Divine-command ethics did not entail theistic tyranny in Islam

Evidence

This conception is not to be understood, as it has invariably been, to mean that divine-command ethics must entail theistic tyranny and the absence of individual moral autonomy. Such an understanding may accurately apply to the ways in which Christian Europe conducted itself, and against which the Reformation and the Enlightenment constituted reactions. But this was not what Islam stood for, at least not what the dominant and mainstream Ashʿari School and generally the paradigmatic duo of Shariʿa and Sufism theorized and practiced. Aside from a miniscule body of rules directly stipulated in the body of revelation, God’s justice was the-world-as-his-creation, which is to say that it was not a specific divine will but one that infused the order of being as goodness (something quite reminiscent of Scheler’s world-as-ethical-order). — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 515

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ‘why be moral’ question and contrasts with Kantian/Enlightenment moral autonomy debates. — connects to: Islamic predestination was read as denying human moral responsibility