Mohd Hafizullah B Abu Bakar
Section 19
The Importance and Significance of Ethics.
Ethics can be defined as a process of systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. The term ethics and morality are closely related. It is now common to refer to ethical judgments or to ethical principles where it once would have been more accurate to speak of moral judgments or moral principles. These applications are an extension of the meaning of ethics. Ethics is traditionally subdivided into normative ethics, metaethics, and applied ethics. Normative ethics seeks to establish norms or standards of conduct; a crucial question in this field is whether actions are to be judged right or wrong based on their consequences or based on their conformity to some moral rule, such as “Do not tell a lie.” Theories that adopt the former basis of judgment are called consequentialist ; those that adopt the latter are known as deontological. Metaethics is concerned with the nature of ethical judgments and theories. Since the beginning of the 20th century, much work in metaethics has focused on the logical and semantic aspects of moral language. Some major metaethical theories are naturalism intuitionism, emotivism and prescriptivism. Applied ethics, as the name implies, consists of the application of normative ethical theories to practical moral problems (e.g., abortion). Among the major fields of applied ethics are bioethics, business ethics, legal ethics, and medical ethics. [1] This is the view from western perspective.
Whereas, Islam defined ethics the set of moral principles that refers to the rightness or wrongness of the decisions and behaviors of individuals and the organizations of which they are part. In general, it can be defined as the system of rules governing the ordering of values .It is a normative field because it prescribes what one should do or abstain from doing. Within an Islamic context, the term most closely related to ethics in the Qur’an is khuluq. It also the study of moral standards which is the process of examining the moral standards of a person or society to determine whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable in order to apply them to concrete situations and issues. Ethics has a twofold objective it evaluates human practices by calling upon moral standards, also it may give prescriptive advice on how to act morally in a given situation.
Therefore, aims to study both moral and immoral behavior in order to make well-founded judgments and to arrive at adequate recommendations. From the Islamic context, the dimensions of ethics are numerous, far-reaching and comprehensive. Ethical system in Islam derived from the teachings of the Qur an and from the Sunnah (i.e. recorded saying and behavior of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him). Islamic ethics deals with all aspects of human life. It deals with relationships between man and Allah, man and his fellowmen man and other elements and creatures of the universe, and man his innermost self (Hanafi & Sallam, 1997).
Furthermore, Islam considers ethics as an offshoot of imam or a Muslim belief system, and it emerges from the Islamic worldview of human life. In addition, Ethics is as our behavior. Behavior is a set of Islamic moral values, which have been prescribed fundamentally in the Quran and implemented by Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h) during his life. [2]
There are some similarities and differences in ethics from Islamic and western point of view. The most crucial difference to take into the consideration is the sources of how ethics is derived. From my simple analysis, I found that, the western derives ethics from their own reasoning that is they deduce ethics from their daily experiences, their thought, and their response towards something. They accept everything that seems logic and acceptable to them as long as they are pleased with it. Their action sometimes provides the false information because we know that mind sometimes tell lies. However, in Islamic perspective, ethics is derived from Al-Quran and Sunnah of our beloved Prophet, Muhammad S.A.W., the true or genuine sources which we should look up for every matters. Ethics which derived from these two sources are completely free from a lies. It means ethics in Islam is the beautiful manner that should be practiced by everyone because it will make sure the presence of justice in every situations and everyone will be pleased with the manner. As we know, Al-Quran itself has the unimaginable beauty which we cannot interpret. The guidelines of how human should behave have been explained in the Quran for a long time ago. Then Allah send the Prophet Muhammad to show the beauty of His guidelines as mentioned in His Book as mentioned in Surah Al-Qalam verse no 4:
And thou (standest) on an exalted standard of character.
The morals, manners and conduct of the Last Messenger of Allah, Sall Allahu alaihi wa Aalihi wa Sallim, were perfected by Almighty Allah—who taught him, with a view to educate mankind. According to Hazrat Abu Huraira, the Holy Messenger, Sall Allahu alaihi wa Aalihi wa Sallim, had said, "I have been sent as a Messenger in order to perfect the morals and conduct of mankind." [3]
The importance of being ethical in Islam is very crucial. From my own opinion, I notice that today people are not following the guidelines of conduct which have been taught by our Prophet. Nowadays, people are concern about material and neglect the virtue on their daily life or briefly said, they are being unethical in Islamic point of view, but for them, it is ethical because they evaluate from western point of view. As a result of lack of ethics or social manners, many social problems have arises such as racing, murder, blackmail, the way of dressing and so forth. To overcome this kind of problems, we need to instill or inculcate our new generation with the right social conduct which is in line with Shariah.
[3] http://www.ummah.net/Al_adaab/sheikh/Adab_and_Ikhlaq.html
p/s: rasanya tak berapa lengkap sangat kerana saya tak sempat baca banyak....because of time constrain, i could not provide much of my thought and information about this topic...
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