THE QUR’ANIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE ROLE OF EL-KALB IN GENERATING SOCIAL (IN)COHESION

Abstract

Since humans are essentially social beings a stimulating social environment is crucial for human development. On the other hand, anything that promotes social distance, conflict, or facilitates social disintegration can be treated as a disruptive variable in the context of overall human development. The events the 21st century civilization witnesses point to the threat of the accelerated disintegration of the local and global social fabric. Multiple addictions, an increase in suicides, marital disfunction, tensions between an individual and the community, racism and xenophobia, insensitivity to the difficulties of the other and the different, terrorism, the continuity of wars, are just some examples of social alienation and growing existential nonsense, to which even the most developed countries have not shown resistance. The tendency of intensifying social incohesion imposes the requirement for seeking an appropriate scientific answer to the question of which constitutive element of the human being and under which circumstances has primacy in the genesis of social (in)cohesion. In this sense, one of the insufficiently researched factors of social (in)cohesion is al-kalb, an unavoidable agent within the general benefit-harm relationship from the point of view of the constitutive sources of Islam. The aim of this paper is to elaborate on and promote the socio-cohesive potential of al-kalb, the explication of which rests primarily on the intra-Qur'anic relations. Such a goal required interpretation of reference ayats, further strengthened by relevant insights from certain areas of modern science. The research findings confirm that al-kalb, as the primary organ of human being, is the initial and most important factor of social (dis)integration and (dis)harmony. For the purposes of this paper, a methodological approach, based on a combination of traditional and rational tafsir and the application of the thematic tafsir method, was used (Halilović, 2015).