Presenting an Islamic Model of Good Morality and Explaining Its Educational Implications with Emphasis on the Verses of the Qur'an

Abstract

This study was conducted with the aim of presenting an Islamic model of good morality (ḥusn al-khuluq) and explaining its educational implications. The present research employed the methods of conceptual analysis, grounded theory, and inferential analysis to examine the subject. The findings (based on the verses of the Qur'an) indicate that the causal factors of good morality include divine mercy, the criterion of perfection, superior moral virtue, teaching and purification, and justice. The contextual conditions include good-temperedness, avoidance of dispute, justice-seeking, forgiveness, and affection. The intervening and mediating factors include good conduct, patience and forbearance, benevolence, altruism, and honoring others. The strategies for achieving good morality include generosity, benevolent behavior, avoidance of quarrel, anger control, cheerfulness, virtue orientation, teaching and purification, honoring and altruism, justice, forgiveness, and kindness. The consequences of good morality are attaining perfection, transforming enmity into friendship, and attracting divine mercy. The conceptual model of teaching good morality, developed through inferential analysis, includes: 1) Educational principles such as divine mercy, divine affection, divine justice, God’s hearing and seeing, faith and righteous deeds, striving for perfection, human dignity, and belief in the Resurrection; and 2) Educational methods, which were extracted and explained as effective ways of cultivating good morality in humans. This study, by presenting a systematic Islamic model for moral education, demonstrates the key role of good morality in achieving personal and social perfection based on Qur’anic teachings.