Collectivism and individualism in the Islamic tradition of self-knowledge
https://doi.org/10.31162/2618-9569-2025-18-1-224-248
Abstract
The article is devoted to the analysis of collectivistic and individualistic aspects in the Islamic tradition of self-knowledge: how they are combined and how they interact within the framework of the Islamic faith. The collectivist tendency in the form of the desire to be connected with fellow believers and to be on good terms with them is one of the central issues within the Islamic worldview. Moreover, a person's awareness of their own self through social self-determination, through the search for their place in the ummah is the most important ontological aspect of self-knowledge in Islam. At the same time, in Islam, the main, ontologically embedded attachment of a person is his connection with Allah, and the entire dynamics of human individuation within the Islamic worldview is directed in one direction - to the Creator. Only through the establishment of personal relations with the Almighty a person can understand himself, those around him and the world as a whole.
In Islam, which is considered to be the so-called "religion of the middle", the collectivistic and individualistic are in a balanced state. Having created the man as a creature with a dual nature, the Creator thereby laid in him a simultaneous desire for self-actualization and an urge for society. Such anthropology also explains the strategies of religious self-knowledge of man within the framework of the Islamic faith, which combines a personal search for knowledge about being, the truth of religious faith through the "self", the uniqueness of the religious experience of each with collective experience, which contributes to the inclusion of a person who has chosen the path of self-knowledge through the religious sphere, in the dialectical system of the individual and the social.
About the Author
N. G. Barinova
Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Nataliya G. Barinova, Psychologist, Master in Social Psychology, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education; Master in Islamic Theology, Russian Islamic Institute; PhD candidate, Department of Philosophy
Moscow
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Review
For citations:
Barinova N.G. Collectivism and individualism in the Islamic tradition of self-knowledge. Minbar. Islamic Studies. 2025;18(1):224-248. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.31162/2618-9569-2025-18-1-224-248
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