Center For Indigenous Psychology (Pusat Pengembangan Psikologi Islam) is led by Prof. DR Achmad Mubarok MA, a Professor of Indigenous Psychology at University of Indonesia (UI), Jakarta State Islamic University (UIN Jakarta), and Assyafiiyah Islamic University (UIA)

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Behavior: in The Perspective of Islamic Psychology
Man is a creature who is thinking, feeling, and having wills. His wills are guided by what he thinks and what he feels. Human soul systematically functions and is supported by following five subsystems. Nafs (Soul) is an inner side of man, it likes a very large room in which there are parts as its subsystems, which are `aql (mind), qalb (heart), bashirah (conscience), syahwat (motive), and hawa (passion). People have souls with different “sizes” depending on hereditary factors and psychological interactions during their lives.

1. ‘Aql (mind) has a capacity to solve problems; its function is to think. Mind can’t determine the truth, but it can find the truth. Intellectual truth is relative.

2. Qalb (heart) is a means for understanding reality. An irrational thing may still be understood by this qalb. In a nafsany system, qalb is a center that controls the system, leading the functioning of human soul. In qalb there are various “powers” (good things) and “illnesses” (bad things) such as faith, love, envy, courage, angriness, arrogance, peace, and infidelity. Qalb has the authority of deciding on an action, so that anything realized by qalb has implications in forms of good deed or sin, reward or punishment. Things had been forgotten by qalb enter memory of nafs (subconscious mind), and those things sometimes appear in dream. In accordance with its name, qalb is often inconsistent.

3. Bashirah, is an innate sight as the opposite of sight of eyes. Different to the inconsistent qalb, bashirah is always consistent to truth and honesty. It can’t be compromised to deviate from the truth. Bashirah is also called nurany from word “nur” (light). Bashirah is divine light in one’s heart. nurun yaqdzifuhullah fi al qalb. Introspection, crying of awareness, religiosity, God spot come from this source.

4. Syahwat is a motive to carry out behaviour. Almost all men and women have sexual motive to the other sex, are proud of their children, love valuable things, good vehicles, gardens, and livestocks.

5. Hawa (passion) is an urge toward a low and blamable object. Crime, angriness, frustration, arrogance, irresponsible behavior, corruption, and arbitrariness come from this passion. The character of passion is wishing to immediately obtain things desired by ignoring moral values.

Therefore, we may conclude that:
• A person whose subsystems are normally functioning has proportional behavior

. A person more often following his mind than the other subsystems of the nafsany system has behavior highly rational but his life tends to be “dry”.

• A person more often following his heart tends to have a calm life although he is sometimes irrational.

• A person more often following his bashirah is guaranteed that his choice is correct and his behavior will be correct vertically and horizontally.

• A person more often following his motive tends to be consumptive and hedonistic in his life

• A person more often following his hawa ( passion) tends to destructive to himself and to others.

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Islamic Psychology: The 5th School of Psychology
After Humanistic Psychology had begun to study spiritual intelligence having a vertical dimension, the notion of Islamic Psychology arises. Similar to notion of Islamic banking (shariah banking) which has been refused but which is now popular in some countries, the notion of Islamic Psychology is now also still refused by the community of Western Psychology. This notion, however, will be accepted at least in certain countries and will even become the fifth school of psychology.

Historically, Islam didn’t create separated sciences such as psychology, because, different to sciences in the western world which were made enemy by the religion (the Church), development of sciences in the history of Islam was inspired by the Holy Qur’an and promoted by ulamas. For example, Al Khawarizmi (mathematician), al Birruni (scientist), Ibn Sina or Averroes (physician) were also ulamas (experts of Islam).

Studies of human soul in the history of Islamic sciences didn’t give rise to psychology, but sciences of Akhlaq and Tasawwuf.

Differences between Western Psychology and Islamic Psychology

1. Western Psychology is a product of empirical thinking and researches, while main source of Islamic Psychology is revelation of Holy Qur’an, its statements regarding human soul, based on an assumption that God, as a Creator of human, knows best about anatomy of human soul. In turn, empiric researches assists in interpreting the holy book.

