Abolghasem Fanai's Interview with Mehrnameh Magazine: Let Us Not Substitute Jurisprudence for Ethics

In your theory of the ideal observer, you consider secular ethics and religious ethics to be congruent, and you say that because in religious ethics the ideal observer is God, and in secular ethics it is reason and moral conscience, and the judgment of these two ideal observers does not differ, therefore secular ethics is equivalent to religious ethics. This view seems to be a facile, convenient version. How can one, with this claim that the God of religion is the God of ethics and not the God of jurisprudence, so easily overlook the deep opposition and intersection between the two religious and secular approaches to ethics as to consider them one and the same?

In that same book (Religion in the Scales of Ethics), I have explicitly stated that existing religious ethics and existing secular ethics have extensive and deep differences, and indeed conflicts, with one another. Fundamentally, one of my goals in writing that book was to find a reasonable and satisfactory solution to resolve these conflicts. I have also said that existing ethics, meaning ethics as it is, whether religious or secular, is in fact the formulation and description of the behavior of fallible human beings, and therefore it is not complete and is subject to criticism, evaluation, revision, and correction. But this claim is not true of ideal ethics, whether religious or secular. What I mean by ideal ethics is "ethics as it ought to be."

There is only one ideal ethics, and that ideal ethics can, at the same time, be both trans-religious and accepted by religion, meaning it can be, in a sense, both religious and secular. The reason for this is that the ideal observer in the realm of ethics, whose judgment is either the source of the "existence" of moral rulings or the source of the "knowledge" of moral rulings, has a single judgment regarding a subject, considering all the characteristics involved in moral evaluation and judgment. In this case, it makes no difference whether this ideal observer is God or human reason.

Therefore, I recognize the existence of difference and conflict between existing religious ethics and existing secular ethics, and this conflict is, in principle, one of the presuppositions of the theory of the ideal observer in the realm of ethics. This claim is not specific to the realm of ethics; rather, it is true and applicable in the realm of knowledge in general. For example, if two chemists disagree about the chemical structure of a particular substance, this disagreement is because existing chemistry is distant from ideal chemistry. Existing chemistry is a mixture of truth and falsehood, or true and false propositions, and is distant from ideal chemistry, which is pure truth and contains only true propositions. Ideal science is "science as defined," and existing science is "science as realized," and these two sciences are distant from one another. Progress in the realm of science means reducing this distance and bringing existing science closer to ideal science, which is an endless process.

In your classifications of the sacred and God, you construct a God of ethics and a God of jurisprudence, and consider these two to be different from each other. On the other side, you also categorize human beings into two types, separating the ideal human from the non-ideal human. Then, based on these classifications, you select the God of ethics from that side and the ideal human from this side, and by combining these two, you stitch together two very different conceptions of ethics. But the truth is that neither are those two Gods so abstractly separate from each other, nor are these two humans so separate from each other. Different ethical perspectives are the product of such interferences that have formed between various human types and kinds of archetypal deities.

Firstly, my work is neither "constructing" nor "tailoring" and stitching. I have not combined different things together. The God of ethics and the God of jurisprudence are not my creations. These are "realities" about which I have argued. Regarding many things, the existing, realized individual is distant from its ideal individual. There is an existing human (= human as it is) and an ideal human (= human as it ought to be). As far as the science of ethics is concerned, these two humans differ from each other in two respects: one is that the existing human's knowledge of ethically relevant realities, which play a role in the goodness or badness, or rightness or wrongness of actions, is not "complete" or "sufficient"; and the second is that the existing human, in the position of judgment, is not "impartial," and their personal interests and inclinations cloud their moral judgment.

On the other hand, the ideal human being in the realm of ethics is someone whose information about morally relevant facts is both complete and sufficient, and who is impartial in judgment, with personal interests and biases having no negative or destructive influence on their judgment. The various ethical perspectives you mention differ from one another because they are the product of the existing human being's understanding of moral values. But just as existing human beings may err in grasping truth in other domains, they are not immune to such error in the realm of ethics either.

The same applies to the understanding that existing human beings have of God and His attributes and characteristics. Here too, the understanding of God (i.e., the God that religious people know and worship) is distant from the real God, or God as He truly is. This is, in principle, one of the fundamental teachings of monotheistic religions like Islam: that God is always greater and more transcendent than our understanding and description of Him. The meaning of the slogan "Allahu Akbar" is precisely this. What I mean by the God of jurisprudence is the understanding/conception of God that jurists generally presuppose when deducing religious rulings, and whose will they consider the source of these rulings. This understanding is, of course, open to critique, and one of the important criticisms leveled against it is that in this conception of God, His moral attributes are absent; that is, in this conception, the relevance and involvement of God's moral attributes in legislation are entirely overlooked.

The God of jurisprudence is a God who is an Owner or Lawgiver, and His right of ownership and lawgiving is absolute; that is, His attribute of justice does not limit these two rights. On the contrary, the absoluteness of these two rights means that whatever that King does is sweet. The wisdom of the God of jurisprudence, if such an attribute is even present in the definition of this God, is nothing more than "expediency." The rulings/commands of the God of jurisprudence are subject to benefits and harms, not to the moral goodness and badness or rightness and wrongness of actions. And this signifies the separation of the God of jurisprudence from the God of ethics, the complete independence of jurisprudence from ethics, and the substitution of ethics by jurisprudence. The God of ethics, however, is a moral God, and His creative and legislative will is subject to His moral attributes.

In the conception I have of God as the ideal observer, the ruling and will of the God of jurisprudence have an ethical framework; that is, the set of God's moral attributes (= the God of ethics) are also present and play a role in the legislation of religious rulings, and this role is limiting and constraining. Of course, I do not reduce religion to ethics, nor religious rulings to ethical rulings. But I firmly believe that the Sharia, in its established state/the Preserved Tablet, has an ethical framework. In my view, the rule of correlation between the judgment of reason and the judgment of the Sharia is a negative rule, not a positive one. The ancients used to say: "Kullama hakama bihi al-shar' hakama bihi al-'aql," meaning "Whatever the Sharia rules, reason also rules."

But in my opinion, there is no evidence in favor of this reading of the rule of correlation. The reading that is defensible and for which one can argue is this: "Kullama hakama bihi al-'aql lam yahkum 'alayhi al-shar'," meaning "Whatever reason rules, the Sharia will not rule against it." If you ask why this is so, my answer is that it is because God's moral attributes, such as His attributes of justice and mercy, take precedence over His attributes of ownership and lawgiving, and they limit the requirements of His ownership and lawgiving. These legislative limitations have three important characteristics or consequences:

The first consequence, which is "theological"/"kalami," is that, contrary to the Ash'arite conception, these limitations do not contradict God's unity and oneness, because in this matter, no one imposes anything on God from the outside. These limitations are a requirement of God's own nature, because it is His own moral attributes that limit His other attributes. Just as God's justice prevents Him from committing injustice against anyone in the realm of creation, the same attribute prevents God from legislating an unjust ruling in the realm of legislation. In the words of the Quran, in this matter, God makes something obligatory upon Himself: "He has inscribed mercy upon Himself" (Al-An'am: 12), and this does not contradict God's divinity, His oneness, or the absoluteness of His power.

(2). The second consequence, which is “metaphysical”/“ontological,” is the claim that if God’s moral attributes constrain His other attributes in the act of legislation, then God’s legislative will will have a moral framework, and God, in legislating, will not violate moral values and norms—that is, such an occurrence is impossible. The religion and sacred law resulting from such a will will be “religion and sacred law within the framework of ethics.” Therefore, religion in the stage of subsistence (in religious terms, the Preserved Tablet) is compatible with ethics, in the sense that it does not violate moral principles, not in the sense that ethics determines the content of religion. God the Lawgiver has the right, within the framework of ethics, to issue expedient rulings and to exercise His right of ownership or legislative authority. Ethics, if we grant its priority over religion, only specifies and delineates the “framework” of religion and sacred law, not its content.

