Hazara Islamicus (Jul 2015)
Accountability of Public Servants in Islmaic State: The early Stages
Abstract
Islamic legal and political system has a long history of fourteen hundred years of implementation in different areas and eras by different Muslim governments. In the beginning of this history there was an ideal Muslim government which was a model for an Islamic state i.e. al-Khilafah al-Rashidah. Afterwards there was some deterioration in the political system but the legal system mainly remained the same. Sometimes the enforcement of Shari'ah was a priority of the government and sometimes it enforced Islamic system only as a compulsion. For one thousand years this system was the only option for the Muslim governments and states as there was no other viable system which could take its place. Accountability is the basis of the Islamic creed and thus it is part of Islamic social and political life as a basic idea. That is why accountability of public servants has always been a cherished idea of the Muslim rulers. Having said that we do not mean that there has been a uniformed organization of this work in the form of a department like Wilayar al-Ma;alim but in one form or another, the work of accountability been present side by side with the formal judicial system. The goal of this article is not to discuss minute details of the accountability in the early stages of the Islamic state, rather it aims at proving broadly that the essence of this important dimension of Islamic political system did exist from the very inception of the Islamic state at Madinah and its successor state of al-Khilafah al-Rashidah. Starting from there this work has been carried out in all the Muslim governments, though the form and strength may have been varied from time to time.
