Abstract:
Religion finds its share of importance and attachment in the masses of today. More people who are alive right now, are following any religion, than the ones who don’t. Islam is the 2nd most popular religion in world. Islam claims to be a “zabta-e-hyat” or code of conduct for living one’s life. A number of Muslim countries are on the run to become economically unstable or in worse cases, economic defaults. Living in poverty, it becomes difficult to anticipate the possibility of getting happy from bare religion alone, even if that religion gives instructions about one’s life as a whole. People either do not follow religion practically, or they do so because of a set routine to which they were exposed at the time of their birth; without ever questioning the time and energy they use in this act.
This research paper is aimed at answering the question, “is there any relationship between happiness and Islam?” If yes, the second set of questions is, “What is the nature of this relationship and how can it be brought in human life? If not, then is religion a human invention? What, if any, is the difference between God and religion?” The latter set of questions however will be researched after arriving at a comprehensive and critical answer to the first one. Because the 2nd set of questions consists of more than one question, their answers will take significantly more time than the one question answered in this paper: “Is there any relationship between happiness and Islam”.
Introduction:
Religion is a way to get people disciplined. With particular rules set centuries ago, religion has created a comprehensive discipline in the life of a human beings. It can be an individual’s single-day-effort or the question of life’s purpose itself. This discipline enforced by the religion, combined with our common sense, makes humans the ‘superior race.’ But religion does not end here in the 2nd decade of 21st century. Today scholars (commonly known as molvis/muftis/molanas or sheikh sab in the 2nd largest Muslim majority country: Pakistan) dictate human calamities as ‘tests’ from God and human problems as ‘fate’ or ‘opportunities’ for which we will be rewarded on “Youm-e-Deen” (the day of judgement). Are such statements, stemming from religion, the absolute truth?
Middle class Muslims born in the 1990s later in Pakistan contain about 12 crore people. They are (and have been) taught that everything happens by the will of God. We as obedient slaves of an Allah, must agree and accept Allah’s decisions. In hard or easy times, we must only, and always, keep praying to the Almighty who is supposed to ease life for people who follow Islam and make it difficult for those who are not Muslims. However the reality before our eyes unfolds as wealthy/famed people existing around us, both religious or non-religious. Religion does not seem to hold anyone back from achieving great wealth or power, nor does it seem to make anyone super rich by supernatural ways. There is no clear distinction in the social statuses of people who have different magnitude of attachment with Islam. Does religion really give satisfaction in life to only the people who follow it, more than the people who are not following it? With money, calamities are managed better, but money is not distributed equally in the universe of this study. With fame, one does not have to worry about low self-esteem. Similarly having money usually translates to having power and that means having the ability to satisfy one’s ego more quickly, rapidly, and repetitively than the others. All these things are achieved however by worldly materials, which have been declared ‘redundant’ for a believer by religion. (S)he is instructed to stop pursuing money, power, and fame. Instead (s)he is asked to focus on completing commandments given by an Allah. Those who follow religion, not just by word but also by deeds, should have lower cravings for power and fame, while simultaneously having the greater amount of life satisfaction than the ones having worldly materials. This should be the result of teachings propagated at an alarming rate in Urban and Rural middle-class families in Pakistan on daily basis, by hook (homes) or by crook (madrassas). Does religion really end human cravings? Does practically following religion makes humans more satisfied in life than by power, money, and fame? To seek an answer, this study was conducted.
Research Questions:
How many times in a week does the respondent perform any act of prayer?
How many times in a week does the respondent perform any act of kindness?
On a scale of 1 to 5, how much is the respondent satisfied with his/her life, where one stands for unsatisfied and five stands for fully satisfied person.
If you were a from a middle/poor class family, having that stigma of "poor" attached, how much will you agree with following statements on a scale of one to five where one stands for strongly disagree and five stands for strongly agree:
"It is Allah who makes you struggle to get happy".
"You could get out of your problems, if you just had a strong enough will and did enough struggle".
"Those who do wrong here will be punished in the afterlife. Allah will make justice for you on the day of judgement”.
Objectives:
Although it has been well established that religion when followed, makes a person’s mental well-being stronger, it still needs more scrutiny. We do not know yet what parts of a religion give this life satisfaction to the believer. There are two basic parts of Islam studied in this research, mentioned here.
