(130) It must have been clear from the description of the origin, sources and aim of Muslim Law that it attaches not a small importance to ethical values. In the beginning, there was one sole science which occupied Muslim intelligentsia, that of the commands of their religion. Soon many sciences had to be cultivated: history, philology, astronomy, etc. Yet they all revolved round and were subservient to the all-embracing Qur'an: history primarily, to explain the allusions in the Holy Book; philology (including poetry) to explain the exact sense of the words used in it, astronomy and physical geography to find out the direction of the Ka'bah to turn towards, a[nd] also the timing for the daily religious services; grammar to standardise text and diction of the Holy Writ, and so on. This Quranic basis, of all sciences, controlled the latitude to be exercised by poets and others, and always checked and pruned the morbid growth of un-Islamic morality.

(131) When even the branches of law, like our own subject, International Law, acquired the status of independent and full-fledged sciences, they still retained their ethical values; their provisions had to have the sanction from the Qur'an or the Sunnah or the Orthodox Practice. No Muslim science was originally cultivated for its own sake, independent and regardless of others; but all were made subservient to the Shari'ah in order to contribute to the well-being of Man in this world as well as in the Hereafter.

Without belief in Resurrection and Reckoning, man may become more devilish than the Devil; and man, without enjoyment of what God has created for him, would be no man at all. The Golden Mean is the rule in Islam, and this is true of even such an overwhelmingly materialistic science as Muslim International Law. And although divorced from law (general and political science), international law of Islam was not based on human reason to be guided by convenience, but continued to retain its ethical basis of the unchangeable Qur'an and the Sunnah.

(132) A matter of fundamental and far-reaching importance is the question of treating aliens. Enemies from among the brothers have in all times and climes, elicited some restraint on the part of the victors, but not so the aliens.

Genocide was a religious dogma for some (regarding the Amalekites), untouchability for others, and yet others propounded "to violate a pledge is a sin, yet to honour the pledge given to the infidel is a greater sin (as we heard during the Crusade's)

(133) It is true that, for Islam, the followers of all other religions are going astray, yet let us see what do even the most religious and the most orthodox of Muslim authors on international law, during the height of their worldly might, say in this respect. They are all unanimous on a basic rule of law regarding international relations, and every compendium of Muslim law repeats that that is, in suffering of this world, Muslims and non-Muslims are equal and alike. One cannot transgress law and justice and good conscience on the pretext that the other party is non-Muslim. One cannot violate [a] pledge given them on any account. Vicarious reprisals are unlawful in Islam (for practice see later "hostages" under the chapter End of War).

Or again. the Islamic institution of giving quarter to the enemy, based on the Quranic command concerns none else than the polytheists, the most detested of all the non-Muslims by Islam. If any human being asks for asylum and protection, it can on no account be refused. In fact, the entire fabric of the rules of Muslim International Law [are] intended for the non-Muslims, since for the founders of this science, the Islamic world represented one single whole; and what they wanted to codify was to establish how to deal with other, that is non-Muslim, States. Justice, even at the detriment of self-interest (Qur'an, iv. 134), such is what Islam enjoins on Muslims is all their conduct, including that in Foreign and War Offices.

(134) It is further to observe that the insistence of Muslim jurists to include the international law in the general compendia of laws as a mere chapter, cannot be emphasised too much. I mean to say that they think that the rules of international behaviour form part of the Muslim Law and that they do not leave international law to the discretion of the rulers or to the whims and fancies of the politicians. This recognition of the legal character of the international law dates not from modern times, but from the very first. For we see it included in of Zaid ibn 'Aliy (d. 120 H.), that earliest extant manual or code of Muslim law. And this practice has never changed in the subsequent ages.