The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

ethics

Broadly speaking, the concept of ethics refers to any normative evaluation of acts. While some make a conceptual distinction between morality and ethics based on a distinction between obligations of the “right” owed to other persons and the pursuit of the “good,” this entry subsumes under the term “ethics” both theories of moral obligation (to others, to God) as well as theories of the good, of virtue, or of the cultivation of the self.

On this broad understanding of the concept, then, Islamic ethics can be found in a wide range of genres and discourses in addition to the revelatory texts of the Qur’an and hadith. They include exegesis and commentary on revelation (tafsīr, sharḥ, ta’wīl); investigation into the ontology of ethics in dialectical theology (kalām) and philosophy (falsafa); the epistemological investigation into the sources and conditions of moral knowledge in Islamic legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) and falsafa; the elaboration of substantive moral rules in positive law (fiqh, furū‘ al-fiqh); and the study of and the search for individual virtue, the perfection of motivations, and spiritual purification in Sufi mystical practices as well as some genres of philosophy. This entry will, of necessity, focus only on a select few of these sources of ethical thought.

Ethics in the Qur’an

The Qur’an presents itself as a universal ethical code for humankind, in sharp contrast to the tribal particularism of pre-Islamic Arab codes. It presents a conceptual scheme for both sociopolitical ethics and the duties and virtues of individual believers. The values, norms, and commands revealed in the Qur’an transform select pre-Islamic ones while introducing a normative revolution. Such pre-Islamic values as generosity, courage, loyalty, veracity, and forbearance are given Islamic validation as virtues that believers are commanded to cultivate in the service of Islam within the limits set down by God. For example, the Qur’an praises generosity in the giving of charity, while condemning both profligacy and spending of one’s wealth out of vanity and the desire for praise. Similarly, the pre-Islamic value of absolute in-group loyalty (wafā’) was transformed by the more complex ethical terrain of the new religion. Loyalty to family and tribal kin was not only expanded to the community of believers (which trumped more particular loyalties) but also constrained by other Islamic commitments. Believers were commanded to not violate oaths or transgress against divine commands, even in the service of communal interests. Loyalty within sociopolitical contexts thus becomes subsumed within the general obligation of loyalty to the covenant with one’s Creator, which the Qur’an indicates is required by man’s recognition that he is created by a sovereign, autonomous God.

However, the Qur’an views pre-Islamic Arab society predominantly in negative terms. It is characterized as jāhiliyya, a concept that refers to a state of moral recklessness arising from submission to human–social passions and whims. The normative revolution in Islam consists in its theocentricity. God Himself is referred to in ethical terms (many of the names of God refer to ethically salient features of God’s essential nature), and man’s attitude toward God is the primary criterion of moral evaluation. The summum malum for a created being is kufr, a state of being that alludes to unbelief, ingratitude, and the (public) denial of God’s existence (takdhīb) and that results in acts of insolence, arrogance, presumptuousness, mockery of revelation, and the violation of divine limits. That the kafir goes astray by committing acts that are substantively unjust, criminal, sinful, forbidden, or tyrannical (referred to in the Qur’an variably as ẓulm, jurm, fasād, munkar, sharr, sū’, faḥshā’, khabīth, ḥarām, etc.) is not itself fully constitutive of the state of kufr; rather, it is the consciously held and affirmed beliefs in one’s own independence and self-sufficiency in the formulation of judgments, moral and otherwise. The reliance on one’s own judgment, which lies at the root of error and kufr, is often referred to as hawā, or (roughly) the lustful, whimsical, and passionate inclination of the human animal. Importantly, the reliance on reason to arrive at sound moral and practical judgments can fall under the scope of hawā.

The summum bonum for a created being is thus īmān, a state of being that includes belief in God and His revelation, performance of all mandated rituals, good works and observances, obedience to all commands and prohibitions, and, perhaps most centrally, the willingness to put all trust in God and to subordinate one’s individual judgment to Him. The mu’min is the one who accepts God’s guidance (hudā), fears God (muttaqī), is grateful to God (shākir), and is upright (ṣāliḥ) according to God’s prescriptions.

The Qur’an also has much to say on the ethics of social relations among humans. While the specific norms and rules of social relations are elaborated within Islamic law, it is possible to generalize some of the broad principles and major themes of Islamic sociopolitical ethics. The Qur’an exhorts strong bonds of communal loyalty, extensive social solidarity, charity for the poor, and obedience to those in authority. The sociopolitical vision is a moderately egalitarian one. Rulership is just only when exercised in the interests of the ruled according to divine guidance. Extreme inequalities are condemned, the poor are said to have a claim on the property of the rich, and wealth is strictly detached from evaluations of virtue, desert, and piety. At the same time, the Qur’anic vision is less ascetic and unworldly than that of early Christianity. Wealth is not, per se, a sign of impiety, nor are other good things of this world. The Qur’anic emphasis is on remaining within the limits of enjoyment established by God and on purifying individual motivations. As such, it might be said that the Qur’an attends to considerations of moral psychology or a realistic attempt to take humans as they are according to an understanding of their motivations, capacities, and needs.

