Justice Is in the Heart of the Judge

And then Allah (swt) said: fa-uḥkum bayna al-nāsi bil-ḥaqqi wa lā tattabiʿi al-hawā — rule among people with truth, and do not follow your desires. Do not follow your desires. Why? Fa-yuḍillaka ʿan sabīli Allāh — for it will mislead you from the path of Allah. And Allah (swt) says: inna alladhīna yaḍillūna ʿan sabīli Allāhi lahum ʿadhābun shadīdun bimā nasū yawma al-ḥisāb — those who wander astray from the path of Allah will have a severe torment. Again, Allah is telling Dāwūd to judge among the people, and to rule among them, and to govern among them, with truth — and not to follow his desire.

The most dangerous thing for the Islamic judicial system is following desires. The most dangerous thing in our relations with one another is when we base them on our own desires and not on the law of Allah. And as we say in Arabic — and I think this saying is also in English — al-ʿadlu fī nafsi al-qāḍī: justice is in the heart of the judge. The law can be on paper, but if the judge does not want to apply it, he can find ways around it. He can. So justice is in the heart of the judge.

And that is why we can only have justice through a true Islamic system. Why? Because you either have good laws and a corrupt judge, or you have a good judge and corrupt laws. In the Muslim world now, in most places, we have a corrupt law with a corrupt judge; we have them both. Here in America, you have a corrupt law, but sometimes you have a good judge, and sometimes you do not. The combination we want is a good law and a good judge — and that can only happen when the law is Islamic and when the heart of the judge is Islamic. But if the heart of the judge is not Islamic, no matter how good the law is — if there is a Qur'an sitting on his desk — it would not do anything. If the heart of the judge is not in line with the law, it will not do anything.

Because in some Muslim countries we have Islamic law on paper — we do. In many Muslim countries, for example, the laws relating to the family are Islamic: divorce, and marriage, and children's rights, and all of that, and women, the divorced and the widow; most of that is Islamic. But the problem is with the heart of the judge: bribery and all those other problems.