Adl: Justice as an Islamic Value

A look at adl in Islamic teaching, drawn from the Quran and authentic hadith.

Islamic teaching commands justice, adl, with a scope that scholars describe as deliberately uncomfortable – not justice applied conveniently toward strangers or opponents, but justice maintained even when it works against one’s own family, one’s own self, or one’s own community.

Adl: Standing Firm Even Against Yourself

Surah an-Nisa instructs believers to be “maintainers of justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives” (4:135), and Surah al-Ma’idah adds a further condition: “let not the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just; that is nearer to righteousness” (5:8). Classical exegetes treat this second verse as directly addressing a natural human failure point – the temptation to bend justice against someone disliked, even an enemy – and forecloses it explicitly, tying justice to righteousness rather than to personal feeling.

The Story of the Woman From a Noble Tribe

A hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim describes a woman from the tribe of Banu Makhzum caught stealing, with members of Quraysh seeking to intervene on her behalf given her family’s standing, approaching Usamah ibn Zaid (RA) to speak to the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ about it. His response became one of the most cited statements on justice in the entire hadith literature: he explained that nations before them were destroyed because they applied the law to the weak while excusing the powerful, and swore that if his own daughter Fatima had stolen, he would have carried out the same punishment on her.

Justice as Closer to Taqwa Than Even Fair Dealing

Surah al-Ma’idah’s instruction that justice is “nearer to righteousness” than allowing hatred to distort judgment is read by scholars as ranking justice above ordinary personal virtue – a person might be individually kind or generous while still failing at justice specifically when a dispute involves someone they dislike, and the Quran singles this failure out as a distinct spiritual danger rather than treating fairness as automatically included within general good character.

Just Rulers Among the Seven Given Shade

A hadith recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim lists seven categories of people Allah will shade on the Day of Judgment, a day with no shade but His – the first named is a just ruler. Scholars have read the placement of the just ruler first in this list, ahead of categories including the person who gave charity so secretly their own left hand did not know what the right had given, as reflecting how much weight is placed on justice specifically when exercised from a position of power, where injustice is easiest to commit and hardest for those affected to resist.

Balance in Weighing and Measuring

Surah al-Mutaffifin opens with a warning specifically against those who demand full measure when receiving from others but give less than due when measuring or weighing out to them (83:1-3) – a warning grounded in the most mundane setting imaginable, the marketplace scale, treated by classical scholarship as proof that justice in Islamic teaching was never confined to courts and rulers, but was expected to govern the smallest, most easily overlooked everyday transaction as well.

Ali (RA) and the Disputed Coat of Mail

Historical accounts preserved by classical scholars describe the fourth caliph, Ali ibn Abi Talib (RA), losing a coat of mail that he later recognized in the possession of a non-Muslim resident of his own state, and taking the dispute before a judge he had himself appointed rather than simply reclaiming it by virtue of his authority as ruler. Because Ali (RA) could not produce two witnesses to establish that the armor was his, beyond his own son and a servant, whose testimony the judge ruled insufficient under the standard rules of evidence, the case was decided against the caliph and in favor of the non-Muslim defendant. The man is reported to have been so struck by watching the ruler of the state accept a judgment against himself, decided by a court he had appointed but did not attempt to override, that he returned the armor voluntarily and embraced Islam shortly afterward. Scholars cite this account as an illustration of adl applied at its most demanding point – not merely justice a ruler dispenses to others, but justice a ruler submits to being bound by himself, even against his own material interest and even in a dispute with someone outside his own faith community.

Understood this way, adl is not a peripheral detail of Islamic practice but part of its lived, everyday texture.

This theme connects directly to our article on Sadaqah: Voluntary Charity Beyond Zakat in Islam. For further primary-source reading, Quran.com offers searchable access to the full text of the Quran and its major hadith collections.