Psychology of Personality Quotes

“him the names (al-asmā’) of everything (2:31). By the ‘names’ we infer that it means the knowledge (alcilm) of everything (al-ashyā’). This knowledge does not encompass knowledge of the specific nature of the essence (al-dhāt) or the inmost ground (al-sirr) of a thing (shay’) such as, for example, the spirit (al-rūḥ); it refers to knowledge of accidents (sing. caradī) and attributes (sing. sīifah) pertaining to the essences of things sensible and intelligible (mahīsūsat and macqūlāt) so as to make known the relations and distinctions existing between them, and to clarify their natures within these domains in order to discern and to understand their meanings, that is, their causes, uses, and specific individual purpose. Man is,”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Ibn Khaldūn seems to consider religion (particularly Islam) as a system which can preserve human nature closest to its primitive good state, while allowing for the evolution of the individual as well as the collectivity.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“The closer they remain to the primitive/ innate state of human nature, the better they are. It may be argued here then that the explanation for Ibn Khaldūn’s hostile attitude toward the sedentaries is that they are seen as having corrupted their good, primitive, innate human nature, while his admiration of the Bedouins stems out of their apparent closeness to the primitive goodness of human nature,”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“The revolutionary change within modern psychology lies in the recognition that neither the unconscious sexual conflict nor the environmental stimuli per se, cause emotional disorders, but rather it is the perceptions, thoughts and contemplation of a person about these stimuli or experiences which can make him a neurotic.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“differs from secular contemplation in that its vision goes beyond this world. Its contemplation of the world leads to the consciousness of the hereafter and the knowledge of God.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Since the origin of every action is a cognitive, emotional, or intellectual mental activity, those who are given to long periods of contemplation will perform their acts of worship and obedience quite easily. While internal cognitive activity is the key to every good and proper action, it is also the source of all disobedience, whether implied or overt.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“He even suggested that just as a healthy person keeps some drugs and first-aid medicines at hand for unexpected physical emergencies, he should also contemplate and keep healthy thoughts and feelings in his mind for unexpected emotional outbursts.12”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Complex responses that influence people’s beliefs, voluntary decisions and observable complex behavior come from previous conceptualizations, emotions and experiences which give meaning to subsequent environmental stimuli. In other words, it is what people think about that affects their beliefs, feelings and consequent behavior. If their thinking is centered on the creation and bounties of the Almighty, their faith will increase, and their deeds and behavior will improve. If it is centered on their pleasures and desires, they will be distracted from their religion and their behavior will degenerate; and if their thinking is about their feats, frustrations, failures, and consequent pessimism, they will be afflicted with reactive depression and other psychological disorders.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“the concept of mechanical human being as adopted by behaviorism; this concept has been replaced with that of a human being as an “information processor”.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“This deformed approach was, from the start, strongly opposed by several scholars. The British psychologist, Cyril Burt, for example,”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“psychoanalysis, Gestalt psychology and learning theory, tried to formulate an all-embracing theory, but none succeeded,”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“If studying Islamic contemplation from the psychological point of view necessarily deals with the conscious inner cognitive thought and feelings of people, then these three dominant perspectives of Western psychology (behaviorism, Freudian psychoanalysis and neuropsychiatry) can offer little or no help.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Biological determinism, in its exaggerated form, claims that anything, normal or abnormal, that people do is fully governed by their inherited genes, their nervous system, and inborn biochemistry. As”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Classical Freudian psychoanalysis, for instance, sees human behavior as fully determined by one’s unconscious sexual and aggressive impulses, which means that people’s conscious ideas, their contemplation, their judgments and their reasoning are but by-products of a deeper concealed mind of which they are unaware. Freud considered religion itself as an illusion and a mass obsessional neurosis!”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Ibn Khaldūn supports the duality of human nature by the following two verses: “And guided him onto the two highways” (Q. 90:10). “And the soul and Him who fashioned it well, inspiring it to profligacy and piety. Prosperous shall be he who purifies it and ruined he who corrupts it” (Q. 91-7-10).”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“three levels of human nature for Ibn Khaldūn: fiṭrah, dualistic human nature and aggressive human nature. By the aggressive human nature is meant the animalistic side of human nature, which is prone to injustice and destruction. This is the lowest, most depraved level of human nature. When”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Ibn Khaldūn believed in the corruptibility of fiṭrah. He believed that this fiṭrah can be corrupted or destroyed by man’s corruption of his dualistic human nature. Bad social influences can cause the evil aspect of human nature to predominate, and good Islamic social values can lead to the good aspect of human nature to predominate.