THE likes of Robin Hood, who rob the rich and give to the poor, believe that their transactions are just. Unlawful they may be, but then it is the law, not their action, which is unjust. It is possible that robbers who intend to keep their loot also think that their victim deserved to be diminished, and that their doing should not therefore be called unjust. But scholars will not agree that each man’s notion of justice is as efficacious as that of any other. They have been debating issues relating to its source, nature, and requirements since antiquity.

The subject is doubtless elusive. I have lately seen several expositions of the Islamic concept of justice. Their authors have quoted verses from the Quran, telling us to be fair and just, but they do not say what according to the Quran fairness and justice are. Allow me a word about my own understanding of the Islamic position in this regard. Islam does not define justice as such; it reaches justice through the following reasoning.

God is, ex hypothesi, supremely just. He is also the supreme lawgiver. His law is, ipso facto, just. It follows that all action that is in accord with His law and injunctions is just, and all that is contrary to them is unjust. It follows also that justice in human conduct is the quality of being in accord with God’s law. Thus, to know where justice resides in a given situation, we would have to find the relevant law or injunction and see what it says.

Note also that the Jewish and Islamic systems of law embody what we know as retributive justice. The aggressor must suffer a penalty proportionate to the injury he has caused: it is tooth for tooth, eye for eye, and life for life. You are entitled to break a man’s arm if he has broken yours. (The law in many states even today prescribes that a murderer will pay with his own life for the life he has taken.)

Scholars have asked whether justice resides in an act or in its author. In other words, is an action just because its doer is just, or is he to be considered just because his actions have been just. It seems to me that, speaking of the generality of men, we have to focus on actions and evaluate them in terms of an external standard of judgment.

In many societies justice is that which accords with the generally accepted values, norms, and customs. In a traditional Hindu community, for instance, it is just that “shudras” do the menial jobs, and it would be a perversion of justice to compel a Brahmin to sweep the streets. And, it would not be unjust for the husband in an orthodox Muslim home to spank his wife if she persisted in her waywardness even after a few admonitions.

Let us now turn to some of the more philosophic approaches to our subject. Plato in the Republic rejects Thracymachus’s view that justice is nothing more than the will of the more powerful, which they impose upon people. He treats justice as an attribute of both the state and the individual. The ideal state is just in that it implements a system of division of labour in which persons do the work for which they are naturally best suited. An individual is just if he achieves excellence in his job performance.

A person’s “soul” has three parts: reason (exercise of wisdom), “spirit” (something like courage), and appetites (desires, needs). In a just man reason commands the other two. In a just state those best suited to deliberate and reason (the philosophers) rule, those who are spirited become soldiers, and the “appetitive” ones become workers, craftsmen, and professionals (doctors, engineers, etc.) All stick to their respective tasks. Philosophers as rulers will do what is good for the people, not what the people want.

Justice has been much discussed in the context of “natural law,” which is both a philosophical perspective and a genre of law. In the Anglo-American tradition, its principles and those of natural justice have found expression in documents such as the Magna Carta and the American Declaration of Independence. An example may be the “self-evident” truth in the Declaration “that all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” That is the law of nature and that of “nature’s God.”

Social contract theorists proceed from the assumption that men and women in the pre-societal “state of nature” possessed rights, some of which by their mutual agreement they surrendered to the state when they created it. Let us visit Thomas Hobbes, also a contract theorist but more pragmatic than the others (such as John Locke and Jean Jaques Rousseau). He starts with a general rule, discovered by reason, that forbids a man that which is destructive of his life or takes away the means of preserving it. Justice, he says, is the product of authoritative and enforceable rules.

It is whatever these rules permit, and injustice is that which they forbid, regardless of moral precepts derived from any source other than the sovereign. It will be seen that this position is similar to the one posited in the divine command theory (such as the Islamic) except for the fact that it substitutes the state for God.

Hobbes believes the law of nature justifies self-preservation, and measures necessary to ensure it are just. The first law of nature, he writes, requires you to seek peace, but if you cannot obtain it, you may resort to war with all the resources that you can muster. Next, in order to protect your peace and security, you should be willing when others are likewise willing, to surrender your rights (to the sovereign) and be content with only such rights and liberties against others as you will allow them against yourself. This is a covenant you have made with the others and it must be kept.

Thus, the third law of nature requires that men perform their covenants. Herein lies the fountain and source original of justice. Breaking a covenant you have made is unjust. The definition of justice, says Hobbes, is none other than that covenants made be fulfilled. Recall that in this train of reasoning, disobeying the sovereign is unjust because it is a violation of the covenant men had made with one another before terminating the state of nature and entering civil society.

Assertions of the desirability of justice are generally predicated on the assumption that its implementation will somehow advance human well-being or, shall we say, happiness. Utilitarian theorists, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, make this case. They maintain that actions are good or bad, just or unjust, depending upon their consequences. They are good and just if they result in maximising the social good or, let us say, if they produce the greatest happiness (or good) of the greatest number.

Related to theories of justice are the theories of punishment. There is retributive justice, referred to above, which awards penalties to the aggressor in proportion to the injury he has done another person. In the deterrent theory, punishment is awarded to generate fear of the suffering it will bring and thus to dissuade the aggressor from repeating the same offence and others from committing it.

Finally, let us recognise the even more complex issue of distributive justice. Here we confront several competing theories of how available resources (land, wealth, power, offices among other things) are to be distributed among members of a society. It is now generally agreed that all should have equal access to opportunity and equal protection of the laws. The conscience of modern man is also tending to the view that all of us, by virtue of being human, have certain basic needs connected with survival, which those who manage society and state have an obligation to meet.

