Islamic Concept of Ombudsman (احتساب عمل کا اسلامی تصور)

Abstract

Imam Ghazzali, a great Islamic philosopher and recognized as Hujjatu’l Islam in the Muslim world in his world famous work Ihya `Ulum al-Din has quoted a report on the authority of Hadrat Abu al-Darda (Allah’s pleasure be on him) in which he said:“Continue enjoining good and forbidding evil otherwise Allah Almighty will make upon you dominant such a cruel king who will neither honour your elders nor be merciful to your youngsters. Good people among you will curse him but their cursing will not be accepted. You will ask for help but no help will be given to you. You will ask for forgiveness but the same will not be given to you. Tahzib Ihya `Ulum al-Din al-Ghazzali, Abd al-Salam Haroon Egypt vol. 1, p. 332.Enjoining good and forbidding evil is the basic rule of faith. All prophets, from Adam till the Last Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon all of them) performed this function and their sincere followers also did the same. Justice and peace prevailed in the society by this function and whenever and wherever this function was not performed the injustice and insecurity came in.This enjoining good and forbidding evil is called in the terminology of the Shari`ah/شریعۃ is called hisbah / حسبۃ. According to Imam Ghazzali, there are four essential ingredients of hisbat:• Muhtasib (Ombudsman)• Muhtasib `Alayh (the wrong doer)• Muhtasib fih (the wrong itself)• Ihtisab (notice and action taken by the Ombudsman against wrong-doer)From the very beginning of Islam, the Caliphs themselves performed this function but when the Islamic State expanded far and wide, the necessity to establish regular departments of Ihtisab was felt and it was the era of Caliph Mamun that this department was formally established.This paper shows that by the changing times, the needs also go on changing and the deviations also changed their form and velocity. Hence, any act which is injurious to the welfare of the society or becoming a cause of its destruction must be taken to notice and set right by nipping the evil in the bud by the office of the ombudsman in a Muslim State. The Holy Qur’an and Sunnah have provided the eternal and basic principles in the light of which good and evil are to be identified for this purpose. This paper has also taken historical view of the various functions performed by the ombudsman during the last four hundred years.At the end, the paper has given the law in force in Pakistan in the form of the P.O. No. 1 of 1983. The first Federal Ombudsman was Sardar Muhammad Iqbal, the former Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court. This office was a trust and was entrusted to a personality who was really most capable, honest and just in his conduct known to the society. This article was published in monthly Ta`mir –i- Insaniyyat, Lahore in its vol. 2, issue 9 of December 1983 and issue 10 of January 1984. I have added the scanned copy for the researchers to maintain originality of the article which was in Urdu language. However, most of the contents of the article have been translated in the abstract in English. An English version of this article is also in progress which will be soon made available by the author for English readers with full references.