Thinking Beyond the West: Property, Responsibility, and Islamic Legal Thought

Property is one of the foundational pillars of modern societies, legally, economically, and ideologically. While many dominant strands within Western legal thought tend to conceptualize property primarily as an individual right linked to personal freedom and autonomy, alternative approaches, especially in Islamic legal traditions, emphasize responsibility towards the community and the environment.

In what follows, I argue that engaging seriously with alternative property traditions—in this case Islamic legal thought, can help us confront some of the most pressing challenges that contemporary property regimes face. Closer engagement with these traditions shows that they offer more than historical or cultural contrast. They foreground responsibility, reciprocity, and the social purpose of wealth, and thus speak directly to current conflicts over land scarcity, housing, ecological limits, and the uneven distribution of resources. Islamic concepts of property challenge the notion of ownership as mere individual entitlement and offer normative tools for balancing autonomy with social and environmental obligations. These perspectives invite us to reconsider what it might mean to own responsibly in an increasingly unequal world.

Property as Public Ritual: Roman Law and Modern Order

A key foundation of Western property concepts lies in Roman law, not only in the technical idea of dominium, but also in the way ownership was legally structured and socially embedded. In classical Roman law, dominium denoted a particularly strong form of control over things: the position of the full owner, protected by specific legal actions and firmly anchored in a highly sophisticated system of private law. Land, houses, enslaved persons, and certain animals were treated as especially important objects which were embedded in a distinct and highly regulated system of transfer (mancipatio). Through codifications such as the Twelve Tables and later juristic compilations, Roman law turned what we would today call private property into a clearly defined legal status that could be claimed, defended, and transmitted.

Property in early Rome was therefore not merely a matter of factual possession, but of public recognition and legal form. It required five Roman citizens as witnesses, a scale-holder, and a symbolic payment in copper and scales. In this setting, ownership was not created silently or privately, but in a small,publicly staged scene in which the community of citizens literally watched one person handing over power over a thing to another. Even without a modern land registry, such rituals made transfers visible, verifiable, and difficult to contest.

This formality also tells us something about civic identity and social hierarchy in Rome. Only those who held full citizenship and the requisite legal capacity could perform a mancipatio. Property understood as dominiumwas thus closely linked to belonging to the political community and to a specific position within it. Large estates underpinned elite power and political participation, while the inclusion of enslaved persons as objects of dominium exposes the rigid hierarchies and exclusions embedded in Roman property law. Public legitimacy meant legal recognition of who could own, who could be owned, and whose claims were excluded.

Through this combination of precise legal rules and public ritual, property in Roman law served several functions at once. It stabilised social order by fixing who controlled land and labour and it provided economic security for households across generations via inheritance and dowry. In this framework, property functioned mainly as a means of safeguarding household stability and maintaining established social structures. Echoes of this structure remain in modern civil codes, such as § 903 of the German Civil Code (BGB), which defines property as the right to use an object and exclude others from its use. The emphasis on exclusive control and defence of the owner’s sphere continues a long tradition in which property protects status and security.

To understand the normative foundations of this concept of property, it is necessary to consider the ideological frameworks that developed around it over the course of time. Property was not only legally protected and socially ritualised; it gradually became tied to a narrative of individual freedom. In many European legal and intellectual traditions, ownership came to signify personal independence and protection against arbitrary interference. This association emerged in medieval and early modern debates on will and moral agency, when thinkers such as William of Ockham and later Locke, Kant, and Hegel reinterpreted property as a sphere of self-determination, transforming it into a key element of modern ideas of autonomy.

Ownership, Autonomy, and Their Limits

From the Middle Ages onwards, property became increasingly tied to political and moral ideas of freedom. Medieval theologians such as William of Ockham began to interpret ownership as a sphere of individual agency protected from interference. Early modern and Enlightenment thinkers further developed this link by conceptualising property as a condition of autonomy and personal self-determination. At the same time, this tradition paid comparatively little attention to questions of distribution and structural inequality. Later critiques, ranging from Rousseau and Marx to contemporary authors such as Piketty, made visible how property can also function as a mechanism of social stratification and political power.

These tensions were eventually reflected in constitutional law. While early liberal constitutions framed property as a natural and inviolable right, twentieth-century constitutional thought, most notably with the Weimar Constitution, introduced the idea of the social obligation of property (Sozialbindung or social obligation of property). Ownership was no longer understood solely as an individual freedom, but as an institution expected to serve the public good.

These developments show that concerns about responsibility and social purpose are not foreign to Western legal traditions. Yet other legal traditions articulate these concerns more systematically, placing responsibility at the normative centre of ownership rather than treating it as a corrective to individual rights. This raises a broader question: are there legal traditions that conceptualise ownership primarily as a responsibility-oriented institution, and what might they contribute to contemporary property debates?

