An Egyptian Ethicist Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz (1894-1958) and His Qurʾān-Based Moral Theory
Main Article Content
Keywords
Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, Egypt, Occidentalism, Qurʾān, Moral Obligation, Immanuel Kant, Religious Hermeneutics, Heteronomy, Dianomy, Autonomy, Integration of Knowledge
Abstract
The sources shaping a moral theory range from “reason” to “societal command” to “religious texts.” The prominence and relationship between these sources is contingent upon the ethicists’ approaches and inquiries. Although Kant’s proposition of “pure reason” as a source of moral obligation marks a significant turning point in the field of ethics, scholars like Søren Aabye Kierkegaard argue for a divine command law of ethics, where religious texts become an inevitable source complementing individual ethical choices. This essay explores the intersection of religious texts and reasoning—the fusion between heteronomy and autonomy as sources of morality. It analyzes Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz’s “Moral Obligation” as a categorical imperative within moral theories and his incorporation of Western scholars such as Immanuel Kant and Henri Bergson into his work, among others. The discussion features a significant episode of Muslim intellectual engagement with Western scholarship and its impact on understanding morality in the Qurʾān. The study shows that Drāz’s La Morale du Koran adapts certain Western ethical theories and reinterprets specific Qurʾanic passages, creating a new synthesis: an integration of knowledge.
References
Endnotes
∗ I would like to thank my colleagues in the Philosophy and Theology Department
in Valparaiso University, Aaron Dean Stalnaker, Umar Ryad, and Younus Y. Mirza
and the AJIS editors and anonymous reviewers for their comments on this essay.
1 A small city in the district of Dusūq, in the Governorate of Kafr al-Shaykh, a place
that was famous for religious education.
2 Memorizing the Qurʾān remains an integral component of the al-Azhar educational
system to this day. In the past, students typically attended local schools in their
villages, known as kuttāb, where they focused on learning Arabic and memorizing
the Qurʾān. Drāz, however, had a different experience. His father chose to send him
to a private tutor who played a crucial role in facilitating his early memorization of
the Qurʾān compared to his peers.
3 Despite the existence of Azharī institutes, the foundational stage of education
retained similarities to the pre-modern system, as illustrated by Richard Bulliet.
Cf. Richard W. Bulliet, “The Age Structure of Medieval Islamic Education.” In Studia
Islamica, 1983: 105–117.
4 This occurred amid the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, a nationwide revolt against the
British mandate in Egypt and Sudan; Cf. Aḥmad Muṣṭafá Faḍlīyyah, Al-ʿAllāmah
Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, (Cairo: Maktabat al-īmān, 2010), pp. 37-45.
5 In 1936, Muḥammad Muṣṭafá al-Marāghī (d. 1945), the Grand Imām of al-Azhar, organized
a delegation known as the Fuʾad I delegation, sending several scholars to study
in Europe. Among them were ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Marāghī and Maḥmūd Ḥubullāh, who
were tasked with studying History and Philosophy in France. Drāz, along with ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān Tāj, Muḥammad Muḥammadayn al-Fahhām, ʿAfīfī ʿAbd al-Fattāh, and
ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd, were sent to France to pursue studies in comparative religion.
Muḥammad Kāmil al-Fiqī, Al-Azhar wa atharuh fī al-nahḍah al-adabīyah al-ḥadīthah,
(Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʿah al-minbarīyah bi-al-azhar al-sharīf, 1956), vol. 2, p. 80.
6 In a meeting with Drāz’s eldest son, Muḥsin, I inquired about why his father refused
to assume the Grand Imām’s position. Muḥsin explained that his father declined the
role out of concern that he might not be able to preserve al-Azhar’s institutional
religious freedom. Drāz feared potential intervention by the Cabinet of Egypt in
al-Azhar’s affairs, prompting his decision. This information was obtained through
a personal interview in Cairo in June 2022. Cf. Faḍlīyyah, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh
Drāz, pp. 17-18.
7 Faḍlīyyah, Al-ʿAllāmah, pp. 89-91.
8 Kenneth W. Morgan, Islam, the Straight Path: Islam Interpreted by Muslims, (New
York: Ronald Press Co., 1958), pp. 3-41.