1. ‘Believing’ is a way propagated by the religion to make humans understand the purpose of their life by giving them a ‘bigger picture’ description of their daily tasks in this world.
2. ‘Belonging’ gives the believers a sense of amalgamation with a bigger society of like-minded people. Thus, providing security to the unconscious mind.
Comparative analysis of personal satisfaction in life for people who practice Islam regularly and those who do not will reveal if following Islam gives satisfaction or not.
Significance of the study:
The topic of this research is a commonly occurring question in the minds of university students, teenagers and preadults. When the previously-mentioned people start a quest to answer their questions like:
Does religion give me anything?
Why is the world so ‘crooked’?
Why do I exist?
there is a chance of young people arriving at a wrong lead, following it, and ending up at wrong answers. The primary example which can be quoted here is teenagers usually becoming atheists and agonists, openly or silently, as they pursue their university degrees. With the invent of internet and the formation of a global village, we all can easily get validation for our beliefs from the outside world. Most famous people (political, entrepreneurs, entertainment industry) are no longer religious. Thus, the audience of this research paper tends to get Allah completely cut out of their way rather than actually researching to find logical answers to their objective questions regarding human life (3 of which were mentioned above). This research paper aims to answer the existence of Allah by a simple method: Seeing if the existence of Allah is bringing any good to the world? Happiness is a good. No one can get enough of happiness, and nobody can deny that happiness is a positive impact in life. Everybody wants to get happy. We all follow different means to get happy. Religion teaches us to get happy by following a certain set of rules and regulations. Following these steps require time and energy. Thus, it becomes particularly important at teenage stage (because there’s a lot of teens can do in their limited time and energy) to understand if religion actually making us happy or if it’s a hoax. This research paper is my first effort in answering this question: Is there a relationship between happiness and Islam?
Literature Review and Analysis:
Self is divided into three different states in Islam. Holy book of Muslims recognizes all these three states of self in its verses. The first one of these is the evil state called Al-Nafs Al-Ammarah. This component of the self is negatively described in all the practices of life and is considered evil (Akhtar, 2008). This state stays at a conflict with the positivity in life and is an embodiment of inciting, unhealthy, destructive, and antisocial personality. (Ashy, 1999). A second state counters the above-mentioned state by blaming, accusing and self-reproaching one’s own self on any wrong deed. This state is described as one’s “conscience” and works against the evil self (Akhtar, 2008). This state generates guilt and internal imbalance. However, in Islamic perspective, this is viewed as good because this can lead to a balance and peace in life. Lastly, the most desirable state that can be in a Muslim is a calm and balanced self-called (Al-Nafs Al-Mutmainna). This state serves as an ideal state. It is the highest degree of one’s personal development in Islam (Abu-Raiya, 2012). According to Ashy (Ashy, 1999), this is the state that all Muslims should aspire to reach. In this state one finds complete harmony, balance, and serenity. This state however needs to be achieved after a hard and lifelong struggle balancing the two other states in a human self (Akhtar, 2008).
Whenever there is a mishap or something wrong going on in/to a human being, it is the result of an imbalance among these three states (Skinner, 2010). The endgame in a human is to maintain a perfect balance in between these three states of human self. A human being becomes content once this level is achieved in a person as is described in the Quranic Verses ‘‘But ah! thou soul at peace! Return unto thy Lord, content in His good pleasure! Enter thou among My bondmen! Enter thou, My Garden!’’ (Q 89: 27-30)
Muslim writers however disagree with the view of happiness that is expressed in any secular and modern scientific research, going as far in their claim as that ‘these simply cannot bring happiness to humanity’. They believe that due to the lack of information available on a human mind’s needs and wants, states and structure, we are unable to devise anything with accuracy on the topic of happiness in human beings (Khomeini, 1979) (Musawi, 1997). The view proposed by a set of Muslim writers stresses on the need of Prophets to introduce human beings to activities that they can do to make themselves happy. According to contemporary Muslim writers, Allah knows the problems that a particular human is going to face, and he also knows how to make these problems go away. Only he knows in a true sense how can a human being get happy. This belief further enhances their stress for the need of a God who understands all human beings. Some of these claims are truly based on truth. In an article that was written in Persian language, (Sajedi, 2008), Sajedi claims that most of the compulsory things dictated in Islam are built for a human being to function well. The writers believe that Islamic faith is the only thing in fact standing between the humankind and animal kingdom. Quran, the holy book of Muslims, gives a perspective that any human can steep to the lowest of the lows if they do not redeem themselves with faith and good actions proposed by the religion Islam (Husain, 1998). And thus, western knowledge is really not needed when it comes to finding happiness and satisfaction in the life of a Muslim.
