Dustur al-Akhlaq fi al-Quran
- Author died
- 1377 AH
- Editions
- Mu'assasat al-Risalah
Dustur al-Akhlaq fi al-Quran (The Moral Code of the Quran) is a comprehensive comparative study of Islamic ethics by the Egyptian scholar and Azharite professor Muhammad ibn Abdullah Daraz (1894–1958 CE) . Originally written in French, the work constitutes the primary doctoral dissertation that Daraz submitted to the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where it was defended in 1947 alongside his complementary thesis, published in Arabic as Madkhal ila al-Quran al-Karim (Initiation into the Quran) .
Composition and Method
Daraz composed the work over roughly six years during his stay in France in the 1940s while Europe was engulfed in World War II . Having earned a licence at the Sorbonne and studied philosophy, ethics, logic, and sociology under prominent French scholars, Daraz initially planned a narrower presentation of the moral law derived from the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad .
Following a suggestion by the French Orientalist Louis Massignon—who granted Daraz access to rare manuscripts and printed texts from his personal library—the study was expanded to examine classical Islamic schools of thought . The French philosopher René Le Senne also advised him to place Quranic moral philosophy in critical dialogue with Western ethical theories . Consequently, the work engages in an objective, comparative examination assessing ideas from thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Jean-Marie Guyau, and Frédéric Rauh against Quranic principles .
Structure and Contents
The work is organized into two primary divisions: theoretical ethics and practical ethics .
The theoretical section (al-Nazariyyah al-Akhlaqiyyah) investigates the foundational principles of Quranic moral thought across five chapters:
- Obligation (al-Ilzam): Analyzes the sources of moral obligation (the Quran, Sunnah, consensus, and analogical reasoning), the characteristics of moral duty—such as practicability, leniency, and gradation—and the antinomies of obligation, including authority and free will .
- Responsibility (al-Mas'uliyyah): Examines the conditions of moral and religious liability, including individual accountability, legal basis, intentionality, human freedom, and the collective social dimensions of responsibility .
- Sanction (al-Jaza'): Evaluates moral, legal, and divine recompense, detailing the Quranic system of guidance and the forms of earthly and eschatological reward and retribution .
- Intention and Motives (al-Niyyah wa-l-Dawa'i'): Discusses intention as a prerequisite for validating actions, the primacy of intention over external acts, purity of purpose, and the corruption of motives through hypocrisy (riya'), malice, or illicit gain .
- Effort (al-Jahd): Investigates the balance between moral exertion and spontaneous virtue, defensive and creative striving, physical acts of discipline such as prayer and fasting, and the interplay between endurance and moderation .
The practical section (al-Akhlaq al-'Amaliyyah) applies these principles across five domains: individual ethics (al-akhlaq al-fardiyyah), familial ethics (al-akhlaq al-usariyyah), social ethics (al-akhlaq al-ijtima'iyyah), civic or state ethics (akhlaq al-dawlah), and religious ethics (al-akhlaq al-diniyyah), concluding with a systematic synthesis of Islamic virtues .
Translation into Arabic
The French text was rendered into Arabic by the Egyptian linguist and scholar Abd al-Sabur Shahin over a three-year effort . Shahin incorporated full Quranic verses in the main text and footnotes—where Daraz had cited only numbers and chapter names—and verified citations by referencing classical Arabic works of jurisprudence, hadith, exegesis, and speculative theology . The translation was reviewed and prefaced by Daraz's son-in-law, Dr. al-Sayyid Muhammad Badawi .
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