Psychology of motivation according to islamic perspective

Abstract

When a person behaves in a certain way, we often wonder why he acted in that way. So, we are looking forward to the impulse or motive standing behind the action.
To deal with the areas of motivation, ideas and theories that seek to define and explicate it, means to enter into a vortex where the fields of studies and viewpoints of scholars, are the only ones that can be taken as based and real. With the change of psychological schools, the conclusions reached change, too. However, the safest conclusion is that theorists of different schools are not of the same opinion on motivation.
Modern psychology defines motivation as a specific need or desire, as an activation of a goal-oriented behavior. According to it, the motivation is internal. The term is used for human beings, but theoretically it could be used for animal behavior, too.
According to various theories, motivation is rooted in basic needs, in order that pain be minimized and pleasure be maximized, it may include specific needs such as hunger, comfort, a desired object or attitude, or it may attributed to fewer apparent reasons, such as altruism, selfishness, morality, etc.
Motive is the generator or the bio-generator of the physical, mental power and the elan for a successful life. Without any motive for work, life, knowledge or any activity, success is weak and inaccessible. “The work started with desire, is, from the very beginning, half done” (Sami Frashëri).

Islam, having clear structure of the human, its constituent elements: bodily, sensory, perceptual ones, from one hand, and the spiritual, sensor, emotional, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive platform of motivation, behind which lie myriads of activation or non-activation of the human behavior. Many of the reasons provided by Muslims that can not be explained by modern theories of motivation (such as the negligence of biological needs for spiritual reasons) in fact can be explained if we believe in the existence of the spirit. Shortly, Islam, as a medium way, reveals the existence of the human spirit and its influence on human motivation, without denying the physical factors.
If motivation is the force or energy towards the impossible, in Islam it is the establishment of the goal to achieve the Good, the Charitable.
The goal, the objective to be achieved, activate man, and all this within the scope of human existence – the Worship of God, a Goal, according to which there are controlled, measured, followed, applied all the other needs, by turning into the pattern of self-control, dedication, good, of “superiority of the submission to God” - reaching the peaks of piety, and not that of ego, stubbornness, pride and arrogance, which “break the master’s neck”.
Islamic concept, establishes man in the correct position, in report to the measure, collective.
Individualism has nothing to do with Islam, despite the holiness that the latter gives to life, property and the honor of the individual. Despite this, the social engagement turns into the individual primary need.
So, in Islam, the individual does not live either only for himself and for the realization of his personal needs (capitalism), or to be sacrificed for society (communist utopia).