Book Review: Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The True Nature of Humans

In this chapter the explaination is based from the Islam holy book: Qur’an. As we talked before, the Islamic Psychology is based on two sources: Qur’an and hadiths and rational sources.

At first, Dr Aisha told the story of Adam and Eve from Qur’an 2: 30-39. This story, the first creation of  human being is provide some lessons about human beings: placed on earth for a purpose, have eminent role in the world, blessed with valuable capabilities, have waeknesses, have potential to elevate themselves by submitting to guidence of Allah, and their key to salvation and happines is in believing and following the guidence that comes from Allah.

Believing in existance of Allah is instinctive in human baings. This innate termed ‘fitrah’ and is generally defined as the pristine nature between humans that leads them to acknowledge the truth of Allah’s existence and to follow his guidence. The point is believing to the concept of ‘higher being’ is part of the fitrah. The majority people in the world believe in God in one form or another even for an atheism. The evidence is when in distress or suffering from tribulation, humans are likely  to call out a hope. It implies that we’re all naturally lean on something ‘higher’. We can see this in many surah in the Qur’an like: 39; 49, 39; 8, 41;51, 10; 12, and 10; 22-23.

The purpose of life is to worship one and only god, Allah swt. We read so many philosophical books that try hard to answer this question. Islam had answer it. So, if you dont follow the guidence and deviate from your true purpose of life, you’ll be chaotic and violete yourself, especially, the soul.

Soul, as the assential of human beings, is very correlated with heart. It has the potential for good or evil. When we try to do good, actually we are following our nature that will make our psychological condition more healthy. In contrast, doing bad things is not only hurting our soul but also making it blind from the truth graduallly. If that happen, the worse thing is we cant see the differences between bad and good. Furtheremore, we can be trapped by doing something bad but we called it good. Finally, we are encompassed by anxiety, grief, sadness, etc.

The ability to think and comprehend is our strong potential that had been given by Allah swt. This is the part of our nature so we can choose to do good or bad. So, the ability to think and comprehand is strongly correlated to our free will. we have a right to choose the path of rightoeusness or the path of evil.

Last but not least, the part of our nature is responsibility for our choices. In fact, responsibility is the answer of the bewildered between choices and decree (qadr). Allah knows what His creation will do does not imply any compulsion. The general conceptualization is people can not use qadr as an excuse for the things that they do and the choices that they make. It implies that all believers should seek forgiveness for their sins. We can see it in quran 30; 55.

Well, you know, actually i am quiet schock when i read this second chapter. It hits me a lot because as a muslim, if i dont closed enough with my Lord, it means that i had violeting my psychological condition. It’s schoking when i know that eeman, tawheed, and any religious things have a big impact to our psychological side because, all of these explanation is not a religious lecture, but it is a true nature oh human beings. When we deny it, we also deny ourself. 

So, we can see now why the sahabah in Rasulullah era didn’t have any psychological problems right? They had follow their true nature. Even when they have any axiety, grief, or sadnees, they will turn back with seek repentece and do good which is they had heal their psychological problems automatically. :)