2. Western Psychology has only three aims: attempts to describe, to predict, and to control mental and behavioral events, while Islamic Psychology had two additional aims which are to create good behavior and to encourage people to be feeling that they are close to God.

3. Counseling in Western Psychology only discuses matters on healthy or unhealthy psychologically, while counseling in Islamic Psychology also gives advices on how to make people have a meaningful living, become good people, and feel close to God.

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Psychological Concept of Man
Psychology as a discipline wasn’t born until in the late period of the 18th century, but its roots can be traced back to the ancient period. Plato once stated that man is his soul, his body is only a means. Aristotle once stated that soul is a function of body as sight is a function of eyes. At present, there are at least four schools of psychology: (1) Psychoanalysis, (2) Behaviorism, (3) Cognitism, and (5) Humanism. The emergences of the four schools indicate a kind of trial-and-error development in attempting to understand man.

Freud with his psychoanalysis theory regards man as a homo volens, a creature whose behavior is controlled by his subconscious mind. According this theory, man behavior is a result of interactions among three pillars of personality: id, ego, and super ego, or biologic, psychological, and social components, or animal, intellectual, and moral components.

This theory is opposed by behaviorism viewing human behavior as not controlled by the innate factor (subconscious mind), but fully influenced by his measurable, predictable, and describable visual environment. According to this theory, man is named homo mechanicus, mechanical man. Machine is a thing that works without any motive and is fully determined by objective factors (such as fuel and its conditions). This theory doesn’t question goodness or badness of a man, he is regarded as very plastic and able to be formed into anything in accordance the environment experienced by or had been prepared for him

This behaviorist theory is opposed by cognitive theory which states that man do not fully obey his environment. On the contrary, this theory views that he is able to actively react to his environment by thinking. Man attempts to understand his environment and responds it with the mind he has. Therefore, according this cognition theory, man is a homo sapiens, a thinking creature.

The cognitive theory is continued by humanist theory. Humanistic psychology regards man as a positive and determining. Man is a unique creature that has love, creativity, values, means, and personal development. Therefore, humanism theory names man homo ludens, man who understands the meaning of life.

Psychology comes from secular culture, so that psychology doesn’t care about God, sins, or goodness/badness. This psychology only knows psychological health and psychological sickness. At present Humanistic Psychology, however, begins to enter a zone whose source is divine revelation. In other words, in addition to study intellectual and emotional intelligences, it also studies spiritual intelligence.

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Human Behavior in Globalization Era
Globalization enables us to know various human behavior in various regions of the earth, both those carried out by backward people in underdeveloped countries and those carried out by educated people in developed countries. We may easily understand strange behaviors of those backward people, but we often become greatly surprised by inhuman behaviors carried out by educated people in developed countries. Advancement of sciences and sophistication of technology do not necessarily improve life quality of an individual or society and may increase quality of crimes. There are a lot of advancements in the names of democracy, human rights, free trade, and other issues, but destruction of various infrastructures and cultural heritages, exploitations of natural resources, and even human elimination are also happening. Thinking all those things deeply, sometime we don’t understand who man really is.

Such a question also causes studies on human are always and will always be interesting. Discourses on man attract us because knowledges of living beings and especially human haven’t achieved advancements had been achieved by other fields of knowledges. Questions on man essentially haven’t answered yet.

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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Developing Muslim Personality (4)
3. Selecting Idol Figures
In child and teenage periods, motives of imitation and identifying are in their peak of development. In child period, father is usually one's identification figure. To a child, his father's figure is the most marvelous figure in his psychological world. A father who can meet his child's identification motive until his son or daughter becomes a teenager will still be his child's idol. In his son's eyes, this father will still be a prominent figure although possibly he is an ordinary man in the society. On the contrary, a father who failed to be his son's idol in his son's children and teenager periods, still will not be a prominent one in his son's eyes although possibly he is a prominent figure in the society.

