THE ISLAMIC WORLDVIEW
(UNGS 2030)
STANDARD CONTENTS
The Meaning of Worldview
• ‘Worldview’ is an English translation of the German term “Weltanschauung”.
• It is rendered in Arabic as
رؤية الإسلام للوجود
Worldview Defined:
• A set of attitudes on a wide range of fundamental matters.
• A comprehensive set of propositions about various aspects of the world.
• A unified and comprehensive view of the world around us and man’s place within it.
• Basic assumptions and images that provide a more or less coherent, though not necessarily accurate, way of thinking about the world.
• A worldview is a profile of the way the people within a specified culture live, act, think, work and relate. It is a “map” or culture’s social, religious, economic and political views and relationships
Worldview Structures & Development
IMPACT OF WORLDVIEWS
• Helps to know peoples and cultures comprehensively
• Helps us to interact with nature, individuals, peoples, nations, cultures and civilizations
3. Helps us to correct our own values, perspectives, attitudes and behaviours
4. Helps us to formulate theories of politics, sociology, culture, etc.
• A worldview encapsulates answers regarding broad questions of "life understanding." These questions are lifetime concerns and sources of anxiety. They involve fundamental matters, expressed in the form of queries. Here are some examples of ongoing human concerns:
Fundamental Questions addressed by worldview
• How far out does the universe go? Did it have a beginning and will it have an end?
• How was it that we humans came about here on earth?
• Does life have a purpose? If it does, what can give meaning to my life?
• Does my daily conduct matter in the long run?
• What happens to me at my death?
• What is good and what is bad? How can I know the good and the bad?
• How should I be treating others?
• How can I know?
• Worldview influences all aspects of life
• Some worldviews such as Islam cover all aspects of life including the personal, social, economic, political, cultural, civilization besides dealing with spiritual, moral, and Aqidah issues.
• But there are other worldviews which focus only on spiritual, material, social, or economic aspects of human life.
• Any worldview should be able to answer the ultimate questions not necessary correct answers but at least consistent
The Definition of Islamic worldview
• “ a metaphysical survey of the visible as well as the invisible worlds including the perspective of life as a whole”. Al-Attas in “Islam and the Challenge of Modernity, p. 27.
• Islamic worldview encompasses the issues of universe, creator, prophethood, society, man, and hereafter.
• It is not a worldview that is formed merely by amalgamation or historical concoction of various cultural values. Rather, it is a well established framework derived from the revelation and interpreted by Muslim scholars throughout Islamic history
• This frame of reference provides us with correct and consistent answers to the ultimate questions pertinent to the issues of God, unseen, man, universe, and life. It also guides man as a vicegerent of Allah to the correct belief system, shari‘ah, and ethical values.
• The worldview of Islam encompasses both al-dunia ( الدنيا ) and al-akhirah ( الآخرة ) in which the dunia aspect must be inextricably linked to the akhirah aspect, and in which the akhirah aspect has ultimate and final significance.
The Main Elements of Islamic worldview
• The Conception:
• of God;
• of Revelation (i.e. the Qur’an);
• of God’s Creation;
• of man and the psychology of human soul;
• of knowledge;
• of religion
• of freedom;
• of values and virtues;
• And of happiness.
Al-Attas, . Ibid, 29
The Objectives of Islamic worldview
• To provide the Muslims with the true knowledge and explanation about the world seen and unseen as they are explained in the Qura'n.
• To teach people the way and method how to achieve the main values of Islam in human life.
• To establish the fundamental ethical precepts, such as justice, freedom, trust, and dignity of human life and existence.
Western Perception of Worldview
• Most of the western perceptions of worldview rely more on our existing reality, experience and life. They don’t give much consideration to the issues related to the unseen world and hereafter.
• Most of the western perceptions of worldview consider it as assumption, but this is not true from an Islamic perspective because in Islam, we consider it as a system and truth derived from revelation.
• Most of the western perceptions of worldview consider it as a product of culture and experience. According to them, religion itself is produced by people and culture.
• In the Muslim perspective, Islam or Islamic worldview is not a cultural product of Arab, Indian, or Malay. It is rather derived from the revealed word of God without corruption and change. This revelation is then understood by Muslims through their different cultural backgrounds and experiences.
• worldview of Islam comprises both al-dunya and al-Akhirah aspects, in which the dunya-aspect must be related profoundly to the Akhirah-aspect, and in which the Akhirah-aspect has ultimate and final significance.
