Perspectives on Morality and Human Well-Being by Syed Nawab Haider Naqvi

Author:Syed Nawab Haider Naqvi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kube Publishing Ltd
Published: 2003-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

V. Problem Areas in a Traditional Islamic Ethical System

Economic progress is vital to human well-being. The Islamic ethical system must, therefore, facilitate it. However, the fact is that Islamic ethics has not been stated explicitly enough to strengthen the individual’s commitment to economic development as a matter of his/her moral duty in the same way as it does on matters relating to distributive justice and poverty reduction.44 A lack of interaction between Islamic ethics and the requirements of economic development hurts both. Inasmuch as religious ethics has not lent direct support to economic growth, it has compromised economic and human development in Muslim societies. This incongruence between Islamic ethics and economics must, therefore, be removed, especially because the former, as noted above, is essentially progrowth.

In this respect, Western (Christian) efforts to adapt an ossified ethical structure to the ethos of the Industrial Revolution are relevant. As related in Chapter 3, the traditional Christian value system, meant to serve the needs of rural societies, could not even comprehend the dynamics of a fast-changing urban society. It was thus confronted with the choice of either being helpful to the cause of economic change, or becoming totally irrelevant to it. Fortunately, however, the Christian theological doctrine was practically rewritten, first in Western Europe and then much later in the United States, to be able to respond positively to the challenge of economic growth and urbanisation, while retaining its religious credential. Calvinism took up the challenge in Europe. Tawney (1937) notes that from its “reiterated insistence on secular obligations as imposed by the divine will” flowed the principle that, “not withdrawal from the world, but the conscientious discharge of the duties of business, is among the loftiest of religious and moral virtues” (p. 239). This was a radical departure from the traditional (Roman Catholic) Christian position, which regarded the economic motive as entirely alien to the life of the spirit. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to state that Calvinism’s was “the first systematic body of doctrine [in Christianity] which can be said to recognize and applaud the economic values” (p. 114). Much later, the Social Gospellers performed a similar feat in the United States. They discarded, around 1890, the fundamental Christian theological doctrines of “original sin and innate depravity” to make Christian ethics usable for tackling the problems of growth and distributive inequities [Fogel (2000); p. 119].45

Fortunately, Islam does not have to go so far as the Christians had to. It is not necessary to rewrite Islamic theological doctrine to make its ethical values helpful to economic progress. Islam does explicitly recognise the excellence of human creation and his/her freedom from any original sin or innate depravity. Instead, human beings, freed from the chains of an irrelevant past, are entrusted with the task of rebuilding societies on strong economic and moral foundations. What, then, explains the historical ineffectiveness of Islam’s ethical system in inculcating a commitment in Muslim men/women to roll back the forces of economic, social and moral decline of their societies in

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