Discuss/illustrate the development of Islamic ethics in the Quran and in Muhammads life an example. How do they relate to pr

MUSLIM ETHICS: SOURCES, INTERPRETATIONS AND CHALLENGES

Islam's potential as a positive moral force in the twentieth century has not infrequently been called into question by Western observers, casual and professional alike. When such doubts are expressed, they appear to arise largely from two sources: first, the belief that the generality of Muslims, under the burden of centuries of ethical determinism, live a life of uninspired acquiescence in the dispensations of Fate; second, the suspicion that Islam has only served to tighten the grip of traditionalism on numerous third world nations, thus rendering them incapable of responding to either the demands or the benefits of technology. In response, some Muslim modernists have gone to the other extreme to demonstrate that, in fact, Islam has virtually invented the qualities of initiative and adaptability. Somewhere in between lies a point at which mutual understanding may begin to grow.

It is surely presumptuous to address so vast an issue in so small a space as this; but some general outlines of the backgrounds, themes, and principles of the Islamic moral genius may at least be suggested. First, a look at the classic sources will sum up the crucial features of the socio-moral climate in which the Prophet Muhammad began his mis- sion, and highlight the salient ethical notes of the Qur3an—the criteria, motives, and conditions of Quranic morality. A brief discussion of Hadïth will furnish a bridge between the sources and the three principal modes in which those sources have been interpreted in the history of Islam: the traditionalist, the rationalist, and the personalist. Finally, some observations will be offered as to how those sources and inter- pretations have confronted, or may yet address themselves to, matters of faith and justice in our time.

SOURCES

Two sources flowed together in the beginning of Islam to form the wellspring of Muslim ethics. They were the indigenous and the revealed: the socio-moral climate of Arabia and the corrective of Qur5anic monotheism. The first may be conveniently described under the headings of community, world view, and the virtuous Arab. In each in- stance the Quran's response to the prevailing situation will be noted; then we will examine more explicitly the internal workings of the ethics of theQur'än.1

1 Throughout this section on "sources," I have relied heavily on the following: Daud Rahbar, God of Justice: Λ Study in the Ethical Doctrine of the Qurtn (Leiden: Brill,

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Arab social ethics in Muhammad's time revolved around tribal struc- tures. A few fundamental intertribal and intratribal features are impor- tant to note here. First, the tribe was not a permanent entity; it could dwindle and vanish altogether, or burgeon and split into new groups. Balance of power among the tribes could be approximated only through the constant threat, if not the ongoing practice, of blood-feud. Cooperation among tribes occurred either through a solidarity pact at the tribal level (hilf) or by a grant of sanctuary and honorary member- ship for an individual (jiwär). Muhammad's task of further uniting the tribes was to be facilitated also by unity of language.

Within the individual tribe, the fiercest of loyalties, unquestioning in its commitment and unbridled in its response to external aggression, was the keystone of morality. Breach of this ca$abiyya from within met with an equally unreasoning ostracism. A traitor was declared "cut off" (khati^, no longer under the tribe's protection and thenceforth liable to his own tribe's vengeance. When Muhammad spoke out against his own Quraysh tribespeople he was labeled an outcast by some of them. Mean- while, the clan of Banü Häshim continued to consider the Prophet their own. Had they, too, disowned him, Muhammad would not have lived to go on preaching that faith is thicker than blood (S. 80:33-37; 58:22).

Over against traditional tribal structures, however, the phenomenon of individualism appears to have been on the rise, due to the establish- ment of a trading economy in an increasingly populous Mecca. Move- ment from a nomadic to an urban environment made possible private financial resources, which in turn allowed fiscal independence and, hence, the breakdown of society into smaller units. In the desert, no one could survive apart from the tribe. In the city, survival of families was no longer out of the question. Before Muhammad's era, the value of an individual's deeds had been subsumed into the collectivity: it was the tribe's honor and bravery that upheld the mores (sunna) of the group. As the tribe lived on, so did the individual. Increasing individualism gradually took its toll on the sense of communal longevity. The 'immor- tality' of the groups yielded to the immortality of hoarding.