• On the basis of this epistemological and anthological premise, Al-Attas defines the Islamic worldview as follows:
• worldview is: the vision of reality and truth that appears before our mind’s eye revealing what existence is all about; for it is the world of existence in its totality that Islam is projecting…The Islamic view of reality and truth, which is a: metaphysical survey of the visible and invisible worlds including the perspective of life as a whole, is not a worldview that is formed merely by the gathering together of various cultural objects, values and phenomena into artificial coherence
• Nor is it one that is formed gradually through a historical process of philosophical speculation and scientific discovery, which must of necessity be left vague and open-ended for future change and alteration in line with paradigms that change in correspondence with changing circumstances.
• It is not a worldview that undergoes a dialectical process of transformation repeated through the ages, from thesis to anti-thesis then synthesis
Classification of Worldview
Another classification
Religious worldview
• There is a universal spirit, god, deity or divine entity
• This divinity has established an eternal moral order that, in part at least, can be known to human beings
• People have the duty to follow eternal moral dictates
• This human conduct has long-term (beyond individual death) significance.
Characteristics of Religious Worldview
• The Religious worldview considers both the world of seen and unseen. It is comprehensive in its perception of the world. It does not undermine any dimension of reality and existence
• Its basis is on the scripture or ‘sacred’, revealed or non-revealed text.
• It is more stable than the scientific and philosophical worldview, in terms of having certain and unchangeable principles of belief system and ethical system.
• The Religious worldview in general imparts to our life the sense of responsibility, meaning, and purpose. This means that life and the existence has a meaning and a purpose. Therefore, it makes our life as a responsibility towards God, and towards other people.
Philosophical worldview
• It derives from philosophy and it means to deal with fundamental questions of life.
• It uses logical reasoning, deduction, induction , mathematic and speculation.
• The Philosophical worldview is more wider in its scope than the scientific worldview. It deals with issues of philosophical and metaphysical world.
• It attempts to give a meaning to creation and life. It does not have the exactness of sciences but it instills in ourselves a sense and meaning.
• Its results and findings are not precise and measurable like scientific worldview’s but they open new ways for human beings to think beyond their physical world.
Main Characteristic
• It is more comprehensive than the scientific worldview, because it deals with physical and metaphysical realties.
• If scientific worldview deals only with certain part of the universe, the Philosophical worldview deals with the entire existence and the universe.
Materialism
• Materialism is a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all beings and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter.
• Materialism excludes the existence of entities that are radically different from or superior to the matter of our ordinary experience.
• In materialistic worldview, only matter matters. Everything that is not physical and material is not accepted.
• It rejects, therefore, the existence of God or gods on whom the universe would depend for its existence or mode of operation; it denies the existence of angels or spirit; it questions the notion of a soul, if taken to be immaterial entity separable, in principle, from the human body.
• Its two main targets are therefore theism and dualistic views of human nature.
• It negates the existence of all that doesn’t fall within the framework of change and transformation and is not perceivable by sense organs
• All knowledge of the world and of society must be based on sense experience and ultimately on science.
• Like positivism, materialism lays stress on science as the only legitimate source of knowledge about the causalities of the world
Postmodernism
• Belief that individuals are merely constructs of social forces, that there is no transcendent truth that can be known; a rejection of any one worldview or explanation of reality as well as a rejection of the reality of objective truth.
• A view which, for example, stresses the priority of the social to the individual; which rejects the universalizing tendencies of philosophy; which prizes irony over knowledge; and which gives the irrational equal footing with the rational in our decision procedures all fall under the postmodern umbrella.
• A cultural and intellectual trend of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries characterized by emphasis on the ideas of the decenteredness of meaning, the value and autonomy of the local and the particular, the infinite possibilities of the human existence, and the coexistence.
• Postmodernism claims to address the sense of despair and fragmentation of modernism through its efforts at reconfiguring the broken pieces of the modern world into a multiplicity of new social, political, and cultural arrangements
Seven principles and characteristics of postmodernism
No absolute truth, truth is relative, contingency is everything. The ONLY ABSOLUTE TRUTH is that there are NO ABSOLUTE TRUTHS (Feyerabend)
No reality: there is no ultimate reality behind things: we see largely what want to see, what our position in time and place allows us to see…
Only Simulacrum: Imagination and speculation
Meaningless and valueless.
Total Doubt
Multiplicities of truth, ethnicities, cultures …
Equal representation for class gender sexual orientation
Secularism
• The English word secular derives from the Latin word saeculum, meaning “this present age”, “this world” of change as opposed to the eternal “religious world”.
• It is defined as “the liberation of man from religious and metaphysical tutelage, the turning of his attention away from other worlds and towards this one.”
Components of secularization
• Disenchantment of nature
– freeing of nature from its religious overtones. Nature is not a divine entity.
