Islamic political economy as a study of social contractarianism in Islamic epistemological reference, invokes a deep study of theories of justice. Besides, since Islamic political economy is a `globally' systemic study of interactions, integration and creative evolution as the embedded methodology explaining inter- relationships, it looks upon the concept of Justice in systemic perspective. What does it mean to view Justice in a systemic concept? The Qur'an mentions of the design of the universe in perfect Equilibrium. Al-Farabi invoked a similar concept of Justice as Balance. In the Tawhidi Epistemology, Justice is an attribute of Allah. We have shown that this attribute along with the other ones, namely of Purpose, Certainty, Well-Being and Creative Reorigination, constitute the essential attributes of the knowledge derivation process from the Stock of Knowledge. Hence, at this level of our discourse, two concepts of Justice are obvious. First, there is the Primordial Justice, which is the Essence of Divine Balance, which signifies the creative purpose. This concept of Justice being an attribute of Allah, like Allah Himself, must exist in its Stock Form and become part of the attribute of this Divine Stock of Knowledge. It is axiomatically functional in the Tawhidi Epistemology, but is not required of nor possible to be configured. Hence, just as the realm of the Stock of Knowledge forms a supercardinal topology or a supermanifold, so also the treatment of Justice as this Primordial Attribute of the Divine Stock of Knowledge, forms a supercardinal subspace of that topology spanning alongwith the other mentioned attributes the topology of Tawhid. 

But at the level of flows derived from the Stock, likewise, the worldly concept of justice is a derivation of the Primordial Jutsice. Yet to be functional for the world and to comply with the unification process that Tawhidi Epistemology (Epistemology of Unity/Oneness) carries with it, the derived principle of justice must emulate the essence of unity and integration that is found in the Primordial Justice. In other words, the created world is the act of Allah. Hence it carries with it the functional derivation of the flows, their created essences, all in the midst of the unification epistemology as a process derived from the primal Tawhidi Epistemology. Furthermore, the derivation of all such flows of knowledge and the attributes being from the Stock and Primordial Elements, the underlying process is once again proactive and this substantively describes the unification epistemology. Consequently, the attribute of justice is derived and interlinked with the other attributes and these together with the discursive order of knowledge flows, by means of the same methodology that we have developed in these series of lectures. This methodology is known as the circular causation and continuity model of unified reality. It is alternatuvely termed as the Shuratic Process in relation to the pervasively interactive-integrative-evolutionary order that is built upon the meaning of the unification epistemology guiding the Shuratic Process.

Since the interactive-integrative-evolutionary methodology arising from unification epistemology is a `globally' applicable one, thus the concept of Justice both in the Primordial Essence of Total Creation as well as in the derived essence of its recursions across extending systems, must take up a `global' meaning. Hence, the complete meaning of Justice is that of Balance both in the Complete and Absolute Essence of Tawhid and in the lived experience across systems of life taken up interactively together.

Premised on the theory of Islamic political economy, developed in another chapter of these series of lectures, one of its principles must be entitlement and property rights, and this must occur through the effort of work and distribution by means such as, partnership, joint ventures, interest-free loans to revive business, a grants economy, Zakah and control of waste. Hence we have here a linkage between the market functions of productive involvement and growth and the institutional functions of policy and control. Yet the imposition of justice in this worldly order is not the primary act of the Islamic state except by means of exercising its legal authorities. The Shari'ah states the directions of transformation towards a social order of justice, well-being, security and knowledge, but it does not impose these laws except as binding upon its legislative powers. Coercion is thus replaced by conviction through the process of knowledge-based transformation. The assumption here is as the Qur'an says, that when Truth has come, what remains but Falsehood? It is also for this non-coercive nature of Shari'ah that the market is relied upon as a God-given milieu of ethical human transformation. The Prophet categorically discouraged interventions on price fixation as long as price fluctuations occurred due to market forces alone. But when undue monopolistic and unjust pricing, production and distributional practices were existent, the Al-Hisbah was empowered as a social regulatory body to check these imbalances for purposes of re-establishing a better semblance of market-driven exchange in the light of the just order that Shari'ah aims at through the market order in society at large.

