Islamic Ethics

Origins of Islam

Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad first received revelations from God (Allah) while fasting and meditating in a cave outside the city of Mecca, in the year 610. These revelations continued throughout Muhammad's life, and his oral transmissions were eventually collected, organized, and recorded to form the Quran, Islam's holy book. As the first Muslim, Muhammad bore witness and took a vow (Shahada) of submission to Allah, a vow that included acceptance of the biblical story from Adam to Christ. Through force of personality and leadership, and by his own example as a Muslim, Muhammad, by the time of his death in 632, had united most of the Arabian tribes into a single community (Ummah).

Muhammad's faith of Islam (literally meaning submission to God) came to extend far beyond the Arabian Peninsula to include most of the vast Persian empire and parts of Byzantium, and within a century encompassed lands ranging from western India and Central Asia through northern Africa. Later, this Islamic World (Dar al-Islam) expanded into Spain and penetrated parts of France and eastern and southern Italy. Malaysia and Indonesia, currently among the most populous Islamic countries, did not embrace Islam until the 14th century, when Arab traders transported the faith along with their wares. Today Islam is the world's second largest and fastest growing religion, with more than 1 billion followers worldwide, including many millions in the West.

Sources of Islamic Ethics

Islamic morality, ethics, and jurisprudence are all derived from two primary sources that together constitute Sacred Law (Shariah). The first is the Quran, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. The second source, and perhaps most accessible, is the Sunnah, or life of the Prophet, which was transmitted through sayings attributed to Muhammad himself, as well as by detailed narrations of his life that can be traced to his contemporaries. Instead of constituting a formal code of morality or ethics, the hadiths are rather a guide for everyday living, and, although their historical validity is often the subject of debate, Muslims believe in their authenticity and follow them closely.

The Quran often uses phrases that are “reminders” to the faithful to pay attention to their religious faith and to remember Allah and their obligations to neighbors and society. In Islamic cities and villages this reminder is manifested on a daily basis through the calls to prayer (namaz) of the muezzin. The Quran goes beyond addressing a single individual's obligations since it also prescribes a doctrine for the community as a whole that is both social and political in nature and that has morality, compassion, justice, honesty, peace, tolerance, and self-sacrifice as its basis.

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