By: Syed Huzaifah Ali Nadwi, Cambridge.
﴾إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالْإِحْسَانِ﴿
“Indeed, Allah commands justice and excellence.”
The line that closes the khuṭbah each Friday is not a curtain-call; it is a sending-forth. Justice is the straight scale; iḥsān is the way the scale is carried—clear steps, clean tone, mercy where it fits, a little beyond the bare minimum. When the rule and the way walk together, rooms feel safe again and speech recovers its honesty.
There is a small room in Kūfa that still teaches this verse. No velvet, no dais; a bench, two men from the market, and a judge whose name became a proverb: Shuraiḥ ibn al-Ḥārith. A strong horse had changed hands. Coins passed; a few streets later the animal went lame. The buyer returned; the seller said, “Sold as seen.” They agreed to stand before a judge, and the seller named Shuraiḥ.
No staffs on stone, no choreography of rank. The Caliph himself—ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb—stood as any claimant would. Shuraiḥ listened; he let each finish. The questions were clean and unhurried: how was the horse received; what changed in your care; was there any deception? Then a sentence that outlived its litigants: keep what you purchased, or return it as you received it. The law did not bow to rank; rank bowed to the law. The room, bare as it was, became heavy with that rare element: courage. When the strongest can be told “no,” the weakest can hope to hear “yes.”
Another afternoon, another test. A familiar shield appeared in an unfamiliar hand. “This is my shield,” said ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib to a Jewish neighbour. “It is in my hand,” came the reply. They walked—not to the street’s theatre—but to the room where evidence is allowed to speak. A trusted servant testified; a son offered to do the same. One witness stood; the other was set aside in that context because love, for all its nobility, can lean a man without his meaning it. The ruling went to the neighbour—not because power won, but because proof did not. The shield returned; more than that, a heart discovered it was guarded by a system that would not tilt for kings. Afterwards, ʿAlī quietly asked the judge not to address him as Amīr al-Muʾminīn in court—“Call me ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib”—lest a title, even unintentionally, pull the scale. That is ʿadl guarded by iḥsān: fairness carried beautifully.
From these rooms, the grammar of justice steps into ordinary life.
In relationships, justice is often small and near. A spouse listens to the whole sentence before replying; that is justice. Another scrolls while the other speaks; that is a small injustice. A parent equalises gifts and time between children and explains why; that is justice. A parent lets the louder child win every quarrel; that is injustice that teaches the shy that truth is weak. A family writes down loans and promises in a simple notebook; that is justice with iḥsān. A sibling keeps score of old mistakes and spends them like currency; that is a quiet cruelty. An apology offered promptly, without “but”; that is iḥsān healing ʿadl.
In friendship, justice appears as the refusal to join a pile-on. A rumour is corrected with the same energy with which it was shared. A private rebuke is given privately; a public compliment is offered publicly. Credit is returned to the person who did the work—“Fāṭimah did this, not me”—and a small injustice is turned away from the door.
At work, justice is a set of habits that become culture. Criteria are named before interviews, not after. Those with conflicts of interest recuse themselves. A manager keeps notes through the year so a performance review is not a memory of the last fortnight. Goals are set in January and not moved in June. Equal work earns equal pay; proximity is not mistaken for productivity. Meetings give the quiet colleague air—“Let’s hear from Ayesha”—and interruptions are moderated. Credit is attributed cleanly; blame is not outsourced to the most junior voice in the room. Procurement refuses gifts dressed as “hospitality,” asks for multiple quotes, and pays vendors on time. Leave is granted without humiliation. A prayer break is not treated as a favour but as part of the working day. Across time zones, the 3 a.m. slot is not always assigned to the same person. An apology is made in the same “reply all” thread as the mistake. These are not theatrics; they are the quiet carpentry of trust.
There is also a truth that runs through Revelation like a live wire: a people are not raised by the loud but by the overlooked.
«هَلْ تُنْصَرُونَ وَتُرْزَقُونَ إِلَّا بِضُعَفَائِكُمْ»
“Are you granted victory and provision except through your weak?”
The centre of a community is not its stage but its margins. The standard of justice is not how the strong are treated when they are strongest, but how the weak are held when they are weakest. The weakest link is most deserving of our care, attention, and empathy—and that, too, is part of justice. If the child with special needs is considered in the family plan; if the elderly parent’s appointment sets the household’s pace; if the cleaner, the receptionist, the security guard, the delivery rider are folded into our sense of responsibility—then a city can call itself decent. Divine help arrives by their doors.
Phones are new courthouses, and often the wrong kind. Forwarding is testimony in casual clothes. The little thrill of being “first to share” ages badly before the One who hears and sees. Ask, before sending: would this be said if all concerned were present; would it stand if evidence were required? Very often the most faithful line in a group chat is the blank one. Silence is not cowardice; it is justice on time.
Anger ruins courts faster than ignorance. Strength is not the arm that floors another; it is the will that reins itself when the pulse runs high. The steps are near at hand: pause; make wuḍūʾ; change the room or the posture; speak when the shoulders have lowered. Loyalty is more than defence; it includes pulling a friend back from a wrong step and closing the thread where it would spiral. In that correction is friendship with a backbone.
Communities breathe through process. Minutes that bind action rather than decorate emails. Roles and timelines named aloud. Recusal when closeness would cloud sight. Donations treated as a trust from Allah and reported with the dignity owed to the sacred. Shūrā that actually listens, where dissent can be voiced without penalty. People forgive delay; they do not forgive fog. Clean process is mercy—iḥsān at the service of ʿadl.
Beyond the fence, the same ethic becomes daʿwah without brochures: contracts kept when no one is watching; refunds offered before complaints; calm speech in hot rooms; gratitude for those who keep order even when disagreement runs deep. This is how a society holds together without cruelty.
There will be a day—unadvertised yet definitive—when scales are set with an exactness no ledger can rival.
﴾وَنَضَعُ الْمَوَازِينَ الْقِسْطَ لِيَوْمِ الْقِيَامَةِ فَلَا تُظْلَمُ نَفْسٌ شَيْئًا﴿
“We shall set up the scales of justice on the Day of Resurrection, and no soul will be wronged in the least.”
Keeping that court in view softens this one. It becomes simpler to say, “Evidence first.” Simpler to own, “That was hasty.” Simpler to step back when affection clouds sight. Simpler to tell a brother, “This stops with us.” Trust—the unseen infrastructure beneath a people—grows in small, almost secret ways: a judge who will not bow to faces; a parent who keeps the rule even for a favourite; a treasurer who treats pennies as pearls; a chair who says, “For this item, someone else should lead”; a WhatsApp group that refuses to play at being a court.
The little room in Kūfa keeps speaking. Justice is more than the letter of a ruling; it is the manner, the poise, the willingness to explain—and, when necessary, to apologise. Excellence is simply justice delivered with a steady hand and a clean heart. Let the week begin with the words that close the khuṭbah, and let them move from the minbar into the diary, the inbox, the kitchen table, the shop counter, and the meeting:
﴾إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأْمُرُ بِالْعَدْلِ وَالْإِحْسَانِ﴿
“Indeed, Allah commands justice and excellence.”
