The Relationships between Ethics and Studies of Spirituality in the Paradigm of Islamic Sciences

The relationship between spirituality and ethics is a subset of the general topics of spirituality and Islamic sciences, which are governed by the assumptions of cognitive science. Our main assumption about accepting the capacities of Islamic sciences to respond to contemporary challenges confronts us with the duality of accepting (confirming) or negating (denying) the system of Islamic sciences. The three sciences including ethics, fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), and theology form this cognitive system. In the confirming approach, the three sciences of ethics, theology, and fiqh are considered as the original major Islamic sciences, each of which carries a part of the comprehensive system of religious education and its spiritual message. Therefore, the current article is considered a multidisciplinary perspective. On the one hand, with an anthropological analysis, we find that the science of ethics has a central and main position in the meaning of Islamic spirituality. The Qur'anic conclusion of this article in human analysis is that according to the 84th verse of Surah Isra, the "formation" of human is the basis of his decisions and choices. The formation itself is related to the three structures of insight, character, and action; meanwhile, human character is the central core of his formation. Insight is its introduction and action is its result. On the other hand, in a spiritualistic analysis, these are the virtues and vices that form the individual, family, social and environmental character of a person, and as a result, they are considered the foundation of the human's formation. Therefore, ethics, with the approach of virtue ethics, plays the most important role in the narration of spiritual teachings, and of course, the two sciences of theology and fiqh complete this narration as the previous and the posterior links.