Monday, April 16, 2007

According to Qur’an, human behavior has characteristics as follow: (1) controllable (2) implying responsibilities, (3) internal and external, (4) individual and societal.

One’s behavior is subject to one’s motivation, orientation, and tendency, but they also have something to do with one’s intellectuality, logic, morality, and independence. If someone has decided to achieve something, then he will focus his attention and efforts on achieving the thing he wants. Based on this perspective, human behavior can be changed.

Qur’an implies that human behavior can be formed, corrected, and changed. The change may come from oneself or due to external factors. Regarding this matter, Qur’an gives an example of opportunity given to anyone regretting his wrongdoings to be repentant and opportunity for wrongdoers to return to the blessing of God. A repentant person will regret his past mistakes and then determines not to do his wrongdoings again. He also will attempt to do good deeds as manifestation of his will to correct himself. In this case, Qur’an states that God will accept his repentance and others who want to correct his behavior.

A strong will to correct oneself may be caused by one’s own wish or by good influences coming from external factors such as other’s persuasion or good social environment. Final decision to change one’s behaviour, however, still depends on oneself. Qur’an in Surah ar-Ra'd (Thunder/13): 11 states, “Surely Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition (their souls). Changing human behaviour is changing his way of thinking, mentality, and character. Way of thinking, behaviour, mentality, and characters of man are indeed can be changed, but the processes are complicated since those processes have something to do with self (nafs) aspect of man. According to psychology, there are two approaches that can be used to change human behaviour: reward and punishment. 9 The first approach states that a person should be punished after doing a wrongdoing with an assumption that he wouldn’t dare to do it again since he is afraid to be punished again.

Others witnessing or knowing that the person has been punished are expected to avoid doing wrongdoings since they are also assumed as afraid of being punished. The second approach states that to stimulate people to do good deeds, rewards should be given to those had showed their achievements, especially to the best ones. The rewards are given to make people compete to achieve the best level of their activities. By using this approach, teachers, Islamic preachers, and the government will be occupied in thinking what rewards should be given to the best people, and will not be occupied in thinking how to punish people who had done wrongdoings.