The Educational System in Islam

The Education in Work Fields

The Islamic education in work fields aims at spreading piety, taking precautions in earnings, and habituating the craftsmen to the moralities and the Islamic ethics. It also aims at encouraging them on increasing and developing the production. It also proposes works’ skillfulness and development in such a way that is concurrent to the national maturity and prosperity in economical fields, for releasing people from poverty and neediness.

Islam has provided the most premium educational courses for craftsmen and workers.

Fidelity and sincerity:

Islam has instructed to be loyal and sincere in works and professions. The Prophet (s) said, “The real earning is the sincere.” “Allah loves the masterly work.” Insincere working brings about illegal earning, which is the most critical. Rewards are given to the faithful deeds, while the insincere are not rewarded. Workers should guarantee damages they cause to employers.

Avoiding cheating:

Islam has forbidden cheating totally because it causes economical and social damages in the country.  The Prophet (s) said, “He is not one of us that whoever cheats, injures, or defrauds a Muslim.” “For those who cheat a Muslim in vendition or purchase, they are not among us, and God will add them to the Jews on the Resurrection Day. He is surely not one of us that whoever cheats us. (The Prophet repeated this statement thrice.) For those who cheat their Muslim brothers, God will remove blessing from their earnings, and will corrupt their livings and forsake them.”

Imam as-Sadiq (a) said to a seller of flour, “Beware of cheating. The consequences of cheating will be shown in the properties or the family members of the cheaters.”

Imam Musa (a) said to Musa bin Bukeir about a counterfeit dinar, “Throw it in the drain so that nothing cheated will be sold.”

Jurists decide the right of revocation in the cheated deals. They also rule the invalidation of the deals in which cheating by showing counterfeited classes is proved.

Fulfillment of missions:

Employees must begin their works in the definite time and do their jobs by themselves. It is invalid to hire others for doing the jobs since the contract was concluded with certain persons. The hirelings could be not adequate enough for doing that job except there is a previous conclusion with the employer on this point. The Prophet (s) said, “The believers are bound to their conditions.”

Keeping the production means:

Craftsmen and employees must protect the tools of working and the productive means. The employees should never neglect them because they are their trusts. Damages of the production devices cause economical loss and injure employers.

Development of wealth resources:

Craftsmen and employees should work sincerely and faithfully for developing and preserving the sources of wealth since the economic life relies upon them. It is impossible for any nation to develop economically unless workers possess a general cognizance of the necessity of conserving and maturing the nation’s resources of wealth.

Professional specialization:

Professional specialization helps in the national development, productive increase, and economical prosperity. Governments are responsible for encouraging these goals by sending the seekers of specialization to institutions inside and outside the country. They are also responsible for meeting the needs of these people. This is surely the most important social responsibility.

Activity and firmness:

The Islamic education in work cares for distributing the spirits of activity and firmness in the employees’ minds. It also cares for warning against laziness and sloth, since these matters paralyze the economic movements and freeze the energies. The following supplication is related to the Prophet’s household. It shows the abomination of laziness and sloth. “O Allah! I seek thy guard against sloth, laziness, inactivity, and indolence.” Imam as-Sadiq (a) said, “Beware of tedium and laziness. They are the key to every vile. The tedious cannot fulfill any duty. The lazy cannot keep any pledge.”[1] Imam Musa (a) said, “Beware of tedium and laziness. They block the shares of this world and the Hereafter.”[2]

Islam abhors laziness, forbids unemployment, and censures the unemployed because it leads to poverty, misery, and neediness. Muslims in the early ages  

[1] Refer to Men La Yahduruhul Faqih.
[2] Refer to the lifetime of Imam Musa bin Jafar.

disgusted long rest and stillness. They came to working fastidiously. Imam as-Sadiq (a) exposed the deeds of those companions before his adherents. He said, “Do not be lazy in seeking earnings. Our forefathers used to hasten in seeking their livings.”[1]

Proudly, Islam calls to diligence, activity, and dispatching to working fields so that the life of luxury and amenity will prevail. In our ‘Labor and rights of workers in Islam’, we have referred comprehensively to labor courses, obligations, and rights that Islam imposed for the laborers and peasants.

Evasion of the ill-gotten:

The most prominent course of the programs of the Islamic education in work is seeding the spirits of piety and integrity in the minds of the employees and craftsmen as well as taking them away from sins and vices. Stipends and salaries of those employees were gotten due to their efforts and pains. They should spend those stipends on their dependants and themselves. They will surely spend them illegally if they slip in fields of lechery. Thus, they leave the ghost of poverty in their houses and expose their families and children to poverty and deprivation.

Last word:

As we reach the end of this thesis, we would like to attract attention to the fact that this has been a brief exposition of the Islamic educational system. We cannot claim of embodying all of the topics and affairs in this regard, since this needs too many volumes.

The educational system of Islam is based upon the most modern means that lie at the top of the marches of the humanitarian civilizations. It can change the general behavior and establish immunity from the moral defects and other vicious compounds. This system achieved the best outcome in the early stages of Islam when it created men who were above all others in their progress towards the right, justice, confidence in God, and wholehearted devotion for God’s sake. Those celebrities could save people from the gloominess of ignorance, sloth, and indolence to take to oases of knowledge, activity, and production.

We regard it obligatory to praise the efforts of the grand master Sheik Hadi al-Qireshi, who provided the notices of this book. I can also hardly neglect his compassion and kindness, that I highly appreciate, without which I could not provide this work. I supplicate to God to reward him with blessings and best merits.

Finally, I wish the readers to point out any flaw that I have inadvertently mentioned in my work, so that we all achieve the service of the right.

[1] Refer to Men La Yahduruhul Faqih.