A child needs a father as his/her own father, not as a father of others. According this perspective, one who is not familiar with his father (or his mother) will suffer an identity crisis, since his loses an idol figure. To become his son's idol, a father should have certain concepts on his son, what he wants from his son, what he wants his son to be. Without such concepts, a father can't design capacity and characteristics of his son's morality. In school ages, parent's position competes with that of teachers.

When a child becomes a teenager, his identification figures possibly will be famous celebrities. In his college-student years, when one is able to think logically and to compare various thinking and literatures, he will choose as his idol a figure who has notions which are firm, unique, prominent, controversial or has been proven to create great works, whether the figure is still alive or has passed away. For adults in college student years, idols have an important role in determining objectives for their future.

The big thinking of the big figures inspires the young person to think big too. A big man in this case is a man whose scope of thinking is beyond social space, geographical space, and space of time in which he lives. The world's big and figures often idolized by the youth among others are Hitler, Napoleon, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Soekarno, Imam Khomeini, and Khadhafi One may be introduced to a big man by reading his biography or visiting his historical places. A big man is a man who "dreams" about something "impossible" and later realizes his dream(s) into reality. Many of great works were initially regarded as merely dreams.

4. Habituation to Patterns of Constructive Behaviors
Knowledge can be transferred by means of teaching. Meanwhile, creating a pattern of behaviors is an aim of education. Education is a form of culture transfer, meanwhile culture of any society contains following elements: (a) moral or ethic, (b) aesthetic, (c) science, (d) technology. On the other side, human behavior is not always logical. Instead, most of human behaviors are formed by means of habituation.

A person getting used to wake up early will still wake up early although he had slept lately at the previous night. The delicious of a spicy food doesn’t have something to do with logic but with habituation to taste. Furthermore, sense of cleanness, sense of orderliness and sense of discipline are also internalized by means of processes of habituation. A person who understands logic of honesty doesn’t necessarily becomes an honest person, on the contrary he may abuses that knowledge to deceive others who are honest. Good manners are not necessarily logic but obviously they are formed by means of habituation.

In forming character of a person, things that should be habits in his/her behaviors are (a) good manners or etiquette, (b) cleanness and neatness/orderliness, (c) honesty, and (d) discipline.

Personality is one of qualities owned by an individual, but it is also one of qualities owned by a group or nation. Consequently, we can say that there is personality of Indonesian nation or Indonesian personality. At present, Indonesian personality is seen as really in bad condition. This doesn’t happen suddenly due to reform, but it happens as a result of this nation’s mistakes in managing living as a nation and a state for 50 years. Results of developing the nation’s personality at present can only be known in one generation in the future. Wallahu a`lam

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Developing Muslim Personality (3)
Parents may have an obsession about developing their children (as individuals) to have noble personalities, a teacher have the same obsession about her students, one having a special attention have the same obsession about certain persons/children. Developing a personality is not an easy job, though. It requires psychological situation and suggestion conducive to internalizing moral values. Infrastructures that should be provided in order to developing a man with a noble personality among others are:

Knowledge of moral values
Human behaviors are influenced by cognitive, affective, and psychomotor aspects. If one has a balance proportion of those three aspects, then theoretically he is able to live in harmony with its environment and with himself since he is able to observe and respond various matters correctly and proportionally. Hence, knowledge of moral (akhlaq) values has a very important influence in developing a personality especially of a child who has a good fitrah (innate disposition towards virtue, knowledge, and beauty)

Knowledge of akhlaq values can be submitted (a) by one’s parent at home in one’s early years by means of tales told before sleeping, then by means of routine advices, special advices in relation with important events, for example when he/she will move to another area, is attempting to select a spouse, will marry, or will occupy a position; (b) by teachers at school in form of akhlaq science, although this way generally put more emphasis on cognitive aspect than on affective aspect, school discipline usually has a significant impact on students, at least it enters their subconscious minds. (c) by ulamas or wise men after praying, at meetings for reading Quran, at special meetings (d) by intellectuals at forums of discussion, (e) by means of programmed literatures, and (d) by means of events impressing one to be learned from.