According to the west, autonomy of a human being is enough to decide his or her happiness. Western researchers and scholars do not find it super-necessary to have a godly element or a “bigger purpose of life” to be happy. The literature of the western civilization comes completely to a grinding halt when we search for any mention of the need of an Allah like entity to make humans happy on psychological levels (Ryan, 2008). Note that humans are not required to be at an epic joyous moment to be “happy” in Islam. Rather it is a state of continuous, prolonged tranquil state, a contentment bestowed by the God on whoever he considers worthy. (Tsai, 2007). Islam also directs little orders and commandments in one’s everyday life. Muslims are required to eat, drink, sleep, walk, run, decide and forgive, and many other activities according to the commandments given in Quran. This is not so in western culture. They do not give attention to life’s little nuisances. Western psychology in-fact has a major chunk of it coming from “big ethics” theory which gives importance to the big decisions and ethical issues occurring at different crossroads of human life, completely ignoring the life’s every-day tasks. (Kupperman, 2002) (Sundararajan, 2005) To sum it all up, (peeing standing or sitting, west doesn’t care, Islam decides it CAN send a man to hell or heaven on this) we can understand that Islam’s concept of happiness is one of a pro-longed nature, both-worldly and holistic.
Although individual happiness is important in Islam too, it succumbs to the need of a greater good when it comes to creating harmony between individual and society as a whole. ‘‘Within an Islamic society … the relationship between the individual and society is regarded as being largely harmonious, and for the individual, Islamic society is a source of social identity and the collective self, mentioned earlier’’ (Smither, 2009). Muslims are strictly asked to not do anything, no matter how good it is for personal gain, if it contradicts the ethics and norms present in a society. (Anwar, 2006) (Elkaisy, 2006) (Smither, 2009). The structure of finances which are practiced in human beings living in Islamic nations are also a key to making it sure that everyone focuses on the society more instead of their own self. Even today, the economy of a person in a Muslim nation is dependent/linked to his or her family, community, and social circle of friends. This is in staunch contrast with the western perspective where individualism is preferred and valued (Aho, 2012).
Reason and intellect have gained little to no popularity in Islamic concept of happiness and satisfaction. Muslims believe that all research and reasoning must be done so in the light of the revelations made upon different prophets, who were in fact helped by these revelations to reason and think. (Mattila, 2011). They further believe that the tasks given by Allah to practice in a Muslim’s daily lives are especially important to practice reasoning and intellect, and thoughtfulness in human beings. Things like making five prayers a day and keeping fasts etcetera are major reasons for human beings to get happy (Khademi, 2009). Because of the strict belief that nothing must be discussed and thought upon outside of the realms of Quran and Sunnah, even in the heydays of Islamic philosophy, it never really caught a foot. It is believed and now known that the restrictions placed by Allah on the thinking capacity of Muslims was (and is) behind so little philosophical discussion in Muslim societies (Akhtar, 2022)
Theoretical Framework:
Islam has been propagated as a “way to live life” instead of just being a “religion” by Muslim scholars over the centuries. This is true in a sense too, that apart from prayers and holy verses, topics as basic as cleanliness or as complex as marriage and divorce have been explained in the holy book of Islam. Punishments are also called rewards, and incentives and decisions have been given in Islam, either in the holy book or by the last prophet of Allah himself. In this religion, there is a wide and open invitation to the act of thinking for Islam and modernity (ijtihad). This invitation is not only extended to every human being alike but is also pushed towards by introducing interesting incentives for those who think.
In the modern time however, we see Muslims have lost this part of Islam altogether and are hell bent on following the former part which consists of basic Islamic injunctions like 'Pardah' for females (think: far leftist feminism) and prayers (think of every middle-class parent). Undue stress is put on these topics while the matters of Ijtihad or “thinking and evolving the conjunctions of Islam with the passage of time” are left far behind.
