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 ...