Adam Yusuf Adam | 7th Graduate Conference
ISLAMIC DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AS A PANACEA TO SOCIAL INEQUALITY: THE NURSI’S PERSPECTIVE
Abstract
Islam as a comprehensive religion has make provisions for both physical and mundane life of man. It provides laws to govern his religious needs and regulations to conduct his physical appetites. It urges justice to be done as that meant to reconcile between the physical and spiritual being of man. Today, the improper impositions of these laws and regulations by both individual Muslims and their various governments and institutions have create a vast vacuum where social inequality is the source of imbalance in many human societies. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877-1960), who was a contemporary Muslim thinker and one of the outstanding social analyst, has considered various issues related to social transformation and its orderliness, distributive justice as a concept coined to teach man how to carter for his social equity by fair distribution of natural wealth and its sharing among the fellow members of the society has extensively been discussed by Nursi and particularly in the Risale-i-Nur. This paper therefore, critically examines the concept of distributive justice in Islam, its meaning, principles, pillars and aim according to Nursi’s perspective in maintaining social equality. It finally remarks on the relevance of the adaptation of Nursi’s approaches in the establishment of distributive justice in our contemporary societies as indeed a tested means of removing social inequality.
Abstract
Islam as a comprehensive religion has make provisions for both physical and mundane life of man. It provides laws to govern his religious needs and regulations to conduct his physical appetites. It urges justice to be done as that meant to reconcile between the physical and spiritual being of man. Today, the improper impositions of these laws and regulations by both individual Muslims and their various governments and institutions have create a vast vacuum where social inequality is the source of imbalance in many human societies. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1877-1960), who was a contemporary Muslim thinker and one of the outstanding social analyst, has considered various issues related to social transformation and its orderliness, distributive justice as a concept coined to teach man how to carter for his social equity by fair distribution of natural wealth and its sharing among the fellow members of the society has extensively been discussed by Nursi and particularly in the Risale-i-Nur. This paper therefore, critically examines the concept of distributive justice in Islam, its meaning, principles, pillars and aim according to Nursi’s perspective in maintaining social equality. It finally remarks on the relevance of the adaptation of Nursi’s approaches in the establishment of distributive justice in our contemporary societies as indeed a tested means of removing social inequality.