Abstract
This chapter aims at developing a doctrine of moral pluralism based on Islamic intellectual tradition. It draws upon modern concepts to differentiate between religious and moral pluralism on the one side and moral pluralism and ethical relativism on the other side. It shows that two concepts form the foundation of moral pluralism, namely the concept of universality, that includes core moral principles, and the concept of plurality of moral values. The two concepts are identified in the Islamic intellectual tradition, represented by the Mu‘tazilite and Ash‘arite ethical theories, i.e. the theory of rational obligation developed by the Mu‘tazila and the theory of maqāṣid al-sharīʿa or the purposes of law developed by the late Ash‘arites. The two theories combined can provide us with a theory of moral pluralism that is authentic and contemporary.
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Notes
- 1.
George F. Hourani, “Divine Justice and Human Reason in Mu’tazilite Ethical Theology,” in Ethics in Islam, ed., Richard G. Hovannisian (California: Undena Publications, 1985), 19.
- 2.
Khaled Abou El Fadl, “What type of law is Islamic Law,” in Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law, eds., Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ahmad Atef Ahmad and Said Fares Hassan (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 11–39.
- 3.
Adel Daher, “Democracy, Pluralism and Political Islam,” in The Challenge of Pluralism: Paradigms from Muslim Contexts, eds., Abdou Filali-Ansary and Ahmed Sikeena Kamali (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 63.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Andrew March, Islam and Libersl Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 70.
- 6.
Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theologyof Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983).
- 7.
Diana L. Eck, “Is Our God Listening? Exclusivism, Inclusivism and Pluralism,” in Islam and Global Dialogue: Religious Pluralism and the Pursuit of Peace, ed., Roger Boase (England-USA: Ashgate, 2005), 21–49.
- 8.
Michael Barnes Norton, Religious Pluralism- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d. Accessed 12 June 2018. <http://www.iep.utm.edu/rel-plur/>
- 9.
John Hick, Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 191.
- 10.
Norton, Religious Pluralism, op. cit.
- 11.
Marcia K. Hermansen, “Classical and Contemporary Islamic Perspectives on Religgious Plurality,” in Islam, Religions and Pluralism in Europe, eds., Ednan Aslan, Ranja Ebrahim, Marcia Hermansen (Springer VS, 2016), 39–56.
- 12.
Roger Trigg, Religious Diversity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 28–29.
- 13.
Ibid, 41.
- 14.
Hick , Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion, 34.
- 15.
Trigg, Religious Diversity, 44.
- 16.
Eck , “Is Our God Listening? Exclusivism, Inclusivism and Pluralism,” 21–49.
- 17.
John Bowden, “Religious Pluralism and the Heritage of the Enlightment,” in Islam and Global Dialogue: Religious Pluralism and the Pursuit of Peace, ed., Roger Boase (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 13–21.
- 18.
Muhammad Legenhausen, “A Muslim’s Non-Reductive Religious Pluralism,” in Islam and Global Dialogue, ed., Roger Boase, 51–73.
- 19.
Mohammed Hashas, The Idea of European Islam: Religion, Ethics, Politics and Perpetual Modernity (London, New York: Routlege, 2019), 234.
- 20.
Paula Zoido Oses, Between History and Philosophy: Isaiah Berlin on Political Theory and Hermeneutics, PhD Dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), 2016, 180.
- 21.
Joshua Cherniss and Henry Hardy, “Isaiah Berlin,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed. <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/berlin/>
- 22.
Oses, Between history and philosophy, 145.
- 23.
Isaiah Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 10.
- 24.
John Kekes, The Morality of Pluralism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 23.
- 25.
Ibid, 25.
- 26.
Hans Küng, A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 105.
- 27.
Abu Hamed al-Ghazālī, Al-Mustasfa min ‘Ilm al-Usul, Vol. 1 (Beirut: Dar Sader, 1995).
- 28.
Norton, Religious Pluralism, op. cit.
- 29.
Khaled Abou El Fadl, “What type of law is Islamic Law,” in Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law, eds., Khaled Abou El Fadl, et al., op. cit., 11–39.
- 30.
Bernard Gert and Joshua Gert, “The Definition of Morality,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Edward N. Zalta, ed., 2017. Accessed 4 December 2018. <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/morality-definition/>
- 31.
William K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief,” Contemporary Review, 1877, 5. Accessed 05 January 2020, <http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/Clifford_ethics.pdf>
- 32.
Peter Van Inwagen, “Is it Wrong Everywhere, Always and for Anyone to Believe Anything on Insufficient Evidence?” in Faith, Freedom and Rationality, eds., Jeff Jordan, and Daniel Howard-Snyder (Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield Press, 1996), 141.
- 33.
Isaiah Berlin, The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997), 10.
- 34.
Cherniss and Hardy, “Isaiah Berlin,” op. cit.
- 35.
Ibid.
- 36.
James Rachels, “Encyclopædia Britannica,” Encyclopædia Britannica, 24 August 2015. Accessed 15 May 2019. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethical-relativism>
- 37.
George F. Hourani, “Divine Justice and Human Reason in Mu’tazilite Ethical Theology,” in Ethics in Islam, ed., Richard G. Hovannisian (Ninth Annual Levi Della Vida Conference, 6–8 May 1983) (Malibu, Calif: Undena Publications, 1985), 73–83.
- 38.
Mariam al-Attar, “Meta-ethics: A Quest for an Epistemological Basis of Morality in Classical Islamic Thought,” Journal of Islamic Ethics 1: 1–2 (2017): 29–50.
- 39.
Kevin Reinhart, “What We Know about Maʿrūf,” Journal of Islamic Ethics 1:1–2 (2017): 51–82.
- 40.
‛Abd al-Jabbār Abū al-Ḥasan al-Asadābādī, al-Mughnī fī Abwāb al-Tawḥīd wa al-‛Adl, al-Ta‘dīl wa al-Tajwīr, Vol. 6–1. (no publication references), 89.
- 41.
‛Abd al-Jabbār Abū al-Ḥasan al-Asadābādī, al-Mughnī fī Abwāb al-Tawḥīd wa al-‛Adl, al-Taklīf, Vol. 11. (Cairo: n.h., 1965), 384.
- 42.
Richard M. Frank, “Moral Obligation in Classical Muslim Theology,” Journal of Religious ethics 11:2 (1983): 204–223.
- 43.
Maṣlaḥa is much closer in meaning to wellbeing as argued by Felicitas Opwis in “Maṣlaḥa in Contemporary Islamic Legal Theory,” Islamic Law and Society, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2005), 182–223.
- 44.
By introducing the term of munāsib (appropriate) to describe the relationship between individual rulings and the maqāṣid, al-Ghazālī maintained that the objectives of the law promulgate human wellbeing, while avoiding the Mu‘azilite assertion that the law has to serve human wellbeing.
- 45.
Abu Hamed al-Ghazālī, Al-Mustaṣfa min ‘Ilm al-Uṣūl, Vol. 1 (Beirut: Dar Ṣader, 1995).
- 46.
Felicitas Opwis, “maqasid al-Shariʿah,” in Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law, eds, Khaled Abou El Fadl, et al., op. cit., 195–207.
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al-Attar, M. (2021). Theories of Ethics in Islamic Thought and the Question of Moral Pluralism. In: Hashas, M. (eds) Pluralism in Islamic Contexts - Ethics, Politics and Modern Challenges. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66089-5_4
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