With the industrial revolution and the subsequent increase in technology, Television is now accessible to more than half of the population of the entire world. With this technology came two theories for this technology. The cultivation theory which states that people who watch TV regularly are more prone to have an unrealistic view of the world, compared to the people who consume it less. On TV, there is a minimal concentration of content that propagates Ijtihad or modern Islamic thinktank. Even the channels dedicated to Islam play the videos of beautiful B-Rolls over Quranic verses, or speeches from different Islamic scholars. These scholars themselves have never lived the life of a middle-class TV viewer, that constitutes majority of their viewers. Therefore, their teachings are not coherent with the people’s needs. A newborn baby who comes to the word post-millennium knows little to nothing about Islamic that might help him survive the enormous development of industry and tech in 21st century. The reason simply being Islam of the 21st century is incoherent for the 21st century. Our ancestors and scholars (the m-squad: molana/muftis/molvis) are stuck to the belief that Islam never changes, that it is made to last forever. They are right too, but what they do not understand is that “Islam is actually MADE to last forever through the very process of changing or ‘ijtihad’ introduced by Holy Prophet peace be upon him”. No religion can be expected to stay the same forever and ever. And ever! (Author’s opinion: With 21st century and the technological advancements, we need to think about and modify Islam in such a way that it agrees with the modernity while keeping its basic code of conduct as it is). Anyone who says these things in Pakistan is immediately labelled as “kafir” or “munafiq” and a “traitor” by the general populace upon given the instruction to say so by the m-squad. However, without ijtihad, there cannot be the Islam which gives happiness and prosperity to its followers. Embracing sufferings bestowed by those in power, in the name of piety, and cruelty of some people because it is what “Allah” has written for us, is not sensible. Nature can possibly not be imbalanced as to keep people poor and unclothed yet ask them to feel happy at the same time. Nature and Allah are balanced. Technology is raising a whole generation for which vicious competition is Allah’s will. Survival of the fittest is Allah’s decree and those who believe that humans are born selfish. This is not the case in Islamic reality. Socially, this has been cultivated in the minds of more than 50% of the selected audience (young, educated teens and preadults) of this study, people who are regularly exposed to media. This has been the implication of teachings of m-squad multiplied in their viewers by cultivation theory since the advent of first mass media tool: Radio.
Another theory that is deemed fit to explain the process of happiness in modern Islam is the Spiral of Silence theory. For this particular research paper, this theory (SOS theory) can be taken to study the direct and indirect implications of the Cultivation theory on average Muslim of Pakistan. The spiral of silence theory is a political science and mass communication theory proposed by the German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. It states that an individual's perception of the distribution of public opinion influences that individual's willingness to express their own political opinions. In layman’s language, Spiral of silence theory states that when anything is suppressed for long enough time, it gets erased from the world. As stated in the paragraph preceding this, ijtihad is actively discouraged in the modern-day practices of Islam.
Today when with the introduction of machine (by the industrial revolution), enough food is being produced to feed the ~7.5 billon people in the world, unequal distribution of this food is leading to a rise in world hunger. Around 1 in every 7 people is forced to try and sleep while being hungry because of global food shortage. Ijtihad would dictate in this matter that primary focus needs to be given on the equal distribution of food rather than on equal education or no corruption or anything suchlike. These are surface matters that will be resolved as soon as everyone is well fed and have food security for the upcoming mealtime. This is also a basic clause of human happiness. Instead of focusing on this, today we are focusing on surface-level problems. Ijtihad or “independent reasoning” is actively discouraged by few elite using m-squad so they may not face any hurdles in hoarding wealth that originally belongs to the whole of humanity and not with 1-2% people in the world. With this in mind, now we’ll see the implications of Spiral of silence theory.
