Machine summary:
While at the socio-political level Islam does consider the ethics of equivalent response to be justified, acceptable, and perhaps the only practicable ethics, at the level of personal morality or, what the Qur’an calls personal taqwā (piety), the preferred Qur’anic position isthat of not returning wrong for wrong.
Although there are competing interpretations of the significance of family relations for morality in Confucianism, one can discern a certain similarity between it on the one hand and Islam, Socrates and Jesus on the other asregards not returning wrong for wrong.
e. , the ability to distinguish right from wrong),sound moral character as the only criterion of one’s worth, total rejection of moral arrogance and self-righteousness, intention plus value/principle behind an ac tion as the ultimate basis of its ethical worth, punishment equivalent to the crime in order to maintain social order, and a non-retaliatory or forgiving ap proach asthe highest moralstance.
Other verses point out that this heart/mind is the seat of free choice in matters of moral and religious duties, particularly those that speak of the human heart’s “hardening” due to moral and spiritual violations(e.
As noted above, Is lamic ethics insists upon the law of equality to protect justice at the level of public order, but simultaneously prefers forgiveness at the personal level.
However, at the level of personal moral ity, all these ethical systems seem to prefer a morality of forgiveness and not ajiss34-1_ajiss 1/23/112017:56 AM Page 159 returning evil for evil.