Islam and Its Social System

Islam and Its Social System - Al-Shia The Scientific and Cultural Website of Shia belief Islam and Its Social System 2021-06-21 439 Views Islam, Society, Islam and Society, Social system We have made you (the true Muslims) a balanced nation so that you could be an example for mankind. What the Qur’an expressly desires is that Islamic society should be a model for all those who want to lead a healthy and happy life. It should be a living testimony to the exalted principle that the way to live a healthy life and secure justice and fair play is not closed to human beings. It is they themselves who should find it and follow it with consciousness, faith and persistence. Contents Society Accidental society Intentional society Characteristics of Accidental Society Characteristics of Intentional Society Individual and society It is the individual who is important It is the society that is important Just Social System Society Equality of men Legal Justice Elimination of undue discrimination under Islamic conception Economic Justice Freedom of thinking and acquirement of knowledge Profit is the result of work and all-round activity Privation is the result of encroachment Law of justice and a just mechanism to enforce it Sense of responsibility Islamic brotherhood Character building and fighting against corruption Essential Elements for the Establishment of a Just Social System Society Man is a being which has for long been social and has been living a collective life. A group of persons living together is called a society. Society may be defined as a group of individuals whose life is correlated with each other because they have common desires or common interests for the realization of which they work together. The formation of such a group is sometimes accidental and sometimes intentional. In the former case, it is tech­nically called Accidental Society and in the latter Inten­tional Society. Accidental society Suppose you go out to see the museum or to have a walk in the public garden of your town. You find that there are many other people also who have come there for the same purpose. You and they practically form a group having a common object. However, it is evident that the individuals forming such a group had no prior intention to form it., Every one of them left his house without having had any intention to do so. Such a group is called Accidental Society. Intentional society if you want to set up a social, financial, political, or educa­tional institution and you do not have the intellectual, physical and financial potentialities necessary to undertake such a project, you try to find some other persons who may cooperate with you in the undertaking. Thus a group or a small society comes into existence, whose members join each other and work together with the prior intention to do so. Such a group is called an Intentional Society. Characteristics of Accidental Society In this type of society, there is coexistence, but there is no cooperation except that of a very superficial nature and that too partial and of short duration. In this sort of get-together, the members of the group do not choose each other. That is why they do not consider it necessary to have any previous acquaintance with one another to be a member of that group. For example, a passenger of a bus, a train, an aeroplane, or a ship normally does not feel any necessity at the time of purchasing his ticket to make inquiries about the moral character of other passengers, their views and their motives for the journey. Normally such inquiries are not even possible. He and other passengers are interested only in using a particular means of transport for going from one place to another, and no deep and extensive acquaintance is required to achieve this end. Characteristics of Intentional Society This tie is, lasting within the limits of the objective of the society and continues to exist until the group is dissolved for one reason or the other. As this type of society comes into existence with the intention of cooperation for the realization of a particular object, therefore, in this case, coexistence is coupled with cooperation and mutual and reciprocal responsibility. In this type of get-together members of the group select each other, and as the way of thinking and doing of each one of them affects the destiny of the others, they contemplate certain rules and criteria for the membership of their group. The coexistence and cooperation between the members of the group and their mutual relations are based on the principles and rules accepted by each member consciously and after careful study. Members of the group work wholeheartedly for its growth and development. A definite example of an intentional society is a family, which in its Islamic form is a model for every other such society. It has all the characteristics of an ideal intentional society, such as: The husband and wife choose each other intentionally and willingly; With a view to leading a common life, With common responsibility, and With reciprocal rights and obligations based on a definite social system accompanied by wholehearted cooperation to secure a better and more developed life for themselves and their children. Individual and society Man is a gregarious and social being. There can be no doubt that the conditions of his life depend on the condi­tions of the society in which he lives. But how and to what extent? Is this dependence such that it does not in any way curtail the independence of an individual to mould his life according to his own choice? Or is it such that it makes him absolutely subservient to his social environment? Or is it neither this nor that but has some interme­diate position? These are three different views regarding the relation of an individual with his social environment. We propose to explain them further. It is the individual who is important According to this view, the main factor in moulding the life of every person is himself and not society, for society is nothing but a collection of individuals, who have learnt by experience that their desires will be better fulfilled if they cooperate with one another, and consequent on this experience they have been attracted to collective life. Hence, their incentive to lead a collective life is actually their interest in the fulfilment of their personal desires. All the social systems have been devised by individuals to safeguard their own interests. Hence everywhere the hand of the individual is uppermost and it is his desire and action which play the basic role. The corruption of society also originates from the corrup­tion of the individuals. If every individual reform himself, the whole society will automatically be reformed. It is the society that is important According to this view, the truth is diametrically opposite to what is maintained by those who say that it is the individual who is important. The exponents of this view hold that it is the society and the social man which are the material reality in this world and not an individual independent of others, for what we find on the face of the earth is only a collection of men mutually correlated and that is what is society. As in the world of nature, every natural being is subservient to a general and universal system of nature and is not absolutely independent, similarly in the society an individual is only a part of it, such a part that follows the whole unhesitatingly and is governed by its overall system. Even the ideas of an individual, his way of thinking, his desires, his aspirations and his will are only a reflection of his natural and social environment and the economic conditions of his society and class. Those who hold that it is the society which is important, maintain that an individual is just like a cell in a living body. A cell cannot be independent of the whole body and its complex system, nor can it develop fully irrespective of the fact whether the whole body is in a healthy an