Creating a Promoting Environment
According to a research quoted by Prof. Dr. Zakiah Daradjat, 83% of human behavior is influenced by what he sees, 11% by what he hears, and the rest 6% by combination of various stimuli. Hence, influence of environment on personality development is highly significant, at home and outside.
Metaphor of environment is mentioned in a hadith of Prophet Muhammad stating that socializing with a good-mannered person is like being near a perfume seller. Being near such a seller will make you fragrant since such a seller usually sprays his perfume to others near him (as a kind of promotion). Meanwhile, the same hadith also states that socializing with a bad-mannered person is like being near a smith at work. Sparks will possibly sprinkle you and ashes will probably make dirty your clothes.

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Developing Muslim Personality (2)
Religious Faith in Personality Structure
According to Islam, personality is an interaction among soul (nafs), heart (qalb), mind (`aql), and conscience (bashirah) qualities. Personality, in addition to being provided with inborn tendencies and genetic heritage from one’s parents, is also formed through a long process during his lifetime, including internalization of values, knowledges, and experiences in his self. In this perspective, religious faith one obtains from knowledges and experiences also enters his personality structure. A Muslim with a strong Muslim personality can’t enjoy the delicious of pork, although it has been cooked in accordance with his taste. A Muslim with a strong Muslim personality can’t enjoy the beauty of opened up awrah. He also always awakes from his sound sleep if he hasn’t done his Isha prayer yet.

Obviously, every Muslim has a different Muslim personality quality. That quality itself isn’t necessarily constant. Sometime it is firm, intact, and prime. But in other times it can be distorted by influences coming from sources other than his religion. In this connection, religious counseling may be given to reactivate innate impulses of faith of one which has been experiencing a spiritual disturbance making his personality no longer intact, so that with the innate impulses of faith his nafsany (self) system functions back by creating a synergy to result in positive behaviors. In certain conditions, religion is a huge power to motivate behaviors, as in other certain conditions, biologic motivations (such as hungriness) have important influences on human behaviors.

In sufistic perspective, consistent fasting (shaum), night prayers (qiyamullail), dawam al wudu, wirid are highly effective in developing one’s personality.

Developing Muslim personality
One is said as having a Muslim personality if, in perceiving, responding, or doing something, he is controlled by Muslim conception of life. One’s personality, in addition to being provided with inborn tendencies and genetic heritage from his parents, is also formed through a long process during one’s lifetime, including internalization of values, knowledges, and experiences in his self. In this perspective, religious faith one obtains from knowledges and experiences enters his personality structure. One who masters religious sciences or akhlaq (morals) science doesn’t necessarily have a noble personality, since personality is not merely an aspect of knowledge.

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Developing Muslim Personality (1)
Introduction
Anyone can be recognized by his/her identity, but our recognition of someone is often not complete so that his/her actual whole-identity is not known. For example, a wife had been married with her husband for almost 20 years, but she did not fully know his husband yet. Suddenly, in their 20th year of marriage she was shocked after finding out the true identity of his husband. The whole identity of a man is usually is known as personality (syahshiyyah). Personality of a man as a thinking-and-feeling creature can be developed by means of various forms of education. In other words, one's life experiences highly influence his or her personality.

Personality
One's personality is built from his temperament and characters. Temperament is mode of one's response to various stimuli coming from his environments and himself. One's temperament closely relates to his biopsychology conditions, so that it can hardly change and is neutral to good/bad judgements. Meanwhile, character closely relates to good/bad judgments of one’s behavior based on parameters held by the society. Character is formed during one’s life experience, so that it can change. Temperament has no ethical implication, meanwhile character is always be an object of ethical judgment. One can have a temperament that is in contradiction with his character.

A person can have a bad temperament while his/her character is good. If his temperament is at work, he tends to act negatively. Later he will regret it and ashamed of what he had done, although this bad temperament tends to reappear. Furthermore, a person who has a bad character but has a good temperament is usually able to hide his bad character from others. The worst is a bad-character person who also has a bad temperament.

Permanent characters will form a personality. According to Freud, man’s personality consists of three pillars, which are Id, Ego, and Super Ego, or animal, intellectual, and moral elements. Behavior, in Freud’s opinion, is an interaction among the three pillars. Freud concludes, however, that human is a Homo Volens, a creature who has wishes and that his behaviors are controlled by wishes hidden in his subconscious mind. This conclusion underestimates man’s dignity.