– This provides an absolute condition for the development of natural science. However highly developed a culture’s powers of observation, however refined its equipment for measuring, no real scientific breakthrough is possible until man can face the natural world unafraid.
• Desacralization of politics
– No one rules by divine right.
– Significant political and social change is almost impossible in societies in which the ruling regime is directly legitimated by religious symbols.
• Deconsecration (relativization) of values
– The disappearance of securely grounded values
– There are no longer the direct expression of the divine will.
– They have ceased to be values and have become valuations
Scientific worldview
• It is based on the premises and findings of science,
• Science is the source of all explanations pertaining to the issues of creation, life, men, and other issues
• Based on 4 important foundations:
– Materialism, logical positivism, empiricism, skepticism
The main steps of scientific method
• Identify the problem or question through observation
• Propose hypotheses and assumptions that should explain the problem posed
• Collect data and information
• Test the hypotheses. If any of hypotheses are wrong reject it, or modify it, or replace it until you get the correct one.
• If your hypotheses are correct. You accept and provide a full explanation of the problem. Repeat the test in similar situations and if the result is the same, then you may proceed to construct a scientific theory. The latter provides a consistent and rational explanation of the phenomenon or the problem. If this scientific theory stands and resists many tests, then it becomes scientific law.
• The fact usually remains intact for long period of time but they can be questioned with development of human understanding and the new data and tool of research. And once a fact is questioned the process of research takes the same course as mentioned above.
Positive and Negative Aspects of Scientific Method
• Because it is based on experiment and empirical research, its findings are more exact and authentic and they can be verified through using statistic, mathematics, and measurement.
• However, these exact results only apply to a certain part of our existence, the physical world. The scientific worldview cannot give us exact and authentic knowledge or interpretation of the metaphysical world.
• Therefore, the scientific worldview is not capable of providing comprehensive and consistent explanation of the entire world.
• The Scientific worldview is very important, because it allows human reason to exercise its ability and to produce knowledge in many fields.
• The Scientific worldview also allows man to discover many laws and pattern of God in the universe.
• However, the scientific worldview passes its limitation when it gives human senses and reason a role beyond their capacities. In scientific worldview, Aql and senses become the only source of knowledge that can be accepted; any other source including revelation cannot be accepted.
• Scientific worldview allowed the human mind to produce industries, sciences and technologies. It opened many ways for human mind to exploit nature and discover its laws.
• However, the scientific worldview failed to protect man and nature from destruction. One of the main reasons of this attitude of scientific worldview is because it undermines the moral, ethical, and religious factors.
• According to the scientific worldview, the only sources of knowledge are reason, experiment, nature, senses, and human experience. It does not consider revealed knowledge as a source of knowledge that can provide guidance to people and answer their questions. In this sense, the scientific worldview was unable to discover the sense and role of morality in human life.
The place of man in the mechanistic-materialistic view is clearly portrayed by Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in the 1903:
The philosophy of nature is one thing, the philosophy of value is quite another….Undoubtedly we are part of nature, which has produced our desires, our hopes and fears, in accordance with laws which the physicist is beginning to discover. In this sense we are part of nature, we are subordinated to nature, the outcome of natural laws, and their victims in the long run… But in the philosophy of values the situation is reversed… We are ourselves the ultimate and irrefutable arbiters of values and in the world of value Nature is only a part…In this realm we are the kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine the good life, not for nature – not even for Nature personified as God.
• Therefore, the scientific worldview failed to give meaning to life and existence. It only gives power of controlling nature, but it lacks the sense of meaning to our life. Therefore, the scientific worldview should adopt new approaches which involve values, moralities, and ethics in the process of scientific research.
General Overview of Islam and Its main Characteristics
• Islam: Salm or Silm, from which Islam derives its root, means submission, surrender, safety/protection and peace.
• As a religion, Islam stands for “complete submission and obedience to Allah”. It is the religion of Allah (S.W.T) which is revealed to mankind.
• It was so named by God. (Qur’an, المائدة: 3)
• Yet islam as a total submission has been the name of religions brought by early God’s messengers.
Four Meanings of Islam الإسلام
• There are four basic meanings for the word islam (as submission), moving from the broadest to the narrowest:
The submission of the whole of creation to its Creator (3:83;
The submission of human beings to the guidance of God as revealed through the prophets (3:85;
The submission of human beings to the guidance of God as revealed through the prophet Muhammad (5:3;
The submission of the followers of Prophet Muhammad to God’s practical instructions.
