Islamic Identity and the Struggle for Justice.

• Author: Ashmore, Robert

Reviewed by Robert Ashmore

The ten essays published under this title are revised versions of papers presented in a symposium held at Cornell University in 1987. Although one-fifth of humanity is Muslim, the faith of these billion or more people remains a mystery to many, especially in the United States. It is especially helpful, therefore, to have authorities on the subject explain Islam to non-believers - all the more because media and politicians in the United States often caricature Islam for partisan purposes.

This book is appropriately divided into two parts: the first analyzing justice as an ideal, and the second discussing the reality, that is the actual practice of justice in various Islamic societies. In the first part, Islamic justice is explained and then compared with Jewish and Christian ideals.

In their introduction the editors explain that the first goal of Islam is to install justice. This priority, Fazlur Rahman notes in the succeeding essay, derives from an initial revelation to the Prophet Muhammad that "there is one God and one humanity," the Qur'anic ideal thus being to unite humankind on an egalitarian basis. Mahmoud Ayoub develops in greater detail the Islamic concept of justice, indicating that it contains both the idea of equality and that of steering a middle course between too much and too little. This is reminiscent of Aristotle's famous doctrine of the mean, according to which moral virtue stands between the extremes of excess and deficiency.

Neither the Qur'an nor the Prophet left a clear political model to follow, Ayoub explains. But it is puzzling to read, "Just laws had to be devised, but they were devised not on the basis of what ought to be but on what had to happen post facto in the Muslim community" (p. 25). From a moral point of view, I would argue, the justice of laws is identical with what they ought to be. Perhaps Ayoub is talking about what is taken to be just in this or that community, and he is surely correct that the strength or power of the ruler determines what is just in a positivistic sense.

In a short essay by Rabbi Laurence Edwards, Judaism is interpreted to reflect that God's justice is balanced by mercy. In Leviticus 19 the Jews are commanded: "The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of our citizens; you shall love him as yourself...." One might expect far different treatment of modern-day Palestinians were the State of Israel to take seriously God's demand in the Torah...