The Quran's response to the resulting situation in Mecca is clear and

I960); Toshiku Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur^an (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1966); Toshiku Izutsu, God and Man in the Koran (Tokyo: Keio Univer- sity Press, 1964); Robert Roberts, Social Laws of the Qoran (London: Williams and Norgate, 1925); Helmer Ringgren, Studies in Arabian Fatalism (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1955); Dwight M. Donaldson, Studies in Muslim Ethics (London: SPCK, 1953); R. Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Kenneth Cragg, The Mind of the Qurtn (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973); W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca and Muhammad at Medina (Oxford: Claren- don Press, 1953, 1956).

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forthright. Wealth is not owned, but on loan, given over to mankind's stewardship. It is a temporary possession which cannot immortalize its holders. Muhammad preached against the stratification of society into rich and poor classes, without, however, advocating a revival of tribal loyalty. The individual had rather to be seen in the total context of society at large. Tribal loyalties must be replaced by a consciousness of common humanity sprung from Adam's clay.

Central to the ethical world view of seventh-century Arabia were the notions of time, or destiny, and custom. Life was purely a this-worldly proposition, governed by an unfeeling Time which eventually destroyed all things as the Zephyr effaces every vestige of a campsite. Hope of living forever was severely abridged. Wealth was squandered in the hope that extravagance might purchase reputation. In any case, Time had prearranged the four fundamentals: sustenance, the sex of children, happiness or misery, and length of days. In the face of such deter- minism, a kind of 'hedonistic calculus' became the standard of personal morality. As Toshiku Izutsu indicates, there was indeed a more demanding communal ethic; but it had no "consistent, theoretical basis."2 Group action always conformed to the ancestral custom (sunna) of assisting members of the tribe or confederation without reference to the Objective' morality of the action to be defended or of the response to be made.

By way of rebuttal, the Qur5an spoke not of uncritical custom, but of the purposeful will of God; not of seeking honor and avoiding shame in this life, but of seeking reward and avoiding punishment in the next. Life forever (khulQd) cannot be had on earth; but one need not despair, for there is more. Judgment replaced hedonism with responsibility. Finally, according to Izutsu, the Qur5än retranslated the key moral- value word karlm (noble): before Islam the word had denoted a person of thoughtless generosity and extravagance; according to the Qur°an, the true kafîm, literally: "the noblest of all" (akram) was the one who was "most God-fearing" (S. 49:13).3

In a similar way, the Holy Book would transform other value-terms into words capable of denoting characteristically Muslim virtues. Islam disciplined the pre-Islamic virtue of courage, refashioning it from a disconnected and purposeless bravery into fortitude "in the way of God." Generosity was redirected from sheer display toward "spending in the way of God," meant for those in genuine need and founded, not on prodigality, but on wise stewardship of God's bounty. Loyalty's focus was shifted from the tribe to the Creator, so that the virtue

2 Ethico-Religious Concepts, p. 45. 3 Ibid., pp. 53-54, 76-79.

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became a Covenanted response to, and acknowledgment of, the Reality of God. Not that pre-Islamic society was a moral vacuum. Montgomery Watt writes:

In the furnace of the desert the dross of inferior attitudes and ac- tions was burned out and the pure gold left of a high morality, a high code and tradition of human relationships, and a high level of human excellence.4

However, the Qw°än views pre-Islamic society as characterized by jahl, referring to it as jcihiliyya, "a certain psychological state" rooted in "the keenest sense of tribal honor, the unyielding spirit of rivalry and arrogance."5 Jahl, capricious and unreflective, had as its opposite Mm, moral reasonableness, tranquility of the soul. But while considered a lofty virtue, it needed, as suggested earlier, a more solid "motivational basis." Islam is based on a realistic self-appraisal before God that prompts grateful service, while jahl is arrogant and self-serving. The Qur^än refers to the transformation from jahl to Islam as a "steep as- cent" through a mountain pass:

