Moral Habituation in the Law: Rethinking the Ethics of the Sharīʿa

Abstract

AbstractThis essay contributes to a longstanding concern with the place of ethics in Islamic law, suggesting a reorientation of the debate through a consideration of the role of habituation in works of uṣūl and furūʿ. I demonstrate that the well-known emphasis on habituation in Aristotle’s ethics, and its underlying conception of character, exerted a heavy influence on writers of akhlāq works. I then examine the development of three fiqhī concepts – idmān, iqāma and iṣrār – to show how jurists embedded this conception of moral behavior in the discursive fiqh tradition, linking their disapproval of persistent sinful or morally distasteful behavior to a tangible legal effect: the forfeiture of the violator’s standing before the court. Based on this finding, I argue that jurists and moralists operated in a shared universe of normativity in which the commitment to habituation as a premier mode of ethical cultivation was held in common.