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The Indigenous Psychology (2)
The concept of Islamic Psychology
The mentioning of “insan” (human) in Al Quran denotes human as a psychological creature. Insan is derived from word “nasiya” which means “to forget”, from word “…uns” (tidak terbaca) which means “harmonious and intimate”, and from words “nasa yanusu” which means “to flare up”. Therefore, human psychology exists from aware to forget areas, from intimate to hate areas, and from flaring up to quiet areas. According to Al Quran, God had created design of human soul very perfectly, containing soul capacities: thinking, feeling, and wishing.

Soul is a system (called system of nafsani) consisting of Aql, Qalb, Bashirah, Syahwat, and Hawa:

1. Aql (reason) has a problem solving capacity. Its function is to think and it may differ good ones from bad ones. Reason can find truth but cannot determine whether a thing is a truth or not, therefore truth of reason is relative.

2. Qalb (mind) is the Prime Minister of the system of nafsani. It leads activities of a human’ soul. It can understand reality, a thing that is not easily done by reason. An irrational thing still can be understood by the qalb. In the qalb there are good things and bad things such as faith, love, envy, courage, angriness, arrogance, peacefulness, and disbelief. Qalb has the authority to decide to do an action. Therefore, everything that is realised by qalb implies rewards and sins. Things had been forgotten by qalb would enter memory of nafs (unconscious world), and some times things had been forgotten emerge in dreams. In accordance with its name, qalb is often inconsistent.

3. Bashirah “conscience”, is view of inner eyes in contrast with view of the head’s eyes. Different to the inconsistent qalb, bashirah is always consistent with truth and honesty. It can’t compromise to deviate from to the truth. Bashirah is also called nuraniy from wod “nur”, which becomes hati nurani in Indonesian. According to tasawwuf, bashira is the divine light that exists in the mind, nurun yaqdzifuhullah fi al qalb. Introspection, cry of contemplation, religiosity, god spot comes from this bashirah.

4. Syahwat (desire) is motive to behaviours. Almost all human have desires to the other sex (sexual desire), while almost all of us are proud of children and interested in valuable goods and things, such as good vehicles (due to their prestige and comfort), livestock, and gardens. Having the things that are desired rightly and legally according to Islam may be of religious services. Indulging desires may lead to sins and crimes

5. Hawa (lust) is motive to low and disgrace objects. Crime, angry, frustration, arrogance, irresponsible behaviours, corruption, despotism, and so on have this lust as their source. One characteristic of lust is interested to enjoy things wanted by ignoring moral values. One who indulge himself/herself with lust tends to carry out destructive actions. Hawa in is “hawa nafsu” in Indonesian, or “id” according to Freud.

Materials of Islamic Psychology are found in classic literatures of middle age. Processing materials with psychological nuance into Islamic Psychology requires hard works. If there is a person who still think that Islamic Psychology is not exist, it is due to he/she still doesn’t know yet Islamic Psychology. This can be compared to the situation when Islamic banking (banking without rate) was firstly introduced in Indonesia, in which the banking society negated without-rate banking. At present, however, all conventional banks open Islamic bank (or syari’ah bank in Indonesia)—the first Islamic bank in Indonesia is Bank Muamalat—mainly after it has been proved that syariah banks are the most strongest ones in facing monetary crisis (compared to conventional banks)

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The Indigenous Psychology (1)
Psychology is the science that attempts to describe, predict, and control human’s mental and behavioural events. Behaviours and smiles are expressions of soul. To understand the meanings of smiles and actions of persons such as Amrozi, who smiled when he was sentenced to dead, for example, psychology is required. Up to the present, psychology is generally apprehended as Western Psychology, which assumes that actions and behaviours of human beings are universal. Actually, Western Psychology, however, is only appropriate to be used to analyse Western humans, since it is in accordance with secular culture as the background of birth of the science.
In other areas of the world, however, human behaviours are affected by values systems different to that of Western society. Validity of what are claimed as universals for humans in psychology should be verified by using multiple indigenous psychology

Indigenous psychology can be defined as a totally native psychology (for a certain society in a certain area), which does not import any of its concepts from other areas at all, and which is indeed specially designed for the certain society. In other words, indigenous psychology is a comprehension based on facts or descriptions related to context of a local culture.