Ah, what will convey unto thee what the Ascent is!— (It is) to free a slave, And to feed in the day of hunger An orphan near of kin, Or some poor wretch in misery, And to be of those who believe and exhort one another to perse-

verance and exhort one another to pity. Their place will be on the right hand. But those who disbelieve Our revelations, their place will be on the

left hand. (S. 90:12-19, Pickthall)

Three principles enshrined in the QurDän are meant to aid believers in that steep ascent. They are the double criterion of Islam versus in- gratitude; the motive of Fear of God; and the twofold condition of divine initiative and human freedom. Grateful response to the largesse of the Creator is the measure of all action in Islam. Over against thankfulness (shukr) stands the gravest of all injustices (shirk), in- cluding any and all responses that imply that "other than God" is the source of life. All actions are reducible to one or the other of the polar attitudes of Islam and ingratitude, of those who "believe and do good works" on the one hand, and on the other of those who refuse to acknowledge the Giver and who ascribe all generosity to themselves.

4 Muhammad at Mecca y pp. 22-23. 5 Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts, pp. 28-29.

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Those who "believe and do good works" do so out of Fear of God.6

They do not cower and cringe as before a tyrant. Rather is their fear born of a certainty that their every action will bear fruit in its kind before God's justice, not so much because of what God will do, as because God is. God is utterly merciful, but His mercy appears as a kind of prior grace and warning in the Signs of creation. Be the Signs blithely ignored or taken to heart, justice will follow. At the Judgment, all who have denied the Signs of Mercy will already have condemned themselves. Further clarifying the concept of Fear of God, Daud Rahbar maintains that love for God does not function as an ethical motive in the Qur?an. Neither is God said to love humanity uncondi- tionally. Fear of God is not, however, to be taken as an 'impersonal' motive, for it has everything to do with the right relationship between Creator and creature. Numerous texts in the Qur5an speak of the need to "guard oneself fearfully," that is, not to "regard oneself as pure" (S. 53:32), not to act presumptuously and rebelliously (S. 96:6). One might say that the Fear of God is prior to Islam. Fear is the beginning of faith, which in turn is the source of ethical conduct.

Morality is never a question either of God's initiative alone or of human freedom alone. God's action is, of course, antecedent; but the Creator has not made light of His creatures by compelling their response one way or the other. On the other hand, whatever human beings do, they are responding willy-nilly to the initiative of God. The Qw°an, understood as a whole, maintains a clear balance and proportion be- tween these two conditions of morality, though many apparently am- biguous texts have often been misread as an almost complete denial of mankind's ethical response. Five points are offered here as a tentative clarification of some of those ambiguities.

First of all, the Qur?an depicts creation as a Trust offered initially to the Heavens and the Earth. They were afraid to accept the Trust, but humanity accepted it, even though (or perhaps because?) mankind was sinful and foolish (S. 33:72). When God informed the angels that He was about to put His vicegerent Adam on earth, they warned the Creator that mankind would be unjust and would shed blood. God assured the angels that He knew what He was about (S. 2:30); for the seed of Adam had acknowledged God as their Lord, and they had done so in full knowledge of the coming Judgment and Resurrection (S. 7:172).

That God knew well the risk involved in giving humanity free choice

6 Cf. Rahbar, God of Justice, Ch. 18, "The Essential Motive Principle of Virtuous Conduct in Quranic Thought," pp. 179-193.

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is evident from the ubiquitous Quranic "perhaps" (lacalla). As Ken- neth Cragg indicates,7 the word is usually followed by verbs of knowing, recognizing, understanding, thanking, being reverent—always in con- junction with God's Signs and with reference both to creation and to the verses (Qyät) of the Qw°an. Everything in creation unfolds before humankind. "If only" they would see the Signs; "perhaps" they would respond in gratitude. Perhaps not.