(3). The third consequence, which is “epistemological,” is that jurists and legal scholars may err in understanding religious rulings and in deriving these rulings from the sources of the sacred law, and one of the common errors also stems from the incorrect conception and notion that jurists and legal scholars hold of God at the back of their minds, which guides their minds when deriving rulings. The compatibility of religious rulings with moral values does not mean that the jurists’ understanding and derivation of these rulings will automatically be compatible with moral values. If we accept that the sacred law, in the “stage of subsistence,” has a moral framework, we must necessarily accept that one of the duties of jurists and legal scholars in the “stage of demonstration” of rulings is to measure and calibrate their understanding and interpretation of religious texts against moral values. This means that moral values acquire an epistemological and falsifying role in jurisprudence. I have proposed the term “the moral falsifiability of jurisprudential edicts” for this epistemological rule.

Religion in the Scales of Ethics is, in fact, a prescriptive and normative theory according to which the religious are obliged to test and correct their understanding and interpretation of religion against moral values. Because God has no immoral/anti-moral ruling, no human being has the right to attribute an immoral/anti-moral ruling to God, and the mere existence of a verse or narration that apparently indicates such a ruling is not an acceptable justification for attributing such a ruling to God. In other words, if we show that a ruling or belief indicated by the apparent meaning of religious texts is “immoral,” we have, in fact, shown that this ruling or belief was not present in religion in the stage of subsistence.

You have said in several places that jurisprudential edicts are valid only to the extent that they are compatible with ethics, and otherwise they are invalid. That is, as you say, the God of jurisprudence must necessarily be bound by the God of ethics. Perhaps within the framework of the ideal observer theory, this view is digestible, but do you not think that jurisprudence is a tool for establishing the ethics intended by the God of ethics? Is jurisprudence not a guaranteed effort to apply that which the text refers to as the divine ruling, or, in the terms of your theory, the command of the ideal observer?

The title of the first chapter of the book The Ethics of Religious Studies is: “Substituting Jurisprudence for Ethics.” In this chapter, I have criticized in detail this common and dominant theory in Islamic culture, which is, in fact, the presupposition of the vast majority of jurists, and I have said that in the common understanding of the status of jurisprudence, which is entrenched in the minds of the majority of Muslims, jurisprudence replaces ethics, and knowing jurisprudential rulings and commands and following them makes human beings needless of knowing their moral rights and duties and following them. Therefore, your statement regarding “existing jurisprudence,” that is, jurisprudence as it is, is true, in the sense that existing jurisprudence is an edifice that has been formed and built based on an incorrect understanding of the relationship between religion and ethics. Because that understanding, which is the cornerstone of this edifice, is incorrect, this edifice is in need of rational/moral reconstruction. In fact, we are faced here with two rival theories regarding the relationship between religion and ethics. According to one theory, religion replaces ethics and the science of jurisprudence replaces the science of ethics, but according to the rival theory, ethics is the framework of religion and the science of ethics is the framework of the science of jurisprudence.

I believe that our understanding of religious texts is contingent upon the presupposition we hold in our minds regarding the relationship between religion and ethics. If someone, before consulting religious texts, accepts that religion is a substitute for ethics and that knowing religious injunctions and following religion renders one needless of knowing ethical injunctions and following ethics, they will understand religion in the way you alluded to in your question. But if someone, before consulting religious texts, accepts that ethics is independent of and prior to religion, then they cannot consider jurisprudential/legal rulings to be identical to ethical rulings and the injunctions of the ideal observer in the realm of ethics; rather, quite the opposite, they will be obliged to measure and balance their understanding and interpretation of jurisprudential/legal rulings against the judgment of the ideal observer in the realm of ethics.

Let us talk more about ethics and jurisprudence. You write elsewhere that there is no logical or productive relationship between ethics and jurisprudence, and elsewhere you hold that the concomitance between the ruling of Sharia and the ruling of reason is negative, not positive, and for this reason, you reject the maximalist reading of the ontological dependence of religion on ethics. It seems you see jurisprudence as absolutely separate from ethics and perhaps as a non-ethical proposition. Why?

I do not see jurisprudence as separate from ethics. My claim is that ethics is independent of and prior to jurisprudence. And because this is so, jurisprudence, in order to be justified, reasonable, defensible, and acceptable, is inevitably compelled to remain within the framework of ethics, not violate ethical standards, and not grant permission to violate these standards to the religious and the devout. The meaning of the statement that jurisprudence and ethics have "no logical or productive relationship" is that one cannot construct jurisprudence with "ethics alone." That is, one cannot claim that corresponding to every ethical ruling there is also a jurisprudential ruling, such that by knowing the former one can also know the latter. This is the very maximalist reading of the existential dependence of religion on ethics, or the positive concomitance between the ruling of reason and the ruling of Sharia, for which there is no evidence in its favor.

The rival theory, which, as far as I know, was first formulated philosophically by the German moral philosopher Immanuel Kant and which I believe is also the correct theory, is that the relationship between ethics and religion/jurisprudence is a "falsifying" one, meaning that ethics falsifies jurisprudential interpretations of legal rulings that are incompatible with ethical values and demonstrates their unjustifiability. Therefore, ethics does not play a generative role in the realm of jurisprudence; that is, ethical rulings do not produce jurisprudential rulings. Rather, ethics plays an inspectorial role in the realm of jurisprudence, which, at the end of the fatwa production line, checks/sifts jurisprudential products and separates correct fatwas from incorrect ones.

The separation of the science of jurisprudence from the science of ethics means that these two scientific disciplines cannot be reduced to one another, nor can one be substituted for the other, and we, as people who are concerned with both living a Muslim life and living an ethical life, need both sciences. If we recognize the necessity and importance of these two sciences, then one of the important questions that arises is what the relationship between these two scientific disciplines is, and if the products and outputs of these two sciences conflict with one another, how we should resolve this conflict. Those who lack one of these two concerns will not face this question. But we are compelled to grapple with this question.

In fact, this is another expression of that famous question concerning the relationship between religion and ethics, which has a very long history in both philosophy and theology, and it is not a new question, although in different eras it is posed in new formulations and appears in fresh garb, but the essence of these formulations is the same. In Islamic culture, the dispute that existed between the Ash'arites and the Mu'tazilites was over whether good and evil are determined by Sharia or by reason. In the modern era, this disagreement is articulated in the form of the conflict between jurisprudential rulings/fatwas and human rights. But if we look closely, the essence of these two disagreements is the same, and that is a disagreement over the relationship between religion and ethics and whether religion is a substitute for ethics, or ethics is independent of and prior to religion.

In explaining religion's services to ethics, you have mentioned the expression of noumenal forms as one of these services. One) What necessary connection do the noumenal world and noumenal forms, as supernatural matters, have with ethics as a worldly matter? Two) Noumenal forms are based more on fear and hope and mostly generate dread and terror; what relation do these productions have with ethics, which is a proposition for minimizing pain and suffering?

Firstly, ethics is not a proposition, but a collection of values, norms, and virtues. The science of ethics is also the knowledge responsible for recognizing and expressing these matters.