It is also to be noted by the same token, that the non-coercive nature of Shari'ah in the milieu of Islamic transformation means first, that such a transformation cannot be imposed against will in a non-Islamic society; its laws are binding to all in an Islamic society simply under the rule of order of justice that is a legal precept of the institutions of courts and of laws and order. But note that such a society cannot come about without its free and conscious acceptance by the electorate. This transformation to the Islamic state is itself a realization of freedom gained in the knowledge-based world view inculcating the Tawhidi Epistemology, the Shuratic Process and their consequential effects in the Islamic change. Hence, non-coercion leads to the existence of Shari'ah' the latter is continued and developed in the midst of such a freedom of knowledge; and is defended by the courts and legal orders by virtue of the injunction of its acceptability within the acceptable knowledge-based social order. The coercion of Shari'ah outside these grounds of freedom of responsibility and knowledge-based acceptance, will undoubtedly result in its abandonement by the generality of mankind at that time, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Yet in all these statements, the role of security of the state, of Shari'ah against the aggrandising onslaughts of the unfriendly world, must be upheld as part of the mandate of the Islamic populace during its confirmation of the Islamic state. Finally, even when an Islamic order does not exist, the Shari'ah finds its living appeal among many Muslims as a powerful moral force. Thus, Shari'ah establishes itself, gains from and recreates the order of purposeful freedom and this is never dead.

Social justice and distributive justice are now seen as the derivation through Shari'ah for the human order. Yet there is no duality and separation between these in the Islamic political economy as an interactive-integrative order of creative change. Whatever is social gains from the economic soundness of the Islamic state and vice versa. The two conditions of society reinforce each other. We do not find in this wholesome congruence the idea that if more of state distribution through the Bait al-Mal was made available to the underprivileged individuals, lower will be the economic productivity, thus higher the loss of economic efficiency and thereby a lesser allocation of wages and partnership to bring about economic distribution. Current socio-economic conditions in the Western world point to this bitter tradeoff: While social expenditure cause debts and deficits to increase, economic distribution causes human misery and loss of well-being.

We must however ask how the simultaneity comes about between social justice and distributive justice in the Islamic political economy? The great moral relevance of markets in human transformation in the Islamic political economy is to be kept in view. Islamic states are minimal states, empowered primarily to promote the knowledge-creation and pervasiveness in society at large; the inclucation of Shari'ah through such knowledge-based efforts; and the security needed to preserve these mandates give to the Islamic state by the populace in the first place, that brought about the state in existence. In this light then, the state undertakes not solely most ventures as public enterprises, but gets into joint ventures with the enterprises. The private sector itself is of the enterprise types specializing in dynamic bundles of basic needs that can rise to the highest order of specification as the levels of attained equality, poverty alleviation, human and physical resource availability, technology and sustainability in the political economy warrants. These dynamic regimes of basic needs as functions of changing equality and social well-being become driven by the continuous knowledge-formation process that is endemic to the economic growth. Goods, resources and technology in such order are thus knowledge-augmented and markets become ethicized markets when the corresponding types of consumption preferences, production menus, distributional menus prescribed by Shari'ah are interactively formed to bring about the social equilibrium in the political economy. The bundle of goods so delivered for consumption, production and public use, above all of which is the endogenizing function of knowledge flows, is termed as the social good (sometime also referred in the literature as common good or simply as commons).

The action of ethicized markets and the role of Shari'ah to bring this about through the interactive function of institutions and the Islamic state, makes it unnecessary for public debts to form. Employment and partnership are part and parcel of the ethicak change into a market-driven economy with enterprises and communitarian spirit. Governments therefore do not have to monetize debts and deficits by floating bonds and public stocks for this purpose. Governments control land distribution and the proper usage of land as per the requirements of productivity (Amal; e.g. example of the Prophet's companion, Belal's land that was confiscated by the Bait al-Mal for non-use) and sustainability (e.g. Hima), but promote private sector involvement with land as a factor of production. Economic efficiency is now linked with the productive use of land in a climate of enterprise where partnership and wage- payments exist, with greater weights being given to the former. The Zakah and interest-free transactions are themselves considered as such private sector sponsored undertakings within the total social order. There is no limit to which the privatization of such a nature with extensive ethical induction, can proceed. It is therefore not surprising to find that the Prophet Muhammad being a merchant himself (Al-Amin=trustworthy), so much encouraged har work in the midst of free and open transactions and the Qur'an invokes in the believer to seek Allah's Signs (Ayaths) in the extensively discoverable and observable scale of the universe. In this way, employment and entitlement are together realized; wealth is formed through enterprise; and the claim on public expenditure is reduced. Investment climate, spending, technological advance and expansions are the logical consequences, all tending toward the realization of market transformation. Consequently, debt and deficits are logically minimized. This makes it possible for complementarity to exist both in terms of the all the socio-economic activities and variables and in terms of the social justice and distributive justice.