Spiral of silence dictates that in the start, there were enough people talking about this much needed “change” in the world pre-millennium and post-industrial revolution to actually get the policies changed in reality. However, they were opposed by the powerful British empire. Britishers were colonizing the world back then to hoard wealth from wherever they can. They were powerful. To them, the thought of ijtihad was powerful, and actions were taken to bring its influence down. Slowly under this influence, Muslims themselves began to oppose this way of modern thinking and began to loathe anyone who opposed traditional ‘khilafat’ Islam. The primary example is of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. By bringing many people to study in English Schools, he helped many families get financially stable when his students got jobs in the government. Their jobs were based on their ability to read and write in English language (in Sir Syed’s school). This kind of happiness was actively resisted, and he was labelled as kafir by the then Islamic scholars. Some even today hold him as a bad person. Now, any newborn who wants to think that Islam is a religion of change and adaptation is discouraged because of the already set norms in the society. Ijtihad is opposed while actually being part of the same religion that Muslims follow. As a result, today, there are a few people left who actually even know of ijtihad, let alone support it. Even few wants this to happen today. This spiral of silence starting from the time that Mughals were overthrown, and industrial revolution occurred, continued over the previous century and today, the population is unaware of ijtihad or “enlightened judgement” that is crucially needed in this post-millennium period.
Lastly, the nature of happiness has also changed with the introduction of machines. Nowadays people of all ages enjoy the entertainment provided to them via phone, compared to any other form of entertainment. It is cheap and readily accessible. From games that kids can play to documentaries and movies that people belonging from any strata of society, any age group of people, any fraction of population can watch and enjoy, technology has now become an essential part of human life. In this situation, Muslims still tend to be far from technology. Middle class and poor Muslim parents do not let their kids use mobile phones (for specifically Islamic, not health reasons), some even restrict access of their kids to “too-liberal” Universities. This suffocation manifests itself as frustration in the resulting kids. They outgrow their parents and get rebellious to Islam and its teachings. Theory of technological determinism states that a society's technology is determined with its cultural values, social structure, and history. When Muslim societies do not accept the technology that is being used all over the world or view its use with significant amount of skepticism and recession, then we will simply be left out of the race of betterment of human civilization. This is a grave danger that no one is paying attention to today as we pursue Islam leaving everything fundamentally connected with Islam behind us. We are already seeing the results of this in the form of out teens suffering to adjust once they move outside Pakistan. Not only is the technology of western world better than ours, the resulting change in their philosophy, thinking and lifestyle is much more constructive than ours. As the poet of the East once said,
You will be annihilated if you do not understand, O people of India!
Even your tales will disappear from the world’s chronicles
This research paper cannot stress enough the importance of finding our way back to Islamic concept of "ijtihad" and finding happiness. Except a select few, people in Pakistan live hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. In such a situation, even insignificant things like watching a movie can make someone’s day. But when m-squad declares movies haram, poor practical Muslims cannot even watch entertainment. Or play games like snooker or chess because these have been declared Haram in Islam by the m-squad. To create a balance in the society, we need to find more ways of “mubashireen” and less methods of “nazeera” in our poor society (Al-Ahzab: 45).
Hypothesis:
“Since we have observed that following religion takes time and energy by critical observation and self-experience, we want to understand the significance, if any, of religion and its relation to happiness for the teenagers and pre-adults in particular and to everyone in general. This should lead to either better reasons to follow religion or a credible reason of discontinuing religion and the effect will be measured by subjective happiness scale.”
Methodology:
Methodology used was the collection of various papers and research studies conducted by people prior to this research and study their literature review and subsequent research in detail. I extracted the information that they used in their articles and read the same to gain a better understanding of their research. After reading different research papers/journal articles targeting religion and its implications on Islamic happiness, I started writing my systematic review for the relationship between Islam and happiness in poor families particularly in the educate people of Pakistan. I took my Universe as a modern university NUST. This is both because it is closely accessible for my personal observation and also because people here are sane and woke enough to accept an opposite opinion and change their views when needed. The full list of articles, journals and studies which were used in this method to extract eligible data have been mentioned in the references.
Universe:
Educated people of NUST was the Universe for observation and analysis of this research.
Importance of Universe:
The audience of this study has all sorts of people living inside it (NUST, Islamabad). Some openly follow Islam, and some openly express their ignorance towards the said (or any) religion. There are those who sometimes follow Islam, and whenever they get stuck on any religious question, until their query is not resolved, they leave Islam. Upon answering their question, these people return to Islam as more practical Islamists.
