The Role of Ideology in Constructing The Human Being

The most important thing for the human being in life is that he knows his beginning and end, the aim of his presence, from where he has come, to which place he goes finally and why has he been created?

These questions which man always puts forward to himself need definite answers in order that Man takes a position towards life in their lights which specifies his behavior, and builds a right satisfactory order to his society.

Positive belief has failed in giving the answer to man’s inquiries about his beginning and end, and the aim of his presence, one time by claiming that Man has been created by chance, another time by claiming that he has been created as a result of development of material…and other interpretations like these which don’t have any result nor value so as to know the truth.

Furthermore, they failed in drawing the outlines of the social order which can reform Man and make him happy.

While deviated religious belief have answered these questions with distorted and dull answers when they admitted initially the existence of the Creator but they likened Him to his creatures as they also failed to specify the most convenient order for humanity,

the Islamic belief has answered all that with the most sincerity and depth when it has announced that man has a wise powerful Creator, who is not known by senses and not compared with people, and that Man has been created for a sublime purpose which is worshipping Allah to reach through this worship to the loftiest degrees of perfection and eternity.

This belief also generates noble emotions and sentiments, which Islam adopts spreading and growing them up, in order to build the perfect human being in the intellectual social and behavioral dimentions, to construct the ideological personality which owns a purposeful intellectuality, straight behavior and a vocational direction on the contrary of the outsider character whose attention concentrates on itself, interests and wishes; therefore suffers from mental emptiness, psychological tension and lack of aimfullness in life.

We must refer that the Islamic belief is not like the beliefs of philosophers- as an intellectual theory- situated in the corners of the mind- rather it is a power which moves through the heart and is reflected positively on the spirit and senses, so he (who adopts it) rushes into the fields of strife and work, so it had been an active and motive power which changed the direction of history,

altered the features of civilization, brought about excellent social and intellectual conversions in man’s life and, achieved witnessed military victories. Hence, we found that the oppressed armless minority in Mecca could- thereby depending on their belief- withstand for thirteen years in confronting a tyranny like flood.

It is this belief which could draft for the Prophet (s.w.a.) an army of ten thousand men while he left Mecca hidingly and chased by its infidels. Those who had made war against him for along time couldn’t withstand against the creeping power of faith, so they surrendered to him, came to him submissively or they paid him the tribute humbly.

Moslems have owned the most powerful implements of victory, it is the belief which makes miracles, which made Hamza- the master of martyrs- leads the first cavalry squadron of thirty Moslems to confront three hundred cavalry fighters from Qureish on the shore of the Red Sea, the Moslem squadron have not come out for a mere parade rather they have been serious in confrontation and engagement with an enemy whose power is ten times its force.

It hadn’t happened through the history of the battles of Islam in which Islam achieved magnificent and successive victories that Moslems’ material power was equal to that power of the enemy.

Rather Moslems’ power had been- as for the number and equipments- no more than a fifth of the enemy’s victory hadn’t been achieved except through their dependence on the great moral reinforcement which the Islamic belief grants for the Moslem fighter without ignoring the role of the continual divine support and some other material factors and conditions.

Thus we find that belief is the basic power in all of the battles of Islam and the central factor in achieving victory in all fields.

In order to motivate the Moslem individual and to put him on the way of civilizational development he should be reminded of the civilizational achievements which the Islamic belief has granted to Moslems who preceded him;

it is true that Moslem has not lost his belief completely but his belief has lost its activity in his heart and lost its social radiance in his behavior because of the factors of the invasion to which he had been subjected and because of the factors of moral decay and retardation which blew away his society as a direct result of his drawing for from the values and instructions of Heaven.

What we must emphasize here in this framework are the following:

Firstly: we must familiarize the Moslem with his right- belief by taking its knowledge from its pure sources.

Secondly: we must stabilize his certainty of its rightness and competency for the modern age and show the points of its superiority to other beliefs.

Thirdly: we must strive to renew the role of the belief in building Moslem individual in order that it is manifested in his intellect as a deep faith, in his behavior as good deeds and virtuous morals as it was interacting in the spirits of Moslems previously bringing about donations and struggle.

For this aim we have issued this research which deals with the role of belief in the intellectual, social and psychological construction of Man and its reflections on the moral of Moslems and their behavior. We also shed light on the great role which the school of “Ahlilbait” (A.S.) had played in preservating belief and contronting the attempts of superficializing knowledge to which the Moslem had been subject throughout successive political eras.

We must mention that we have followed the “traditional procedure” and have depended-basically- on traditional sources. From Allah we ask support and success.

Adapted from: "The Role of Ideology in Constructing The Human Being" by: "Ar-Risaleh Center"