Ethical Property: Qurʾānic Perspectives on Social Responsibility

One such tradition can indeed be found in Islamic legal thought, where ownership is conceptualised fundamentally through responsibility rather than exclusion.
The Qurʾān presents a vision of property rooted in divine sovereignty and moral obligation. All wealth ultimately belongs to God, while humans act only as stewards (khalīfah). Possession is therefore not a private domain of unchecked control, but a moral test (fitnah) of character (Q2:284; Q 6:165; Q 9:60; Q 70:24–25): will the holder of wealth share, act justly, refrain from excess, and support the vulnerable (Q 8:28; Q 64:15)? This ethical framing is concretised through institutional mechanisms. Zakāt, the obligatory redistribution of wealth, is designed to prevent accumulation among elites and ensure that resources circulate for the benefit of the poor (Q 59:7; Q 70:24–25). Waqf endowments, charitable trusts dedicated to education, health, or religious infrastructure, extend this obligation across generations by tying property to long-term communal benefit. The doctrine of reviving unused land (ihyāʾ al-mawāt) links ownership to productive and sustainable use: only those who cultivate or repair “dead land” may acquire rights over it.

Rather than defining property primarily as the power to exclude, Islamic legal thought frames it as a trust that must be exercised with regard to others, the environment, and future generations. Unlike the Western concept of the social obligation of property, which emerged in the twentieth century to limit individual property rights in the name of the public good, the Qurʾānic conception embeds responsibility at the very core of ownership. The obligation is not an external restriction added to an otherwise autonomous right; it forms part of what ownership is.

This normative vision, however, has not always translated directly into positive legal systems. Across the Islamic world, property laws developed through a combination of Qurʾānic principles, juristic interpretation, customary practice, and, in the modern period. In the nineteenth century, European empires reshaped legal orders in regions such as North Africa and the Middle East. In Egypt, for instance, the adoption of the Napoleonic Code as the basis of civil law resulted in the marginalisation of waqf institutions that had for centuries financed education and welfare. Although the religious concepts of stewardship and redistribution continued to exist, they lost institutional support and legal recognition. This colonial restructuring recast property as an instrument of private power rather than communal responsibility—a legacy that continues to shape property regimes in many Muslim-majority societies today.

Property Conflicts in Western Societies

Contemporary Western societies are also grappling with conflicts that stem from the limitations of their own property regimes, particularly where property is treated primarily as an object of capital investment rather than as a social institution. The Berlin initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen, which demands the socialisation of large housing corporations, reflects a growing unease with the commodification of housing and the concentration of urban land in the hands of a few market actors. At stake is a fundamental question: Who owns urban land, and for what purpose —investment, speculation, or the provision of housing as a basic social good?

These debates echo concerns that Islamic legal traditions have long addressed through concepts that tie ownership to social benefit. The doctrine of mawāt (unused or “dead” land), for instance, allows individuals to acquire rights over land only if they make it productive for the community. Here, ownership is not a reward for capital, but for stewardship and responsible use. Similarly, zakāt and waqf embed wealth in systems of redistribution and public welfare (zakāt, the obligatory sharing of wealth; waqf, charitable trusts dedicated to education and social services), ensuring that resources circulate rather than accumulate (9:34; 59:7). These mechanisms offer conceptual tools for thinking about property in ways that prioritise social function over market value.

While the historical contexts differ, the underlying questions are surprisingly similar. Movements such as “Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen” challenge the assumption that property should serve primarily private accumulation, pointing instead to the need for models that secure access, affordability, and long-term social benefit. Islamic legal thought provides one such mode, even if it cannot be transferred directly, by showing how property systems can institutionalise responsibility, limit speculative uses of land, and encourage productive or socially beneficial uses. In this sense, the pluralism of property traditions becomes not a threat to legal coherence, but a resource for reimagining how ownership might contribute to social cohesion and environmental sustainability.

Conclusion: Rethinking Property as Responsibility

Islamic legal thought demonstrates that ownership need not be grounded solely in autonomy or market logic; it can also be organised around responsibility, stewardship, and redistribution. While Western traditions, particularly since the Enlightenment, have also recognised property as a social institution, Islamic approaches place this relational dimension at the normative centre of ownership. This comparison invites a rethinking of property not merely as private entitlement, but as an institution whose legitimacy depends on how it structures relations between individuals, communities, and the natural world.

These ideas are not confined to the past. Responsibility-oriented forms of ownership continue to shape property practices in contemporary Muslim-majority societies, for example through waqf endowments in education and welfare or land-use regimes inspired by ihyāʾ al-mawāt. Even where Islamic principles coexist with modern statutory law, they provide alternative normative frameworks that influence debates on land distribution, urban development, and social welfare, demonstrating that these concepts remain living legal imaginaries rather than historical curiosities.

For the SFB 294, research program these perspectives reinforce a central claim: structural change in property is not merely economic or technical, but deeply historical and normative. Modern property regimes—private, public, or state-owned—are arenas in which tensions between autonomy and obligation, exclusion and access, accumulation and stewardship are continuously negotiated. Western civil codes may present property as conceptually closed, yet beneath their surface lie competing logics and suppressed alternatives.

A genuinely plural approach must therefore go beyond comparing legal traditions and uncover alternative concepts embedded within dominant systems themselves. Only by engaging seriously with this multiplicity can property be reimagined, not as a narrow legal tool, but as a social institution capable of fostering social cohesion, ecological responsibility, and global justice.