In these various factions of the society, all living under one umbrella (NUST), the opinions are usually backed by credible evidence and happenings in their lives. Those who follow Islam as a routine take it from their parents. Many others discover problems in the “cultural-Islam” (unlike the true Islam). They leave the religion because they have problems with this concept of “cultural-Islam.” They do not struggle and find the answers. Then there is also a small group of people who know there are faults in the complete system of religion practiced in Pakistan. Religion here has become an amalgamation of the system created by Allah and the ground realities of modern world, the system created by human beings, for their personal gains.
All audience of this study wants happiness in their lives. Most also understand the difference between satisfaction and happiness. Depression is at an alarmingly prominent level in the audience of this study. This includes people who are privileged. About half of these people stay up late at nights, gaming, partying, or studying. There are also those who do not know where their next meal will be coming from, although these people usually get mixed and are undistinguishable from their surroundings. Living in such an environment, if someone wants to give about 2-3 hours of their average day to Allah, there is a strong possibility that they have a credible reason to do so. One of these reasons, that most people agree upon is that Islam, when followed properly, gives them happiness. I wanted to research the credibility of this belief. Does Islam really give happiness to everyone that follows it?
Pakistan is an Islamic country according to official papers. It is also widely publicized as a secular country, although various killings and injustices practiced on minorities dampen this claim to a wide extent. However, the followers of the main religion, Islam, are not happily living either. The world ranking for Gross Happiness Index of Pakistan in 2021 was at 105th position. The ranking was done in 149 countries. Ninety-six percent of people in the country are Muslims. Such staggering number of people are following a religion which should make them happy, and yet we rank in the lower third of the happiness ranking in the world. Despite a commendable social support system and mostly closely-knit families living together, why is 35% of the population of Pakistan still not happy? For the year that is running (2022), 43% of Pakistanis expressed no hope for any positivity. This is even lesser than the global average. Pakistan ranks 25th in the net hope rankings of the world. Islamic happiness is a different concept than one commonly anticipated when we hear the word happiness. Islam teaches a concept of happiness which does not exist in this world at all. This happiness is “otherworldly” happiness. A Muslim is directed to spend all his life working at his highest degree to earn the happiness of the “otherworld” which will be given to him/her because of this world’s struggle. Happiness that is associated with the word “sa’adah” in the Muslim book of Qur’an is a permanent state. It refers to otherworldly happiness or the happiness of the hereafter. This eternal happiness is mentioned twice in the Qur’an, once as an adjective and once as a verb. Allah says in the Quran:
“The day it comes (day of judgement), no soul shall speak except by His permission. Some of them will be wretched, and some happy” (Qur’an 11:105).
and
“And as for those who are happy, they will be in Paradise, abiding there so long as the heavens and the earth endure, unless your Lord wills, as uninterrupted giving” (Qur’an 11:108).
The happiness of the physical world here, which we humans think of when we say the word “happiness,” is called “mut’a” in Quran. It is described as “short-lived” and not a profitable thing. This type of happiness (coming from restaurants and new phones, vast mansions, and shiny cars) is compared with that of the happiness of animals. as Allah states:
“As for those who disbelieve, they take their enjoyment and eat as the cattle eat” (Qur’an 47:12).
This kind of physical pleasure is short-lived because bodily health and external qualities such as wealth and friends are but transient and cannot provide permanent happiness, according to Islam. Thus, Allah states:
“Are you content with the life of this world, rather than with the hereafter? Yet the enjoyment of the life of this world compared with the hereafter is but little” (Qur’an 9:38).
Through this, one fails to understand that in a state of 70 years of existence with the whole nervous system of a human being working well, why should a person be asked to stay away from what makes him feel happy in this world (mut’a)? The promises of life after this are the only thing a Muslim is given if he decides to quit struggling for this world. The worldly pleasures here have been humiliated by comparing them with the pleasures belonging to the beings of lesser intellectual capacity than humans (cattle). To understand this concept of happiness, on part of the creator, one asks if suffering here with promises of a better life in an unseen future, justified? (If the author creates someone without their consent only because he can do so, would it be justified on the author’s part to put that creation to a test as chaotic as life, and demand that his creation do as he wants it to do, in return of a better future?) Life in a constant fear of hell and a constant hope of heaven is not a life one can enjoy. This is what true Islam’s concept of ‘Eeman’ is. Religion does indicate how we should have fun and be light, and shake off responsibilities from time to time, like on the Eid, but living under the constant fear of hell and having a consonant thirst for heaven is an unnatural way to live. In the modern world, we see wretched of the Earth fighting a war to survive everyday while the riches have much better problems. How is it then that both groups can take certain steps and go to same heaven together? What kind of a justice would that be? Happiness is every person’s basic right. In this world of chaos, humans are no longer even conscious of their own right to be happy. In the Universe of NUST, both of these classes exists and live side by side, one oppressed and struggling, the other consciously oppressing and smiling.