Secondly, although I believe that reducing the pain and suffering of humans, and indeed all sentient beings, is a morally good and valuable act, and in some cases is also one of our moral duties as humans, I oppose reducing ethics to this moral value or duty. Reducing pain and suffering is only one of the duties that ethics places upon our shoulders, and there are other moral values and duties that are neither related to reducing pain and suffering nor originate from it. For example, if I promise you that I will conduct an interview with you. From a moral standpoint, my situation before making the promise differs from my situation after making the promise. Before promising, I am morally free to interview you or not, but afterward, the interview becomes morally obligatory for me. Imam Ali (AS) says in Nahj al-Balagha: "Al-mas'ul hurrun hatta ya'id," meaning the person from whom a request is made is free to accept or reject that request as long as they have not promised, but afterward, they are not free.

The very act of promising will obligate me to fulfill my promise, even if my breaking the promise produces no pain or suffering in you or others. Or if you have done me a kindness, I am obligated to thank you, even if my ingratitude adds no pain or suffering to you or others, or does not reduce anything from your or others' pain and suffering. Likewise, I am obligated to treat you with justice and fairness, even if my unfairness and injustice toward you does not add to your pain and suffering, or my fairness and justice does not reduce your pain and suffering. Of course, a specific act may simultaneously be an instance of reducing pain and suffering and an instance of fulfilling a promise; but in these cases, we are faced with two or more moral duties that we can fulfill by performing one act, not with a "mother duty"/"prime ought" from which other duties are derived.

In modern moral philosophy, this theory is called moral pluralism, which is fundamentally different from religious pluralism and should not be conflated with it. Moral pluralism is the idea or claim that fundamental moral values and norms are inherently plural and this plurality is irreducible, meaning they cannot all be reduced to a single mother/fundamental/prime value or norm (such as reducing pain and suffering and increasing pleasure).

Thirdly, what do you mean by the claim that "ethics is a worldly matter"? If you mean that in the realm of ethics we do not deal with any non-material/non-natural concepts or categories, I must tell you that, on the contrary, it is quite the opposite. At least many moral philosophers think so. Of course, moral naturalism is one of the views in moral philosophy concerning the existential and metaphysical status of moral properties and values. But many moral philosophers believe that moral properties like goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness, and moral relations like ought and ought not are not "natural," meaning they are not part of the natural world or, as you say, "worldly," and have a fundamental difference with weight, mass, color, and other natural and physical properties. The same applies to the subject of moral judgments. For instance, consider the very concept of pain and suffering, the reduction of which you consider the essence of ethics or the entirety of ethics; you will see that pain and suffering are not material and tangible matters, but rather intangible and invisible matters, which have visible/tangible effects and symptoms through which, and also through imagination and empathy, we can discover their existence in others.

With these explanations, the answer to your question is this: I have said that religion can, by strengthening the psychological underpinning, reinforce people's motivation to live morally and remain moral, and this is religion's most important service in the realm of ethics. The depiction of the unseen forms of actions is also one of religion's services in the realm of moral psychology, but how and for whom? I have answered these two implicit questions in that same place, and that answer, in brief, is as follows: (1) by providing an additional motive (2) specifically for believers. That is, someone who is not a materialist/atheist and believes in the existence of the unseen world/the world of meaning and has already accepted that their deeds and words have an outward form and an inward reality, if they know that, for example, consuming the property of an orphan is exactly like consuming fire, they will have a motive, or a greater motive, to refrain from such an act.

This is exactly like using legal or non-legal punishment and sanctions to reduce moral anomalies in society. For instance, if public opinion is sensitive to politicians' lying and can react appropriately to it, as is the case in some free and democratic societies, then a politician who lies will, under the pressure of public opinion, be forced to resign from their position, or their party will be compelled to dismiss them. Naturally, the existence of such a mechanism will give politicians a greater incentive to lie less, and this is one of the services that law, freedom of the press, and the sensitivity of public opinion, or in religious terms, enjoining good and forbidding evil, can render in the realm of ethics.

It is the same when religion recounts the inward and unseen forms of people's actions to them. In this way, an additional psychological support for ethics is created, but not for all human beings and not for the irreligious, but for the religious who have sincerely accepted the necessary presuppositions and have faith in them from the bottom of their hearts.

Your question has another aspect as well. It seems you have assumed that ethics consists of reducing the pain and suffering of all human beings, including the pain and suffering of the moral agent. This is not the case. If it were so, human beings would have no motive to oppress others. If I felt intense pain and suffering within myself every time I lied, I would lie less, or not lie at all, if only to escape that pain and suffering. Fundamentally, a significant part of ethics, or the core of ethics, or the baseline of ethics, consists of duties whose performance is usually accompanied by pain, suffering, toil, and hardship for the agent; that is why it is called obligation. Even if we accept that reducing the pain and suffering of others is the only duty a moral agent has, in many cases, performing this duty is accompanied by the agent's own pain and suffering.

At the very least, someone who wants to fulfill this moral duty must inevitably forgo their own pleasure, comfort, and enjoyment and endure deprivations and sufferings. My point is that in many cases, reducing the pain and suffering of others is concomitant with enduring pain and suffering in oneself or reducing one's own pleasure and comfort. Even Professor Mostafa Malekian, who was the main proponent of this idea in Iran that living morally increases the moral agent's peace, happiness, and hope, has changed his view in recent accounts of his ethical theories and explicitly states that moral living sometimes even increases pain and suffering, and one should live morally solely out of "love for the good" and not necessarily for the reduction of pain and suffering and the increase of pleasure, peace, and happiness.

Under this same discussion, you speak of the moral order of the universe. Which moral order? How does this moral order justify suffering, pain, poverty, discrimination, madness, congenital defects, affliction, calamity, and so on?

This question of yours is based on an incorrect understanding of the moral order of the universe. What is meant by the moral order of the universe is that this world is not indifferent to the good and bad deeds of human beings; that is, not only is no deed lost in this world, but, in colloquial terms, "what goes around comes around." In the words of the Quran, "So whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it, and whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it." Of course, belief in this matter is in no way incompatible with the existence of poverty, discrimination, madness, congenital defects, affliction, calamity, and such things. As Rumi says, this world is like a mountain, and our actions are a voice.

Those who believe in a moral order of the universe mean that the actions we perform have an echo in this world that will eventually, sooner or later, return to us and catch up with us, whether in this world or in the world after death. The moral order of the universe does not seek to justify the status quo, so that one could ask how this theory justifies poverty, discrimination, suffering, and calamity. This theory says: if these evils have been produced by an individual or a group of human beings, they will ultimately see the recompense for their actions, either in this world or in another; that is all. In technical terms, the existence of natural evils is compatible with the moral order of the universe. Yes, some atheists have sought to rely on the existence of natural evils in this world to conclude that the God of the religions does not exist or that His existence is improbable. But that is another subject and has nothing to do with the moral order of the universe. Someone may not believe in the existence of God, yet believe in the moral order of the universe, that is, hold the belief that the structure of this world is such that morally good and bad deeds do not have the same effect on the agent's fate.

It may well be possible, through scientific/empirical research, to show that, on the whole, those who live an ethical life enjoy greater mental health, happiness, tranquility, hope, and inner satisfaction than those who violate the rights of others, even though the latter group may be materially better off in this world than the former. Of course, accepting this theory is easier within a religious framework where belief in the existence of God is one of its pillars. Not to mention that from an "esoteric" perspective, much of what we superficially consider "evil" are in fact outward hardships that are accompanied by inward, otherworldly, and even outward "goods," and only if we look from the rooftop of the universe with an esoteric eye can we judge whether they are evil or good.

Elsewhere, you say that religion negates egoism. But it seems that religion, as an individual matter, is an effort for a person to escape hell, a place where one thinks only of oneself and not even of one's father or child. The religious person wants to save only "himself" because on the Bridge of Sirat, he is alone. In this domain, it seems the issue of the reproaching soul and the worshipping human cannot serve ethics much either, because worship and reproach are an effort to escape a hell that is, incidentally, attained through jurisprudential criteria, and thus violence is never washed from the brow of such a person, and in the history of violence, many blood-soaked prayer rugs have been seen.