Concerning the nature of God's will, D. Rahbar contributes a third point. The language of the Qur̂ an is highly rhetorical and hence open to misinterpretation. Quranic statements are not meant to be taken metaphysically or as having any philosophical axe to grind. Taken together, the texts teach that the divine "will" is indeed all- encompassing, but it neither constrains nor predetermines. "God does not change a people's estate till they change their own heart's thoughts" (S. 13:11). Rahbar draws three specific conclusions: First, God's will is not enacted on whim or caprice; it is purposeful, wise, discriminating. In short, God is no despot. Second, texts which speak of God's doing "what He wills" to "whom He wills" refer primarily to God's limitless power which is to be glorified. Finally, "God's will is sometimes men- tioned in the same breath with His Kinghood and His permission," in- dicating that the "except God will" notion is to be understood rhetorically and not metaphysically. Rahbar sums up by saying that God "works His will in guiding men's dispositions upon their will- ingness to be guided, and that He works His will in leading them into er- ror when they stubbornly defy His ordinances."8

So frequent in the Qw°an is the call to "seek forgiveness,"9 that it is nearly impossible to doubt the Book's insistence on human freedom. No one who acts unfreely need ask forgiveness, either of the God who has fixed his destiny or of the people whose fate it has been to be wronged by him. Seeking forgiveness is nevertheless at the very center of QurDanic ethics. In addition to implying an acknowledgment of personal responsibility, seeking forgiveness is the first step toward becoming receptive to the experience of God's mercy, and hence toward the fur- therance of good conduct in grateful response to the Signs that are God's mercy, and so forth. Moral growth is an ascending spiral.

Finally, Islam's ethics is an historically conditioned one. Those who respond gratefully will be vindicated by the end of history, as heralded by a succession of warning prophets who have all along presented mankind with the basic moral option on the basis of their prophetic in-

7 Mind of the Qur^an, pp. 75-92, 152-53. 8 Rahbar, God of Justice, pp. 82-84. 9 Cf. Cragg, Mind of the QurVn, pp. 110-28.

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terpretation of the Signs. The fact of impending Judgment, like the call to forgiveness, implies human responsibility. Accountability without freedom is a sham. Human responsibility dates to the acceptance of the Trust in full expectation of the Day when "every soul will know what it has done" (S. 81:14).

Muhammad was clearly a man of his own time in many ways. How- ever, pre-Islamic morality has been discussed here as a "source" of Muslim ethics less as directly formative of Islamic values than as the general ethical climate to which the Qur5an responded so vigorously and as the raw material which the Prophet would attempt to reshape.

INTERPRETATIONS

Immediately after the death of the Prophet, recollections of his words and deeds began to form a bridge between the sources we have been discussing and the institutionalized interpretations that were to evolve during the eighth and ninth centuries. Hadïth became the link between the descriptive guidance of the Qur5an and the prescriptive norms of fiqh (legal science), between the ethical and the legal. Muhammad's conduct was the obvious choice for a moral touchstone in cases not ex- plicitly treated in the Qur5an. "Personal judgment" or "opinion" (ra^y) needed to be anchored in, and subject to the critique of, the Prophet's sunna as preserved in the collective memory of the Community. Fazlur Rahman has articulated several features of Hadïth development that are important in this context.10 First of all, the Community hesitated ini- tially to commit the Prophetic sunna to writing because they feared possible confusion of Hadïth with the Qur5anic text, and/or because of the very specific applicability of the decisions exemplified in a given hadïth. As the community grew, however, its needs changed, as did the de facto moral practice of the Community. Their actual practice was still felt to be consonant with the imitation of the Prophet. Hence the term sunna, originally reserved to the behavior of Muhammad, came to mean also the "actual practice" of Muslims. Further need to regulate that practice in detail while continuing to attend to new exigencies covered neither in Qw°an nor Hadïth gave rise to a third meaning of sunna: specific ruling deduced by more or less conscious analogy. Sunna as ideal ethical norm and consensus (ijma°) as actual conduct therefore gradually merged through the implicit agency of analogical reasoning (giyäs). Sensing the dangerous possibility that the Prophetic sunna might thus be evacuated of normative force through coalescence

10 Islam (New York: Doubleday [Anchor paperback], 1966), pp. 43 ff.

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with living practice, al-Shaficï (d. 819) moved toward defining a sure and objective standard of ethics. His insistence that every moral deci- sion be shored up by reference to a hadïth (rather than by reliance on analogy) unfortunately set up the double threat of the cessation of creative theological activity on the one hand, and the fabrication of hadïths on the other. Both threats came to pass: theology became a repetitive exercise and the actual sunna of the Community gradually found its way into Hadïth.

