In actuality, we specifically need Islam to be good people.

Yes, there are good people of other faiths, no doubt. But I am using the term “good” in a technical sense to characterize a person who fulfills all basic moral obligations or at least feels bad about not fulfilling them.

To suggest that only Muslims are even in a position to fulfill all basic moral obligations and that adherents of other religions are missing out on these obligations violates principles of universalism that have become so widespread among people today. It is almost a truism in the minds of people that even those without religion can be morally upright. But is this true?

Those who make this claim focus their argument on a small set of moral truths.

In actuality, this shows how limited these people’s understanding of morality is. Their morality only consists of two line items: don’t kill and don’t rape.

There is usually also the platitude, “I don’t harm anyone. That’s what my morality is based on and it doesn’t require belief in God, much less Islam.” This, of course, is a cop out because “harm” can be very vaguely defined and context-dependent. What one considers harmful can vary from time to time, culture to culture, and even from person to person within a single time and culture.

So, even if we all agree that morality is simply about preventing harm, different people will have widely divergent views on harm. Furthermore, it is not easy to “calculate” what causes harm in the first place or what causes the most or least harm in any given situation. And when we look at the way people behave in real life according to their morality, it does not seem like they are acting on the basis of a complex calculation of weighing harms. Mostly it seems people act on the basis of larger societal and cultural norms of acceptable behavior and then interpret whatever is socially unacceptable as “harmful.” These are objections raised against what’s known as the Harm Principle in Western ethics.

But Islamic ethics is far richer, far more nuanced, and, yes, far superior to the vague, speculative musings of liberal deployments of the Harm Principle (which is, again, just a cover for transient cultural sensibilities anyway).

Central to Islamic ethics are the concepts of adab and khuluq, i.e., manners and character. As the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم said, “The best amongst you are those who have the best manners and character.”39 Allah also praised the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم as having khuluq adhim, i.e., great superlative character.

When we look at the content of Islamic ethics, adab, and khuluq, we find a great deal that is not intuitive as far as Western liberal cultural sensibilities are concerned. Here are some of the more prominent examples:

• Great emphasis for respecting and taking care of one’s parents.

• The moral imperative of helping one’s neighbors.

• The moral significance of visiting the sick.

• The premium placed on supporting orphans and the poor.

• The moral necessity of maintaining family ties.

Sure, you will find some impoverished semblance of these values in other religions and non-Islamic cultures. But in Islam, these are not niceties. They are duties. You are not considered a morally exemplary person for doing the above. Rather, you are merely doing your basic moral duties and if you fail in this, then you are morally culpable. It’s a big difference.

But there are further imperatives:

• Can one be a moral person if one is racked with jealousy?.

• Can one be of sound moral integrity if one habitually backbites?.

• Can one be considered ethical in any sense if one fails to have good assumptions of people?.