Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

GOD’ S WAY t 171
was provided by the body of traditions handed down about the
Prophet’s own behavior, but there remained the considerable task
of explaining, ordering, and adducing into their particulars the
general moral principles provided by revelation. This fell to the
science of jurisprudence (fiqh), which Ghazali (d. 1111) defined as
“the science of scriptural rules established for the regulation of the
acts of those who are obliged,” that is, the Muslims. Muslim dialectical
theology (kalam), in contrast, took up the investigation,
explanation, and defense of the principles themselves, among them
the not inconsiderable task of reconciling God’s all-determining
Will and humans’ responsibility for their own acts.
Note: The behavioral codes of the three monotheistic communities
are thought to rest on God’s will, as expressed in the commandments
and teachings he had laid down in Scripture. The matter, as it turned
out, was far more complex. There was, to begin with, a powerful
competing vision of what constituted the good for humankind. What
the Greco-Roman ethical tradition principally contributed to the
moral systems of the monotheists was the fruit of a long, richly detailed,
and highly intuitive scrutiny of human character. Plato, Aristotle,
and the Stoics lay bare the wellsprings of human action and
devised a typology of human personality. Sin, the concrete reprehensible
act—hamartia, “missing the mark,” the Greeks called it—interested
them far less than vice, the habituated and habitual character
trait that produced such an act. The formation and content of monotheistic
morality had a strongly personal cast: sin is an offense against
God or, more specifically, against something God had willed. The motivation
for such acts was somewhat problematic. An “evil impulse”
or Satan was sometimes fingered as the immediate culprit by the
rabbis, whereas for the Christians, Original Sin provided a more general
explanation.
Once the Jews and Christians, and latterly the Muslims, came in
contact with Greek ethical theory, these explanations of why humans
acted in despite of God’s express will became somewhat less than
satisfactory. The monotheists did not need the Greeks and Romans to
tell them that “the good that I would do, I do not” (Rom. 7:19), that