Only the third of these can properly be translated as Islam with an uppercase Islam
Islam also means ‘peace’ and this signifies that one can achieve real peace of body and of mind only through submission and obedience to Allah. Such life of obedience brings in peace of the heart and established real peace in the society at large.
• Every Muslim has to utter this word at least 5 times a day at the end of each of the five daily prayers.
• Always every Muslim salutes one another with: al-Salamu ‘alaykum, meaning ‘peace be unto you.
• Not only in this world would the Muslim exchange this salutation but also in the hereafter “and ‘Peace’ will be their greeting therein” (Qur’an, 10:10).
• Allah (swt) calls into the abode of Peace (Qur’an, 10:25).
• Paradise is nothing but the abode of peace “They shall not hear therein vain or sinful discourses. Only the saying: ‘Peace, Peace” (Qur’an, 56:25-26).
• Muslims are enjoined to enter into peace wholeheartedly (Qur’an, 2:208).
• In fact, the enjoinment of peace is not just within the Muslims but extended to non-Muslim communities (Qur’an, 8:61)
الإيمان: al-Iman
• Iman is the state of security and safety that a person enjoys when he is attached to his creator
• Technically:
• Iman is the belief in the main articles of the Islamic faith:
– Believe in God and his attributes and names بالله الإيمان
– Believe in angels بالملائكة
– Believe in books بالكتب
– Believe in prophethood بالرسل
– Believe in hereafter الأخر باليوم
– Believe in predestinationوالقدر بالقضاء
الإحسان al-Ihsan
• Everything we do should be put in Ihsan form, that is, in beautiful manner.
• In Had'ith : ( أُعبد الله كَأنّكَ تراهُ فإِنّ لم تَكُن تَراهُ فإِنهُ يَراكَ )
“Ihsan means to worship Allah as if you see Him, or if you don’t see Him, He is seeing you”.
• It also means: to do, or worship Allah in the manner He likes.
• To fear Allah and be certain that He is present, and watching every deed, and everything one does.
• Ihsan in the Qur’anic context\
• “ ذَلِكَ عَالِمُ الغَيبِ والشَّهَادَةِ العَزِيزُ الرَّحِيمُ لذَّي أَحسَنَ كُلَّ شَيءٍ خَلَقَهُ وَبَدَأَ خَلقَ الإِنسَانِ مِن طِين “ (32:6-7).
– In this verse, if God does what is beautiful through creating and making everything, including men, beautiful, then man has the obligation to do what is beautiful particularly in his relation with Allah and with other creature.
• Ihsan is everything in our life and in fact, when we become Muhsinin, we become protectorate servants of Allah (S.W.T).
• “ إِنَّ اللهَ مَعَ الَّذِينَ اتَّقَوا وَّالَّذِينَ هُم مُّحسِنُون “ (16:128).
In this verse, Allah promises support to those who beautify their deeds.
• وَأَحسِنُوا إِنَّ اللهَ يُحِبُّ المُحسِنين (2:195).
This verse, Ihsan is related to Allah, to what we do in all our life.
• “ وَالَّذِينَ جَاهَدُوا فِينَا لَنَهدِيَنَّهُم سُبُلَنَا وَإِنَّ اللهَ لَمَعَ المُحسِنِين “ (29:69).
– In this verse, Allah makes Ihsan as a condition for providing guidance to us and showing us the right path, the right way and correct deed which will make us successful in Dunia (الدنيا ) and Akhirah ( الآخرة ).
• وَمَن أَحسَنُ دِيناً مِّمَّن أَسلَمَ وَجهَهُ للهِ وَهُوَ مُحسِنٌ وَاتَّبَعَ مِلَّةَ إِبرَاهِيمَ حَنِيفا “ (4:125).
– In this verse, Ihsan is linked with the perfect and correct religion the most perfect person in the religion is the one who is Muhsin, meaning he does things in very beautiful manner.
Hadith Jibril on Islam, Iman and Ihsan
On the authority of Omar, who said : One day while we were sitting with the messenger of Allah there appeared before us a man whose clothes were exceedingly white and whose hair was exceedingly black; no signs of journeying were to be seen on him and none of us knew him. He walked up and sat down by the prophet. Resting his knees against his and placing the palms of his hands on his thighs, he said:"O Muhammed, tell me about Islam".
The messenger of Allah said: "Islam is to testify that there is no god but Allah and Muhammed is the messenger of Allah, to perform the prayers, to pay the zakat, to fast in Ramadhan, and to make the pilgrimage to the House if you are able to do so.“
• He said:"You have spoken rightly", and we were amazed at him asking him and saying that he had spoken rightly. He said: "Then tell me about iman.