9 ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Maṭʿanī, “Fikr al-ʿamāliqah: Mabādʾ al-qānūn al-dawlī wa-al-Islām.”
In Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz: drāsāt wa buḥūth bi qalam talāmizatih wa muʿāṣirīh,
(Cairo: Dār al-qalam li-al-nashr wa-al-tawzīʿ, 2007), p. 31.
10 Al-Maṭʿanī, Fikr al-ʿamāliqah, p. 33.
11 I retrieved a copy of this paper from Drāz’s son, Muḥsin, in Cairo in June 2022.
12 This information was obtained by interviewing Drāz’s eldest son, Muḥsin, in Cairo
in June 2022.
13 Faḍlīyyah, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, p. 15-16.
14 Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, “Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, al-ʿalim al-ʿallāmah, al-baḥr
al-fahāmah,” in Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz: Dirāsāt wa buḥūth bi Qalam talāmizatih
wa muʿāṣirīh (Cairo: Dār al-qalam li’l-nashr wa’l-tawzīʿ, 2007), 21.
15 Al-Qaraḍāwī, “Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz,” p. 24.
16 Faḍlīyyah, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, p. 18.
17 M. A. Drāz, The Moral World of the Qurʾan by M. A. Draz, translated by Danielle
Robinson and Rebecca Masterton, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008).
18 Basma I. Abdelgafar, Morality in the Qurʾan: The Greater Good of Humanity,
(Malaysia: Islamic Book Trust, 2018).
19 Drāz, The Moral World of the Qurʾān, p. 13.
20 Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq fī al-Qurʼān: Dirāsah muqāranah
lil-akhlāq al-naẓarīya fī al-Qurʻān: mulḥaq bihā taṣnīf lil-āyāt al-mukhtāra allatī
tukawin al-dastūr al-kāmil lil-akhlāq al-ʿamalīya, edited by Al-Sayyid Muḥammad
Badawī, translated by ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr Shāhīn, (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-risāla, 1974),
p. 22.
21 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 136-137.
22 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 141-142. All the translations of the Qurʾanic verses are
sourced from https://quran.com.
23 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 163-171.
24 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 245-250
25 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 258-259
26 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 261.
27 Other examples that Drāz cited from the Hebrew Bible in this category are:
(Deuteronomy, 5: 25; 7:12-16; 11:13; 12:5-6; 15:9), (Genesis, 3:3; 4:11-12; 9:1; 22:16-
17; 27:28-29; 35:11-12), and (Exodus, 23: 25-27, 15; 13); from the Gospels, (John, 19
and 21), (Mark, 10, 21), (Luke, 12:29-34), (1 Timothy 6:17-19), and (1 John 2: 15-25)
See Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 277-282.
28 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, 282; Cf., (Q. 4:11, 12, 24, and 66), Drāz categorizes all the
verses in the Qurʾān that mention rewards or punishments and organizes them into
a chart. Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 401-402.
29 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 424-470.
30 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 585-587.
31 Little and Twiss argue, “It is hard to see how one can trace relationships between
two concepts, particularly concepts as complex as religion and morality.” David
Little and Sumner B. Twiss, Comparative Religious Ethics, (New York: Harper &
Row, 1978), p. 6.
32 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 19-134.
33 Kant states, “Philosophy based on experience is said to be empirical; but if its doctrines
are abstract and prior, it is said to be pure. Pure and merely formal philosophy
is then called logic, but logic becomes metaphysics when it is focused on definite
metal objects. This is the origin of the idea that there are two kinds of metaphysics,
the metaphysic of nature and the metaphysic of morals. Physics, for example,
is both empirical and theoretical, and so is ethics; but the empirical part of ethics
should be called practical anthropology, while its theory is properly called morals.”
Immanuel Kant, and R. Bernard Blakney, An Immanuel Kant Reader, ed. 1st, (New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 166.
34 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, (Chicago: Open Court
Pub.), 1946.
35 Stern states: “For Kierkegaard, however, because Hegel’s solution to the problem
of moral obligation was intended to avoid any Kantian tension between duty and
inclination, this meant that the social command account could not treat morality as
asking too much of us as individuals; it thus threatened to render our moral lives…
by reducing the moral demand.” Robert Stern, Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant,
Hegel, Kierkegaard, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 1-3.
