Every civilisation eventually asks the same question.

Where does morality come from?

Is it imposed by law?

Learned from parents?

Inherited through culture?

But religion is usually “interpreted” – which usually goes back to culture.

Or is there something deeper—something already present before the first commandment is ever heard?

The Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an begin in remarkably similar places.

Both tell us that before there were nations, before there were tribes, before there were institutions or laws, there was a human being fashioned by God.

The Qur’an speaks of what it calls the fitrah:

“So direct your face towards the religion, inclining to truth—the fitrah of Allah upon which He created mankind. There is no changing the creation of Allah.” Qur’an 30:30

“So direct your face towards the religion, inclining to truth—the fitrah of Allah upon which He created mankind. There is no changing the creation of Allah.” Qur’an 30:30

The verse is often read as a call to religion.

It is also a profound statement about human nature.

Something essential precedes culture.

Something within us precedes ideology.

Before we become members of a nation, a religion or a political movement, we are human beings endowed by God with an intrinsic moral capacity.

We know, somewhere within us, that compassion feels different from cruelty.

That honesty feels different from deception.

That mercy feels different from vengeance.

This inner compass is easily ignored.

It is far more difficult to extinguish.

Religion,  does not overwrite that compass.

It is the language of that compass. Sharia literally means “path to water” in Arabic, and Halacha means “walking” or “the way one walks”.

The meaning being, in a desert, water is life. This life is similarly a desert without spirituality.

It provides an external structure, a moral exoskeleton, that preserves what God has already placed within the human heart.

The fitrah is not created by religion.

It is remembered through........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)