In one of his works of literary criticism, the Syrian scholar Ṣalāh al-Dīn Khalīl Ibn Aybak al- Ṣafadī included a short passage which has attracted the attention of modern scholars studying the Greek legacy of Arabic intellectual culture. In the medieval sources and these modern historical investigations, the Arabic translation of the Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.) does not figure prominently. Unlike Galen's works on medicine or Aristotle's logic, the impact of the N.E. in the medieval Islamic world was also fairly small. Miskawayh was a key mediator in the Arabic and Islamic reception of Aristotelian ethics. This chapter analyzes whether the religious minded threaten those writing philosophical ethics, especially perhaps because philosophers like al-Fārābī presented ideas from Aristotle's N.E. in a political framework. An oppressive environment may have encouraged the study of political philosophy for apologetic purposes.