36 C. Stephen Evans, God and moral obligation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013),
p. 25.
37 Chris Heathwood, “Could Morality Have a Source?” In Journal of Ethics & Social
Philosophy 6, no. 2 (n.d.) pp. 2-3.
38 The Qurʾanic verses that discuss wine are: (Q. 2: 219; 4: 43; 16:67; and 5: 90-91)
39 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 27.
40 Muʿtazilah are a theological school that can be traced back to its founder Wāṣil ibn
Aṭāʾ (699-749). They are defenders of reason in Islam and, in the 8th century, were the
first to use the Hellenistic philosophy to drive their dogmatic points. They give preference
to reason over revelation. Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Muʿtazilah.”
41 The Shīʿah were a political group that supported the fourth Caliph of Muhammad,
ʿAlī ibn Abī Talib, and later they supported ʿAlī’s descendants. This group developed
a religious and theological movement different from Sunni Islam and has important
sects to which the term Shīʿism is applied. Newman, “Shīʿī,” in Encyclopedia
Britannica.
42 Ashʿarīyyah is a theological school that supports the use of reason and speculative
theology to defend the faith. It was founded by Abū al-Hassan al-Ashʿarī in the
10th century. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopedia, “Ashʿarīyyah,” Encyclopedia
Britannica, (October 21, 2009), https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ashariyyah,
accessed on 3/16/2023.
43 Maturīdīyyah is a school of theology founded in the 10th century by Abū Mansur
al-Maturīdī (d.944). They are very similar to the Ashʿarīyah, but they rely on
the Qurʾān without reasoning or free interpretation; Britannica, T. Editors of
Encyclopedia, “Māturīdīyyah,” (Encyclopedia Britannica, April 3, 2020), https://
www.britannica.com/topic/Maturidiyah, accessed on 3/16/2023.
44 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 22-26.
45 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 26.
46 The Qurʾān states, “And [by] the soul and He who proportioned it; And inspired
it [with discernment of] its wickedness and its righteousness” (Q. 91:7-8); “Rather,
human, against himself, will be a witness” (Q. 75:14); “Have We not made for him
two eyes? And a tongue and two lips? And have shown him the two ways?” (Q. 90:
8-10); Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 27.
47 The Qurʾān states, “And We have certainly honored the children of Adam and carried
them on land and sea and provided for them of the good things and preferred them
over much of what We have created, with [definite] preference” (Q. 17:70).
48 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 33
49 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 117.
50 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 36.
51 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 98.
52 J. P. Plamenatz and Duignan Brian, “Jeremy Bentham.” Encyclopedia Britannica,
February 11, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jeremy-Bentham
accessed on 3/16/2023.
53 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 111.
54 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 115.
55 Bergson argues that there are two types of Morality: closed, whose religion is static,
and open, whose religion is dynamic. Leonard Lawlor and Valentine Moulard-
Leonard, “Henri Bergson,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by
Edward N. Zalta, September 21, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/
entries/bergson, accessed on 3/16/2023.
56 Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, translated by Brereton
R. Ashley, Audra C., & W. Horsfall Carter, (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1935), p. 87.
57 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 9.
58 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 5.
59 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 89.
60 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 16-17.
61 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 91.
62 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 23-24.
63 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 25.
64 Rauh wrote L’ Expérience Morale (1890) and Essai sur le fondement Métaphysique de
la morale (1903).
65 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 118-123.
66 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 127.
67 Drāz, La morale du Koran, pp. 68-69; Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 98-98.
68 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 131-34.
69 In his work “The Incoherence of the Incoherence,” Ibn Rushd argues that all prophets
are genius philosophers and, conversely, philosophers are the heirs of the prophets.
This assertion is grounded in his broader argument that philosophy and religion are
not contradictory but, in fact, complementary to each other. Ibn Rushd, Averroes’
Tahafut Al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), translated by Simon Van
Den Bergh, (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 359.
70 He refers to religion in the general sense; he does not mean Islam alone, as indicated
in his footnote on page 14. Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 14.
71 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 14-15.
72 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 678.
73 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 679.
74 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 679.
75 Elizabeth Bucar, Creative Conformity: The Feminist Politics of U.S. Catholic and
Iranian Shiʿi Women, (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2011), p. 1.
