Abstract

Suppose you are in a situation where you are morally obligated to tell the truth, but choose to say something that is opposed to your beliefs. Later on, it turns out that what you said was true, unbeknownst to you. We might say that you attempted to lie, but failed. Morally speaking, is your situation like that of someone who expressed a true belief with the intention to be honest? Or like someone who intentionally and successfully uttered a falsehood? Such cases illustrate the relation between knowledge, morality, and luck. The problem is a familiar one. Linda Zagzebski (1994) has sought to show that there are certain aspects of Christian theology, namely the traditional doctrines of grace and eternal reward or punishment in the afterlife, that magnify the problem of moral luck. She calls this revised version of the problem “religious luck.” Taking inspiration from this idea, in the following we will explore how religious luck figured in a debate within Islamic jurisprudence concerning the concept of tajarrī. After reviewing contemporary discussions of moral and religious luck, we will introduce the notion of tajarrī in the jurisprudential context, and finally show how moral luck was dealt with in the Islamic legal tradition.