From Normative Objectives to Moral Agency

A Behavioral Mediation Framework for Maqasid al-Shariah

Abstract

Although maqasid al-Shariah scholarship has increasingly addressed human welfare and institutional performance, the behavioral mechanisms through which normative objectives are translated into sustained individual and institutional practices remain under-theorized. This study conceptualizes moral values as behavioral mediators between maqasid objectives and preservation outcomes. Using qualitative normative-conceptual research, it integrates Qur’anic and Prophetic ethical foundations, classical maqasid scholarship, and contemporary studies of Islamic ethics, maslahah, institutional performance, and education through a hybrid deductive–inductive analysis. The findings show that moral values operate through two complementary pathways: constructive cultivation of protected goods and preventive restraint of harmful practices. Justice, honesty, mercy, wisdom, and self-restraint emerge as cross-cutting virtues operating across intrapersonal, interpersonal/institutional, and maqasid-preservation levels. The study proposes a behavioral-mediation framework in which maqasid objectives shape moral dispositions, which guide individual and institutional practices and ultimately contribute to multidimensional preservation outcomes. The framework extends classical and systems-oriented maqasid theory by explaining the behavioral link between normative purposes and lived practice and provides a conceptual basis for moral formation and subsequent empirical research.