Population:
All students of NUST, all alumni, staff and administration were the population for this research.
Sample size:
138 was the size of my sample. This gives me a confidence level of 95% that the real value is within ±5% of the measured/surveyed value.
Unit of Analysis:
In teens and preadults aging from 16 to 26, educated and sane, religion and its implications were the unit of analysis. Not only their behavior but also their daily life’s contribution and deeper understanding of their religion was required to be the study’s unit of analysis.
Tools of Data Collection:
An open-ended interviewing guide was used to collect fresh data. Systematic research on pre-existing topics matching my topic was also done to better grasp the concept of Islam vs Happiness.
Techniques of Data Collection:
1. Viewers observation
2. Critical deduction of existing research
3. Interviews and Verbal surveys with sample audience
Technique of Data Analysis:
The data collected was studies in the light of existing theories and spiritual knowledge. Validity and liability of data is testified and deemed credible because of the excessively open nature of the understudy question. Religion has become a widely debated topic and in systematic reviews, such debates are critically analyzed using existing knowledge of an unbiased researcher. The same was done to decipher the implications of collected data in this study. This case study is unique in a way that it does not adhere to the principle of belief in anything beyond human understanding. This study holds an educated and balanced human being as a supreme creature until proven otherwise, and then begins its data analysis.
Conclusion and suggestions for further study:
Until now in human philosophy spawning in the west, happiness has been discussed mostly as an ‘outside-in’ process. The west has put emphasis on the importance of money and sex coming from outside a human being, (Biswas-Diener, R., Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2012). and giving him happiness and “butterflies” inside a human being. This concept turns opposite when viewed in the light of Muslim studies where struggles and hardships are believed to be blessing-in-disguise from Islamic God. This system believes on happiness being an inside-out job. This focuses more on spirituality and transcendence (Leong, F. T. L., & Wong, P. T. P. (2003). Webb, D. (2012).
Until now, Islamic concept of happiness was not accurately measured in western regions. Western surveys mainly contain happiness on the basis of goal achievement, desired satisfaction level, ego strength and autonomy of a human being. In Islam however, all these values are secondary to what comes the first: Islam. As an example, a Muslim may be all unhappy according to western standards of happiness but at the same time, pretty happy himself because he or she considers the religion as a source of happiness, disregarding the values set by western philosophers as measures of happiness. But at the same time, it is super important to not get lost in religion and start using its proposed happiness as an escape mechanism from the harsh realities of life as this enormously helps those who are doing wrong to keep doing it (m-squad), giving zero importance to religion themselves. They can then use the religion (as it is being used now in Pakistan) to make a society of workers and laborer who believe that their adversaries are a result of their own wrongs or are a blessing in disguise and that these will give them higher status in another world. This belief can make peasants happy, but once educated, most Muslims reject this ignorant notion of justice to be done only on the day of judgement. These people, although few in number, agree with the Western model of happiness that gives importance to the individualistic look on this happiness model, while also disagree with the entire dependence on outside-in model of happiness. There needs to be done research on the balance attainable between body and soul, the states of soul as discussed in Islam and the concept of Inside-out and Outside-in mechanisms of happiness. This future research will be essential to completely understand the true causes of happiness, lifting the intentional misguidance set by capitalism and unintentional mistakes in one-sided philosophies proposed for happiness by scholars of the East and West alike.
Bibliography:
Akhtar, S. (2022). The Quran and the Secular Mind. Google Books. Retrieved 2 June 2022, from https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Quran_and_the_Secular_Mind.html?id=iIx8AgAAQBAJ.
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