Belief and activity: an approach to measuring belief for mental health research

There is no scientific way that we can measure a man’s belief in his religion. As a result, when religious issues are investigated for mental health, we face problems. It is because the detailed evaluation of the religious system is not widely practiced in scientific activities. This article aims to show how a Muslim’s belief in his religion, Islam, can be qualitatively measured by evaluating his daily religious activities.

A Muslim is defined as someone who believes in Islam. In other words, a Muslim believes in the statements or information mentioned in the main Islamic documents. As central documents of the religion of Islam, there are two recognized main sources. One is the Holy Quran and the other is the Holy Hadith. These two resources describe the pros and cons of religion with every other aspect of life, from toileting to sleep. Now, there are some obligatory activities that these resources inform Muslims. For example, believing in Allah, Prophets, life after death, etc., and doing some obligatory tasks like saying daily prayers, paying Jakat for the poor, attending Hazz, etc.

The documents describe the benefits and rewards for maintaining those mandatory activities and also the losses and penalties for ignoring them. Now, very rationally, if someone believes in that, i.e. believes in Islam from the bottom of his heart, he will be encouraged to do the activities and also discouraged from ignoring them. If we read the authentic documents of Islam, we will see that the benefits and rewards are very significant, as are the losses and punishments. So, naturally, any human being who believes that he will be well rewarded if he does something and severely punished if he doesn’t, should assist those, except those who suffer from some psychiatric or other disorder or illness. severe disability.

So, for whatever purpose, if we measure the extent of obligatory daily religious activity upheld by a Muslim, it will ultimately reveal the extent of the belief he has in himself about the mentioned truths in Islam. It can even be used as a qualitative measure for scientific purposes. But what should be kept in mind is that any activity shows its consistency when it is done without any undue external pressure and also for a minimum and defined period of time.

For example, someone who preaches people for Islam and says the daily prayer on time every day for at least a month can be taken as a better believer than those who do not do the above. Because the mentioned reward and punishment for daily prayer are significant enough to encourage someone to perform them. So if we confirm health, both physical and mental, surely we can compare the qualitative amount of beliefs between the two groups.

Finally, one thing should be mentioned: any activity that Islam advocates is always mentioned in its core documents as being good for the human being himself, which makes the above statement all the more plausible for any Muslim. Someone who knows or believes that something is very seriously useful to him but doesn’t do it must have some problem with his thinking or intuition if we take the belief statement to be true.