76 Aaron Stalnaker, Overcoming our evil: human nature and spiritual exercises in Xunzi
and Augustine (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006), pp. 296-297.
∗ I would like to thank my colleagues in the Philosophy and Theology Department
in Valparaiso University, Aaron Dean Stalnaker, Umar Ryad, and Younus Y. Mirza
and the AJIS editors and anonymous reviewers for their comments on this essay.
1 A small city in the district of Dusūq, in the Governorate of Kafr al-Shaykh, a place
that was famous for religious education.
2 Memorizing the Qurʾān remains an integral component of the al-Azhar educational
system to this day. In the past, students typically attended local schools in their
villages, known as kuttāb, where they focused on learning Arabic and memorizing
the Qurʾān. Drāz, however, had a different experience. His father chose to send him
to a private tutor who played a crucial role in facilitating his early memorization of
the Qurʾān compared to his peers.
3 Despite the existence of Azharī institutes, the foundational stage of education
retained similarities to the pre-modern system, as illustrated by Richard Bulliet.
Cf. Richard W. Bulliet, “The Age Structure of Medieval Islamic Education.” In Studia
Islamica, 1983: 105–117.
4 This occurred amid the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, a nationwide revolt against the
British mandate in Egypt and Sudan; Cf. Aḥmad Muṣṭafá Faḍlīyyah, Al-ʿAllāmah
Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, (Cairo: Maktabat al-īmān, 2010), pp. 37-45.
5 In 1936, Muḥammad Muṣṭafá al-Marāghī (d. 1945), the Grand Imām of al-Azhar, organized
a delegation known as the Fuʾad I delegation, sending several scholars to study
in Europe. Among them were ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Marāghī and Maḥmūd Ḥubullāh, who
were tasked with studying History and Philosophy in France. Drāz, along with ʿAbd
al-Raḥmān Tāj, Muḥammad Muḥammadayn al-Fahhām, ʿAfīfī ʿAbd al-Fattāh, and
ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd, were sent to France to pursue studies in comparative religion.
Muḥammad Kāmil al-Fiqī, Al-Azhar wa atharuh fī al-nahḍah al-adabīyah al-ḥadīthah,
(Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʿah al-minbarīyah bi-al-azhar al-sharīf, 1956), vol. 2, p. 80.
6 In a meeting with Drāz’s eldest son, Muḥsin, I inquired about why his father refused
to assume the Grand Imām’s position. Muḥsin explained that his father declined the
role out of concern that he might not be able to preserve al-Azhar’s institutional
religious freedom. Drāz feared potential intervention by the Cabinet of Egypt in
al-Azhar’s affairs, prompting his decision. This information was obtained through
a personal interview in Cairo in June 2022. Cf. Faḍlīyyah, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh
Drāz, pp. 17-18.
7 Faḍlīyyah, Al-ʿAllāmah, pp. 89-91.
8 Kenneth W. Morgan, Islam, the Straight Path: Islam Interpreted by Muslims, (New
York: Ronald Press Co., 1958), pp. 3-41.
9 ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Maṭʿanī, “Fikr al-ʿamāliqah: Mabādʾ al-qānūn al-dawlī wa-al-Islām.”
In Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz: drāsāt wa buḥūth bi qalam talāmizatih wa muʿāṣirīh,
(Cairo: Dār al-qalam li-al-nashr wa-al-tawzīʿ, 2007), p. 31.
10 Al-Maṭʿanī, Fikr al-ʿamāliqah, p. 33.
11 I retrieved a copy of this paper from Drāz’s son, Muḥsin, in Cairo in June 2022.
12 This information was obtained by interviewing Drāz’s eldest son, Muḥsin, in Cairo
in June 2022.
13 Faḍlīyyah, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, p. 15-16.
14 Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, “Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, al-ʿalim al-ʿallāmah, al-baḥr
al-fahāmah,” in Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz: Dirāsāt wa buḥūth bi Qalam talāmizatih
wa muʿāṣirīh (Cairo: Dār al-qalam li’l-nashr wa’l-tawzīʿ, 2007), 21.