Equality and poverty alleviation, entitlement and property rights, social well-being and progress, now become social attributes of harmony and codetermination among peoples and groups whom Allah has blessed at different ranks so that they may know each other, not that they would despise each other. If the market process in its ethical apporpriateness is the realization out of the interactive nature of ethically endogenous preferences and menus, then the prices are stable and deficits are minimal (except when an old debt has to be honoured to a foreign liability or when state security needs public funds); investments are high in a climate of profit-sharing under economic cooperation and in the absence of interest-rates; partnerships and participation in microenterprises are established jointly with those at higher echelons of production, such as distributional channels. Consequently, real incomes remain high and the proportion of wealth in the national income increases compared to the wage-bill. This lowers the cost of production and thereby increases economic efficiency in enterprises while the ethical goal of partnership is realized. These kinds of cyclical interrelationships among the activities and variables in the the Islamic political economy makes price stability to be a logical consequence of market exchange. Consequently, economic equality through allocative efficiency is attained through the market exchange and productive-efficiency relationship. This brings about realization of distributive equity. Whereas, social equality is brought about by the role of Zakah, partnership, knowledge-guided directives according to Shari'ah by institutional and state programs. The two merge through the interactions between these agents and activities in the midst of a knowledge-induced transformation toward ethicized markets.

The real value of wages, incomes, wealth and resources is also maintained by the absence of speculative ventures (Gharar) in Islamic markets (capital markets, stock exchange). Only actual real sectorial activities or those with the visible promise to invigorate real sector activities in accordance with the conditions needed for transformation to ethicized markets, are pursued and promoted in the interactive-integrative-evolutionary process of the knowledge-based transformation of preferences, menus and distributions. Again the question remains: How is this non- speculation oriented ventures made possible in the midst of a world market that is deep in gambling on risk and speculation? The stake is between stability and steady growth and randomness of returns with the possibility of liquidation. The generality of investors and producers and holders of funds as in Mudarabah and Musharakah basis, in the presence of an enterprising economy, find that survival as opposed to large but risky returns is a prominent goal. Growth prospects with certainty causes investment flows and production to emanate. This is well-proven in respect to foreign direct investment flows. Contrarily, the speculative market crash of the Wall Street, Mexico, Berring Bank and the U.S. Loans and Savings and the political insecurity in Quebec, are known to have caused global financial uncertainties, favouring the very rich and the privileged to gain out of these uncertainties (insurance companies and overseas lending institutions). In the Islamic political economy, the presence of knowledge induction through interactions now focusing on the nature of steady and stable growth and technological change in a dynamic basic needs regime of growth, a microenterprising environment with appropriate instruments of enterprise and communitarianism with its informed returns, plus the active participation of the populace pervasively at all levels of the Islamic society, economy and institutions. through the sciences and the educational sector, would bring about the conviction on the real sector activities as opposed to speculative activities. With the outside world, the resource management of the Islamic world by itself requires dealings on grounds of such real sector activities and not speculative ones. All this can dawn on the Muslims only if the Ummah is the awakening reality of the future mature Muslim world. Note how the post-World War brought about the reconstruction of Europe by the Western formula of the Marshall Plan and led to the unique economic, social and political integration through the academic ideas found realism in the Bretton Woods Institutions. Note also how the world of Eurocentricity is deepened post-Cold War by its unjust form of global resource and political segmentation. Thus, the examples of history, the changing face of the Ummah, the pervasive knowledge-forming world view of Islamic political economy can induce the realization for developing economic relations and market transacts in terms of real sector activities, avoiding speculations both within the Muslim world and with the other world. The jointness of the economic benefits (=stability, security and steady growth) and the social benefits (=microenterprising and communitarian spirit in the midst of the dynamic basic needs regime of advance) are thus once again made the basis for overcoming the unreal lure of speculative gambles.

Speculative gambles as functions of risky ventures are bound to be driven by interest-based economies, for profits are impossible in such ventures. Profits are results of actual resource productivity. The absence of speculative gambles by cause and effect of an ethicizing market and business climate in the knowledge-based world, must therefore mean the cause and effect of a transformation in the absence of interest-based transactions. This in turn means that the socially de-equalizing function of interest rate (not what Keynes said on the same account in his essey, "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren") and the economic claim on resources due to the control over finance by the wealth of a few that is generated by speculation (shown by MNCs and capital intensity), will be reduced in the process of the Islamic politico-economic change. Equality is thus gained as a real sectorial activity on all fronts -- ownership, production and economic efficiency, stability, growth certainty. The net result of these is social well-being as the function describing the knowledge-based simultaneity realized by the interactions among the variables and activities shown by the maximum degree of human involvement. 