I did not say that religion "negates" egoism right at the beginning of the moral journey and conduct. What I have said is that at the start of the path, religion "curbs" and "moderates" egoism, although it ultimately replaces the self with God, and this means the negation of egoism at the end of the path of moral education and training. Of course, for religion to have such a function, we must understand it correctly, and its correct understanding depends on accepting the theory of the primacy of ethics over religion. Contrary to your report, religion offers numerous and diverse healing prescriptions for treating the moral and spiritual ailments of different people at various ranks and contexts, and what you mentioned pertains to only one of these prescriptions and stages. Generally speaking, religious teachings in this regard operate in three stages:

In the first stage, religion tries to replace "nearsighted" and "obscurantist" selfishness with "farsighted" and "clear-sighted" egoism. At this stage, religion takes the calculations of prudential or utility-oriented reason as given, but introduces new items, namely otherworldly and spiritual profit and loss, onto the scene. Someone who believes in the existence of the Hereafter and has accepted that their good and bad deeds have good and bad consequences and effects on their otherworldly fate will naturally forgo the immediate profit they gain in this world through doing a bad deed to prevent the greater loss that will befall them in the life after death.

To curb human selfishness, which is one of the main sources of moral anomalies, the first step is to show people that altruism, treating others with fairness and justice, respecting their rights, and remaining faithful to one's moral duties and commitments toward others is also in the agent's own interest, and that the benefit of moral conduct does not accrue solely to others; rather, the agent of the moral act ultimately benefits from their own action as well. Of course, living morally and treating others morally with the motive of attaining personal gain is not morally "ideal," but in any case, having a moral lifestyle and conduct toward others differs from having an immoral lifestyle and conduct toward others, and is better than it.

In technical and specialized terms, the agent's motive is one of the things that is itself subject to moral evaluation and also plays a role in the moral value of the action that originates from that motive. The best motive, from a moral standpoint, is performing a moral act solely because that act is morally good and right, or refraining from an act solely because that act is morally bad and wrong. However, possessing this motive is an ideal whose attainment requires arduous and continuous spiritual exercise and training.

Therefore, realism dictates that, in the context of moral education and upbringing, we take gradual steps to curb and moderate selfishness and egoism and to remove this great obstacle from the path of moral living and the realization of a moral society. One of these steps is precisely what religion, provided it is properly understood, also takes in a religious society: namely, replacing short-sighted/narrow-minded egoism, which is an obstacle to living and remaining moral, with far-sighted/enlightened egoism, which is not an obstacle to living and remaining moral.

In the second stage, religion strives to strengthen the sense of altruism in human beings and weaken the sense of selfishness in them. For instance, when religion calls the struggle against the self (jihad al-nafs) the greater jihad (jihad al-akbar), it is in fact inviting believers to wage jihad against selfishness, self-centeredness, anger, wrath, greed, and avarice, which are the sources of moral anomalies. If someone succeeds in this jihad, their selfishness will, in fact, be weakened, and the weakening of selfishness is identical to the strengthening of altruism—that is, it is concomitant with it. These two motives, both of which exist in human nature, have an inverse relationship with one another, meaning that the more a person follows one of them, the more the other will be weakened in them, and vice versa. Thus, less selfishness is equivalent to more altruism, and the weakening of selfishness is identical to the strengthening of altruism. In our mystical literature, too, love has been spoken of as the best medicine for treating selfishness and transitioning from selfishness toward altruism.

And finally, in the third stage, religion, at the ultimate level, strives to seat "God" in place of the "self" of the agent. God taking the place of the self means that henceforth, the individual's relationship with others is not regulated based on "acquisitive love," but rather based on "bestowing love," because God's love and affection for His servants is one hundred percent a bestowing love. God wants human beings for their own sake and loves them, but not for His own sake. One who, in the spiritual journey toward God, becomes annihilated in God and seats Him in place of the self will not want others for their own sake, and their love for others will be a bestowing love, not an acquisitive love. Such a person wants themselves for the sake of others, not the other way around, and therefore, in interaction with another, their motive and impetus is not the acquisition of personal profit and benefit, but purely the good, welfare, happiness, and felicity of the other that impels them to perform an action or refrain from performing one.

There are presuppositions in your remarks with which I disagree. For instance, you have said that salvation from hell is attained solely through following jurisprudence and jurisprudential rulings. This statement is correct only if we substitute jurisprudence for ethics. But if we accept the primacy of ethics over jurisprudence—and we must accept it—then we must also adhere to the implications of this claim, one of which is that salvation from hell depends on fulfilling two conditions: one is adherence to ethics and ethical values, and the other is adherence to jurisprudential rulings. In other words, paradise is the reward for obeying two sets of divine commands: one set consists of ethical commands discovered through non-religious/extra-religious reason, and the other set consists of religious/jurisprudential commands that the Prophet conveys by relying on revelation and his inner insight; the commands of the second set are also a subset of ethical commands and fall within the framework of ethics.

One of the themes of the ethics of religious studies is that human salvation and felicity in the afterlife depend on observing ethical values, and following jurisprudential rulings does not make the faithful independent of following ethics, nor does it relieve them of the ethical duties incumbent upon humans qua humans. To put it more clearly, we have two hells: one is the hell resulting from violating jurisprudential regulations, and the other is the hell resulting from violating ethical values. This claim also holds true for paradise. Therefore, if we accept the primacy of ethics over religion, we are compelled to also accept the claim that every effort to live ethically and behave ethically toward others is a step an individual takes toward saving themselves from hell and otherworldly torment, and salvation from hell and entry into paradise cannot be secured merely through following jurisprudence and jurisprudential rulings. Rather, in addition to that and prior to it, observing ethical values is also necessary.

You have said that violence has not been cleansed from the brow of the religious person and that history has witnessed many blood-soaked prayer mats. Much can be said on this matter as well, but I must confine myself here to mentioning two points:

Firstly, from an ethical standpoint, violence is divided into two types: permissible/justified and impermissible/unjustified. For example, when state institutions elected by the people use force to arrest a criminal and, after a fair trial, sentence them to a punishment proportionate to the crime and forcibly impose that punishment upon them, they have in fact resorted to a form of violence against that individual. Violence means that an individual or group, by applying physical pressure, deprives another individual or group of their freedom and prevents the realization of their will. Similarly, when you forcibly capture an enemy soldier invading your land on the battlefield, the very act of capturing that soldier is a form of violence against them.

But this violence is ethically justified/permissible. Unfortunately, there are many misunderstandings in our society about ethics and some ethical values, one of which concerns the moral status of violence. Many people believe that, ethically, violence is absolutely bad, reprehensible, and condemned, whereas this is not the case. A father and mother who force bitter medicine down their child's throat have in fact resorted to violence against that child, but if they refrain from doing so on the pretext that such an act is violence, and the child is harmed as a result of not taking the medicine, everyone—even that same child when they grow up—will blame and reproach those parents and accuse them of negligence and dereliction of duty.

As another example, if I see someone attacking you with a knife and trying to kill you, and there is no way to defend you except by throwing a stone at them and wounding them, then my ethical duty is to do so. Naturally, in some cases, to defend our own rights or defend the oppressed, we are compelled to use violence against oppressors, and this violence, if it does not exceed the limit, is proportionate, and is the only way to defend someone's right against its violation, is ethically permissible and sometimes obligatory. One can scarcely find an oppressor who desists from their oppression with kind words and without the use of force, pressure, and violence, and without causing them pain and suffering. In principle, the just punishments imposed by governmental institutions that possess ethical and popular legitimacy are a form of violence that is ethically permitted and justified. You might say that what is meant by violence in common parlance is precisely unjustified/impermissible violence. In that case, the dispute would be merely verbal, but apparently this is not so.

