The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

public interest

Throughout Islamic history one finds tensions between political and religious leaders over the right to determine and enact the public interest—a question situated at the intersection of politics, law, and religion. Islamic political authorities have always been concerned with policies that serve the interest of society as a whole. The second caliph ‘Umar b. al-Khattab (r. 634–44), for instance, justified keeping the conquered land of southern Iraq under state control and with a land tax (kharāj) because that would serve the public good (khayr, ‘umūm al-naf‘). During the first few centuries of Islam, political authorities controlled the discussion of the public interest—the Arabic word frequently used was maṣlaḥa, literally “well-being” or “welfare”; but with the weakening of the caliphate after the tenth century, Islamic legal scholars challenged the dominance of secular authorities by defining public interest in religious terms. Ghazali (ca. 1058–1111) was the first jurisprudent to articulate that the objective of the divinely revealed law is to protect humankind’s maṣlaḥa by preserving their religion, life, intellect, progeny, and offspring; whatever benefits these five basic necessities of human existence constitutes a maṣlaḥa, and whatever does not runs counter to the interest of Muslim society. Grounding the determination of public interest in the religious law (i.e., the shari‘a) meant not only that decisions by political authorities received legitimacy by being in agreement with the divine purpose of the law but also that religious scholars (‘ulama’) had greater say in the public policies of the state. Various jurists after Ghazali refined and enlarged his concept of public interest to the point that it became the overriding principle to determine all rulings not explicitly addressed in the revealed sources of Islamic law (cf. Shatibi [d. 1388]).

After about the 14th century, Muslim writings on public interest were dominated by the concept of siyāsa shar‘iyya—articulated in detail by the Hanbali scholars Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350). This concept emphasizes that all political policies have to be governed by the religious law and that the political ruler and his functionaries have to implement policies and conduct state affairs in consonance with it. In contrast to the concept of maṣlaḥa, siyāsa shar‘iyya envisions the whole of the political sphere to be guided by religious consideration and to follow the procedures of Islamic law (fiqh). This view leaves little room for the ruler to use purely political expediency in determining state policies in areas in which he hitherto was granted exclusive and discretionary authority—even if only by his de facto power—namely, extra-qadi jurisdiction, penal law (especially ta‘zīr), and the administration of the state. While the regime of siyāsa shar‘iyya provides religious scholars with greater power in political affairs and the ability to curtail governmental excesses, close cooperation between political and religious authorities also implicates the latter in state policies and allows for vesting laws promulgated out of political considerations with the mantle of religious legitimacy.

In the modern period, the tug of war between religious and political leaders over the sphere of law has been won mostly by the political authorities. Islamic law and its traditional practice have been marginalized in its application mainly to personal status law. In order to reinsert Islamic law into the public sphere, Muslim intellectuals have turned toward the concepts of maṣlaḥa and siyāsa shar‘iyya to accommodate the desire of the state for all-inclusive authority while retaining an Islamic identity. The state receives its authority to legislate, administer justice, and implement its policies by doing so in the public interest (maṣlaḥa) within the limits of the shari‘a. Depending on interpretation and political circumstances, maṣlaḥa may be optimistically seen as a check on unlimited state power or pessimistically viewed as a mere rubber stamp for its abuses. For instance, reinstating the Ottoman Constitution in 1908 was hailed as a way to uphold the people’s maṣlaḥa; the abolition of polygamy in Tunisia in 1956 was justified in the name of public interest, serving the country on its way to modernization; and the Syrian jurist Muhammad Sa‘id Ramadan al-Buti (b. 1929) supported the state’s right to restrict freedom of speech with the argument that the maṣlaḥa of the people’s intellect is thereby preserved from deviation and error.