Social and economic justice are thus seen to be interactive. The production and enjoyment of these categories are accordingly treated as essential attributes in the realization of the economic and social equality, poverty alleviation, appropriate consumption, production and distributional changes made possible by the realization of the attribute of justice. Such a derivation is made possible by means of discursions (Ijtehad) revolving around Shari'ah, which in turn is directly derived from the epistemological texts (Qur'an, Sunnah) -- hence invoking the Tawhidi Epistemology. The essence of unification derived from the Unity of Tawhidi Epistemology through the process of discursions, brings about universal complementarity. This bestows the unity among the systems of life as knowledge flows are so made to expand across interlinking systems and thoughts. Unification through universal complementarity is the attribute of Ijma. The balance is so established in the Islamic political economy in the midst of the derivation of the knowledge flows from the Stock of Knowledge in terms of the Primordial Attribute of Justice (essence of Shari'ah and the Divine Laws, Sunnat Allah). But balance of this nature both for the Primordial Order and for the unification process is pervasive. Hence, the same discursive (Ijma) method is recreated to generate perpetual advance intertemporally over the scale of knowledge flows. This is the continuity process of the circular causation that establishes Justice in the same relational scale. 

How does the above conceptualization of a theory of Justice from the plane of the Primordial to the plane of the world, correspond with the theories of justice in the literature? Rawls' theory of knowledge following the Kantian version of the moral law is a embedded look at a form of utilitarianism converted to the direction of freedom. The three phases of Rawlsian world as opposed to the axiomatic premise and the unification premise of the interactive-integrative-evolutionary worlds of Tawhid, are the Original Position, the Difference Principle and the non-terminal continuity of these same. In the Original Position, the individuals become moral monads, deriving knowledge from their own individual perceptions of the moral law as meant in the a priori sense by Kant. Thus, the Primordial Premise is replaced at this level by the perceptual concept of Justice in individuated forms. Society at the most unified level of its moral worth is thus a linear aggregation of such individuated beings assuming moral law from their own perceptions of the a priori text. There is however, nothing beyond reason alone to make the individuals derive these moral laws. Whether God exists or not is consciously important. What matters is the perception of a meaning of God as perceived by reason. Thus the moral law is not a Tawhidi Law but that the Tawhidi Law is interpreted by means of human reason. This is contrary to the theory of Justice we have propounded in the case of Islamic political economy in terms of its Tawhidi Epistemology.

The Difference Principle is a Second Best neoclassical state (although Rawls disclaims neoclassicism in his book, The Theory of Justice) that makes it necessary for the state to intervene in order to correct the unequal distribution until society is made thus to once again evolve into a self-same Original state. The aim of political philosophy in Rawls is thus to attain social justice as fairness, because of the individualist nature of the Original Position and the neoclassical claim on resources by market agents. Yet the nature and extent of state intervention in this conduct remains so much absent in the writing that it is not even realized that every such intervention would bring about a market distortion, which in turn through the nature of neoclassical marginalst substitution between social justice and distributive justice, will cause it impossible or very costly to attain the Difference Principle -- make the most underprivileged better off even at the loss of welfare of the privileged. Here too a contrary concept of equality is invoked by the Tawhidi world view. The substantive difference of complementarity as opposed to marginalist substitution causes the markets of the Islamic political economy to be non-utilitarian, non-neoclassical and non-distortionary in nature. Consequently, the attainment of social justice is costly in Rawls. It is cause and effect and hence costless in the Islamic political economy. Hence, it has constraints in realization in Rawls, while it has lesser constraints in realization in the Islamic political economy.

Rawlsian game is non-terminal in nature. This means that there is a continuous evolution of the process from Original Position to Difference Principle to Original Position etc. This view is equivalent to the neoclassical nature of shifts in the production (consumption possibility) curve under the impact of technological change. Yet every surface attained in such long-run transformation are still once again structurally described by the same invariant principle of marginalist substitution. The social welfare surfaces for Rawls are under this same resource substitutional experience that gets increasingly market-costly and hence the cost of remaining along or near to the 45-degree line from the origin growth trajectory, becomes impossible, contrary to what Rawls would wish for. Every new Original Position arrived at marks a temporary equilibrium point in Rawlsian allocation of social welfare levels. These points are increasingly unstable as the opportunity costs between market transactions and Difference Principle widens.

The evolutionary character of Rawlsian Original Position perturbed equilibria is unlike the Ijmatic convergent equilibria, though evolutionary in nature, for the Islamic political economy. Although the temporary points of equilibria are perturbed in both cases, in the Tawhidi order these points describe and result from the Shuratic Process and are all knowledge-induced (hence the evolutionary nature of such temporary equilibria). Such points are not the result of benignly self-interested individuals or due to marginalism.

