ABSTRACT
The subject of values presents obvious difficulties. Indeed, why not discuss the moral code of Islam, or even the ethics of Islam? The word “moral” sounds traditional if not old fashioned; it connotes notions of good and evil, a host of commandments and prohibitions; it suggests coercion of the individual, something that limits and cramps. The word “ethics” is more acceptable: it is closer to the notion of a system of values, of a general vision of the moral life, but it can also express a standard approach. Max Weber speaks of Islam and other religions as being ethical religions, that is, “a complex of commandments and prohibitions whose transgression is sin,” and he attributes this characteristic to prophecy, which “produces a centralization of ethics.” The word “values” is commonly used nowadays, and it corṙesponds more to modern sensibility, which is preoccuṗied with seeking values, whether isolated or connected, in order to form the basis of ḥuman conduct and its representation. We know that the “theory of values” arose with Western philosophers and replaced the earlier morality which was experienced as an imposition; it introduced the notion of personal morals, whose principle was to conform to values that had been freely chosen. But there are also collective values, or even values attached to a particular line of conduct for which they lay the foundations: “warrior values,” for example, or “tribal values,” or “essential values” etc. The value may be isolated, like a Platonic idea, or grouped in a cluster, or even a system. Nevertheless, it remains strictly abstract, since it is itself the product of an abstraction, and rarely a creation. Seeking the values of a culture, of a religion or a society, is to undertake a task of extraction among a profusion of data. It is in fact a quest that leaves some latitude to personal interpretation, to choice, as soon as one has become sensitive to one particular set of values rather 50than another. There is also the problem of the divergence of values within a single ethical system, especially if it is as vast as that of Islam. My purpose here is not a selective one. I seek the values of Islam in their multiplicity, and at the same time I am looking for a guiding principle, whilst situating these values at various levels of apprehension.