Beyond this emerging consensus, certain versions of egalitarianism have it that all should have equal possession of the means of well-being. Marx wanted to organise a system of rights and obligations on the basis of ability and need. He would take from all according to ability and give each according to his/her need. Then there is meritocracy that will give each what he deserves as determined by his merit, which results from some combination of talent and hard work. Proponents of this view are likely to hold that the determination of an individual’s merit relatively to that of others with regard to a given task is fairly easy to make. Competitive examinations are one way; demonstration of performance on the job, or in a laboratory, could be another.

I do not see a consensus among Muslim thinkers on the subject of distributive justice. Equality before law and that of opportunity are admitted, but the equality of outcomes is not. That a person’s basic needs should be met is also granted. There seems to be agreement also that one should get what one deserves on the basis of his merit. But there is at the same time a professed preference (but no action) for bridging the gap between the rich and the poor. There is no agreement on how wealthy a person may be.

Before closing this discussion, I should like to applaud the writer of a recent article in this newspaper (September 8, 2006) for bringing an instructive case to our attention. Abu Obaida, he tells us, was the commander of a Muslim force in a Syrian town, and its governor, at one time. Anticipating an invasion by a much larger hostile army, he decided to evacuate the town. He called in the town notables and returned to them the money they had paid in taxes and tribute on the ground that he would no longer be able to protect their lives and property.

If the government of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is listening, it may want to return to the country’s taxpayers most of what it has taken from them, for it has given them little in return.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US. Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

EMBARKING on his civil career almost seven years ago, General Musharraf promised to strive for the creation of a society that was tolerant and justly administered. The main planks of his policy later came to be defined as ‘enlightened moderation’ and ‘good governance’ with power devolving to the people at the grassroots.

To implement his ideas the choices and the field at that time were plenty and wide open. Yet, well wishers of the general and others enthused by his ideas were dismayed and puzzled when they found political malcontents and religious extremists gathering round him. Some among them were ambitious, others corrupt and still others had a score to settle with their parent parties’ ousted leaders — Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto.

The seeds of the failure of Musharraf’s programme were thus sown before it got going. His chief political adviser Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and his first prime minister Zafarullah Jamali were surrounded by orthodox clerics. Neither made a secret of their natural affinity with the religious elements. They induced Musharraf to cut a deal on amendments to the Constitution with the religious leaders.

Now, five years later, efforts are on to cut another, or surrender altogether, on the issue of the amendments to the Hudood Ordinances. The vast majority of liberal, secular and nationalist elements and women are being further alienated without even the moderate among the clerics being won over to their cause. In this game of power, an upsurge in extremism and the violence accompanying it should cause no surprise.

The outcome of the events in progress in parliament, on the borders and in the regional neighbourhood remains uncertain. But it is unlikely Pakistan will emerge from this turmoil a better governed and moderate country. The immediate and greater worry should be about governance. Only a society that is well administered can hold back the tide of extremism. Here the reverse has happened. Extremism has been rising because the standards of governance have been falling. Let this statement be illustrated by some instances of bad governance.

The affairs of the state are required to be conducted under the laws subject to propriety and consciousness of accountability. Disregarding this fundamental rule, the Capital Development Authority has allotted plots out of the quota reserved for the disabled, the destitute and widows to the chairman of the authority itself, the chief executive of a bank, a special judge and at least 10 other well-paid officials. This may be an instance of the callous violation of law and the rules of decency by some superior authority in order to bribe officials but there are stories of officials themselves bribing or using political connections to get profitable jobs.

The rate for a posting to a ‘lucrative’ police station in Karachi is said to be more than a million rupees. The persons to head police stations are chosen by the politicians in power. The officer in whom this power vests under the law is required only to sign the order. A former Karachi police chief once confessed to this writer that neither he nor the provincial chief were ever allowed to exercise this authority and yet were expected to maintain discipline in the force.

Gen Musharraf’s Police Order and Local Government Ordinance were intended to make it difficult for anyone, howsoever highly ranked, to interfere in the affairs of the district administration and in the police command. The interference by all accounts is much more now than it was under the old laws.

Some of the most harrowing examples of misgovernance come from Sindh’s education department which employs almost half of the government’s total workforce of half a million. The department has seen four secretaries in three years, the fifth has just arrived. All of them could not have been shirkers. The obvious inference is that they were got rid of for pointing out the rules or for giving free expression to their views which is a time-honoured duty of a public servant.

For all these years, thousands of posts of teachers have remained unfilled because the people and parties in power have been unable to agree on how the jobs were to be shared among them. All options are being considered, except for selection through the public service commission, whose chairman and members, 11 of them, are getting paid without work.

The last substantial intake of teachers, police and revenue officials in Sindh through the public service commission was in 2003. The commission’s chairman at that time, M.M. Usmani, said that neither the then governor nor any of his ministers interfered in the selection process, nor were any friends obliged. Resultantly, the concerned departments confirm that those selected by the commission stand out in a crowd of backdoor entrants.

Arbitrary appointments are only a part of this unseemly situation. Most primary schools in rural Sindh have just two rooms for five classes and one or two teachers. After the teachers have been paid, the department’s budget is left with no more than Rs45 for a school’s teaching aids. While the government’s own schools are in this sorry state, for President Musharraf to throw millions of rupees at unwilling madressahs to improve their standards makes little sense.

What is said of the police and education is true for all government departments and activity. But we find the focus on creating larger cabinets and inducting more advisers. Governance has thus been reduced to power play at the cost of the people.

In this setting it is difficult to find fault with the Transparency International’s finding in a recent survey that the incidence of corruption in Pakistan is much higher now than it was in the time of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Corruption has spread wider and faster since elections and devolution. Corruption is a total negation of good governance. What is needed is a review and reversal of the political and administrative systems introduced by the military government.