The Concept of Goodness and Justice in Religious and Secular Law

Justice forms the heart of all religious doctrines, but each religious doctrine gives justice a peculiar shape. Further, the concepts of justice and goodness are examined in more detail through the prism of Islamic religious law, with its own nuances and outlines. Regarding justice in secular law, we recall the statement of the ancient Greek sophists claiming that «justice is what is beneficial to the authorities» and the general recognition of law as a normatively fixed justice. In other words, not every statute can be considered as law if it does not meet the objective requirements of law — justice. Thus, there is no good in such a law and legislation. Also, according to the author of the paper, the founding fathers of the atheistic state — the USSR — knew perfectly well the religious canons, the cornerstone of which was social justice. And one of the reasons for the political longevity of the USSR can be confirmed by the words of one of the outstanding Islamic lawyers: «The state can hold on disbelief («kufr»), but it will not hold on injustice...” Religious righteous behavior, being in the sense of «God–pleasing» behavior, the bearer of all-encompassing goodness, is the highest stage of communion with universal values, justice being one of the main values. Justice, like other universal values, is fixed both in religious norms and in positive legal rules. Without the implementation of the principle of justice, there can be no question of building a rule-of-law, social state. Recognition by an effective government of the rights of the people and rejection of actions aimed at restricting the rights of people, compliance of the government authorities with the requirements of justice — i.e., the creation of good by those in power — form the first means of obtaining the consent of the people and the most important ways to earn their trust, as well as to ensure the legitimacy of the existing government.

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