Two clarifications need to be made here concerning Hadïth as source of ethical behavior and Hadïth as interpretation and "ethical polemic." The one has to do with the first half of the fundamental ethical tension in Islam between the search for an individual behavior-model and the need for societal norms. (The second half of the tension will be treated shortly.) As source, the Hadïth holds up the Prophet as a moral paradigm. As such the traditions were a kind of "mirror for everyman," whose binding force took the form of a personal allegiance to the Prophet, an allegiance recommended by true belief but not yet possessing the more generalized force of law. A second point has to do with Hadïth as a tool of the determinists. Numerous traditions represent a highly selective reading of the Qur̂ an and are evidently based only on those texts which, when taken out of context, support the denial of human freedom and responsibility. Of such hadïths Helmer Ringgren writes:

The traditions emphasized the divine power and tried to determine its effects and its extent in various details of human life, spiritual as well as physical. Partly those traditions are conditioned by the theological discussions of the first centuries after the higrah, partly they mark a gradual penetration of pre-Islamic fatalistic thoughts into the doctrine of Islam.11

Roughly contemporaneous with the growth of tradition-science was the evolution of legal method. By around 800, two different emphases had begun to take shape. Qur?an and Sunna were agreed to be the bases of moral behavior, but opinions varied as to how to interpret the sources. Malik b. Anas of Medina (d. 795) leaned toward a kind of con- sensus or 'agreed practice,' while Abu Hanïfa of Küfa (d. 767) tended more toward the explicit use of analogical reasoning. Al-Shaficï had studied under both Malik and Shaybanï, a student of Abu Hanïfa, and

11 Studies in Arabian Fatalism, p. 192; cf. also Rahman, Islam, p. 299, and W. Mont- gomery Watt, Freewill and Predestination in Early Islam (London: Luzac & Co., 1948) and his The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973), esp. Ch. IV, pp. 82-118.

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opted for a middle path. His legal method would include both the com- munitarian emphasis of Malik (ijmQ°) and the more rationalist- individualized element of Abu Hanifa's school (now in the form of qiyäs). Al-Shaficï, however, would give consensus decided priority over analogical reasoning. Ibn Hanbal (d. 857) would later take to its ex- treme al-Shaficï's claim that the Sunna could be found only in Hadïth. Discarding both consensus and analogy, Ibn Hanbal eliminated any possibility that personal preference or changing community needs might be adduced as a justification for straying from the Qur̂ an and Sunna. Shortly after Ibn Hanbal's time, the "Door of Original Thinking" (ijtihüd) creaked to a close. Muslim ethics had been institutionalized with a vengeance. Orthodox* legalism cast its long shadow over most of the Islamic world.12 With its concern for argument from authority and uniformity of practice, the traditionalist position had ousted from the fold of orthodoxy the other two important types of ethics: the ra- tionalist and the personalist.

At the risk of oversimplification, the three main lines of classical and medieval ethical interpretation may be broadly characterized as follows. Traditionalist ethics taught that a given action was to be considered evil precisely because God had forbidden it. It emphasized correct action in accord with Revelation as received in faith by the Community and as known to all through Islam's duly constituted teaching scholars. As to the source of ethical legitimation the position was transcendentalist. In the faith-works arena, it was activist, opting for works over faith. Its ethic was societal rather than personal in that the Community's con- certed actioh was regarded as a major encouragement and support. For a variety of Reasons, social and political, the traditionalist approach was heavily deterministic.

