The Quran

۞ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَأمُرُكُم أَن تُؤَدُّوا الأَماناتِ إِلىٰ أَهلِها وَإِذا حَكَمتُم بَينَ النّاسِ أَن تَحكُموا بِالعَدلِ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ نِعِمّا يَعِظُكُم بِهِ ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كانَ سَميعًا بَصيرًا

Muhammad Asad

BEHOLD, God bids you to deliver all that you have been entrusted with unto those who are entitled thereto, and whenever you judge between people, to judge with justice.¹ Verily, most excellent is what God exhorts you to do: verily, God is all-hearing, all-seeing!

I.e., in the judicial sense, as well as in the sense of judging other people's motives, attitudes and behaviour. - The term amanah denotes anything one has been entrusted with, be it in the physical or moral sense (Razi). If one reads this ordinance in the context of the verses that precede and follow it, it becomes obvious that it relates to the message or - in view of the plural form amanat - to the truths which have been conveyed to the believers by means of the divine writ, and which they must regard as a sacred trust, to be passed on to "those who are entitled thereto" - i.e., to all mankind, for whom the message of the Qur'an has been intended. This, of course, does not preclude the ordinance from having a wider scope as well - that is, from its being applied to any material object or moral responsibility which may have been entrusted to a believer - and, in particular, to the exercise of worldly power and political sovereignty by the Muslim community or a Muslim state, to which the next verse refers.