An Introduction to the Islamic Lifestyle based on the Quran and Hadith

A glance at the history of social thought suggests that there are three main patterns of lifestyle. First, monasticism according to which the world is a place where human identity and personality are destroyed and he is impeded from achieving growth, prosperity and sublimity. Therefore, human being should avoid any kind of social commitment and responsibility, such as marriage, in this material life, and try to achieve spiritual sublimity in isolation. Second, the philosophical lifestyle of pleasure that has no belief in the hereafter and seeks mere pleasure in the material world. According to this belief, human life is limited to worldly pleasure and human soul vanishes after death. Third, the Islamic lifestyle that emphasizes equally on two dimensions of the world and hereafter. According to this view, worldly needs of human are as important as his afterlife. Human responsibility has four dimensions: God, slelf, people and the nature. The present paper is an attempt to study the rights and duties of human based on Islamic teaching, criticizing the two above-mentioned lifestyles, and emphasizing the value of Islamic lifestyle.