Observing Islam With Ethics: From Hatred Theology to Religious Ethics

Abstract

The emergence of religious phenomena that lead certain Muslim groups in Indonesia to spread hatred (religious hate speech) became the primary rationale of this article. This phenomenon occurred because some Muslim groups consider their religious understanding to be the only actual theological truth while ignoring religious ethics in a religiously plural society. Therefore, some questions were raised: Firstly, what is the conceptual structure of Islam? Secondly, what does Islam teach its believers in regards to living together within the Islamic community and living among believers of other different religions? The method of ethics was employed to analyze the two research questions by describing, analyzing, and criticizing the attitude of the Islamic movement, which spreads hatred. From this article, it is expected that Muslims should emphasize not only religious theological but also ethical truth. The findings are as follows: firstly, the conceptual structure of Islam comprises of threefold: Islam, Iman, and Ihsan, which culminate in Ihsan, Sufism, and ethics. Secondly, in regards to becoming a Muslim and embracing it among believers of other religions, Islam essentially relates its religious and theological truth to the religious ethic (the ethic of al-Qur’an), which combines three elements of ethics: God’s, religious, and social ethics. The two latter ethics should always refer to God’s affirmative ethics, for instance, with His Divine attributes of The Most Merciful and Just. God has mercy on human beings and treats all of them justly. Likewise, human beings essentially should do the same in relation to God and fellow human beings.

Keywords

• theology of hatred, religious ethics.