Ethics of questioning in the words of Imam Ali (AS)

Ethics refers to the carnal characteristics of man, and questioning is rooted in human thought and is discussed as ethics of thinking under applied ethics. According to Imam Ali (AS), questioning is one of the indicators which represents that people are attentive and feel responsible for society's problems. In Imam Ali's words, the ethics of questioning means observing the ethical rules in the questioning process as a necessary condition for society's prosperity, growth, and development. Despite the importance of the questioning index in the development of society, the way of observing ethical standards in the questioning process determines the constructive or destructive role of questioning in that society. Ethical questioning has a long history in religious and Islamic texts and sources. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status of ethics-based questioning through a qualitative content analysis of Imam Ali's speech, including lectures, sermons, letters, and short speeches extracted from Nahj al-Balaghah and other related sources. The results of the qualitative content analysis showed that the ethics-questioning model, according to Imam Ali (AS), has three main issues: (1) characteristics of question (being exploratory and purposeful and paying attention to the quantity and quality); (2) the characteristics of the questioner (being wise, knowledgeable, opportunism and brave) and the characteristics of the respondent ( being attentive, eager to question and answer); (3) the results and consequences of inquiry (knowledge acquisition, enlightenment, awareness, and progress).