Reconciliation is widely regarded as an important pathway to sustainable peace, yet community-based peacebuilding faces a persistent ethical challenge: how can relationships be restored without overlooking injustice or weakening accountability for wrongdoing? This article examines the Islamic ethical principles of ?ul? (reconciliation and negotiated settlement), ?adl (justice), and ?afw (forgiveness or pardon) and considers their relevance to community-based peacebuilding in Northern Nigeria. Drawing on Qur’anic and hadith analysis, Islamic legal scholarship, restorative justice, conflict transformation theory, and published studies of local peace initiatives, the article investigates the relationship between reconciliation, justice, forgiveness, and accountability. It adopts a qualitative, interpretive, documentary design and critically analyses relevant scriptural passages, scholarly literature, institutional reports, and documented peacebuilding cases. The analysis identifies three interrelated propositions. First, ?ul? provides a religiously meaningful framework for negotiation and relationship repair, but its ethical legitimacy depends on the fairness and voluntariness of the settlement. Second, ?adl establishes a normative boundary against reconciliation that conceals serious wrongdoing, excludes victims, or reproduces unequal power relations. Third, ?afw can support healing and reintegration, but it should not be treated as a universal obligation imposed on injured parties or as an automatic substitute for legal and social accountability. The article proposes a Justice-Accountable Reconciliation Framework that connects voluntary dialogue, truth acknowledgment, proportionate accountability, victim participation, reparative action, and sustained monitoring. Its contribution lies in bringing Islamic ethical reasoning into direct dialogue with contemporary conflict transformation scholarship while identifying practical safeguards for community mediation. The framework remains conceptual and requires validation through field interviews and comparative case studies in Northern Nigeria.
Tag: conflict transformation
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From Political Philosophy to Peace Architecture: Revitalizing Waqf within Islamic Political Thought for Community Security and Conflict Transformation
In view of the chronic growth of conflicts, community insecurities, political instabilities, forced displacement, and socioeconomic inequalities in most Muslim societies, there has been a growing interest among academia and policymakers on the capabilities of indigenous governance institutions for sustainable peace and inclusive development. Despite the preponderance of state-centered approaches, liberal peace approaches, and humanitarian interventions in current peacebuilding agendas, much less attention has been paid to the constructive role of Islamic endowment (waqf) institutions as sustainable community security mechanisms and conflict resolution tools. Historically, waqf institution served not only as an institution for public charities but as one of the most robust institutions of Islamic political governance, which financially supports the implementation of policies aimed at developing education, health facilities, administration of justice, construction of public amenities, poverty alleviation, and social welfare thus contributing to social harmony and political stability. However, the waqf governance and conflict transformation functions remain understudied by the contemporary scholarship. This paper presents a conceptual framework that recontextualizes the role of waqf in the broader stream of Islamic political philosophy as an adaptive device in constructing lasting peace architecture. It employs a qualitative conceptual research design drawing from Islamic concepts of Siyasah Shar’iyyah, Maqasid al-Shariah, institution governance theory, and conflict transformation theory to explore this question based on a thorough review and synthesis of classical Islamic jurisprudence, modern scholarly works, and international policy documents. It finds out that Waqf has a great potential institutional capacity to address root causes of conflicts in a peaceful manner through equity-based wealth redistribution, social development, social protection, economic empowerment, mediation, and inclusive governance. The study presents a new model namely: Waqf Peace Architecture Framework (WPAF) that integratively links Islamic political philosophy and modern peace building strategy. It argues that reconstituting waqf as a governance institution rather than just as a charitable institution can foster community resilience, address social inequity, promote social trust and build up social capacity that transforms conflicts sustainably. The research ends with proposing recommendations for comprehensive policy reforms, institutional restructuring, and capacity development initiatives including institutional innovations and Waqf 2.0 in order to bring waqf institution into the current global peace architecture.