Guilt and Shame in Religious Education

To cite this article: Khosravi, Z. (2018). Guilt and shame in religious education. Talim: Journal of Education in Muslim Societies and Communıities, 2, 5‒22. https://dx.doi.org/10.12738/talim.2018.1.0100 1 Correspondence to: Zohreh Khosravi (PhD), Professor of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Alzahra University, Vanak, P.O. Box: 1993891176, Tehran Iran. Email: zohreh_khosravi@yahoo.com Abstract Learning self-control is an important component of religious education. However, the relation between religion and psychological well-being is controversial. While some findings indicate religiosity to be associated with mental disorders, other findings show it provides people with calm and hope. The manner in which guilt forms, which is important for both religious and psychological studies, can shed some light on this controversy. Guilt appears as a cognitive-emotional experience when people breach their believed religious and moral standards. The two concepts of guilt and shame should be distinguished. While guilt refers to behavior, shame deals with the person’s whole self. Thus, guilt can be associated with taking responsibility for one’s behavior whereas shame undermines the whole personality of a person and targets one’s self-esteem. In addition, shame is profoundly dependent on others’ judgments and leads to rumination and feeling worthless. Distinguishing between guilt and shame can explain this controversy. The positive association between religiosity and psychological disturbances results from the feeling of shame, whereas feeling of guilt can explain the negative correlation between religiosity and psychological disorders. This differentiation is important in Islamic education. According to Islamic teachings, people should retain their self-esteem even when they commit negative actions. The negative action itself should be the aim of critique and blame rather than the spirit of the person, which has a divine origin. Thus, distinguishing between action and agent should be taken as a strategy in Islamic religious education so that only the bad action is taken at issue, whether for blame or change. On the other hand, the whole personality of the person should be taken as a respected entity. This is why Islam views despair as a supreme fault because associates a person with basically being worthless.