For the rationalist ethician, any action which could be judged in- herently evii must therefore be forbidden by God. Correct thought was the goal, knowledge in accord with reason, all leading to virtue. The ra- tionalist wafe immanentistic, looking 'within' things for the immutable principles ubon which value rests essentially. Convinced that freedom is part and parcel of humanity, this type of ethics even went to the extreme

12 On Islamic legal developments, cf. Josef Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964) and The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950); Rahman, Islam, pp. 75 ff.; R. M. Savory, "Law and Traditional Society," in Islamic Civilization, ed. R. M. Savory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Duncan Black Macdonald, The Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Theory (New York: Scribner, 1903); Noel J. Coulson, A History of Islamic Law, Islamic Surveys Series, No. 2 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Pre$s, 1965); Levy, Social Structure of Islam, pp. 175 ff.

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of determining God in order to safeguard human initiative and respon- sibility.13

According to personalist ethics, represented chiefly by the Son mystical poets, a specific action could be good or evil as judged in terms of a further end, namely, closeness to God. So, for example, Moses was acquitted of the least wrongdoing in the murder of the Copt; and Khidr (Moses* unnamed guide in S. 18) was highly praised for a series of for- mally indefensible actions recorded in scripture. Purity of heart and in- tention were the goal. Action could be legitimated on the basis of some special intuition or esoteric knowledge. Such privileged moral guidance derived only from God, but the personalist approach was neither precisely transcendentalist (as was the traditionalist) nor exclusively im- manentist (as the rationalist). The personalist tended toward quietism, valuing faith over works. It looked for 'moral support' not so much from acting in concert as from the individual's being sustained by a rela- tionship with God. Although the clearly pantheistic thinkers espoused a blatant determinism, personalism was by no means totally engulfed in determinism. As influential a writer as Jaläl al-Dîn Rumï (1207-73) steadfastly maintained both divine and human freedom, teaching that though one must ultimately become God's slave to be a true believer, one is not compelled in the process. The seeker may freely reject God's grace and can become God's slave only by freely relinquishing his free will.14

On the basis of this brief survey of the outlines of classical and medieval ethical developments, the following conclusions can be set forth. First, insofar as the Hadïth literature presents the Prophet as an ethical paradigm, the Hadïth can be regarded as a primary source of Muslim ethics. That the textual content of the traditions was never con- sidered liable to critical scrutiny implies complete trust that whatever the Prophet said or did, it was to be considered worthy of imitation. Insofar as large segments of Hadïth are, in Rahman's words, "uncompromis-

13 George Hourani devoted a number of significant publications to this subject, especially Islamic Rationalism: The Ethics of cAbd al-Jabbär (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971); "Juwayni's Criticism of Muctazilite Ethics," The Muslim World, LXV (1975), 161-73; "Two Theories of Value in Medieval Islam," M.W., L (1960), 269-78; "Ghazali on the Ethics of Action," JAOS, XCVI (1976), 69-88; "The Rationalist Ethics of cAbd al-Jabbar," in Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition (Richard Walzer Festschrift) (Oxford: Cassirer, 1972), pp. 105-15; "Ethics in Medieval Islam: A Conspec- tus," in Essays on Islamic Philosophy and Science, ed. George Hourani (Albany: SUNY Press, 1975), pp. 128-35. See also Muhammad Umaruddin, The Ethical Philosophy ofal- Ghazzali (Aligarh, 1951); Franz Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of Freedom (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960); Richard Walzer, Greek into Arabic: Essays in Islamic Philosophy (Oxford: Cassirer, 1972), pp. 142-63, 220-35.

14 Cf. Masnavi (Nicholson's translation), Bk. Ill, 2900 ff., Bk. IV, 401-5.

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ingly deterministic,"15 they must be viewed as interpretation and not of a piece with the Quran's more balanced picture. Second, and from a slightly different angle, the very fact of Hadïth implies an interest in a personal ethibs whereby each individual is encouraged to imitate the Prophet. At ihe sanie time, the method of Hadïth development and in- terpretation implies an equally strong social bias in ethics, based on strong faith n the trustworthiness of the Community as transmitter. That communitarian bias allowed society to legitimate the survival of ethical norms through isnöd criticism, i.e., the process of pronouncing scores of individual transmitters to be credible repositories of moral value. Third, early preference for ijmQc over qiyäs further underscores a faith in the Community, acting in good faith, as the …