Equality and hence the subsequently related variables, such as, poverty alleviation, property rights, employment, wealth and income distribution, production and efficiency, technological change, resource diversification and control are determined in the Rawlsian case by opportunity cost of allocation between competing ends of such `goods'. It is therefore possible in Rawlsian framework of resource allocation to substitute between `goods' (hence also between `bads', between `goods' and `bads'). Opportunity cost in this sense do not arise in the Tawhidi resource allocation case because of the existence of universal complementarity among `goods', displacement of `bads' (not substitutions!), and the temporary of misconstruing an indeterminate thing as `good' or `bad' -- called Mubah, until the growth of knowledge flows in the process well-determines the indeterminate thing as one or the other of `good' or `bad', After the universal complementarity applies.

Prices in the presence of universal complementarity among `goods' are determined by interdependencies among multimarkets for such goods. Intersectorial linkages cause prices thus to be demand driven across sectors and final demand. Thus prices change in the same direction in such a system under complementarity, while knowledge-induction must be pervasive, continuous and vigorous. A great role is thus played by knowledge flows as technological inputs for such a growth. The markets are then treated in their ethicizing nature as mentioned earlier. The non-existence of opportunity cost in this universally complementarity framework does not mean that relative prices will not increase at different rates. The production possibility curve, the consumption possibility surface, the utility surface, and the social welfare surface of neoclassical economics which underlie Rawlsian Second Best treatment of utilitarianism in an allocative sense, do not appear in the Tawhidi framework of universally complementary analysis. We have simply evolutionary trajectories of knowledge-induced basic needs regimes of growth with ethicizing markets. On must also note that neoclassical idea of complementarity is not substantive for the complementary analysis of Islamic political economy. That is because of the universal nature of complementarity in this franework as opposed to the limited nature of complementarity in neoclassical framework that makes the latter non-substantive.

It is also important to note how `bads' are treated in the complementary analysis of Islamic political economy. `Bads' mean the well-determination of a thing as socially unwanted. Since the social appropriateness followed by the reduction of wastage are instrumental in the Islamic political economy, such a thing cannot be promoted (e.g. speculation=Gharar, interest rate). The idea is the same relating to the concept of `Good'. Only Mubah is subject to well-determination with the progress of knowledge flows. Hence, the analysis of `bads' concerning its own reflective order is similar to that of `goods', but in the plane of `goods', the production of a `bad' is the degenerate original point of zeros. By the same token it can be noted that the production and consumption of Mubah in the complementary framework of analysis mean temporary neoclassical allocative points. Yet there is substantive conceptual difference here. Neoclassical marginalist allocation are points of stable equilibria in the long-run. Whereas, Mubah are points of unstable equilibria in the short run and are wiped out by the extent of impact of knowledge flows (denseness of knowledge space in the sphere of socio-economic action and response).

Rawlsian Justice is fairness taken up as a utilitarian and neoclassical entity. Its construction are methodologically non- interactive although that is not the intention of Rawls. The framework of Justice as a universally systemic Balance in the Primordial Order and in the unification process of the world of Islamic political economy is not shared methodologically by Rawls' theory of justice and vice versa. Consequently, all the socio- economic, socio-political, institutional and epistemological basis of the two systems are polar apart.

Islamic economics has not ventured into any deep study of theories of justice in economic theory. In recent times this attempt has been made by this author. Naqvi on the other hand has invoked Rawslian and Nozickean arguments in explaining certain concepts of Islamic development. But his reproduction of these ideas for Islamic development has left great methodological gaps and turned an Islamic economists' approach to theories of justice of no utility or interest, new or challenging for describing the function of this central attribute of Allah in world-systems.

The usual trend with Islamic economics has been to accept the neoclassical economic analysis and paradigm and then to patch up an ethical attribute of Islamic into this paradigm. Hence there has not been any epistemological demand to reconstruct a world view of Islamic economics, society, politics and science from the Tawhidi epistemological sense. Since this challenge has not been met, the theory of Justice, one that has in the past moved the classical Islamic scholars so immensely from Farabi to Ghazzali, to Shatibi to Malik, from Averroes to Arabi, etc. has not been taken up. Epistemologically therefore, the theory of Justice in Islamic economic literature has remained untouched. This is indeed a pitiful state leading either to continued imitation of Western paradigms of justice or to no new demand. This is thus yet another substantive area of difference between the budding paradigm of Islamic political economy and Islamic economics.