Secondly, a religious person has multiple aspects and dimensions and is a collection of diverse identities, of which religiosity is merely one. A single-identity human being is an abstract concept without a real referent. Therefore, the behavior exhibited by a religious person is the outcome of all those identities and does not always originate from his religion and religiosity; rather, it is the product of the interaction of identities and various, numerous causes and factors that work together and produce the will for such behavior in the individual. It is a great fallacy that some atheists/anti-religionists commit when, as soon as a person who, alongside his other identities, is also religious commits a morally ugly and reprehensible act—for instance, inflicting unjust violence on others—they conclude that religion is therefore to blame, and that he committed this ugly act solely because he is religious, and that if he were irreligious, he would not have committed such an ugly act.

In the real world, we do not have a purely religious person, meaning we do not have a human being who is only religious and has no other identity. Therefore, without justified reason, one cannot single out a specific identity, such as religiosity, from among the multiple identities an individual possesses and hold it responsible. It is quite possible that the other identities of such a person compelled him to do such a deed. The converse of your claim can also be proposed. This very religion, fear of God, and the religious motivations of believers have reduced many unjust acts of violence throughout history. For such a conclusion to be logically justified and acceptable, one must be able to demonstrate that the person's other identities played no role whatsoever in his behavior.

In fact, a false lead is given here; that is, people are told that to combat violence, they must abandon religion and renounce it, because religion is the source of violence. But this is giving a false lead, because we see that some have renounced religion and are still afflicted by violence, and the extent and level of violence that irreligious people inflict upon one another and upon others is in no way less than the extent and level of violence that religious people inflict upon one another and upon others. The history of irreligion is no purer in this respect than the history of religiosity, nor do the irreligious have a more brilliant record in this regard.

Let alone the fact that human history up until these recent centuries and decades is a more or less uniformly "religious" history, and fundamentally, no alternative, non-religious history was available for us to judge whether that secular history would have been more violent or not. If today, religious and irreligious human beings and religious and irreligious societies are equally afflicted by violence and morally abnormal behaviors, this indicates that the source of violence is something else and somewhere else; that is, neither is religiosity in and of itself the generator and agent of violence, nor is irreligion an obstacle to it. If moral reformers err in diagnosing the source of moral maladies, naturally, the prescription they offer for treating this malady will not be curative.

The reality is that violence originates from human selfishness, greed, covetousness, avarice, excessive desire, power-worship, and money-worship, and religion and irreligion in and of themselves play no role in this matter. The effect of religion on a person is like the effect of music or wine. At most, a selfish person who is religious tries to concoct a religious justification for his ugly behavior toward others, and a person who is irreligious tries to concoct a non-religious/secular justification for committing the same act. In general, we humans, whether religious or irreligious, have a strong tendency to misuse sacred and valued things and to justify our wrongful deeds in their light. Some religious people justify their ugly deeds and violate the rights of others in the name of God and the Prophet, and some irreligious people commit these same ugly and unjust deeds in the name of freedom and democracy, nationality, race, the working class, and so on. But just as no one should blame freedom and democracy for the misuse of freedom and democracy, the misuse of religion should not and cannot be blamed on religion either.

In other words, to understand freedom, democracy, human rights, and things of this nature, one cannot appeal to the behavior of those who claim to champion freedom, democracy, and human rights. This fallacy is committed by some who, in the name of religion, oppose freedom, democracy, and human rights. The reasoning of these individuals is that because the advocates of freedom, democracy, and human rights act in such and such a way, therefore freedom, democracy, and human rights are bad. This reasoning is fallacious because, between freedom, democracy, and human rights and the behavior of these individuals, there are at least three premises/gaps, and without proving those premises or filling those gaps, one cannot infer and justify such a conclusion from the behavior of those individuals. Those premises are as follows:

The ontological premise: The individuals who claim to advocate for freedom, democracy, and human rights are genuinely advocates of these matters, meaning they ascribe intrinsic value to them, not instrumental value, and they do not pursue their personal or group interests under the guise of advocating for these matters.

The epistemological premise: These individuals have correctly understood freedom, democracy, and human rights, and

The psychological premise: These individuals are not learned but unprincipled; rather, they are committed to their knowledge in practice.

But individuals who justify their morally wrong behaviors in the name of freedom, democracy, and human rights (1) may merely invoke these values to secure their own interests, (2) may not have correctly understood these values, and also (3) may have correctly understood these values but lack practical commitment and adherence to them, and therefore the sin of these people's morally ugly deeds cannot be attributed to freedom, democracy, and human rights.

The exact same analysis holds true regarding the relationship between religion and violence. The mere fact that a group commits unjust violence against others in the name of religion does not demonstrate that this violence truly originates from religion, because logically (1) those who invoke religion may not actually be religious, but rather hypocrites and, in the words of Imam Hussein, slaves to the world, with religion merely a plaything on their tongues, (2) they may not have correctly understood religion, and (3) they may have correctly understood religion but lack religious commitment. Therefore, one cannot discover anything about religion itself from the behavior of these individuals. And in my view, one could even claim that true believers, who have correctly understood their religion within the framework of their ethics and are committed to it, actually have a greater motivation to refrain from unjust violence.

Regarding the linguistic relationship between religion and ethics, it seems that the language of religion, at least within the scope of scripture, is ethically very diverse. In one place it is highly ethical and gentle, and in another place, very harsh. Religion speaks at one point of the Merciful God and at another of the Avenging God. Given that you believe in the complete independence of the language of ethics from the language of religion, how can one, from an ethical perspective, judge between these two aspects of religious language?

It seems that in this question of yours, you have conflated two issues that are not very related to one another. The independence of the language of ethics from the language of religion is a linguistic theory about ethical predicates or the function of ethical sentences. According to this theory, defining moral goodness and badness, or rightness and wrongness, is possible without reference to divine command and prohibition. That is, for us to conceive and affirm that oppression is bad and justice is good, we do not need to conceive and affirm that there is a God who has made justice obligatory and oppression forbidden. This is one issue. Another issue, which has been conflated with this one in your statement, is what judgment the language of religion receives from an ethical standpoint: that is, are the expressions we have in religious texts compatible with the ethical values governing language, or do they violate these values? I will answer this question later, but before that, it is appropriate to point out two implicit yet important points.

There are two presuppositions in your formulations that, in my view, are both incorrect: the first presupposition is that violence is entirely incompatible with ethics, which I explained earlier, saying that from an ethical perspective, violence can be divided into justified violence and unjustified violence. Your second presupposition is that mercy is incompatible with vengeance. Whereas mercy is compatible with vengeance, both in the sense that vengeance upon the oppressor is mercy upon the oppressed, and in the sense that maximalist ethics is not incompatible with minimalist ethics; rather, the two are on a continuum. Just vengeance is compatible with the principle of justice, which is the floor of ethical values. Justice is the "floor" of ethics, and mercy or forgiveness and pardon is the "ceiling" of ethics. Therefore, these two are not incompatible. If A steals money from you, ethically you have the right to take the same amount from his pocket. Of course, one must separate the "stage of the establishment of a right" from the "stage of the enforcement of a right."

At the stage of enforcing a right, and to prevent chaos, you must go to court, and the court will recover your right from that individual. If the court rules in your favor and judicial officers forcibly take your right from that person's property and give it to you, neither you nor they have committed an ethically wrong act, meaning your action does not violate the principle of justice. At the same time, you might show mercy to that individual or their spouse and children and forgo your right, that is, not enforce your right. This is mercy and forgiveness. But the fact that mercy is an ethical value or virtue does not make vengeance or retaliation ethically bad and a vice.

