The balance between justice and mercy in the Qur’an

In recent political history, calls for justice have resounded with great urgency, especially in the United States, the United Kingdom, and throughout the Arab world.
For example, in his remarkable primary campaign in the United States, Bernie Sanders repeated a call for social justice countless times, and he was able to do so in a country increasingly divided by inequality and by what he described as the inability to meet basic needs, such as health care and educational opportunities. to all its citizens.
Even Donald Trump’s support in the general election from upper-class white voters was based, at least in part, on their feeling that the Democratic Party had treated them unfairly.
More recently, in the elections held in the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, defied the vote and media consensus to increase the percentage of votes and seats in Parliament, depriving the rival Conservative Party of its majority.
His platform was also based on social justice, and going to more radical positions than Sanders, for example, calling for the renationalization of the energy and rail sectors.
But public sympathy for political movements based on denouncing injustice is not limited to the West.
The upheavals in Arabic-speaking Muslim countries since 2011 – the phenomenon known as the Arab Spring – reflect in many ways the yearning for a more just society.
The universal desire for justice makes it plausible to claim that justice is, in some ways, a natural moral quality.
However, it remains difficult to define justice precisely, as evidenced by the long history of ethical and political research within the Western philosophical tradition, characterized as “a series of footnotes to Plato” in Alfred North Whitehead’s memorable phrase.
Part of the problem is that the idea of justice pertains to a variety of ethical phenomena.
In addition, the inclination toward mercy must be balanced with justice in the balance.
Consider a judge deciding between two competing lawsuits for justice: you can say that he intends to act equitably.
A judge or magistrate is called justice, reflecting that the excellence of that person’s work is measured by the degree of impartiality in the application of the law (assuming, of course, that the law itself is just).
Even if extreme sympathy has been generated by a plaintiff, the dictates of mercy cannot override the other’s right to justice.
But in some cases, fairness can be replaced to some extent by forgiveness and conciliation; For example, mercy is often requested during the sentencing of a person who has been convicted.
Arguments can be made on both sides of the scale: the conscience’s commandment of impartial justice is met with a plea for clemency.
How can this disagreement be explained?
If we consider any ethical choice as a moral test, it would seem that, in the case of the judge evaluating conflicting claims, the crucial point is the extent to which the inclination toward bias rather than justice can be set aside.
In the case of sentencing a convicted criminal, the test is to temper justice with mercy. When we turn our attention to society as a whole and imagine the possibility of a just world inhabited by fallible human beings, it becomes clear that the overall vision must aim at justice, without neglecting mercy.
This means that the moral code and the laws to which human action must conform on a social level must express a wisdom capable of uniting these two virtues, just as they seem to be united in harmony with our intuitions about ethical choices in our personal lives.
The Qur’an uses two parallel words for justice: ‘adl and qisţ.
Although both terms appear widely in the Qur’an, ‘adl is often the focus of commentators, who even equate qisţ with ‘adl, although never the other way around, leading to the terms being treated as synonymous.
However, careful study shows that these two words are also characteristically used in the Qur’anic lexicon for specific aspects of justice.
Words based on the root of ‘adl, which etymologically refer to the balance of two objects, can be used when justice is to be understood as equity in personal virtue.
An example of the importance of impartiality is found in the context of bearing witness, perhaps legal (or more generally for the sake of God), in the Qur’an:

And may the hatred that you may feel for some, not lead you to the extreme of not being righteous (allā ta’dilū).
Be just!
(i’dilū)
That is closer to fearfulness.
(The Table Served, 5:8)

On the other hand, verses within the Qur’an that provide ethical guidance on divorce demonstrate that, in certain situations, a higher ethical standard can transcend traditional notions of justice.
Compare what the Qur’an says (65:2): “Either you keep them as you should or you separate from them as you should” (fa-amsikūhunna bi-ma’rūfin aw fāriqūhunna bi-ma’rūf), and 2:229, “E Divorce is twice.
And either he takes it again as recognized, or he lets it go in with excellence “(Al-ţalāqu marratān fa-imsākun bi-ma’rūfin aw tasrīĥun bi-iĥsān).
Here two new key words have been introduced into the Qur’anic moral vocabulary: ma’rūf, what is customarily referred to as just and therefore subject to some degree of variation between different societies, and iĥsān, a transcendence of natural justice to a level of ethical and spiritual excellence, embracing what was mentioned above as mercy.
This can be observed in the verse of the Qur’an often repeated within the Friday khutba:

It is true, Allah commands justice, excellence* and giving to close relatives; and it prohibits indecency, reprehensibility and injustice.
(The Bee, 16:90)

In some cases, the relationship between justice and mercy is even more finely balanced.
Consider the Qur’anic law of talion or qiśāś.
In the Qur’an (2:178) after prescribing retribution for murder, the Qur’an adds a clause by which compensation can be accepted instead:

But if a brother forgives him something, let him do as he has acknowledged and let him give it up well.
This is a relief that Allah gives you and a mercy.
(The Cow, 2:178)

This places Qur’anic law in an intermediate position between the strict Mosaic law, which commands capital punishment in Deuteronomy 19:21, and the Gospel principle of “turning the other cheek” in Matthew 5:39.
The Qur’an recognizes that, in certain situations, a stricter application of justice can result in greater general social welfare:

In the talion you have life, you who know how to recognize the essence of things!
(The Cow, 2:179).

However, it promotes forgiveness as the highest moral ideal:

Whoever renounces out of generosity will serve as a remission (The Table Served, 5:45).

Thus, the Qur’anic position retains a flexibility to deal with a wide range of social situations and makes human moral actors to some extent accountable to their conscience, so that their actions must continually be placed between strict justice and mercy.
Where then is qisţ?
The word is derived from the notion of a portion distributed, and can even mean a certain amount of measure.
Therefore, it often has the connotation of a more tangible form of justice, equity.
This may lead to the linguistic argument, which has some merit, that while ‘adldenotes fairness, qisţdenotes distributive justice.
However, within the Qur’an, while ‘adltends to be descriptive of a personal standard of conduct, qisţqualifies the condition that justice be established within the social arena.
In this way, qisţbecomes a central term for the place of justice within the Qur’anic Weltanschauung, as expressed in the Qur’an:

And so it was that We sent Our messengers with clear proofs and sent down with them the Book and the Scales, so that men might establish equity.
(El Hierro, 57:25)

Here justice is not conceived only in its dimension as a virtue, a quality that is privately embodied in discrete individuals, but as a real part of the socio-moral world.
The Qur’anic notion of qisţrefers to a shared social project, or what we might call the ‘just society’.
As such, it is the goal realized by the wisdom of human action as Shari’ah, divine law, and moral code, that confirms and expands the scheme of justice already intuitively known through natural law, represented perhaps in the Qur’an by the Ladder (al-mīzān).
Plato assumes that the just city accurately reflects the just human soul, by precisely balancing its inner elements, each of which serves the purpose dictated by its nature.
In The Republic, he puts in the mouth of Socrates, “it is not a concern of the law that any class in the city is doing exceptionally well, but that it must be concerned to apply this to the city as a whole, harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share in the benefit that each one can bring to the community.”
The Qur’anic image is rather one in which inner human action always stands as a moral test, and fine distinctions between justice and mercy are an important part of its perfection.
In contrast to this, within the shared ethics of society, it is the telos, or goal, of that action, evaluated on the scale of natural and divine law, that extends justice to society on the basis of mercy.
This is because both justice and mercy derive from God’s wisdom and return to it, as even the greatest rivers on earth eventually return to the sea.
As Milton quotes Jesus, in Paradise Lost, in a petition to God:

I will mitigate the rigor of justice by mercy, so that both may be more glorified, and your anger will be fully satisfied and appeased.

As recent populist movements in the United States and the United Kingdom show, political demands referred by justice in the contemporary world often resonate with large groups of voters of a range of political persuasions.
Within the framework adopted in this essay, this is not a surprising fact, but reflects the nature of justice, in the sense of qisţas a collaborative and merciful social project.
It is therefore often easy for religious activists, both conservative and liberal, to form alliances with broader movements that aim to fight social injustice.
Without denying the importance of such political alliances in achieving tangible and shared goals, it is intellectually coherent to distinguish between the respective philosophical approaches of different social justice advocates.
Nonetheless, the concepts of justice and mercy remain basic to the language with which human beings engage in common theoretical research and calls to practical action, while the Qur’anic balance of these virtues is prescribed by our Creator for the realization of a better world for all.

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By: Ramon Harvey Source: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu