A Standard for the Evaluation of Voluntary Actions and ItsConditions from the Standpoint of the Quran and Hadith

There are two old important questions in ethics: what standard should a voluntaryaction meet to be moral or valuable? And by what standard can one determine thepositive or negative moral worth of an action according to the religious texts?Indicating what standards make voluntary actions valuable, this paper classifiesthe valuable actions into two types: actions the rewards for which can be gainedin this world and actions the rewards for which cannot be gained in this world(they are beyond the capacity of this world). This study shows that according tothe religious texts, the criterion for the positive value of human voluntary actionsis to please God, and an action has to satisfy two conditions, if it is to please God:(a)it must be considered as serving God; (b) it must reinforce or protect humandignity. Since if a deed lacks any of these conditions, it will not be valuable andwill not lead to divine pleasure.