“اِنَّ الَّذِیۡنَ یَخۡشَوۡنَ رَبَّہُمۡ بِالۡغَیۡبِ لَہُمۡ مَّغۡفِرَۃٌ وَّ اَجۡرٌ کَبِیۡرٌ ﴿۱۲﴾”

“Indeed, those who fear their Lord unseen — for them is forgiveness and a great reward.”
(This is verse 12 of Surah Al-Mulk.)

The core argument broken into everyday examples.
The claim: People avoid “bad” behavior for different reasons, and most of those reasons are shaky. Only one reason gives morality a solid foundation.

1. “It’s bad because I personally think so”
   Someone might think cheating on taxes is fine because “everyone does it” or because their own reasoning talks them into it. Personal opinion shifts — someone can convince themselves a wrong is actually okay depending on their mood, self-interest, or ideology. Example: a person might genuinely believe lying is fine “if it protects someone’s feelings,” while someone else sees the same act as dishonest regardless.
2. “It’s bad because society says so”
   Social norms change constantly and differ across cultures. Something scandalous a century ago (like women working outside the home) is now unremarkable; something once accepted (like public smoking indoors) is now frowned upon. If your only compass is “what society approves of,” you have no fixed direction — you just drift with the crowd.
3. “I avoid it because it might harm me”
   A person doesn’t steal — but only because they’re afraid of getting caught or losing their reputation. Now imagine the exact same person finds a wallet on an empty street with no cameras, no witnesses, and total certainty no one will ever know. If their only reason for honesty was fear of consequences, nothing stops them here.
4. “I avoid it because the law might catch me”
   Think of speeding: many people slow down only near a speed camera and floor it right after. The law’s “grip” only holds where it’s watching. Laws also have loopholes, and enforcement is imperfect — a purely law-based ethic collapses wherever enforcement is weak or the law itself is unjust.
5. The proposed alternative: fear of an all-seeing God
   This model says: avoid evil not because a boss, camera, or neighbor might see, but because you believe you’re always seen, everywhere, with no loopholes and no gaps in coverage. Example: a shopkeeper gives correct change to a blind customer not because anyone would ever know if he cheated them, but because he believes he’s accountable regardless. That, the passage argues, is the only version of “good behavior” that holds up in every circumstance — including the ones where nobody’s watching but God.
   The closing point: If you’re honest only because of fear of people, fines, or your own shifting opinions, that “goodness” isn’t durable — it’s a building on sand. It’ll hold up right until the exact situation it wasn’t built for.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Original source of information from tafheemul Quran

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Here’s the English translation:
Surah Al-Mulk, Note 18
18. This is the very root of morality in religion. For someone to avoid evil because it is bad in his own personal opinion, or because the world considers it bad, or because he fears some worldly harm will result from committing it, or because he fears the grip of some worldly power — this is a very unstable foundation for morality. A person’s personal opinion can also be wrong; because of some philosophy of his own, he may consider a good thing bad and a bad thing good. The world’s standards of good and evil are, first of all, not uniform, and moreover they keep changing from time to time. No universal, eternal, and everlasting standard is found in the world’s moral philosophies today, nor has one ever been found. Fear of worldly harm also does not provide any permanent foundation for morality. A person who avoids evil only because he fears some harm befalling him in this world cannot refrain from committing it in a situation where there is no fear of any harm resulting from it. Likewise, fear of the grip of some worldly power is also not something that can make a person a person of noble character. Everyone knows that no worldly power is aware of the unseen and the witnessed alike. Many crimes can be committed while escaping its notice, and countless strategies are possible for escaping the grip of any worldly power. Moreover, the laws of any worldly power are themselves more repugnant than many of the evils they punish. For this reason, the true religion has built the entire edifice of morality upon this foundation: that one should abstain from evil out of fear of that unseen God who is watching man in every condition, from whose grip man cannot escape by going anywhere, and who has given man a comprehensive, universal, and permanent standard of good and evil. Abandoning evil and adopting good out of fear of Him alone — that is the true goodness which is worthy of merit in the sight of religion. If a person refrains from evil for any other reason, or adopts, in outward form, actions that are counted as good deeds, then in the Hereafter these moral acts of his will not deserve any value or weight, because they are like a building constructed on sand.”