Over the past three decades, Talal Asad and his students have taken a leading role in applying Foucault’s influential work on ethics to the Islamic tradition. Such Asadian scholarship suggests that ethical bodily discipline has important effects on how Muslims interpret scriptural texts. Nevertheless, when these effects are discussed, little attention is given to the topic of “intentions” in relation to scriptural meaning. The proposed presentation argues for greater attention to this topic, showing how a focus on intentions opens up new perspectives on Islamic discourses and their relationship to ethical bodily discipline. The presentation has both an ethnographic component and a theoretical component. The ethnographic component examines debates over Islam and human rights in contemporary Egypt, with a focus on controversies related to personal status law. Data is drawn from fieldwork among local participants in these debates, including religious scholars, journalists, NGO-activists, and government officials. The presentation will show that such debates center largely on claims about the intentions behind scripture, which are attributed to God. Egyptian proponents of human rights standards hold that such standards are consistent with the intentions behind scripture, even if they often conflict with its literal wording. By contrast, religious critics of human rights standards see them as violating the intentions behind scripture. This brings us to the theoretical component of the presentation, which takes up the question of how individuals infer the intentions behind scripture. Here the presentation highlights a number of insights from the work of prominent philosopher Donald Davidson. According to Davidson, we infer the intentions behind the speech of others based on assumptions about their beliefs and desires. Moreover, all things being equal, we tend to assume that the beliefs and desires of others resemble our own. This line of analysis bears on Egyptian human rights debates, implying that when different groups attribute different intentions to God this is because they are projecting their beliefs and desires on to God. Pushing the analysis a step further, the presentation will suggest that in controversies concerning personal status law, the beliefs and desires projected on to God are rooted in specific embodied forms of family life to which participants are ethically committed. Participants strive to live in accordance with these forms of family life, molding their subjectivities accordingly. With this in mind, the presentation will consider how participants’ ethical projects shape their perceptions of God and His intentions.