Fitrah and Its Bearing on the Principles of Psychology

Abstract

There is not a newborn child who is not born in a state of fifrah. His parents then make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian, just as an animal is born intact. Do you observe any among them that are maimed (at birth)?’ Though the discipline of psychology is a well-developed empirical science in the West today, few psychologists have dipped into the religious and philosophical literature of the East. It is our intent here to discuss the psychological discourse in classical Islamic literature, which offers insights into human nature and the psychology of human behavior that are relevant for contemporary psychotherapy. Such an undertaking will also reveal that the psychological facets of Islam are interwoven closely with its metaphysical, volitional, and ethical aspects. It would therefore be worthwhile to abstract psychological elements from the Islamic legacy, systematize them, and present the findings within an Islamic framework and in an idiom that would interest the modern psychologist. According to Isma‘il al Fmqi, the relevance of Islam to psychology or any other discipline can be determined by discovering what the legacy of Islam has to say on the discipline in question? Although the discipline “Islamic psychology” does not exist within the Islamic legacy as we know it in the West, there is no reason why such a discipline cannot develop. Contemporary efforts to bring about an Islamic psychology are few and far between. We have yet to see an introduction to Islamic psychology similar to what we have seen in the cases of anthropology and sociology.’ Our contribution, therefore, consists of developing an introduction to Islamic psychology withfimh as our point of departure. At a time when psychology is struggling to emerge as an autonomous discipline by shedding its old links with philosophy, any attempt to go in the opposite direction may seem retrogressive. However, today there is an ...