There are, however, limits to the Qur’an’s egalitarian vision. In addition to some of the inegalitarian distributions of roles and rights within the Muslim community along gender lines, Qur’anic ethics distinguishes sharply between Muslims and non-Muslims. The primary solidarity community is the community of believers, at least from the Medinan period on. Muslims are enjoined not to value relationships of loyalty with non-Muslims at the expense of the Muslim community. Among other reasons, non-Muslim communities are seen as potential political and military rivals to Muslims. Similarly, while Muslims acquire rights by virtue of being Muslim (i.e., they do not need an explicit relationship to a state or ruler), non-Muslims may acquire rights only contractually. However, the Qur’an enjoins strict adherence to compacts with non-Muslims (particularly in the Medinan verses, with Jewish and Christian ones), and this forms a means of constructing relationships of mutual moral obligation.

Islamic Theories of Metaethics

Any systematic theory of ethics must address ontological and epistemic questions. First, do moral norms and values have an objective existence or are they created by some being subjectively? Second, how do humans know what morality requires? Can they arrive at true knowledge of morality through reason or intuition or do they require morality to be revealed to them authoritatively? Islamic investigations into metaethics have taken both (dialectic) theological and philosophical forms, and all possible combinations of answers have been given to the ontological and epistemic questions.

The Mu‘tazili theologians asserted a doctrine of “ethical objectivism” and “rationalism.” Their doctrine was “objectivist” because it held that norms exist independently of God’s will. God cannot will or command what is immoral. The basic claim is that our description of certain acts as “good,” “bad,” “just,” “unjust,” and so on has some basis in objectivity yet not quite in the same way as our descriptions of the material world. These are “intuitions” that are extremely hard to flatly deny and can be discovered or made intelligible by certain intellectual and discursive acts. Their doctrine was “rationalist” because they held that reason gives independent knowledge of right and wrong and the status of revelation. Revelation helps and often fills in the gaps of reason but is not per se essential to all moral knowledge. Mu‘tazilis do recognize that some acts are known to be good only by revelation in some select cases, like the good of prayer and worship, noting that reason alone might have found them worthless or optional. But even here, it is stressed that God reveals their goodness rather than makes them good.

These themes would be echoed later in the doctrines of the philosophers (falāsifa), who added a conception of a hierarchy between rational philosophy and religion. While philosophy represents both the purest path to moral (and other) knowledge and (for some) the highest form of human flourishing (sa‘āda, eudaimonia), thinkers such as Farabi (ca. 878–950), Ibn Sina (980–1037), and Ibn Rushd (1126–98) held that religion was strictly necessary for giving specific form to the general principles deducible through reason and for convincing and motivating the masses (who would not be able to comprehend complex rational proofs) through its inspirational, imaginative, and symbolic powers.

The eventual orthodox view, however, was the Ash‘ari view, which defended a doctrine of “theistic subjectivism” or “voluntarism”—morality is something that is determined or willed by a certain agent (in this case God), not something that exists objectively and can thus be discovered. The doctrine was defended primarily on the grounds of God’s omnipotence: if man could judge right from wrong, and thus presume to judge what God can and cannot prescribe for him, this would imply limits on God’s power. So-called intuitions can be shown to be the product of circumstance and socialization, while judgments of “reason” are seen as arbitrary, mere statements of will, desire, or feeling. They contradict one another, cannot prove their premises, and render revelation useless. A person may think that some actions are good and others bad, but that person has no proof for this judgment without knowledge of their ontological status. God’s omnipotence means that He can command things that seem to us immoral. The role of reason is to prove the truth of revelation and then to help with the interpretation of revelation and possibly to extend it to uncovered areas according to certain approved methods. Epistemically, thus, Ash‘arism is “hermeneutic” or “traditionalist” rather than rationalist, and for this school, applied normative ethics thus largely manifests itself as law.

Beyond “Law”? Contemporary Political Ethics

By and large, Islamic law retains its traditional prestige in ethical matters. Almost all practical ethical questions admit of being treated as “jurisprudential” (fiqhī) questions. However, in addition to the traditional alternatives or supplements to law (particularly Sufism), some contemporary Islamic thinkers are developing approaches to ethical questions, particularly in the social and political realms, which are both indebted to and also unconstrained by traditional jurisprudential methods. Thus thinkers might draw from classical legal theory to emphasize religion’s insistence on worldly welfare (maṣlaḥa) or the overall objectives of the law (maqāṣid), such as protecting religion, life, reason, progeny, and property.

However, with this foundation in the concepts and categories of “law” as traditionally understood, it is a short step to speaking about Islamic normativity almost entirely in these general terms or even to invoke a more abstract “spirit” of justice, equality, mercy, spirituality, or self-sacrifice, which ethical claims must embody. Many thinkers are also unwilling to exclude non-Muslims or lax Muslims from this ethical purview. At this point, a nonparticularist Islamic ethics emphasizing universal interests and a “spirit” of justice and mutual human concern might be regarded as fundamentally “postlegal.” A particularly relevant exemplar of this trend is the European writer Tariq Ramadan, who expands the idea of the maqāṣid from five to dozens of human interests, speaks of “two revelations” (the Qur’an and the universe), and insists that “the real” is a source of law, all while refusing to exclude non-Muslims and their forms of reason from the realm of “Islamic ethics.” Similar patterns of thought that are partially indebted to concepts and values of law but not recognizably jurisprudential can be found in Islamic theories of feminism, democracy, medical ethics, and the environment.