Consult Your Heart: The Self as a Source of Moral Judgment

In this chapter, I explore the authority of the heart (qalb) as a potential locus for individual moral knowledge and normativity in Islamic ethics. To do so, I discuss two ḥadīths that ostensibly suggest one’s “self” as a source of moral judgment. These ḥadīths raise renewed questions about the sources of moral judgment, the nature of moral judgment, and the ethical capacity of the “self” (conscience) – “consult your heart and consult your self …”; “righteousness is good conduct, and sin is that which rankles in your chest and which you would hate for other people to look upon.” There are rich debates in the Islamic tradition on the place and authority of the bāṭin (inward) in generating moral knowledge, which correspond to contemporary discourses in Western ethics on the conscience’s place in the moral formation of the individual. I argue that although the Islamic legal tradition as a discipline has focused on qualified external actions of individuals and the ijtihād (independent legal reasoning) of mujtahids (jurists), it did not ignore the authority of the bāṭin for moral assessment and the ijtihād of common individuals. I propose that the inward dimension has always occupied an important space within the interdisciplinary field of Islamic ethics, but has been overshadowed by the overarching theological disputes between the Muʿtazilīs and Ashʿarīs over sources of knowledge.

The chapter starts by exploring the relevant aḥādīth (reports) and their interpretation in ḥadīth commentaries, followed by an analysis of discussions in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence and Sufism.