Understanding Amrozi’s smile, for example, is not sufficient by only comparing it to smiles of western people. We should find its roots in culture of West Java, culture of santris (students of any Indonesian traditional Muslim school), and cultures of entrepreneurs, culture of armed fighters (mujahids, muqatils), since he was not merely a Lamogan citizen, but he and his friends (Imam Samudera and others) had also involved in wars (physically and mentally) against the colonising Soviet Union in Afghanistan, as mujahid (fighters against communist unbelievers) and as muqatils (field fighters), and uniquely had been trained by CIA ‘s instructors (USA)

Islamic Indigenous Psychology
Souls are not only discussed by psychology or philosophy, but also by religion (in this case, Islam). Al Quran (and hadith) talks about souls (nafs) more than 300 times, but due to Islam’s different history of sciences, sciences such as psychology were not born from Islamic civilisation. In the West, developing sciences were totally separated from and even were made enemy by the Church, so that psychology (and other sciences) was not guided by religion (the Church), and therefore Psychology does not mention faith, sin, and belief in the day after. It knows healthy and unhealthy, but it doesn’t know (care about) good or bad.

Religion Psychology as a Western science also does not talk about truth of a religion but about how experiences in adhering a religion can affect behaviours of the followers In the history of Islamic sciences, Al Quran highly urged its followers to use its reason. The progress of sciences was not only inspired by the holy book, but was also guarded by the ulamas. Study on souls was not discussed in the context of behaviours, but discussed in the context man’s relations with God, so that the science emerged was not psychology but Islamic moral and tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism). Islamic moral talks about how to improve human’s behaviours, while tassawuf talks about how man can feel themselves close to (make their souls close to) God.

Islamic Psychology is a study with nuance of pyschosufism, with Al Quran as its main source based an assumption that the holy book is a manual on souls published by the Creator. In addition to Al Quran, hadith, Islamic scientific traditions, and empirical researches act as other sources. Western psychology is used as an aiding tool to understand verses of Al Quran and concepts of psychology, since it seems that Ibn Sina’s thoughts on healing of souls, Ibn Sina’s thoughts on interpretations of dreams, Iman Gazali Al Muhasibi’s thoughts on study of personality has been absorbed by Western psychology. While modern Psychology limits itself to only describe, predict, and control human’s mental and behavioural events, Islamic Psychology has additional tasks: to create good behaviours and to encourage human to feel close to God.

The Motorcycle Theory
It should be admitted that Psychology as a science is already highly developed, rich in methodologies, rich in empirical researches, meanwhile Islamic Psychology is still very poor in empirical researches at present. If human is regarded as a motorcycle, the West directly “rides the motorcycle” without feeling any need to read the manual provided by the manufacturer. With its long experiences, the West has already had a lot of knowledge on characteristics of the motorcycle. Since the west does not read the manufacturer’s manuals on how to ride “the motorcycle” (human), however, the Western psychology often experiences trials and errors.

We can see those trials and errors in developments of theories of psychoanalysis, behaviourism, cognition, and humanism. Only recently the West began to enter the domain of spiritual intelligence which is actually more domain of religion. In the future, the study of Psychology’s spiritual intelligence will probably be in harmony with Tassawuf (religion)’s spiritual intelligence.

Meanwhile, when Islamic Psychology sees the “motorcycle”, the thing firstly it does is reading the manufacturer’s manual. Al Quran is a manual on human (and its soul) made by the Creator. At present, Islamic Psychology only understands the characteristics of the motorcycle from descriptions written in the manual. It does not have a lot of empirical experiences in the field yet. In the future, after also becoming rich in empirical experiences. Islamic Psychology can be the fifth school of thought in Psychology after Humanism Psychology.

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