Islam: Prudentially Moral and Morally Prudential

This paper is an attempt to delineate the relation between Islam and natural morality. It first, in a Kantian but non-reductive manner, identifies Islam with morality, defining Islam as the morally prescribed relationship with Allah. Pointing out the incompetence of this moralist view of Islam to stand the test of the Islamic Scriptures, the paper then takes on the task of explicating the sense in which Islam is moral rather than morality. Finally, Islam is identified as a system of religious ethics carefully built simultaneously on the basis of moral and prudential considerations.