The Universality and Scope of Justice in Islam

Definition of justice and its scope is something about what legal and political philosophers could never reach a unified position throughout a history. In these days, many in the West are trying to present Islam and its law and justice as something utterly uncivilized, unjust, cruel, and outdated and of no use in modern world. Positivist's concept of justice that prevails in the world today, mostly based on temporary secular-materialistic values, is in most of the cases opposed to the eternal principles and rules laid down by God Almighty. Justice according to the early proponents of Natural law, if not based on the universal values in itself is not justice, and as such is doomed to failure. Today we are witnessing the kind of global justice that threatens even to destroy humanity.  The present article is an effort to find out the most suitable definition of justice according to the Islamic law, and present the concept of universality and scope of justice in Islam in a way to show the absolute God's principles and values are unchangeable and everlasting, and only rightful solution to be followed today.

Effective Leadership Practices of a Government Secondary School Head Teacher in the Rural Context of Gilgit-Baltistan G-B

Leadership is a key driving force to improve a school at the time of challenges. The quality of education in public schools of Pakistan is rapidly deteriorating due to unsatisfactory leadership practices. The improvement of these schools is only possible through effective practices of school leadership. Hence, the purpose of this study was to explore the effective leadership practices of a government secondary school head teacher in the rural context of Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B). The study explores how the head teacher brings about considerable improvement in schools by overcoming the contextual challenges facing the school. The study was carried out through the exploratory case study method within the qualitative research design in order to have an in depth and close understanding about leadership practices of the particular head teacher. The head teacher's effectiveness was studied in three schools; the current school where he has been successful in bringing considerable improvement and two other schools where he had worked in the past. The participants in this study were the head teacher, teachers, students and community representatives who were selected from the three focused secondary schools. The findings of the study reveal that the head teacher utilised different leadership strategies to improve the schools. The most common strategies he used were distributed leadership, pedagogical leadership, community involvement, effective management, fair examination system and positive relationships with different stakeholders. It further revealed that the head teacher's leadership practices had a log lasting impact on the schools where he had worked previously. The findings of this study are significant for head teachers of all schools in general and for headteachers of public institutions in particular. For, public institutions are facing more or less same challenges across public institutions of Gilgit BaItistan. Hence, the findings of this study will provide a road map for public sector head teachers to overcome those challenges to lead their schools successfully through challenging situation.