The Qur'an's Cosmological Morality

Accordingly, to understand this moral archetype, we must uncover the massive legal contributions of the Qur'an to the formation of Shar'ia and hence to the fashioning of Muslim subjectivity. [64] We must understand and appreciate its moral message and moral structure as integral to, and as enveloping, its "legal" conception and discursive practice.

The Qur'an, singularly retaining immense religious value for modern Muslims, has from the beginning provided Muslim believers with a cosmology entirely grounded in moral natural laws, a cosmology with perhaps far more persuasive power than any of its Enlightenment metaphysical counterparts and one that had powerful and deep psychological effects. [65] The Qur'anic moral arsenal was thus embedded in a holistic system of belief, in a cosmology that comprised a metaphysic. In fact, it may be argued that this cosmology was itself part of an enveloping moral system that transcended the categories of theology, theosophy, and metaphysics. In this broadest sense of cosmology, we might argue that the Qur'an offers no less than a theory of cosmological morality of the first order, which is to say that Qur'anic cosmology is not only profoundly moral but is also itself constructed, both in form and content, out of a moral fiber...

-Wael Hallaq, The Impossible State, p. 83.