Habitual sin erodes the very capacity to distinguish right from wrong

Evidence

People criticize us for evoking fear in our lessons [duriis] . But look around you: Do you think ours is a society that is afraid of God? If we were afraid of Him and His fury [qahr] , do you think we would behave in the way we do? We are all humans and commit mistakes, and we should ask for forgiveness from Him continually for these. But to commit sins intentionally, as a habit, is what is woeful ! Do we feel remorse and cry at this condition of the Islamic community [umma] ? No! We do not even know we are in this condition. The last shred of fear in our hearts has been squeezed out by the countless sins we commit, so that we don’t even know the difference between what is permissible and what is not [l) wa l) . — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 976

Categorization

• XREF: The causal claim that repeated practice (even sinning) shapes moral perception connects to the vault’s Aristotle virtue-ethics material and Bourdieu’s habitus.