15 Al-Qaraḍāwī, “Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz,” p. 24.
16 Faḍlīyyah, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, p. 18.
17 M. A. Drāz, The Moral World of the Qurʾan by M. A. Draz, translated by Danielle
Robinson and Rebecca Masterton, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008).
18 Basma I. Abdelgafar, Morality in the Qurʾan: The Greater Good of Humanity,
(Malaysia: Islamic Book Trust, 2018).
19 Drāz, The Moral World of the Qurʾān, p. 13.
20 Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq fī al-Qurʼān: Dirāsah muqāranah
lil-akhlāq al-naẓarīya fī al-Qurʻān: mulḥaq bihā taṣnīf lil-āyāt al-mukhtāra allatī
tukawin al-dastūr al-kāmil lil-akhlāq al-ʿamalīya, edited by Al-Sayyid Muḥammad
Badawī, translated by ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr Shāhīn, (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-risāla, 1974),
p. 22.
21 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 136-137.
22 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 141-142. All the translations of the Qurʾanic verses are
sourced from https://quran.com.
23 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 163-171.
24 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 245-250
25 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 258-259
26 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 261.
27 Other examples that Drāz cited from the Hebrew Bible in this category are:
(Deuteronomy, 5: 25; 7:12-16; 11:13; 12:5-6; 15:9), (Genesis, 3:3; 4:11-12; 9:1; 22:16-
17; 27:28-29; 35:11-12), and (Exodus, 23: 25-27, 15; 13); from the Gospels, (John, 19
and 21), (Mark, 10, 21), (Luke, 12:29-34), (1 Timothy 6:17-19), and (1 John 2: 15-25)
See Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 277-282.
28 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, 282; Cf., (Q. 4:11, 12, 24, and 66), Drāz categorizes all the
verses in the Qurʾān that mention rewards or punishments and organizes them into
a chart. Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 401-402.
29 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 424-470.
30 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 585-587.
31 Little and Twiss argue, “It is hard to see how one can trace relationships between
two concepts, particularly concepts as complex as religion and morality.” David
Little and Sumner B. Twiss, Comparative Religious Ethics, (New York: Harper &
Row, 1978), p. 6.
32 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 19-134.
33 Kant states, “Philosophy based on experience is said to be empirical; but if its doctrines
are abstract and prior, it is said to be pure. Pure and merely formal philosophy
is then called logic, but logic becomes metaphysics when it is focused on definite
metal objects. This is the origin of the idea that there are two kinds of metaphysics,
the metaphysic of nature and the metaphysic of morals. Physics, for example,
is both empirical and theoretical, and so is ethics; but the empirical part of ethics
should be called practical anthropology, while its theory is properly called morals.”
Immanuel Kant, and R. Bernard Blakney, An Immanuel Kant Reader, ed. 1st, (New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 166.
34 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, (Chicago: Open Court
Pub.), 1946.
35 Stern states: “For Kierkegaard, however, because Hegel’s solution to the problem
of moral obligation was intended to avoid any Kantian tension between duty and
inclination, this meant that the social command account could not treat morality as
asking too much of us as individuals; it thus threatened to render our moral lives…
by reducing the moral demand.” Robert Stern, Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant,
Hegel, Kierkegaard, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 1-3.
36 C. Stephen Evans, God and moral obligation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013),
p. 25.
37 Chris Heathwood, “Could Morality Have a Source?” In Journal of Ethics & Social
Philosophy 6, no. 2 (n.d.) pp. 2-3.
38 The Qurʾanic verses that discuss wine are: (Q. 2: 219; 4: 43; 16:67; and 5: 90-91)
39 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 27.
40 Muʿtazilah are a theological school that can be traced back to its founder Wāṣil ibn
Aṭāʾ (699-749). They are defenders of reason in Islam and, in the 8th century, were the
first to use the Hellenistic philosophy to drive their dogmatic points. They give preference
to reason over revelation. Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Muʿtazilah.”
41 The Shīʿah were a political group that supported the fourth Caliph of Muhammad,
ʿAlī ibn Abī Talib, and later they supported ʿAlī’s descendants. This group developed
a religious and theological movement different from Sunni Islam and has important
sects to which the term Shīʿism is applied. Newman, “Shīʿī,” in Encyclopedia
Britannica.
