IB World Religions 5.6.2. Akhlaq in Practice: Family, Modesty, Struggle and Charity Notes

5.6.2. Akhlaq in Practice: Family, Modesty, Struggle and Charity

Akhlaq and character

1. Akhlaq is the Arabic word for character and for ethics at the same time, and Muslims treat the two as one subject. The aim is not only right acts but a settled disposition from which right acts follow.
2. The Prophet is the model. A hadith reports him saying he was sent to perfect noble character, and his wife A'ishah is reported to have described his character as the Qur'an itself.
3. Adab, good manners, is the everyday face of akhlaq. It covers greeting, speech, table manners, keeping promises, and how a person treats servants, neighbours and strangers.
4. A hadith gives the tradition its golden rule, saying that none of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. Commentators have long asked whether brother means fellow Muslim or every human being, and both readings are defended.
5. Respect for elders and mercy to the young are pressed as duties. A hadith says that whoever shows no mercy to our young and no respect to our old is not one of us, and care for ageing parents is treated as an obligation rather than a kindness.
6. Niyyah, intention, governs the whole. Because Muslims hold Allah judges intention as well as outcome, an ordinary act done for His sake counts as worship while a good act done for display counts for nothing.

Protection of the weak

1. The Qur'an returns constantly to those with least power. Orphans, widows, the poor, travellers, debtors, captives and the enslaved are named as claims on the community rather than as objects of pity.
2. Care of orphans is the sharpest case. The Prophet was orphaned himself, a hadith promises the guardian of an orphan a place beside him in paradise, and consuming an orphan's property is described as swallowing fire.
3. Zulm, wrongdoing and above all oppression, is the word for the opposite. A hadith has Allah saying that He has forbidden oppression to Himself and made it forbidden among people.
4. Life is treated as inviolable. The Qur'an says that whoever kills a soul, other than for a soul or for corruption in the land, is as though he had killed all humanity, and Muslims apply the verse to murder and to warfare alike.
5. Suicide falls under the same principle, since Muslims hold that life is a trust from Allah rather than a possession. Imams increasingly pair the ruling with pastoral care, teaching that mental illness reduces or removes accountability.
6. The duty reaches animals and land. Hadiths promise reward for giving water to a thirsty dog and condemn cruelty and waste, and Muslim environmental organisations build their case on these texts.

Marriage, polygamy and divorce

1. Marriage is presented as the normal state and as a religious act. A hadith calls it half of religion, the Qur'an describes spouses as garments for one another, and the tradition treats celibacy as no virtue.
2. Rights run in both directions. The wife receives the mahr, a dower paid to her and kept as her own, together with maintenance and the right to hold property and earnings in her own name.
3. Polygyny is permitted and hedged about. The Qur'an allows up to four wives in a verse addressed to the care of orphans, and adds that if you fear you cannot deal justly, then marry only one.
4. Muslims read that condition very differently. Some scholars treat the permission as standing, others point to a further verse saying you will never be able to be just between women, and Tunisia has prohibited the practice while Turkey and others restrict it.
5. Divorce is permitted and discouraged. A widely quoted hadith calls it the most disliked of the things Allah has permitted, and the Qur'an requires a waiting period, the iddah, with arbitration by both families before it takes effect.
6. Wives have routes out of their own. Khul' lets a woman end a marriage by returning the mahr, judicial divorce is available for harm or neglect, and instant triple talaq has been restricted or criminalised in Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and India.

Sexual conduct and abortion

1. Sexual relations are confined to marriage. Zina, intercourse outside it, is forbidden to men and women in the same terms, and the Qur'an separately forbids accusing anyone of it without four witnesses.
2. The tradition asks for restraint before it asks for penalties. Believers are told to lower the gaze and guard their modesty, and the evidential bar for punishment is set so high that jurists rarely met it.
3. Same-sex relations are held impermissible by all the classical schools, and that remains the position of most scholars now. A minority of Muslim writers contest the reading, and Muslim communities differ sharply over how gay and lesbian Muslims should be treated.
4. Abortion is discussed through the question of when the soul is given. Many jurists read a hadith about stages of formation as placing ensoulment at one hundred and twenty days, while others argue for forty.
5. The rulings follow from that choice. Hanafi jurists commonly permit abortion before the ensoulment point for a serious reason, Maliki jurists tend to forbid it from conception, and every school permits it at any stage to save the mother's life.
6. Contemporary cases test the frame. Fatwas were issued permitting abortion for women raped during the Bosnian war, and Muslims living under permissive secular laws often find the religious ruling the stricter of the two.

Modesty and the veil

1. Haya, modesty, is the value underneath the discussion, and a hadith counts it among the branches of faith. It governs speech and bearing as well as dress, and the Qur'an addresses it to men before it addresses it to women.
2. Two passages carry the argument. One tells believing men and then believing women to lower their gaze and guard their modesty and to draw the khimar over the bosom, and another tells women to draw their outer garments, the jilbab, about them when they go out.
3. The words for coverings are many and local. Hijab now usually means a headscarf, the niqab covers the face, the chador and the abaya are full outer garments, and the burqa with its mesh panel is chiefly Afghan.
4. Most schools hold that the hair should be covered, they disagree over the face, and a small number of modern scholars argue that the requirement was social rather than permanent. Muslim women themselves hold every one of these positions.
5. Compulsion is contested from both directions. Iran enforces covering by law and has met sustained protest, France bans the headscarf in state schools and the face veil in public, and Muslim women have challenged both policies in court.
6. Women give varied reasons for their own choices. Interviews and surveys record piety, identity, family expectation, protection from harassment and political statement, and many women describe their reasons changing across a lifetime.

Jihad and sadaqah

1. Jihad means struggle, and the tradition divides it in two. The greater jihad is the struggle against one's own selfishness, and the lesser jihad is the collective defence of the community.
2. The greater jihad is the daily one. Muslims apply it to keeping the fast of Ramadan, holding back anger, studying, resisting temptation and praying when prayer is inconvenient.
3. The lesser jihad is bounded by rules. Classical law requires legitimate authority, a just cause of defence and proportionality, and it protects non-combatants, crops, trees and places of worship.
4. Muslim scholars overwhelmingly reject the use of the word by armed groups for attacks on civilians. The Amman Message and open letters signed by hundreds of scholars argue that such acts fail every classical condition at once.
5. Sadaqah is voluntary giving, distinguished from the obligatory zakat. A hadith calls every act of kindness sadaqah, a smile included, so the word covers time and speech as well as money.
6. Sadaqah jariyah, continuing charity, is giving whose benefit outlasts the giver, and the waqf, a permanent endowment, built wells, schools and hospitals on that principle. Muslim relief agencies work in the same frame today.