Islam's Seven Deadly Sins

One myspace friend asked me if Islam has a list of sins, analogous to the Roman Catholic Church's "Seven Deadly Sins".

I searched google, and used a Qu'ran search engine and an Hadith search engine on the word "sin" but found nothing.

I feel it is an interesting and challenging question. If there is no "catolog of sins", then one might speculate about the reason for its absence.  Perhaps it is unnecessary to list sins in detail, if one is guaranteed forgiveness and deliverance.

Obviously, one might attempt to compose one's own list of sins in Islam.  From what I know it seems that atheism would be number one, and ascribing partners to Allah (shirk) would be number two.  But my question is not WHAT the list might be, but WHERE is it in Qur'an or Hadith or oral tradition, and if it is absent, then why is it absent.  What might that absence indicate? 

The Old Testament lists the Ten Commandments.  Jewish tradition catalogs 617 mitzvahs (positive and negative injunctions) in the Torah.  Jesus recites the Beatitudes in his Sermon On The Mount.  The Roman Catholic Church formulated the seven deadly sins, and the seven virtues, and Dante took poetic license to embellish upon these.

We know that Islamic tradition discourages poetry, as illustrated by this article.

I sense that in this pro-Muslim article, one may find a description of the historical dynamics which discouraged the formulation of a list of sins.

The following excerpt from the above link offers profound insight:

These five axioms were cardinal to the Mu’tazilah. Contention or denial of any one of them removed the contender from Mu’tazilah rank. And yet, if we were to characterize Mu’tazilah doctrine by a single dominant idea, we are compelled to say that the whole thrust of their movement revolved around the problem of man's ethical nature, which they regarded as the central problem of the self. Their concern was a very Islamic one, since in Islam the end-all and be-all of human life – indeed, of all creation – is the realization in space-time of a divine trust. And their reasoning was clear. If God is transcendent – and   the Muslim believes He is – He may not be said to invade, or be invaded by, creation. God is forever unique. Therefore, there is in Islam neither incarnation nor pantheism; neither emanation from God nor fusion into God. These are all constructs devoid of foundation. The only unquestionable, given reality is that man, the creature, stands under an imperative, namely, the command of value; that he is commanded as well as moved by value to seek its realization in the realm of the actual.

...

Perhaps one may find something akin to a catalog of sins in Sharia law:

http://www.masnet.org/history.asp?id=585

Islam developed a comprehensive law that covered the whole span of human life. This comprehensiveness flowed from Islam's conception of human life as created for the fulfillment of imperatives constituting the divine will. All acts, therefore, are seen as falling within the purview of the law and are either wajib (obligatory), mubah (permissible), mandub (recommended), makruh (recommended against) and haram (prohibited). At the same time, the law of Islam acknowledged the general welfare of humans to be its purpose. It divided that purpose as consisting of daruriyyat (universal necessities), hajiyat (personal needs), and tahsinat (desirables).

 

While ethics recommended the kind treatment of wife, children, and relatives, the law prescribed that feeding, sheltering, and caring for them be equal to one's treatment of oneself. In the same spirit, the law abolished all interest and instituted interest-free financing for all. It granted the captive the power to ransom himself by contract, the ignorant the right to be taught, and the deprived the right to partake of the wealth of the affluent.

 

The law further declared it a punishable sin to speak evil of one's neighbor even when the evil was true; to reject the neighbor's compensation and apology; to fail to visit him in sickness. One must help a neighbor in want, return his greeting with a better one, give him good counsel at all times, whether he asks for it or not; even to bless him when he sneezes. A Muslim is obliged to protect his neighbor's family and property in his absence, to attend his funeral and burial when he dies, or perform his obsequies in case of need.

 

Islamic law prohibits man from spying, lying, and being deceptive. It forbids speaking without knowledge, loud speech, entering another's house without knocking, and the assumption of airs of pride and superiority. It commands to keep oneself clean, to put on one's best when in congregation, to fulfill one's promise under all conditions, to maintain one's decorum at all times, and to bend one's head to parents and elders, to men of knowledge and those in authority.

 

Thus the corpus of laws constituting the Shari’a is usually divided into twelve departments:

 

1.  Rituals and liturgy

2.  Personal status

3.  Contracts

4.  Torts

5.  Criminal law

6.  Constitutional law

7.  Taxation and public finance

8.  Administrative law

9.  Land law

10.   Law of trade and commerce

11.   International law

12.   Ethics and personal conduct

 

Law is often said to be the mirror of civilization in the sense that when it has grown mature and complete, civilization reflects itself in its laws. This view assumes that law is a product of civilization, produced like other features of civilization by the forces operating within it. The opposite is the case with the Shari’a. Rather than being a product or reflection of Islamic civilization, the Shari’a is its first cause. Its observance by the Muslims of the world is the source that generated Islamic civilization, that nursed and protected it in history. The Shari’a was, and continues to be, the civilizing force among Muslims.