but what is “morally right” and “his or her due” have been interpreted and practiced very differently throughout history. The word “just” is also not immune from abuse, as it is married to actions to cover acts that may be egregious and unjust—just wars, just conflicts, just revenge, just retribution, just taxes and the like.

Today, what we commonly refer to as justice may be broadly divided into two, “commutative” (or “corrective”) and “distributive” (or “social”) justice. The origin of the division and the term “distributive justice” is attributed to Aristotle.¹ The conception of commutative justice (crime and punishment)—the effective prevention of harm to members of society and to their property by others—has remained more or less intact through time, and it is generally agreed that governments have a critical role to support and enforce commutative justice. On the other hand, the conception of distributive social justice has been anything but intact. While the origin of the term social justice has been traced to the Jesuit Priest Luigi Taparelli D’Azeglio, who apparently coined the expression in the 1840s,² it was an outgrowth of the writings of a number of philosophers in the nineteenth century—including the giants of moral philosophy Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Rousseau and Smith—who portrayed the landscape of justice a human creation as opposed the handmaiden of nature and all human beings having the same worth and also being equals on this earth. Thus, the idea of social justice, a result of human actions, began to take shape. The latter considered social justice as demand for equality among humans because their Creator has created them equal even though they may differ with respect to characteristics of their individuality. Until the turn of the twentieth century, it appears that the idea of social justice was little different from the Aristotelian concept of distributive justice, via Saint Thomas Aquinas, that justice regulated human relations for the common good. The two terms—social and distributive—are used by some interchangeably (notably Hayek), while some (notably Rawls) see “social” as applying to all institutions whereas distributive being more restricted in its institutional coverage to the distribution of goods and resources. Others split social justice into two parts—“procedural” justice and “distributive” justice, procedural justice being concerned with the procedure used for reaching decisions—transparency, consistency, representation, impartiality and distributive justice—the “just” division of the economic pie (production and wealth) among the members of society that includes owners of capital, workers, those who cannot provide for themselves and the animal species. To avoid confusion as to which definition of social justice is implied, we use the two terms (distributive and social) interchangeably in order to preserve the original references to authors who use one or the other or use them interchangeably, but for our purposes in this book, when we use “social justice,” we are referring to distributive justice unless otherwise indicated.

Distributive justice has been and continues to be a prime concern of political and religious philosophers, economists, clerics, societies, governments and indeed of those striving for world order, and has evolved, is evolving and is far from settled, and while some see a role for governments in its enforcement, others do not. Distributive justice shapes a society and its political system and determines the material wellbeing of groups and individuals; and the political and social system, in turn, affects distributive justice (a veritable loop). Justice shapes our attitude toward members of society and society at large and what we conceive as “fair”—hard work resulting in commensurate rewards and fair chance of getting ahead. It affects our willingness to invest in our self through formal and informal education to increase our productivity. It is an important factor in social harmony and can lead to division or cohesion among the members of a community.

Distributive justice impacts poverty, which in turn heavily influences the mental and physical health, lifespan, productivity and outlook on life of the poorer members of society. Poverty could lead the poor to commit crimes, to steal and to even kill and impinge on the rights of others in order to survive. All of these influence human state of mind, trust in society, work habits, human productivity, economic output, perception of the political system and in turn participation, and ultimately the overall human fulfillment on this plain of existence. More broadly, it could be claimed that justice brings harmony, peace and health to societies and countries, whereas injustice brings conflict and turmoil; and a society or a nation at peace may be also more likely to be at peace with its neighbors. Justice may be simply the glue that holds societies and humanity together and prevents a state of continuous conflict.

The search for justice can be divided into two broad approaches—defining a goal for justice (and then deriving the principles and institutions required for achieving it) or alternatively laying down rules that must be strictly followed to achieve justice; the two approaches could also be coined as exogenous and endogenous theories of justice, respectively. Looking at the evolution of distributive justice through history, some have been concerned with the justness or fairness of the process of individual journeys through life, while others have focused on the final outcome; some accept humans as they are, while others explicitly or implicitly advocate changing human behavior (such as from hoarding to sharing, or from selfishness to altruism); some are interested in the principles of justice (an exogenous system), while others are focused on a just social and economic system that would emerge if certain rules were followed (an endogenous system); some theories have religious roots, while others are of a human construct; and some theories are abstract, impractical and near impossible to implement, while others could be more easily put into practice. The perennial quest for justice is a continuing concern across time and space.

Our goal in this modest endeavor is to provide a brief history of the evolution of thinking on justice, from earliest history to the birth of Islam. How Islam’s perception of justice departed from these earlier conceptions and why the Islamic vision was practiced for only a brief period during the life of the Prophet (sawa). In a follow-up volume, we discuss the conceptions of justice after Islam to the times of Rawls and Sen, including the contributions of contemporaneous Muslim thinkers and an assessment of the state of justice in Muslim countries.