Islamic moral cultivation inherits Aristotle’s model of character formed by outward repetition

Evidence

This Aristotelian understanding of moral formation infl a number of Islamic thinkers, foremost among them the eleventh..century theologian Abu Hamid al— (d. 1111 ), but also al— skawayh (d. 1030), Ibn Rushd (d. 1 198 ), and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406). Historian Ira Lapidus draws attention to this genealogy in his analysis of Ibn Khaldun’s use of the Arabic term malaka 28 Lapidus argues that although Ibn Khaldun’s use of the term malaka has often been translated as “habit,” its sense is best captured in the Latin term ha itus, which Lapidus describes as “that inner quality developed as a result of outer practice which makes practice a perfect ability of the soul of the actor” (Lapidus 1984, 54) . Consider, for example, Ibn Khaldun’s remarks in The Muqad ah, which bear remarkable similarity to Aristotle’s discussion: “A habit[us] is a fi rooted quality acquired by doing a certain action and repeating it time af.. ter time, until the form of that action is fi fixed [in one’s disposition] . A habit[us] corresponds to the original action after which it was formed” ( Ibn Khaldun 1958, 346). In terms of faith, malaka according to Lapidus, “is the acquisition, from the belief of the heart and the resulting actions, of a quality that has complete control over the heart so that it commands the action of the limbs and makes every activity take place in submissiveness to it to the point that all actions, eventually, become subservient to this affi of faith. This is the highest degree of faith. It is perfect faith” (1984, 55-56). — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 955

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines malaka/habitus as a soul-deep quality produced by repeated outward practice, distinct from mere habit, and traces its genealogy from Aristotle through Islamic thinkers.
• XREF: This connects to the vault’s cluster on Aristotelianism and virtue ethics, and to Mahmood’s larger argument about habitus and embodiment of normativity — relevant to how liberal feminism treats outward religious practice as mere conformity.