Reducing justice to security in the ancient Iranian thought

It is widely held that Shiite political thought is based on justice and Sunnite political thought on security. However, a careful investigation of Sunnite political texts reveals that justice was a concern for the Sunnite scholars, too. The present paper is to do a content analysis of the signification of the concept of justice and security in Sunnite thought. The results show that in the ancient Iranian thought, too, justice is important, but here justice is equal to the security of governor and government; in other words, when it is said that governor should be just and the vassals should be secure, it means that the governor should be secure and the vassals should be just. In fact, by vassals’ justice it is meant that they should obey sultan. As result, it is clear that this justice applies to the time of the stability of power and governor has no need to justice in order to attain power because the concept of justice and domination do not converge on one point.