Social Intuitions and Qurʾānic Ethics

Detractors of, apologists for, and those who would simply describe Islamic ethics, often assert that the Qurʾān is the source of Muslim norms of behavior. While at one level this assertion is indisputable, to assert this casually obscures one of the most subtle and most distinctive features of Qurʾānic ethics, namely that the Qurʾān very frequently specifies that one ought to act according to norms not specified in the Qurʾān, that is, one is to have recourse to sources of ethical knowledge located elsewhere than in Revelation. This paper will justify this assertion, and then explore the implications of a Revelational specification to follow non-Revelational moral norms. Preliminarily such a doctrine would seem consistent with features of Qurʾānic anthropology and cosmology which, in contrast, for example, with most forms of Christianity, diminished the categorical difference between the Next world and This one, and between human nature and human potential. Some possible different workings-out of this ethical system for Imāmī-Shīʿī and Sunnī Islam will be considered as well.