Moral Decrees of Islam as Consonant with the True Expediencies

By: Ayatullah Muhammad Taqi Misbah Yazdi
What we understood from Islam and we believe that to dispense with religious discussion can also be proved through rational proof is that regarding values and dos and don’ts, like the declarative cases encompassing “being and not-beingâ€‌, the truth is nothing but one, and as such, it cannot be treated as multiple and diverse. We have also an array of good and bad things, which are purely based on social contract and have no real and true foundation, but not all good and bad are like that. The morally and ethically good and bad which are credible in Islam are all consonant with expediencies and corruptions.
For example, telling a lie is unacceptable and not permitted because it brings about people’s mistrust to one another, and as a result, it will end up in the collapse of the social order, and man can never live in such a society. Imagine a community whose members are liars and they all tell lies in one way or another. In such a community, the social bond will loosen and the system of living will shatter. The edifice of social life is founded on trust in one another. If lies are supposed to be rampant and everybody tells lies, you can no longer trust anybody ranging from your spouse and child to your relative, friend, neighbor and colleague, and life will break down. It is because of this tremendous and irreparable social loss that telling a lie is prohibited in Islam and is considered as a major sin.
On the contrary, telling the truth wins the trust of one another and people can enjoy the benefit of social life. If students of schools and universities do not trust what their teachers and professors tell them and have written in books, all sessions in schools and universities and textbooks there will be rendered useless. Therefore, the goodness of telling the truth and the badness of telling a lie are consistent with the expediencies and corruptions associated with them, and it is through their association with expediencies and corruptions that Islam has considered honesty as good and lying as bad.
The point we have to add is that according to Islam, goodness and badness of things are not only related to the material and worldly goodness and badness. In fact, there is a set of good and bad things which are related to the spiritual and otherworldly affairs of man. In the good and bad things that Islam has promulgated, in addition to the material and worldly good and bad things, it has also taken into account the spiritual and otherworldly welfare and perdition.

Summary
In conclusion, religious knowledge, whether pertaining to the doctrines or to the ethical and moral laws and issues, is consonant with the realities, and in all these fields the truth is not more than one and the true religion is only one and has no room for multiplicity and plurality. In the section about laws and values, it can occasionally be seen that the ruling about a certain thing changes; for example, telling the truth is sometimes good while at other times it is bad. The reason behind it is that we have not taken into account and stated the subject in all its dimensions. And if it is done and we consider certain limits and conditions, to be honest will be always good or bad and it will never be changed.
From the viewpoint of philosophical and epistemological foundation, we also said that the source of pluralist thought can be one of these three isms: positivism, skepticism and relativism. If, like the logical positivists, we said that metaphysical and non-empirical cases such as “There is God,â€‌ “There is the Day of Resurrectionâ€‌ and the like are essentially meaningless accounts, or if we became advocates of relativism in human knowledge in totality or on particular ethical and moral cases, or if we embraced agnosticism and said that no part of human knowledge is definite and certain, and all of them with varying degrees are inseparable with doubt and skepticism, through one of these three philosophical and epistemological foundations, one could lead to pluralism and the acceptance of the multiplicity of truth in human knowledge, including religious knowledge.
Of course, at the outset of the discussion we have also noted that it does not mean that everyone who has turned pluralist had initially accepted positivism, relativism or agnosticism. Rather, it is also such that at the beginning one had inclined toward pluralism, accepted it and then sometimes looked for evidence to justify and prove it. But, at any rate, if one wants to follow the logical conclusion, at the outset, he has to accept one of these three foundations in epistemology and then arrive at pluralism through it. And in essence, we have to bear in mind that the logical conclusion is that all scientific issues are in one way or another anchored in philosophical principles and premises and the philosophical issues in turn are based on epistemological issues. That is, from the viewpoint of logic, at the beginning we have epistemological discussions and then philosophical discussions and thereafter current scientific issues.
For example, when a physician or a researcher tries to invent medicine for curing a certain ailment, initially he does not come to deal with philosophy and prove the philosophical rules, but this research is definitely based on a philosophical principle; namely, the principle of causality. This researcher goes to the laboratory and spends many hours for research to invent a medicine means that he has believed that illness does not come into being spontaneously and without a cause; whenever there is a disease, there must certainly be a cause. And he also believed that there is another cause and factor that could affect and eliminate the factor leading to the disease and thus cure the same.
In this manner, without accepting the principle of causality, no researcher can conduct research. But this does not mean that initially, he has studied philosophy and used the principle of causality by indisputable evidence and has then gone to the laboratory and conducted research. Rather, belief in the principle of cause and effect unconsciously and half-consciously exists in his mind.