Philosophy Of Islam [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 18

Just
Social System

Just Social System

We have made you (the
true Muslims) a balanced nation, so that you could be an example for mankind

(Surah al‑Baqarah, 2:142).

What the Qur'an expressly desires is that the Islamic
society should be a model for all those who want to lead a healthy and happy
life. It should be a living testimony for 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.

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 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., Everyone 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 co‑operate with you in the undertaking. Thus a
group or a small society comes into existence, whose members join each other
and work together with prior intention to do so. Such a group is called
Intentional Society.

Characteristics of
Accidental Society

in this type of society there is co‑existence, but
there is no co‑operation 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 of
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 aquaintance 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 co‑operation for the realization of a particular object,
therefore, in this case co‑existence is coupled with co‑operation
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 co‑existence and co‑operation 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 whole‑heartedly 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 lead a
common life, With common responsibility, With reciprocal rights and obligations
based on a definite social system accompanied by whole‑hearted co‑operation
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 he himself and not the society, for the society is nothing
but a collection of individuals, who have learnt by experience that their
desires will be better fulfilled if they co‑operate 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 fulfillment of their personal desires.

All the social systems have been devised by the 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 reforms himself, the whole society will
automatically be reformed.

It is the society
which 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 over‑all 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 and sound
state or not. Similarly an individual cannot be independent of the social
system in which he lives. He will have to go the way towards which the powerful
social and economic forces dominating the society will push him.

Some contemporary social schools have gone to such an extent
in their reliance on the importance of society as explained above, that it
appears as if man is a being totally dependent on society or his class and has
perforce to follow the way shown to him by social and class environment
without having the least possibility of exercising his own will and choice.

As the result of this view, the principle, that everybody
should reform himself so that the whole society is reformed, gives place to
another principle, which says that it is the social system which should be
changed and reformed so that the individuals are automatically reformed.

It is the mixture of
the individual and the society which is important

According to this view it is the mixture of the individual
and the society which is important. The individual is a being who is neither
fully independent of nor fully dependent on society. He has an intermediate
position.

There is no doubt that the overall educational, economic and
political system of the society leaves its impression on the individual, his
ideas and his personality. It evokes certain desires in him and suppresses
certain others. It moulds his life and guides his will. Nevertheless its impact
is not so strong as to make the individual totally subservient to his social
environment. It is similar to the impact of the natural environment on him.
Unlike other existing things man is not also totally subservient to his natural
environment. In many cases he rules over nature, and using his self‑consciousness
and harnessing his latent inner forces tries to change his natural environment
or to bring it under his control. He stands in the same relation to his social
and class environment also. He does not completely submit to it. He tries to
understand the sociological laws and with the help of his knowledge and his
hidden powers tries to control and change his social environment to his own
advantage. He is not always reconciled with the existing social system.

Hence, though the social changes have their own laws and
trends and most of them are due to the factors working inside society as a
whole, an appreciable amount of them takes place as a result of the ceaseless
efforts of self‑conscious and enthusiastic individuals also.

Thus neither the individual is exclusively important, nor
the society and the social system. What is important is a mixture of the two.

An overall study of the Islamic teachings shows that they
are based on this third view, viz. that of the real importance of a mixture of
individual and society.

We find that the Islamic teachings stress, on the one hand,
the responsibility of an individual in regard to self‑making and
environment‑making, and on the other emphasize the inevitable effect of
the social atmosphere in giving shape to the ideas, intentions, morals and
actions of man to such an extent that it may be said that all men are largely
interdependent in shaping their destiny.

That is why the Qur'an wants everybody to find and tread the
path of righteousness and not to put up the corruption of environment as an
excuse for his own deviation.