• He said:"It is to believe in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, and the Last Day, and to believe in divine destiny, both the good and the evil thereof.“
• He said:"You have spoken rightly". He said: " Then tell me about ihsan.“
• He said: "It is to worship Allah as though you are seeing Him, and while you see Him not yet truly He sees you".
• He said: "Then tell me about the Hour".
• He said: "The one questioned about it knows no better than the questioner.“
• He said: "Then tell me about its signs.“
• He said: "That the slave-girl will give birth to her mistress and that you will see the barefooted, naked, destitute herdsman competing in constructing lofty buildings.“
• Then he took himself off and I stayed for a time. Then he said: "O Omar, do you know who the questioner was?" I said: "Allah and His messenger know best". He said: "He was Jibril (Gabriel), who came to you to teach you your religion.” (Muslim)
Taqwa (تقوى)
• Taqwa is perhaps the most important single term in the Qur’an.
“And make provision for yourself; the best provision is taqwa". (Quran, 2:197).
• Taqwa is one of the many words in Islamic vocabularies whose exact equivalent cannot be found in English. It has been translated as "fear of Allah", "piety", "righteousness", "dutifulness" and "God-wariness",
• The word taqwa is derived from the Arabic root (waqa), whose verb signifies “to guard or protect against something.
• Taqwa has the sense of protecting oneself from moral peril, preserving one's virtue, and guarding oneself against the harmful or evil consequences of one’s conduct (and thus the displeasure of the Almighty).
• Taqwa is thus a kind of awareness or consciousness by means of which one protects oneself from sliding into evil.
• the Qur'an teaches that both the sinful tendency and taqwa are inspired into the soul of man by Allah. This is not to say that Allah inspires us to be sinful.
• One who has taqwa has wariness of associating others with Allah, wariness of sin and evil, and even wariness of that which is dubious.
• We learn from the Qur'an that the outward observance of ritual is not sufficient for taqwa.
• Taqwa thus seems to have practical social and political implications. It is not a meditative state which isolates one from the world, but a provision for finding one's way through the world, which in its social and political dimensions requires justice and fairness.
• Indeed, the historian, Marshall Hodgson. attributes the success of early Islamic civilization not to favorable economic conditions or military power. but to the Taqwa of the Muslims
• The command issued to the believers "Ittaquallah", is a command to be vigilant over oneself with awareness of the presence of Allah, a religious form of the admonition "Watch Yourself" directed to one whose misbehavior is imminent.
Main Characteristics of Islam
• Divine nature of Islam ربانية
• Comprehensiveness الشمول
• Universality العالمية
• Moderation/Balance التوازن
Divine nature of Islam ربانية
• Its origin is from God
• It is based on the concept of the unity of God
• It was so named by God
• It calls people to the unity of lordship ( ربوبية ) , unity of worship ( ألوهية ) , and unity of names and attributes (والصفات وحدانية الأسماء).
Comprehensiveness الشمول
• It covers all aspects of life
• It deals with spiritual and material aspects, dunia ( دنيا )and akhirah ( آخرة ), seen and unseen, social, economic, political, and cultural, aspects of human life
• Islam contains many legislations with regard to personal and social lives as well as national and international aspects of human life. It covers ‘Ibadah, transaction, relation between man and man, between man and God, between man and the universe
• Comprehensiveness in belief system, ‘ibadah system, and moral code.
Universality العالمية
• Islam is not meant only for a particular group of people or a particular period of time, but it is addressed to all mankind, regardless of their social strata, races, colors, languages, cultures, and civilizations.
• There is a unity of religion within a diversity of cultures and ways of implementing the teaching of Islam.
Giving things their due measures التوازن
in:
• Human nature
• Human needs
• Belief system
• Ritual
• Islam is a religion that gives to each aspect of human life its due without any imbalance or exaggeration. The material, social, spiritual, cultural, and intellectual aspects of human life are treated in a balance manner.
• Islam never asks people to focus only on the spiritual dimension or on the material dimension of their life. But it puts each dimension in its right place and legislates the necessary instruction to fulfill and meet the need of that particular dimension of human life.
• وابتغ فيما أتاك الله الدار الآخرة ولا تنسى نصيبك من الدنيا
But seek, with the (wealth) which Allah has bestowed on thee, the Home of the Hereafter, nor forget thy portion in this world: but do thou good, as Allah has been good to thee, and seek not (occasions for) mischief in the land: for Allah loves not those who do mischief."
Michael Hart in The 100, A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons In History' New York, 1978
• My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the secular and religious level. ...It is probable that the relative influence of Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity. ...It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history
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