Moral decay is the erosion of shared moral standards when systems replace divine or natural law with humanly constructed metrics that serve power rather than justice.
Moral decay is not the absence of morality but the replacement of one moral framework with another. When divine law is removed from public discourse, human preference fills the vacuum. When natural law is dismissed as metaphysical, convention takes its place. When moral reasoning is replaced by technical measurement, the metrics define what counts as good.
The Islamic diagnosis of moral decay identifies a specific mechanism: the corruption of hearts that replaces divine accountability with self-interest. When individuals and institutions no longer judge themselves against standards they did not create, they become the judges of their own conduct. The result is predictable: conduct that serves power is judged good because power defines the standards.
Moral decay is structural, not merely personal. It operates through institutions that normalise extraction, systems that reward self-interest, and cultures that treat material success as evidence of moral worth. The decay is reproduced across generations as each generation inherits the moral framework of the one before it, and the framework has already been compromised.