Therefore, neither does the concept of a "vengeful God" conflict with the concept of a "Merciful and Compassionate God," nor is harsh language in itself unethical or anti-ethical. In other words, if we see the harsh expressions found in religious texts in their historical context/setting, which is typically a context of defense, we cannot judge them as being unethical or anti-ethical.

In your discussion of the rational dependence of ethics on religion, you say that the claim of religion's dependence on ethics is a denial of ethical rationality. What is meant by ethical rationality?

Ethical rationality is a type of practical rationality according to which ethical judgments are considered judgments of practical reason, and therefore their rationality originates directly from practical reason itself. This is Kant's view on the relation and connection between practical rationality and ethics. This view is also called non-instrumental practical rationality. The rival view, which belongs to Hume and his followers, reduces practical reason and practical rationality to instrumental reason and rationality. If one accepts this second view, then to show that a moral commitment is rationally justified and reasonable, one must be able to show that this commitment entails a benefit and advantage for the acting person.

Those who claim the rational dependence of ethics on religion can, in fact, have their claim formulated in this way: moral commitment is only beneficial to the acting person if we accept religious beliefs, such as the existence of God and the system of otherworldly reward and punishment, because the losses and harms resulting from adherence to ethical values cannot be compensated for in any other way. Therefore, the rational dependence of ethics on religion has an important presupposition, which is the denial of ethical rationality and the restriction of practical rationality to instrumental rationality.

In your book, after examining the various dependencies of ethics on religion, you deferred the examination of the epistemological dependence of ethics on religion to another book. I think this book you spoke of has not been published. In general, what are the main points of this dependence?

This book has now been published under the title The Ethics of Religious Studies, and the publisher is awaiting permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for its distribution. In that book, this issue is discussed in detail, and summarizing those discussions here is not possible. There, I have stated that what is meant by epistemological dependence is either "cognitive" dependence or "justificatory" dependence. That is, those who claim the epistemological dependence of ethics on religion either claim that moral judgments derive their epistemological justification from religion, or they claim that religion is the source of knowledge of moral judgments and that ethics is one of the religious sciences. Furthermore, the epistemological dependence of ethics on religion can be formulated both in terms of the dependence of the science of ethics on the science of kalām (theology) and in terms of the dependence of the science of ethics on the science of fiqh (jurisprudence), or, to put it better and more precisely, in terms of substituting jurisprudence for ethics. In that book, I have criticized all these views in detail, along with the reasons that have been or can be offered in their favor, and have demonstrated their incorrectness.

Moreover, I have shown that not only is ethics not epistemologically dependent on religion, but, on the contrary, religion is dependent on ethics in this respect, although this dependence is negative, in the sense I explained earlier in response to your second question regarding the rule of correlation. There is no anti-ethical ruling or belief in religion, but there is no problem with religion having rulings that do not originate from ethics and about which ethics remains silent, saying nothing, neither affirming nor denying. For example, whether the number of rak'ahs for the morning prayer should be two or four—none of the principles of ethics say anything about this matter. But ethics says that religious rulings must be just and must not be unjust.

In explaining general ethics and specific ethics, you employ the terms pluralism of truth and pluralism of salvation, and with the priority you give to individual ethics over social ethics, you write: "The attempt to impose a particular reading of individual ethics on all members of society is a clear instance of oppression and injustice." In your view, does religion and religious ethics not do this very thing? Does it not impose a particular type of ethical thinking on all human beings in terms of belief and behavior?

The fact that every religion, or some religions, consider themselves to have a universal mission and see their audience as human beings qua human beings does not mean imposition. This is an invitation, and every thinker and founder of a school of thought has the right to invite others to accept their view and school. As long as they merely present their view and school, advocate for it, and do not impose it on others by force, their action is compatible with ethical standards; that is, they have the ethical right to propagate and invite others to their religion.

The debate is over this: if a group does not accept a religion's invitation to adopt a particular individual ethics, do the founder of that religion or its followers have the right to forcibly impose their own accepted individual ethics on that group? The answer is that, from the perspective of social ethics, such an act is oppression. However, this act is only oppression if that group recognizes and respects the right of the followers of that religion to follow their own accepted individual ethics. If someone does not recognize your right to choose your religion and does not allow you to follow your religion, then you also have the ethical right to reciprocate.

One of the errors that occurs in understanding religious texts like the Quran is that terms such as kufr, kāfir, and their derivatives are typically taken out of their historical context and translated as "dissident" and "follower of another religion." This is not the case at all. The kāfir in Quranic terminology differs both from the kāfir in jurisprudence and from the dissident and the different in the modern world. Equating these is to commit a kind of anachronism. The kuffār in early Islam were those who did not recognize in any way the right to choose a religion or the freedom of expression for the followers of the new religion, Islam, and deemed the lives, property, and honor of Muslims lawful [to violate], torturing them, imposing economic sieges upon them, or exiling and displacing them for converting to Islam. God has explicitly stated in the Quran: "Allah does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes from being righteous toward them and acting justly toward them. Indeed, Allah loves those who act justly. Allah only forbids you from those who fight you because of religion and expel you from your homes and aid in your expulsion from making allies of them. And whoever makes allies of them, then it is those who are the wrongdoers" (Al-Mumtahanah: 8-9).

God only warns you against friendship with those who fought you on account of religion, expelled you from your homeland, and collaborated with one another to expel you; and whoever befriends them is a wrongdoer. This verse, which is among the clear, decisive verses of the Quran, is consistent with the principle of justice, which is the foundation of minimal social ethics. And this very verse prohibits us from generalizing the rulings issued in other verses and narrations concerning the kuffār of early Islam to the followers of other religions and to dissidents who recognize the human rights of Muslims, and also from imposing our own accepted individual ethics upon them.

You believe in the autonomy of ethics and its priority over religion, yet at the same time you describe religion as concomitant with ethics and see religious motivations as useful and enhancing for living ethically. How can these two be reconciled? In what way and on what basis does religion have an enhancing effect on an ethics that is entirely prior to and independent of it?

I explained this in one of the chapters of the book Religion in the Scales of Ethics under the title "Services of Religion in the Realm of Ethics," and also in response to one of your previous questions on this matter. Of course, I have used neither the term "useful" nor "enhancing." Rather, I have used the term "service" or "function" of religion in the realm of ethics. I have said that religion can play an important role both in moral psychology and in the moral education and upbringing of its believers. These roles are, of course, not exclusive or irreplaceable, but for religion to be able to play such roles in the realm of ethics, there are several conditions that must be fulfilled. Otherwise, religiosity may lead to the opposite result.

Firstly, religious people must have the concern to live ethically, or in Rumi's words, the aspiration to climb upward; otherwise, they will not understand religion correctly and, based on an incorrect understanding of religion, will assume that religion has issued a license to violate moral values.

Secondly, religious people must have accepted the autonomy of ethics from religion and its priority over religion; otherwise, they will substitute jurisprudence for ethics. An understanding of religion built upon such a presupposition is erroneous, and under its shelter, one can easily issue and justify a license to violate moral values. Therefore, an incorrect understanding of religion and Sharia is not in the service of ethics; rather, it is an obstacle to living ethically and remaining ethical, and precisely for this reason, it is incorrect.

Thirdly, after correctly understanding religion, religious people must have faith in their religion and be committed and bound to its precepts. Otherwise, religion will not be able to serve ethics either.

