By Shaykh Muhammad Khalil Harras
I need not emphasise the elevated position of noble character in Islam, which regards it as the hoped-for fruit of all the beliefs and rulings it has brought. The Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, tells us that completing noble character and calling people to it by word and example were the primary purpose of his mission: “I was sent only to complete noble character.” He made it the companion of piety, saying: “The weightiest things placed in the scale on the Day of Resurrection are mindfulness of God and good character.” In his comprehensive counsel to Mu‘adh ibn Jabal, may God be pleased with him, when sending him to Yemen, he said: “Be mindful of God wherever you are; follow a bad deed with a good one, which will erase it; and treat people with good character.”
My purpose here is to explain what distinguishes Islam ethically from all the doctrines and philosophies known in ancient and modern times. This applies to its identification of the end towards which human behaviour should be directed, the source of all a person’s deeds and endeavours in this life; its cultivation of the faculty that supervises these deeds and their motivating intentions and volitions, which moral philosophers call conscience; and its discrimination concerning evil qualities, its precise standards for each, and its assessment of the circumstances surrounding actions that affect whether they are described as good or evil. These and other features testify that Islam is the religion that established a complete, practical ethical system, distinguished by its affirmative character and built upon the strongest foundations. It opened the way for humanity to ascend through the degrees of perfection to whatever this species is destined to attain, according to individual capacities and differing efforts to acquire the means of that desired perfection.
Regarding the first aspect, Islam does not recognise the lowly ethical ends about which moral philosophers prattle. These do not befit the human being as a creature destined to be resurrected into another life, there to receive recompense for what their hands have sent ahead during the limited span of their first life.
In Islam’s view, the end towards which a person’s conduct and deeds should be directed is not those immediate, short-lived pleasures that do not last and befit only dumb animals, which live solely by instinct without reason restraining them from what is inappropriate. Hedonistic ethical doctrines demean human dignity because they acknowledge no virtue in human beings and recognise no distinction between them and other animals. In their view, the human aim should be that of every living creature: obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain, and nothing else. Islam does not, of course, prohibit enjoying the good things God has permitted His servants. Indeed, it may encourage and commend this, as shown by God’s words: “Say: Who has forbidden the adornment God has brought forth for His servants, and the good provisions? Say: They are for those who believe in worldly life, exclusively theirs on the Day of Resurrection.” [al-A‘raf: 32.] And His words: “You who believe, do not prohibit the good things God has made lawful for you, and do not transgress; God does not love transgressors.” (87) [al-Ma’idah.]
Nevertheless, Islam condemns most strongly making such enjoyment one’s objective and confining one’s efforts to it, as indicated by God’s words: “On the day those who disbelieve are presented to the Fire: You exhausted your good things in your worldly life and enjoyed them.” [al-Ahqaf: 20.] And His exalted words: “Whoever desires worldly life and its adornment, We shall repay them in full for their deeds therein, and they will not be short-changed. (15) Those are the ones who have nothing in the Hereafter except the Fire. What they accomplished there has come to nothing, and their deeds are void. (16)” [Hud.] Many other verses similarly condemn those who make worldly enjoyment their final goal and do not look to the ends beyond it.
Nor, in Islam’s view, is the goal what utilitarians describe as achieving the greatest utility for the greatest number. Although this objective is nobler than the preceding one, since it seeks the collective interest, it is still not an end to which efforts should be confined. It can, rather, be considered part of what an individual should strive towards. It falls within God’s words, “Cooperate in righteousness and piety” [al-Ma’idah: 2], and the Prophet’s words, blessings and peace be upon him, “The best people are those most beneficial to others.”
Nor is the goal of conduct, as deontologists hold, doing duty for its own sake, simply because it is duty, even if that entails losing a benefit or suffering pain. Given the human being’s innate love of pleasures and benefits and dislike of pains and harms, a person cannot be moved to act except in hope of obtaining a benefit or averting harm. Doing duty merely for duty is a purely hypothetical notion rejected by Islam’s realism and its regard for human nature. The Qur’an therefore abounds in promises and warnings: promises energise souls and console them for pleasures lost and pains endured in this life, while warnings restrain them from what leads to manifest punishment in the Hereafter.
If these and other ends, which moral philosophy has laboured to establish and moralists have exhausted their minds deriving and defining, cannot serve as the ultimate end of human action and endeavour in this life, the noble Qur’an presents the end for which aspirations should compete and towards which firm resolve should hasten: attaining God’s forgiveness and pleasure, enjoying nearness to Him, and entering the abode of His mercy, the dwelling of His righteous servants. God says: “Hasten towards forgiveness from your Lord and a Garden as wide as the heavens and earth, prepared for the God-fearing.” (133) [Al ‘Imran.] He also says: “The righteous will be in bliss, (22) looking from couches. (23) You will recognise the radiance of bliss in their faces. (24) They will be given a sealed pure drink, (25) whose seal is musk. For this let those who compete compete. (26)” [al-Mutaffifin.]
After describing Paradise’s bliss in Surat al-Saffat, God says: “This indeed is the supreme triumph. (60) For the like of this let those who work work. (61)” [al-Saffat.]
Thus we see that this end, which the noble Qur’an describes as the goal for its followers in all their beliefs, words, intentions and actions, is worthy of being sought by every person who knows that their destiny in the next life depends on what they put forward in this one. The two are connected as a conclusion is connected to its premises, as God says: “Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it, (7) and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it. (8)” [al-Zalzalah.]
Shaykh Muhammad Khalil Harras (d. 1395 AH), may God have mercy on him.
Lecturer at the College of Fundamentals of Religion.
Al-Hady al-Nabawi magazine, issued by Jama‘at Ansar al-Sunnah al-Muhammadiyyah, volume 25, pp. 49–51, issue 3, 1 Rabi‘ al-Awwal 1380 AH, corresponding to August 1960. Publisher: Maktabat Manar al-Tawhid li-l-Nashr, Madinah; Maktabat Ibn Taymiyyah, Cairo, 22/49–51.