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A Quest for the Values in Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Hichem Djaït
Hichem Djaït*
Affiliation:
Tunis
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Extract

The subject of values presents certain dangers. Why not the moral philosophy of Islam or even the ethics of Islam? The term “moral” seems traditional, if not antiquated: it connotes the ideas of good and evil, a long list of commandments and interdictions; it evokes a restraint of the individual, something limiting and narrow. The word “ethics” is more acceptable; it is closer to the idea of a system of values, a global vision of the moral life, but it may also express a normative process. Max Weber speaks of Islam and other religions as being ethical religions, that is. “a complex of commandments and bans whose transgression is sin,” and he imputes this particularity to prophecy that “produces a centralization of ethics.” The term “values” is often used today, and it corresponds better to modern sensitivity preoccupied with the search for dispersed or connected values on which to base its behavior and its image. We know that the “theory of values” began with Western moralist philosophers as a substitute for the old morality, experienced as submission, and to introduce the idea of a personal morality, the essential being to conform to freely-chosen values. However, we may also speak of collective values or even of values attached to a particular line of conduct that they establish, for example, “martial values.” “tribal values” or “fundamental values.” A value may be isolated, like a Platonic idea, put into a package or even a system. It remains none the less abstract, since it is itself the product of an abstraction and rarely a creation. To look for the values of a culture, a religion or a society is to devote oneself to an operation of extraction from a multitude of data. It is truly a quest, one that allows for personal interpretation in selection from the lime that one becomes sensitive to one line of values rather than to another. Thus is presented the problem of the divergence of values within a single ethical system, especially if it is as vast as that of Islam. My purpose here is not selective. It is to go in search of the values of Islam in their variety while trying to find a guideline and also locating them at various levels of comprehension.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 31 , Issue 124 , July 1983 , pp. 90 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

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poetryGoogle Scholar
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ethico-political thoughtGoogle Scholar
al-MÂWARDÎ, Adab al-Dunyâ wa-l-dîn, Cairo, 1955.Google Scholar
al-MuRÂDÎ, K. al-Ishâra ilâ adab al-Imâra, Beirut, 1981.Google Scholar
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Idem, al-Hikma al-Khâlida, Cairo, 1952.Google Scholar
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GoldzIHER, I. “Muruwwa und Dîn,” in Muhammedanische Studiens, Halle, 1890, I.Google Scholar
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Hodgson, M., The Venture of Islam, Chicago, 1976, especially Vol. II.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izutsu, T., The Structure of the Ethical Terms in the Koran, Tokyo, 1959.Google Scholar
Idem, God and Man in the Koran, Tokyo, 1964.Google Scholar
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