Ethical theories: An Islamic Perspective (2022)

‘Righteousness is not in turning your faces towards the east or the west. Rather, the righteous are those who believe in Allah, the Last Day, the angles, the Books and the prophets…’ Qur’an 2:177.

Humans have always grappled with the notion of justice and human rights. It is precisely because of the prevalence of injustice in the world that we have an inherent yearning to make the world right and just. Throughout history, philosophers developed theories that provide a unified account of how to live the good and just life. The three main theories are: utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and virtue ethics.

Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham

Jeremy Bentham, in late 18th century England, observed that all human beings are governed by pleasure and pain – ‘mankind’s sovereign masters’ as he called them. Because we like pleasure and dislike pain, the most moral course of action is that which maximises pleasure over pain. This is called the greatest happiness principle - that the moral quality of an action is judged according to its consequences for human happiness. Arguably, Bentham’s theory is perhaps the most antithetical to an Islamic worldview. 

Islam does not judge an action according to whether it produces good or bad consequences, whether it maximises pleasure over pain. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is reported to have said: “Nothing afflicts a Muslim of hardship, nor illness, nor anxiety, nor sorrow, nor harm, nor distress, nor even the pricking of a thorn, but that Allah will expiate his sins by it.” This powerful hadith reverses the pleasure/pain dichotomy. The Muslim lives in the world as a hermit, a ‘stranger’ with the realisation that the world is a means to an end and not an end itself. Therefore, what is good for the hereafter is good for him and what is bad for it, is bad for him. Simple. Under this worldview, worldly pleasure is not the purpose of existence and pain takes a noble character because suffering pain is not meaningless. This perspective only makes sense from a theocentric ontology that places God at the center of existence. For Bentham, however, God is replaced by the principle of utility and human happiness. 

Kantian ethics: Immanuel Kant 

Immanuel Kant developed his ethical theory during the Enlightenment period when Western civilisation rejected Christian authority for truth, preferring reason and science. Kant argued that people should act based on whether they want such actions to be universal and done by everyone to everyone. Essentially, every action was to be reasoned. All immoral actions are therefore irrational actions. For example, murder is always wrong because if everyone does it to everyone, no one would live. In Islam, killing a person is regarded as one of the greatest sins because of the destruction of a structure God has created and given life to. However, Kant’s idea of morality does not depend on scripture. He comes up with the prohibition of murder solely within human reason. According to mainstream Islam (Ashari and Maturidi schools of theology), murder is a sin because God proscribed it regardless of whether reason detects it or not.

The problem with Kantian ethics is not Kant’s reliance on reason. Rational inquiry has always held a high status throughout Islamic civilisation, from Al-Kindi, Islam’s first philosopher, to Al-Ghazali also known as Ḥujjat ul Islām (The Proof of Islam). The Qur’an repeatedly appeals to reason such as in verse 2:44, ‘will you not reason’?. The Qur’an goes further and challenges opponents to bring substantive proofs for their arguments: “[Prophet], say, ‘Produce your evidence, if you are telling the truth’” (2:111). Rather, the problem with Kantian ethics from an Islamic perspective is because it elevates reason above other sources of knowledge, such as the heart (al-qalb) and revelation (wahy), which are integral parts of Islamic epistemology. For Kant, reason alone is considered to be the medium for understanding God, whereas, for Al-Ghazali, in his masterpiece, Revival of Religious Sciences (Ihya Ulumuddin), the heart as a privileged tool for divine illumination and the experiential knowing of God.

Virtue Ethics: Aristotle 

This ethical theory goes back to Aristotle in the classical period. Virtue ethics is not based upon reason (Kantian ethics), or human happiness (Utilitarianism), but on a particular understanding of human nature and biology. It places emphasis not on rules that you should follow, but rather the type of person you should become. In other words, the most moral action is not one that produces good consequences but is a decision made by a virtuous person. Some virtuous traits according to Aristotle are: wisdom (hikma), temperance (mizan), justice (adl’), courage (shuja’) and excellence (ihsan).

This theory has been largely abandoned by the West. After the Enlightenment, virtues were replaced by science and reason, and in today’s post-modern age, if one were to speak of virtues, they are dismissed as sanctimonious or conservative. However, Islam adopts a very similar form of ethics to Aristotelian virtue ethics and later scholars have harmonised it with the Qur’an and Sunnah. Aristotle’s theory is based on virtuous character, which for Muslims, means to behave according to the life and practices of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the Perfect Man (al-Insan al-Kamil).  

Conclusions

I briefly presented three main schools of ethical theory that I encountered at university. My aim is to encourage Muslim students to delve into their own intellectual tradition so that when they encounter different theories at university – which they inevitably will – they will have the necessary tools to navigate and respond to them and not be perturbed by them. The Islamic tradition is diverse; it is not confined to ritual worship alone, it has a deep philosophical and ethical legacy that will help you in your professional careers as doctors, lawyers, businesspeople, teachers, engineers and architects. 

Today, we live in the postmodern, post-truth world of the 21st century where essences are reduced to malleable identities, meta-narratives are replaced by personal experiences, and attempts to develop a unified ethical theory are futile because all morality is relative. This presents unique challenges for Muslims, or any adherent of a faith tradition, who ascribe to an Ultimate Reality. This is because the ultimate reality of existence, Oneness (Tawhid), behind all existence, is no longer to be the default worldview in our postmodern age. 

For Muslims, the Qur’an is Al-Furqan, the Criterion, that discerns right from wrong, virtue from vice, and sets out a totalising worldview to guide mankind to the straight path (Sirat al-Mustaqim). Therefore, without a deep understanding of their intellectual tradition, Muslim students will become vulnerable to every ideology and theory that one can imagine whose underlying assumptions about the world are fundamentally antithetical to an Islamic worldview.