An Inquiry into the Meaning of ‛IIffat (Chastity or Modesty) in the Fields of Jurisprudence and Ethics

Document Type : Original Article

Author

• Mahdi Shajarian

Assistant Professor, Department of Social Justice Studies, Institute for Civilizational and Social Studies, Research Institute for Islamic Culture and Though, Qom, Iran

10.22067/jfiqh.2024.83765.1622

Abstract

The main concern of the present paper is to analyze the meaning of chastity in the two fields of Islamic Jurisprudence and ethics. In ethical discourse, chastity refers to self-restraint in face of sensual desires and maintaining moderation in sexual urges. Upholding this virtue is seen as a function of reason over basic desires, and does not require adherence to specific religious rituals. However, in jurisprudence, a narrower definition is provided by some jurists. According to this definition, chastity is achieved through refraining from prohibited acts (based on Islamic law), regardless of the acts being deemed immoral by reason independently. As a result, a chaste person avoids not only the prohibitions that can be approved by reason, but also the ones for which reason remains silent. This group of jurists consider the ethical expression of chastity to be an innovation and reject its application to scripture. However, it seems that based on lexical evidence and the usage of the term and its derivatives in the Qur’an and ḥadīth, the ethical definition adopted by these jurists departs from the lexical reality and establishes a conventional religious usage (Mutasharriʿ) in the field of jurisprudence. Therefore, in the absence of contextual evidence, religious scripture cannot be interpreted based on the aforementioned jurisprudential meaning, and here the understanding of jurists who interpret chastity similar to ethics scholars seems to be the more accurate view.

Keywords

• chastity
• jurisprudence
• ethics
• sensual desires

Main Subjects

• other

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