In my conversation with Mr. Nikfar, in response to his claim that religion destroys morality, you spoke of two kinds of morality versus two kinds of religion: ideal religion and existing religion versus ideal morality and existing morality. Why must we resort to such divisions for refutation and proof, and why do we constantly retreat to the ideal world to prove a claim? Why do we not set aside the ideal world once and for all and speak in the realm of actual reality in order to properly explain matters? If we are to speak of existing morality and existing religion, which, in your view, acts more morally: secular morality or religious morality? Why?

In this question, you have combined two contradictories. On the one hand, you presuppose the ideal world, and on the other, you negate it. On the one hand, you ask: "If we are to speak of existing morality and existing religion, which, in your view, acts more morally: secular morality or religious morality? Why?" and on the other hand, you recommend that we set aside the ideal world and speak in the realm of reality to properly explain matters. These two claims contradict each other, because when you ask, "Which acts more morally?", you have in fact presupposed the existence of an ideal morality. If I am to answer this question of yours, I am compelled to compare these two existing moralities with ideal morality and see which of them is closer to it.

If such a morality, which is part of the ideal world, had no reality, judgment between these two would become impossible. In principle, critique, measurement, and judgment in any field are possible only if we measure the existing situation against the ideal situation. The world of ideals, or the world of norms and values, is a real world without presupposing which the question of which moral system is better than another could not even be posed, let alone be answerable. Therefore, one should not imagine that the ideal world is a fanciful, imaginary, or illusory world, reference to which prevents the proper explanation of matters!

The ideal world is a part of the real world against which we theoretically measure the situation we currently live in or face, and toward which we practically strive to draw closer. As an example, in the economic sphere, a desirable/ideal economy is one in which the rates of inflation and unemployment are low. By comparing the existing economic situation with this situation, one can judge the existing situation and its desirability or undesirability. Otherwise, judgment becomes impossible.

With this explanation, I return to your question. As I have said in Religion in the Scales of Ethics, existing secular morality and existing religious morality—that is, what has actually been realized as a result of fallible human beings' cognition of and adherence to ideal morality—are distant from that ideal morality, and therefore both are equally open to critique. This distance is because human beings, whether secular or religious, in order to live morally, are compelled to (1) recognize those values and (2) then adhere to those values. But human beings are not infallible in either the stage of cognition or the stage of action and adherence to moral values; rather, they are prone to error and may err inadvertently or deliberately.

Therefore, the outcome realized as a result of their cognition and behavior is always subject to critique and evaluation. I cannot say with absolute certainty that, on the whole, existing secular morality has a better and more acceptable track record than existing religious morality. Look at the extent of poverty, injustice, discrimination, violation of rights, coercion, war, bloodshed, and other moral errors on a global scale to realize the truth of my statement. One cannot attribute all these anomalies to religion and religious morality. Who invented and employs weapons of mass destruction? Who instigated the First and Second World Wars? Whose work were the forced labor camps in Siberia and the massacres of opponents in the former Soviet Union? One cannot even say that with the secularization of morality, anti-moral institutions such as slavery and anti-moral behaviors such as the instrumental use of human beings have been completely eradicated, or that the rate of crime has decreased.

Many moral aberrations have merely changed form and continue their existence in new garb. It is true that overt slavery is no longer recognized and is legally a crime punishable by law in many countries, yet hidden slavery is still prevalent in those same societies. The instrumental use of other human beings is the very essence of slavery. The same applies to the issue of superstition and superstition-worship, whose volume and scope are no less than before; rather, the type of superstition has changed, but its essence has not disappeared. For every new thing discovered or invented, there are those who set out to find ways to abuse it. And for every moral or legal prohibition that is enacted and enforced, there are those who circumvent that law. If there is a difference, it lies in the manner of justifying these transgressions. If religious people wish to commit a wrong, they cobble together a religious justification for their wrongful acts, and the irreligious a secular one.

My point in response to Mr. Nikfar was that, in making a comparison, we must either measure existing secular morality against existing religious morality, or ideal secular morality against ideal religious morality. If we measure existing moralities against one another, we see that both fall short of the ideal morality and neither has a clean, shining record. But if we measure ideal moralities against one another, my claim is that these two moralities are one; that is, we have only one ideal morality and cannot have more. In my view, secular morality does not stand opposed to religious morality, and the God of religions, alongside religious/legal injunctions, has called us to follow a supra-religious/secular morality.

The more precise question is, "On the whole, have theists lived more morally or atheists?"—the answer to which I do not know. Mr. Nikfar's claim was that we do not have an ideal religion but we do have an ideal morality, which in my opinion is an unjustified and indefensible claim. Because, as I have said before, religion and religiosity are not identical; rather, there is a gap between the two, and this gap cannot be filled. Religiosity is the product of the behavior of religious people, and this behavior is based both on their understanding of religion and on their will to follow the commands of religion, and since religious people are not infallible or immune from error, they may err in both respects. Therefore, the gap between existing, realized religion and ideal religion originates from the same source as the gap between existing morality and ideal morality.

Nikfar says the entire history of religion is a history of misunderstanding and miscomprehension, and says he is suspicious of religion at its core. You say that errors in understanding and mistakes in the behavior of religious people in the realm of existing religion should not be attributed to ideal religion. The secular intellectual expects you to state which ideal religion you are talking about? Where is this ideal religion? Where does it sit in history? From his perspective, ideal religion does not exist, but ideal morality does.

Look, this objection cuts both ways. Religious people can also say that they are suspicious of secular morality at its core, and if someone claims that secular societies have erred in understanding and following secular morality, one could reply that in that case, the history of secular morality becomes a history of misunderstanding and miscomprehension. We, in turn, expect secular intellectuals to state which ideal secular morality they are talking about? The morality on the basis of which a land like Palestine is occupied and the occupying state is immediately recognized, but the request of its people, after forty-some years of displacement and wandering, to have a Palestinian state recognized in a part of their land at the United Nations is threatened with a veto? Ideal religion is precisely where ideal morality is, and sits in the same place in history where ideal morality sits.

We do not, of course, deny the existence of ideal ethics. But we believe that just as we have ideal ethics, we also have ideal religion, and the reason supporting the existence of both is the same. Religious texts are interpretable, and the possibility that past generations erred in understanding religion or a part of religion always exists, just as the possibility of human error in understanding nature and understanding moral values is always present. Just as the history of humanity's adherence to ethics cannot be held against ethics itself, and for this reason we are compelled to separate existing ethics from ideal ethics, the history of religiosity cannot be held against religion either.

To understand religion, one must refer to religion itself, not to the behavior of the religious. Interestingly, Mr. Nikfar does not hold such a view regarding Marxism, meaning he believes that the history of the realization of Marxism and the attempt to actualize Marx's ideas in the former Soviet Union should not be held against Marx. Furthermore, I do not accept that the history of religion is only a history of misunderstanding religion. Our rich mystical literature and all these teachers of an

Secondly, empirical studies on the background of the formation and emergence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have shown that this declaration originated more from strong religious concerns than from humanism, and the Christian roots and foundations of this declaration and its reliance on the commonalities of the great religions cannot be ignored. In my view, humanism, in the correct sense of the word, does not conflict with theism or belief in God; therefore, your strict demarcation between religion and humanism is indefensible. Moreover, there is no historical evidence to support your claim regarding the close connection between humanism and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Thirdly, the mere existence and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although a commendable and praiseworthy act and a step forward toward the realization of a moral society, the human community, despite great efforts, remains far from the moral utopia, and those who adopted, recognized, and committed to implementing this declaration do not adhere to their commitments. Thus, humanism has also failed to create the moral utopia you envision. In my opinion, if we are realistic and read human history fairly, we will conclude that the element of human will and choice, along with his interests and desires, has the first and last word in this matter, and until this human being wills and earnestly strives to live according to moral values and regulate his relationships with others based on moral standards, neither religion nor human schools, or as you say, humanism, will be of any avail.

