Ramadan Reflections (2025)
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What Justice Really Means in Islam | Ramadan Reflections
From Palestine to Pennsylvania, injustice thrives when justice serves the powerful. But Islam teaches that no one is above justice—not even yourself. Imam Tom Facchine explains how Islamic justice exposes global hypocrisy and why the world needs it now.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.I've been asked to speak about some of the things that make Islam distinct. Some of the things that make Islam special, especially in the context of what we see from the society around us. And of course the first thing that came to my mind, the first installment of this series, it has to be about justice. That Islam is about justice. Islam is about giving everyone a fair shake. And obviously this is something that we are in desperate need of today. You know, in the Western tradition, they represent justice with a statue. Perhaps you've seen it before. It's a statue of a nondescript woman with scales in her hand, which represent justice, and she has a blindfold. And the blindfold is meant to represent something. And what the blindfold is meant to represent is the impartiality of justice. That justice should be established for everyone and upon everyone. And this is the exact same commandments that we have in Islam from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ لِلَّهِ شُهَدَاءَ بِالْقِسْطِ And in the other ayah, he flips it. يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاءَ لِلَّهِ O you who believed, stand firmly, consistently, persistently for justice. For Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And the context of those two verses are very very important. It's in the context, the rest of the verse goes on to say, that even if it's against yourselves, even if it's against your parents, even if it's against your tribe or your nation or whatever group that you belong to, don't think that you're above justice.
And don't think for a second about withholding testimony. And don't think for a second about falsifying testimony. This is serious. Justice is for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And so you stand, just like you stand in a courtroom, you acknowledge the sovereignty and the dominion of the person running the court, of the judge. When you bear witness for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, there's a theological dimension to it. You are acknowledging and affirming the rights of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, to be the sole arbiter over everything. And in Surah Al-Ma'idah, the other verse, the context is equally as interesting, because Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala addresses a situation, in which a people was wronged. And he warns them, to not let the fact that you have been wronged in the past, let you make excuses for yourself, so that you then go on to oppress the next day, later, after that. Which was very relevant to the companions, who had been persecuted for their belief in Mecca for years. And they had been beaten up, and they had been tortured, and they had experienced everything. And it's very, very relevant today as well. When we see that there are people who, they can go through a holocaust in the 30s and the 40s, and then, almost simultaneously, turn around and oppress people in Palestine. Don't think that the fact that you have been oppressed, gives you right to a perpetual status of victimhood, and you can do whatever you want. That's not how it works. That's not Allah's justice, and that's not the justice that He wants. If we don't have these reminders about what is justice, and the importance of justice, then, what is the natural tendency for people to fall into?
The natural tendency for people to fall into, is exactly what Allah ﷻ spends the good portion of Surah Al-Baqarah talking about. Tribalism. Nationalism. My group, right or wrong. I don't care if my group committed something heinous or something good, I'm with them no matter what. That was the mistake of Bani Israel. That they thought that they had some special favor with Allah ﷻ, even nothing that they could do, took them out of Allah's favor. They imagined, in their delusion, that what was really a contract with Allah ﷻ was a blank check. And so we see that our time, our era, needs this reminder more than ever. Look at our society, look at the state of the world that we live in. All of the institutions that are supposedly standing up, or erected, or established for justice. What are they doing? The United Nations. When we see the people who have veto power continually, consistently. It was as if they took the opposite of Allah's verse. Continuously standing up for oppression and genocide. Continuously standing up for ethnic cleansing. When we see the other organizations, the International Criminal Court, or the International Court of Justice, everything has fallen apart. That the lady of justice with the blindfold, and the blindfold was supposed to stand for impartiality, became actually blindness to injustice entirely. That is the society in which we live today. And how in need of Islam is the society in which we live today. You know right here in Pennsylvania we had Luigi Mariano picked up.
And we don't condone what he did. But at the same time, people had to reconcile themselves with the fact that the masses of American people sympathize with Luigi. Why did they sympathize with him? Because someone in a stuffed suit was allowed to sign a paper that went across his desk every day and reject and reject and reject a need. People need medicine to live, to survive. And this person had insulated himself in a metaphorical tower. Thinking that Allah's justice could never been done to him. And Allah knows best. But we're saying that why did people sympathize with that? Even the mainstream media begrudgingly had to acknowledge that people sympathize with Luigi. Why? Because the people know there is something fitri about it. There is something natural in the human disposition. We hate injustice. We hate to see it done. And the Prophet ﷺ said that one of the things that destroyed the people before you is that when someone of high rank committed a crime, they would forget it. They would let it go. But if someone who was weak and someone who was of lowly status committed the same crime, then that's when they would punish. And that's what the people of America feel today. They look at somebody who is responsible perhaps for the deaths of thousands of people. Or in the case of the butchers like Netanyahu and the other leaders or heads of state, millions of people. And they don't see justice and justice is not done. But we see somebody else, somebody who if they are the wrong type of person, if your skin is a little bit too dark,
or your name is a little bit too foreign, or you have this characteristic or that characteristic, all of a sudden that blind lady of justice comes back and she doesn't see what happens to you. So as Muslims who believe that we have something to contribute to society, who hold on to our principles, who are ready to hold our own accountable, even if other people don't because we believe in Allah's justice we establish justice for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We're not going to look one way when it's for us and look a different way when it's against us. We are for the truth and we are for justice. No matter who says it and no matter who implements it. So let us remember for ourselves in the month of Ramadan, every single one of you, we establish justice for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Not for this group identity, not for our own team, no, for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Because we are afraid that if justice is not established, that Allah can destroy everything. He can replace us. He can turn all of us. I'm a convert, most of you know. He can replace us with other Muslims. He can let other people come into Islam. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us from that and make us instruments of His divine justice in every way, shape and form that we are able to. Subhanakallahumma wa bihamdika ashhadu an la ilaha illa anta. Astaghfiruka wa atubu ilayk. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.
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