Excuse my almost total ignorance here. I asked for books these past two months and no one has been able to find them. I am more ignorant than truly necessary.
What I know is that Islam expects charity, as do Christianity and Judaism. I know justice is also expected.
What do these virtues mean to Islam? What content has been given them by the philosophers and jurists of Islam?
sch
[Let this one be evidence of what it is like to not have Google, as I lacked from March 2010 until I got to the VOA halfway house's second floor in June 2021. I just googled "Islam virtues" and let me share the results.
Morality in Islam from Wikipedia:
In Islam, morality in the sense of "practical guidelines"[1] or "specific norms or codes of behavior" for good doing (as opposed to ethical theory),[2][3] are primarily based on the Quran and the Hadith – the central religious texts of Islam[4] – and also mostly "commonly known moral virtues"[5] whose major points "most religions largely agree on".[1] They include kindness (to people and animals), charity,[6] forgiveness, honesty, patience, justice, respecting parents and elders, keeping promises, and controlling one's anger,[7] love of God and those God loves, love of his messenger (Muhammad) and of believers.[8]
The virtues of Islam are often discussed in theory, but those who are most aware of the merits of Islam for what they really are, and who feel and taste the sweetness of faith, are those who adhere by the teachings and morals of Islam in their lives and with their families and neighbors, in their dealings and their solitude. Islam instills infinite values in those who commit to its teachings; values that emanate from one’s conscience. These values are present even in the absence of preventive law. They are far nobler than mere convenience and are derived from a higher source than the theories of a philosopher, a wise man, or a group of legislators.
36 Islamic Everyday Virtues is way too long for me to quote, but I do notice an overlap with Aristotle and with The Bible. Islam’s adaptation of virtue ethics: Bringing light to the challenges of a post-pandemic world is where I will end:
The form of philosophical ethics that goes back to Aristotle — often referred to as virtue ethics — is based, not upon conceptions of the right (as in Kantian ethics) or the good (as in utilitarianism), but on a particular understanding human nature and biology. Religious traditions tended to adopt this form of ethics in the medieval period — and hence theological ethics within Islamic and Christian or Jewish traditions often dealt with such common affects as anxiety, fear, and sorrow, their causes and their treatment. For example, the tenth-century Christian ethicist Yahya bin ʿAdī worked on the refinement of character, while the eleventh-century Muslim ethicist Miskawayh produced a book with the same title (tahdhib al-akhlaq) relying on Aristotle’s ethical framework. Muslim ethicists in particular both Islamised Aristotelian virtue ethics and harmonised it with the Qur’ān and sunnah (the prophetic tradition).
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In the Islamic ethical tradition, ethics (akhlaq) means that one performs good behaviour spontaneously, without hesitation, and with minimal deliberation. Ethics is, moreover, considered a faculty (malakah), a property of the soul which comes into existence through exercise and repetitive practice, and so is not easily undone. Following the Aristotelian tradition, medieval Muslim ethicists discussed the purpose of human beings and the achievement of virtue and virtue being pleasurable. They analysed the three faculties of the soul: intellectual (ʿaql), irascible (ghadab), appetitive (shahwah) — the purpose of each faculty, the virtue underlying each faculty, its sub-virtues and how to acquire them, virtue being a balance of each faculty and vice being an imbalance, the excess and deficiency of each faculty and vices and how to treat them. They conclude that there are four pillars of good character: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.
I wish I had more time to read the last article, it covers also Christian and Jewish ethics. sch 12/19/22]
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