Thursday, March 22, 2007

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.