42 Ashʿarīyyah is a theological school that supports the use of reason and speculative
theology to defend the faith. It was founded by Abū al-Hassan al-Ashʿarī in the
10th century. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopedia, “Ashʿarīyyah,” Encyclopedia
Britannica, (October 21, 2009), https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ashariyyah,
accessed on 3/16/2023.
43 Maturīdīyyah is a school of theology founded in the 10th century by Abū Mansur
al-Maturīdī (d.944). They are very similar to the Ashʿarīyah, but they rely on
the Qurʾān without reasoning or free interpretation; Britannica, T. Editors of
Encyclopedia, “Māturīdīyyah,” (Encyclopedia Britannica, April 3, 2020), https://
www.britannica.com/topic/Maturidiyah, accessed on 3/16/2023.
44 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 22-26.
45 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 26.
46 The Qurʾān states, “And [by] the soul and He who proportioned it; And inspired
it [with discernment of] its wickedness and its righteousness” (Q. 91:7-8); “Rather,
human, against himself, will be a witness” (Q. 75:14); “Have We not made for him
two eyes? And a tongue and two lips? And have shown him the two ways?” (Q. 90:
8-10); Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 27.
47 The Qurʾān states, “And We have certainly honored the children of Adam and carried
them on land and sea and provided for them of the good things and preferred them
over much of what We have created, with [definite] preference” (Q. 17:70).
48 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 33
49 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 117.
50 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 36.
51 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 98.
52 J. P. Plamenatz and Duignan Brian, “Jeremy Bentham.” Encyclopedia Britannica,
February 11, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jeremy-Bentham
accessed on 3/16/2023.
53 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 111.
54 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 115.
55 Bergson argues that there are two types of Morality: closed, whose religion is static,
and open, whose religion is dynamic. Leonard Lawlor and Valentine Moulard-
Leonard, “Henri Bergson,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by
Edward N. Zalta, September 21, 2021, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/
entries/bergson, accessed on 3/16/2023.
56 Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, translated by Brereton
R. Ashley, Audra C., & W. Horsfall Carter, (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1935), p. 87.
57 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 9.
58 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 5.
59 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 89.
60 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 16-17.
61 Bergson, The two sources of morality and religion, p. 91.
62 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 23-24.
63 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 25.
64 Rauh wrote L’ Expérience Morale (1890) and Essai sur le fondement Métaphysique de
la morale (1903).
65 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 118-123.
66 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 127.
67 Drāz, La morale du Koran, pp. 68-69; Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 98-98.
68 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 131-34.
69 In his work “The Incoherence of the Incoherence,” Ibn Rushd argues that all prophets
are genius philosophers and, conversely, philosophers are the heirs of the prophets.
This assertion is grounded in his broader argument that philosophy and religion are
not contradictory but, in fact, complementary to each other. Ibn Rushd, Averroes’
Tahafut Al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), translated by Simon Van
Den Bergh, (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 359.
70 He refers to religion in the general sense; he does not mean Islam alone, as indicated
in his footnote on page 14. Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 14.
71 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, pp. 14-15.
72 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 678.
73 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 679.
74 Drāz, Dustūr al-akhlāq, p. 679.
75 Elizabeth Bucar, Creative Conformity: The Feminist Politics of U.S. Catholic and
Iranian Shiʿi Women, (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2011), p. 1.
76 Aaron Stalnaker, Overcoming our evil: human nature and spiritual exercises in Xunzi
and Augustine (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006), pp. 296-297.
Article Sidebar
Published
Aug 1, 2024
Article Details
How to Cite
Abdelgawwad, O. (2024). An Egyptian Ethicist: Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Drāz (1894-1958) and His Qurʾān-Based Moral Theory. American Journal of Islam and Society, 41(2), 46–79. https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v41i2.3376
Section
Articles
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
When an article is accepted for publication, copyrights of the publication are transferred from the author to the Journal and reserved for the Publisher. Permission will be required from the publisher for any work for which the author does not hold copyright and for any substantial extracts from work by other authors. The copyright holder giving permission may instruct the author on the form of acknowledgment to be followed. Alternatively, we recommend following the style: “Reproduced with permission from [author], [book/journal title]; published by [publisher], [year]”.
No commercial reproduction is allowed without the express permission of the publisher.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
© The International Institute of Islamic Thought
