The social significance of religion

Religion includes a very wide range of issues, a set of ideas which are the basis for a comfortable, safe, good and valuable functioning of society. At the same time, it covers all groups of society, without dividing them according to racial, confessional, national, class or other characteristics.

Social teaching is intended to formulate ideas, foundations or systems that help to solve so-called social problems. It is also focuses on the elimination of social inequality and is inseparably linked to the moral, ethical and religious feelings of people. The toolkit of social teaching is Islamic law (fiqh), which is the four legal schools which are based, in turn, on the Holy Quran and hadith. These four schools of Islamic law explain in detail what is permissible and forbidden and how to act in a given situation.

The goal of religion itself is to educate people to be of high culture, morality, tolerant in a diverse society, as well as to ennoble the morals of people and call for obedience to the Creator. Social teachings, as a rule, are tools for the formation of a personality and its upbringing. It is a kind of an algorithm that teaches a person how to focus on something, to think, to speak, to act and to communicate with society. The leitmotif of social teaching in Islam is the concept of justice.

The principle of Islamic social service is to strive to become closer to God, to earn His pleasure by following the commandments and not demanding anything in return. A person builds a relationship with God, creating virtues in himself. All life’s complications provide people with the opportunity to embody virtues that bring them closer to the contentment of the Creator.

In practice, social service is to feel compassion for those in distress or generous assistance to those in need, or protection of the oppressed, care for the disadvantaged and the desire to benefit people both now and in the long term. Thus, belief in divine justice is directly related to a person’s desire to strive for justice and avoid any form of oppression towards anyone.

In fact, those who act justly are those who truly know God and testify to his greatness. In Islam, the starting point for all virtue and justice is rooted in the spiritual desire of man to love God and be His beloved and to help the servants of God. This spiritual justice gives rise to all other forms of justice. Virtue and helping one’s neighbor, regardless of their confessional affiliation, are woven into the very nature of divine religion.

MUHAMMAD ALIMCHULOV Theologian