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“In its recognition of fiṭrah as innate goodness, it also acknowledges a dualistic conception of human nature, which is distinct from fiṭrah. This duality of good and evil within the human soul, is dynamic: it is capable of transformation to a higher level in harmony with fiṭrah, or degradation to an animal level, with a capacity to corrupt, or even obliterate, the pure innate fiṭrah.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Man’s primordial purity should be seen in the context of his primordial existence, not his existential existence, which is subject to material limitations. Man’s material nature is the locus of his forgetfulness, but his faithful believing parents will teach him the oneness of God,”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“In this covenant lies man’s acknowledgement of God’s existence (wujūd) and his affirmation of his servitude to God alone (cubūdiyyah). God created man’s fiṭrah according to this attestation. Thus, the inborn fiṭrah mentioned in the Ḥadīth suggests that man was originally created pure to submit to God, and not to associate partners with Him, and that it is man’s duty in this world to continue in this pure state.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Isfahānī also refers to it as man’s “general knowledge” (macrifah camiyyā), which is embedded in the human fiṭrah. It enables man to know God through a process of recollecting what is already embedded within his fiṭrah. So, nothing can remove this innate knowledge, it can only be retrieved. That is why it is also said: “He who knows his soul, knows his Lord”.13”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Man’s perfection and knowledge of God depends on his faithfulness to the pre-existential covenant, to his fiṭrah, by emulating Prophet Muhammad, the primal manifestation of divine names.11”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Pre-existential fiṭrah is man’s primordial perfection and the earthly fiṭrah is in harmony with this perfect state. The role of prophets is to remind man of the oneness of God (tawḥīd), his original nature, and his primordial fiṭrah.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“According to Tustarī, man sealed a covenant with God long before his entry into this world, when he was still a speck endowed with intellect, and he acknowledged God’s supremacy by his affirmative answer to the question, “Am I not your Lord?” The true test of man’s faithfulness to the covenant with his Lord is his phenomenal existence in this world. Tustarī states: “The self-consciousness of man derives from the moment of affirmation of Divine Lordship (rubūbiyyah) with their first profession of faith”.10 This is man’s involuntary submission to God; it is man’s pre-existential state, and it is also the state in which he is born on earth. Man’s submission in this world, however, is a voluntary submission according to Islam, which complements his innate nature.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“the context of the “pre-existential” fiṭrah. Basically, this concept means that God created fiṭrah so that man could come to acknowledge Him as the one God who has power over all things.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“who follows the wrong way does not do so because of innate sin, but because he acquires after birth a lower soul (nafs) that tempts him to do evil and makes him susceptible to the negative influences of the social environment.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“According to Ibn Taymiyyah, fiṭrah means that every child is born with innate goodness and that is the social environment that causes him to deviate from this original state. Furthermore, that fiṭrah is not merely a dormant potential, but an active state of man’s inherent inclination to love and know God. Man in this world merely makes a conscious attempt to awaken this given active inclination into conscious reality.”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“The term dīn, which comes from dāna (to be indebted), also signifies indebtedness, and in the religious context it means indebtedness to God who created him and to whom he must ultimately return. To express his gratitude to God, man must submit to Him in worship in accordance with Islam, and by so doing, man will realize his fiṭrah. Man’s submission to God is termed cibādah (worship). This is a conscious submission to the will of God; it is man’s fulfilment of the purpose of his creation as God states, “I have not created the jinn and mankind except to worship Me” (Q. 51:56).”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“Qur’ān (see above), the right religion is the one that teaches the oneness of God, and it is this religion that is in harmony with the innate human nature which is inclined towards this divine monotheism. So, for man to know himself and to realize his innate nature, he must follow this true religion (dīn hānīf). This religion is Islam, in the wide sense of its belief and submission to God, as confirmed by the verse, “The true religion with Allah is Islam” (Q. 3:10).”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives

“According to al-Nawawī (d. 676/1277), fiṭrah is an unconscious state of belief, which a person acquires at a conscious level through a process of socialisation, depending on his family upbringing and societal influence. If a child were to die before attaining the age of discretion, he would be of the inmates of Paradise. This applies to the children of polytheists as well.5 This view is supported by the following Ḥadīth:6”
― Amber Haque, Psychology of Personality: Islamic Perspectives