The Moral Criterion of Economic Activity from the Perspective of Holy Quran's Economic Verses

Normative ethics, as a branch of moral philosophy, seeks to achieve moral standards to regulate right and wrong behaviors of human beings. Regarding the factors involved in these behaviors’ being right or wrong, the following views have been put forward: virtue ethics (which permits the action that has originated from virtue), consequentialism (according to which the measure of rightness of the action is its results), deontology (whose criterion is not the action’s results, but rather its nature), and consequentialist deontology. The aim of this study is to comparatively examine the ethical measure of humans’ economic activity with regard to the economic verses of Quran. Thus, at first, a brief explanation of the normative ethical theories is offered, and then, examining Quran’s economic verses in the form of declarative and normative statements, some examples for each of these theories are stated. The findings show that according to the instances stated in the economic verses of the Holy Quran, the spirit of the economic activities should be that of virtue, that is, having goodmotivation and moderation in economic affairs, and that economic agents should consider consequentialist deontology in the sense of commitment to divine commandments in the economic sphere and in the meantime pay attention to the consequences of Quran’s economic traditions.