The Concept of Fithrah in Islamic Psychology: An Interdisciplinary Perspective between the Qurʿan and Developmental Psychology Theory
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Abstract
The concept of fithrah occupies a foundational position in Islamic thought, denoting the primordial, God-endowed constitution of the human soul — a state of original purity, monotheistic inclination, and moral readiness that every human being possesses at birth. Despite its centrality to Islamic anthropology, theology, and educational philosophy, fithrah has been underexplored as a systematic psychological construct capable of engaging productively with Western developmental psychology. This study addresses that lacuna through an interdisciplinary systematic analysis that examines the convergences and divergences between the Qur'anic concept of fithrah and four major developmental psychology theories: Piaget's cognitive-developmental model, Kohlberg's moral development theory, Erikson's psychosocial stage theory, and Vygotsky's sociocultural framework. Drawing on a systematic review of classical Islamic scholarship — including Al-Ghazali's Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din, Ibn Miskawayh's Tahdhib al-Akhlaq, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah's Madarij al-Salikin — alongside contemporary Islamic psychology literature (2018–2025) and the original Western theoretical sources, the study finds five principal areas of scholarly convergence: the recognition of innate moral potential, the role of social environment in shaping moral development, the importance of rational capacity in ethical reasoning, the process of moral growth through identifiable stages, and the centrality of self-cultivation (tazkiyah) as the developmental telos. The study also identifies three fundamental divergences: fithrah's insistence on a transcendent divine origin for moral capacity, its integration of spiritual and rational dimensions within a unified anthropological framework, and its teleological orientation toward divine proximity as the ultimate developmental end-point. The interdisciplinary analysis generates seven theoretical propositions for an Islamically grounded developmental psychology and proposes the concept of Fithrah-Consonant Development (FCD) as a contribution to both Islamic educational theory and cross-cultural psychology.
Keywords: fithrah; Islamic psychology; developmental psychology; moral development; interdisciplinary; Qur'an; Piaget; Kohlberg; Erikson; Vygotsky; tazkiyah
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