Social control in the teachings of the Holy Quran

Dissertation for receiving a doctorate degree in sociology (cultural theoretical orientation)

Abstract

This research aims to present Islamic propositions in the form of sociological concepts and reach a final conclusion in the form of a view attributed to the teachings of the Qur'an about social control. The main question of the research is "what is the social perspective that can be attributed to the teachings of the Qur'an about the control of deviance". This research has been conducted with the qualitative method of grounded theory by referring to all the verses of the Quran and coding and analyzing the related verses. Based on this research, the Holy Quran starts the strategies of deviance control from the norm setting stage and then considers correct and complete "monitoring" of its implementation. This monitoring is done in two ways: God's direct monitoring with different means as a ruler over human actions and the need for humans to monitor each other's actions. From the point of view of the Holy Quran, in addition to falsifying appropriate and defensible norms, one of the basic conditions for the effectiveness of this supervision is "the popularity of the supervisors and rulers and their power to punish the wrongdoers". Due to the fact that one of the means of controlling perverse human actions is punishment, the Holy Quran tries to control their perverse actions by determining various worldly and supernatural punishments for perverts. Other solutions provided from the Qur'an's point of view in this regard are: "family supervision over the actions of its members", "choosing efficient and competent agents and managers", "social support and support for the victim of perversion". Also, the Qur'an suggests the use of "re-socialization", "value control", "emotional control" and economic punishment in order to restore the deviance from the deviance. And finally, for those who cannot be corrected by these methods, he uses physical punishment as the last step. Extracting the teachings of the Qur'an in this regard can provide the basis for developing the theory of deviance control from an Islamic point of view and be an effective help to the officials of the Islamic system to control the deviant actions of society members and also deal with social anomalies. Key words: deviance, social control, Quran, social supervision, God's supervision, punishment, physical punishment, victimization, background theory, norming, family, social support. Societies to guarantee Conformity of their members with the norms and dealing with deviance, they have a set of material and symbolic resources and certain rules and principles with a guarantee of implementation. Social scientists also understand the process of controlling deviance in the light of scientific understanding of this phenomenon and identifying and predicting appropriate and efficient solutions to deal with it. An important part of the mission of Islam is to pay attention to the phenomenon of deviance and remove it from the scene of human societies. Therefore, it is necessary for Muslim thinkers to use revelation sources (verses and narrations of Ahl al-Bayt (peace be upon them)) to present these views in a systematic way and finally to develop religious theorizing in the field of social sciences.

By studying the entire Qur'an, he provided a relatively comprehensive set of Qur'anic teachings about controlling deviance. Due to the limitation of the thesis in terms of volume and presentation time, at this stage only "the text of the Qur'an" (authentic text and appearance of the verses) was examined and coded. In the cases of referring to the appearance of the verses, in order to establish the initial appearance, some traditions under the verses and the views of a limited number of commentators have also been referred to. In order to complete this view and attribute it to Islam in the next stages, by referring to the books of Islamic interpretation, narration, history, ethics and jurisprudence and completing the obtained codes, it is possible to achieve the theory of social control of deviance from the perspective of Islam.

         Although it is not specified about the priority and delay of the solutions in the Quran, but logically and intrinsically, an order for these solutions can be considered. These strategies start from the normative and efficient monitoring stage and continue until the physical punishment stage.

This treatise is organized and presented in five chapters: the first chapter is dedicated to the general discussion; The second chapter deals with the conceptual framework; In the third chapter, the research method has been examined.In the fourth chapter, the findings of the research have been presented, and finally, the fifth chapter is dedicated to summarizing and concluding.

Statement of the problem (what is the problem?)

Social science thinkers consider humans to be in need of social life. Accordingly, he is considered a social being; However, one group considers this feature to be instinctive and inherent, and another group considers it to be acquired. But living together has its own conditions and limitations. On the one hand, in order for the society to be able to maintain its order and continue its life, it is necessary to continuously adapt new people and prepare them for group life. A situation where people agree with social values ??and norms is the result of it. The realization of this conformity is also possible in the light of people's commitment to behavioral patterns and norms. A major part of this is realized in the form of learning these patterns and norms and people's internal commitment to them.

On the other hand, a person feels that he is forced to accept the "costs" that this life imposes on him in addition to the benefits and advantages he gets from social life; For example, the need to feel safe or belong to a group, or the need to love others and be loved by others, forces him to ignore his personal interests and interests and sometimes perform behaviors contrary to those interests. In many cases, due to his sensitivity to the encouragements and punishments that others apply to him, he finds himself in need to understand their expectations as much and better as possible. At the same time, in order to increase his interests in the society and avoid possible losses, he becomes interested in increasing his prediction power against their possible reactions. This is why people seriously feel the need for stable and stable patterns of behavior in social relationships in order to preserve this power of prediction; And they force themselves and others to adhere to these patterns. This is because the existence of fixed patterns of behavior is the basis for the stability of social expectations of each role as well as the type and quality of reaction to all kinds of actions. In this way, it can be seen that humans, in practice, usually play their roles in accordance with the discussed frameworks and patterns and also according to the expectations that other members of society have of them; And in this way, on the one hand, they organize the social order and make the society possible; And on the other hand, they make their behaviors predictable in the context of interaction with each other.

At the same time, in human societies, there is always a field of inconsistency as much as a field of conformity with norms and values; In such a way that the two concepts of conformity and deviance are mainly raised next to each other, and are often understood together. In this way, people's living next to each other and their need to interact in the same environment also actualizes the conflicts between individual interests. In addition, social norms and regulations bind and limit people and reduce their freedom to access those benefits. As a result, it is not too far from the expectation that individuals or groups violate the personal interests of others or the collective interests of society and violate social norms in order to implement personal or group desires. Therefore, it cannot be denied that as much as the members of the society follow the norms, there is the same amount of disobedience to the social rules and this fact is the same everywhere. Although most people often agree with social norms, social thinkers always emphasize that the true and complete image of a human society includes both conformity with the rules of social behavior and displays various forms of norm-breaking.

An action is considered "uncivil" with this argument, which can be considered as a kind of opposition to the norms of a "collective". A concept that in a general sense can be called "norm breaking", in the general sense of the word. For this reason, thinkers of every society are looking for a way to control deviation in their societies; As far as from their point of view, the final purpose and desired of all the discussions that have been formed around abnormal actions and against the principles and standards is to control deviance.