Faridah Jalil

Business Ethics: Theory and Practice in an Islamic Context

In Islam the dilemma whether an act is ethical or otherwise may be resolved by referring to the principles that are enunciated in the sources of the Shari’ah (Islamic law). Islamic business ethics, therefore, is based on these sources and provides an essential foundation in the making of ethical business decisions. Islamic ethics is known as akhlaq and together with its core principles which include ikhlas, zuhud, tawakkal, amanah, siddiq and ‘adl guide an individual to always do good and eschew evil since the aim of business is not merely to accumulate wealth but to bring about a just socio-economic order and to ultimately please God. Further, akhlaq and its core principles guide how business disputes are to be resolved and at the same time restore harmony between the disputing parties. In addition, the chapter demonstrates the application of these core principles within the context of an Islamic organisation.

Environmental Sustainability as a Human Right

The principle of sustainable development has become a constant phrase of international documents adopted in the last few decades leading to the development of an international legal obligation of ensuring sustainable development. This chapter argues, that ensuring access to safe drinking water is one of the imperative due diligence obligations derived from sustainable development, requiring from a State to take all necessary actions that can be reasonable expected from it to take to ensure sustainable development. This obligation of ensuring access to safe drinking water is an obligation of conduct and as illustrated in the chapter stems from the two intertwined pillars of sustainable development: social development and environmental protection. Such an understanding of the obligation to ensure sustainable development opens up a possibility of additional legal reasoning, alongside the human rights arguments, when advocating for respect of an international legal obligation imposed on States to diligently pursue their efforts of ensuring accessibility to safe drinking water, not only to specifically affected groups of people, but systemically, to the entirety of their populations.