booke

48chapter onefrom counting goals in football: it is, for example, either 1 or 0 butnever anything in between. The Book says: ‘O believers, fear Allahas He should be feared, and do not die except as Muslims [ill§ waantummuslimån]’ ($l #Imr§n 3:102, MF). It means that al-isl§m andits pillars demand that we fear Allah as He should be feared. Andeveryone who thinks this verse has been abrogated by verse 64:16has been spitefully deceived. 42Morality ( al-akhl§q) is here understood as a sociospiritual law thatlays the foundation of the relationship between the members of thehuman race. It distinguishes human beings from animals and it iseffective, regardless of the economic structure in a society. Themorality of al-isl§m is characterised by universal validity. It achievesits characteristic as ‘general ethics’ through its status as divine revelation.This morality differs from mere custom and tradition, which,although mentioned in the Book, were neither stated as precise rulesnor—because of their nature as constantly changing social practice—explicitly particular norms. In contrast, social ethics were revealedin the form of commandments, the al-furq§n, from Noah onwardsuntil MuÈammad (ß). They are still valid at the present time and areshared by many different cultures in the world; they are enforcedregardless of the nature of the economic system or social environment.In sum, they are the common (human) denominator whichunites cultures, political systems, race, class, and gender. Theydirectly influence the individual’s social behaviour once they havebeen institutionalised as a cultural norm or common practice. Whatevery Arab Muslim must realise is that, contrary to what is currentlybelieved, social obligations towards society are first and foremostmoral obligations and only secondarily religious duties or politic allegalobligations. 4342‘So fear God as much as you can; listen and obey and spend in charity for thebenefit of your own soul and those saved from the covetousness of their own souls…’( Al-Tagh§bun 64:16).43MS added to this the following comment: ‘It has been a big mistake in ourintellectual past, intended or not, to denounce universal ethical guidelines as ideologicalreflections of a specific cultural tradition. Some Arab Marxist intellectualsthought, for example, that ethics belongs to a kind of ideological superstructure in asociety that reflects primarily its economic, material substructure. According to thisview, the ethics of the Bible and the Qur"an, and this includes the ten commandments,express a specific kind of morality derived from the primitive economic conditionsthat existed in the ancient Near East. Marxist thinkers argued that because