Moral reformers, instead of spending their efforts fighting religion or irreligion, should devote their energy and resources to moral education and training. In that case, we can hope to gradually approach the moral utopia. But if these reformers' diagnosis of the root of moral anomalies is incorrect, they will naturally waste their energy and resources. It is also worth mentioning that when I say a human is a human, we also mean that a human is not God and is not an angel. Therefore, striving to create a society one hundred percent free of moral anomalies is a kind of dangerous fantasy that will yield a completely opposite result. That is, those who, in the name of religion or human ideologies, have sought to eradicate moral anomalies, the result of their work has been a society that is morally more degenerate and backward. The most that can and should be done in this regard is to strive to reduce the extent of moral anomalies, not to eradicate them. The moral paradise is a society that one can approach, but in this world and with this human being, it cannot be reached.

If we move past theoretical questions and arrive at functional discussions, in your opinion, why, both in the history of Islamic writing and scholarship and in Islamic political and civil history, is jurisprudence so robust and ethics so frail? Why have we not engaged with ethics to the extent that we have engaged with jurisprudence? Is this due to the essence of the religion, which leads its followers to link with jurisprudence, or due to the disposition of the religious?

First, I must emphasize that the existing jurisprudence taught in seminaries is, in reality, a combination of Islamic Sharia (jurisprudence), ethics, law, and the customs of the society of the Prophet's era and subsequent centuries. A precise and specialized answer to your question requires historical and sociological research, and unfortunately, I am not qualified to comment as an expert in these two areas. Therefore, the points I will make are merely conjecture, speculation, and the proposal of a possible explanation. It seems that the robustness of jurisprudence and the frailty or continued frailty of ethics among us Muslims has numerous causes and reasons that form a wide spectrum. As far as I can see, this problem does not stem from the essence of the religion, because if the essence of the religion is to be realized, it must pass through two filters: one is the understanding of the religious, and the other is the behavior of the religious, and the religious are not infallible or free from error in these two matters, meaning they may err both in understanding the religion and in following religious commands.

Although, when comparing religions, Islam and Judaism possess a more extensive sacred law (Sharia) than religions such as Christianity, this fact alone, even if it leads to the bloating of jurisprudence, will not necessarily cause the withering of ethics. For what we mean by the bloating of jurisprudence is its unbalanced growth. The point is that other branches and fields of learning, including philosophy—especially the practical parts of philosophy, such as “moral philosophy” and “political philosophy”—as well as theology or Kalam, have not grown apace with jurisprudence, and a discipline like “the philosophy of jurisprudence” has essentially had no standing whatsoever until now. Had these sciences grown alongside jurisprudence, a constructive and fruitful interaction and dialogue would naturally have formed between expert scholars in these fields and the jurists, and the advances, developments, and diversity of opinions and theories present in these disciplines would have overflowed into jurisprudence, and these sciences, like interconnected vessels, would have fostered the balanced growth of jurisprudence.

The factors behind the excessive growth of jurisprudence and the extreme thinness or underdevelopment of ethics, and consequently the gradual emptying of Islamic society of moral virtues and the growth of moral vices within it, can be divided into two categories: theoretical and practical. From a theoretical standpoint, an incorrect conception of rationality, or the conduct of the wise (Bina’ al-‘Uqala), the scope of religion, the comprehensiveness of religion, the relationship between religion and ethics, the failure to recognize extra-religious realities and values, and an incorrect expectation of religion to answer non-religious or extra-religious questions can be counted among these factors. Issues of this sort are part of the subject matter of Kalam, or better yet, the philosophy of jurisprudence. In reality, our jurists hold crude and unrefined presuppositions in their minds regarding these issues and organize their jurisprudential research based on those presuppositions.

In other words, they are imitators (muqallid) of previous jurists in this area. Among the non-theoretical factors that have played a role in this matter, one can cite the politics of the rulers of the time, their financial and political support, the necessary investments for training jurists and developing jurisprudential education, as well as the support of the Caliph or Sultan of the time for a specific theological school, such as the Ash‘arite school, which was neither on good terms with the aforementioned rational sciences nor, theoretically, did it substitute Sharia for ethics. Fortunately, in the contemporary era, disciplines such as moral philosophy and modern hermeneutics have found their way into the seminaries, and the prospect of establishing a constructive interaction between these sciences, as well as taking the philosophy of jurisprudence seriously, appears bright.

Naturally, in the initial stages, seminary students’ engagement with these sciences is aimed at dispelling doubts and defending the same traditional and well-known theory regarding the aforementioned presuppositions, and defending the legitimacy of the unbalanced growth of jurisprudence. However, in later stages, this approach will give way to a scientific and sound one, which will pave the way for a constructive and critical dialogue between these sciences and jurisprudence. These are considerations that hastily come to my mind. The subject under discussion is worthy of serious scholarly research. I hope some will take the initiative and conduct research in this area.

Moving from the previous question to an important one, what is the relationship of our Muslim taste, and especially our Iranian taste, with ethics? From the perspective of collective ethics, how empathetic is the psychological makeup of our ethical being with ethics? How much of a role has religion played in forming this taste?

To be honest, I am neither an expert in this area nor do I have much to say, and therefore I prefer to say nothing and leave the answer to this question to those who have worked in this field and have something to say.

It seems the ethical dosage of our taste has decreased. Many say our society has reached a major ethical crisis. Why have we reached this crisis? What role has religion played in this?

There is no doubt that our society is facing a moral crisis. All of us, in our daily lives and with our skin and flesh, touch and experience this bitter truth. Indeed, one might go further and say that we are confronting a moral collapse. But the explanation that can be given for the origin of this crisis or collapse cannot and should not rely solely on one particular factor. At the same time, in my opinion, one of the factors that has not been without influence in this matter is the incorrect understanding of the relationship between religion and ethics, which has led to substituting jurisprudence for ethics. For my part, I have tried to critique and correct this understanding. In fact, the relationship between religion and ethics is the main project that has been the focus of my intellectual and cultural activities for years and remains my primary preoccupation.

How can we overcome this crisis? What must we do for our society to return to ethics? What role should religion assume?

I believe we have relatively good and rich spiritual and moral resources and reserves. If we approach them with appropriate tools and methods, and also make the best use of the experiences and advances made in other cultures and societies in this field, we can hope to overcome this crisis. But first and foremost, we must acknowledge the existence of the crisis. It seems that many of our officials are still not ready to recognize this bitter truth and admit to the existence of a moral crisis in our society, or if they do admit to such a thing, they attribute it to the conspiracy of foreigners and cultural invasion, and act upon this false notion that this crisis can be solved through religion and the implementation of jurisprudential rulings, whereas this crisis is a meta-jurisprudential and even meta-religious crisis, and meta-jurisprudential and meta-religious crises demand meta-jurisprudential and meta-religious solutions.

Religion can play a positive role in solving this crisis only if we correct our understanding of the relationship between religion and ethics and do not substitute jurisprudence for ethics. In fact, this very incorrect understanding of the relationship between religion and ethics is one of the factors that has created this crisis; that is, the current undesirable situation is largely the result of substituting jurisprudence for ethics. Therefore, seeking help from the very factor causing the crisis to solve the crisis will lead to its intensification and perpetuation, making it deeper, more widespread, and more difficult to resolve day by day.

.

---

.

Let Us Not Substitute Jurisprudence for Ethics

Religion and Ethics in Conversation with Abolghasem Fanai

Abolghasem Fanai's Interview with Mehrnameh Magazine, Issue 17, Azar 1390

.

---

.