Question 606: Can you please mention some verses of the holy Quran in which mentioned about physiological motivations?
Answer 606: Motivation is the reason for people’s actions, desires, and needs. Motivation is also one’s direction to behavior, or what causes a person to want to repeat a behavior. A motive is what prompts the person to act in a certain way, or at least develop an inclination for specific behavior.
Emotions are complex. According to some theories, they are states of feeling that result in physical and psychological changes that influence our behavior. The physiology of emotion is closely linked to arousal of the nervous system with various states and strengths of arousal relating, apparently, to particular emotions. Emotion is also linked to behavioral tendency.
Motivations are divided into two different divisions, according to new psychologists.
- Physiological Motivation. 2. Psychological Motivation.
Those motivations that are natural and related to the physiologic needs for our body can guide a person’s behavior toward the way that provide physiologic needs for body.
Psychological motivations can be attained through learning for a person during his social growth.
The followings are some verses of the holy Quran in which Allah (swt) provide these physiological motivations for the human beings in order to be guided on the right path. Some of them are related to those motivations that keep their nature safe and some are related to breathing motivations.
A: Motivations for Keeping Nature safe: Those verses in which mentioned some motivations that keep our nature safe are as follows:
- “He said: Our Lord is He Who gave to everything its creation, then guided it to its goal”[1]
- “Glorify the Name of your Lord, the Most High; Who creates, then makes complete; And Who makes (things) according to a measure, then guides them to their goal.[2]
- “And the earth We have spread it forth and made in it firm mountains and caused to grow in it of every suitable thing”.[3]
- “…and Who created everything, then ordained for it a measure”.[4]
- “…And there is a measure with Him of everything”.[5]
- “Surely We have created everything according to a measure”.[6]
- ” So We said: O Adam! This is an enemy to you and to your wife; therefore let him not drive you both forth from the garden so that you should be unhappy”.[7]
- Allah points to some motivations like cold, heat, fatigue: And Allah has given you a place to abide in your houses, and He has given you tents of the skins of cattle which you find light to carry on the day of your march and on the day of your halting and of their wool and their fur and their hair (He has given you) household stuff and a provision for a time.[8]
- If we tolerate thirst, fatigue or hunger in Allah’s Way: “It did not beseem the people of Medina and those round about them of the Dwellers of the Desert to remain behind the Messenger of Allah, nor should they desire (anything) for themselves in preference to him This is because there afflicts them not thirst or fatigue or hunger in Allah’s Way, nor do they tread a path which enrages the unbelievers, nor do they attain from the enemy what they attain, but a good work is written down to them on account of it Surely Allah does not waste the reward of the doers of good”[9]
- And his hosts of the Jinn and the men and the birds were gathered to him, and they were formed into groups; Until when they came to the Valley of the Ants, one of the ants said: O Ants! enter your houses, (that) Sulaiman and his hosts may not crush you while they do not know.[10]
- And We will most certainly try you with somewhat of fear and hunger and loss of property and lives and fruits And give good news to the patient.[11]
- ” And Allah sets forth a parable: (Consider) a town safe and secure to which its means of subsistence come in abundance from every quarter; but it became ungrateful for Allah’s favors, therefore Allah made it to taste the utmost degree of hunger and fear because of what they wrought”.[12]
- So let them serve the Lord of this House; Who feeds them against hunger and gives them security against fear.[13]
- And reward them, because they were patient, with garden and silk; Reclining therein on raised couches They shall find therein neither (the severe heat of) the sun nor intense cold.[14]
- And they shall say: (All) praise is due to Allah, Who has made grief to depart from us Most surely our Lord is Forgiving, Multiplier of rewards.[15]
- Toil shall not afflict them (those who are in the Heaven) in it, nor shall they be ever ejected from it.[16]
- And one of His signs is your sleeping and your seeking of His grace by night and) by (day Most surely there are signs in this for a people who would hear.[17]
- He it is Who made for you the night that you might rest in it, and the day giving light Most surely there are signs in it for a people who would hear.[18]
- Allah is He Who made for you the night that you may rest therein and the day to see Most surely Allah is Gracious to men, but most men do not give thanks.[19]
- And We made your sleep to be rest (to you).[20]
- And He it is Who made the night a covering for you, and the sleep a rest, and He made the day to rise up again.[21]
- And He it is Who takes your souls at night (in sleep), and He knows what you acquire in the day, then He raises you up therein that an appointed term may be fulfilled Then to Him is your return, then He will inform you of what you were doing.[22]
- When He caused calm to fall on you as a security from Him and sent down upon you water from the cloud that He might thereby purify you, and take away from you the uncleanness of the Shaitan, and that He might fortify your hearts and steady (your) footsteps thereby. [23]
B: Breathing Motivation:
- And a sign to them is that We bear their offspring in the laden ship; And We have created for them the like of it what they will ride on; And if We please, We can drown them, then there shall be no succorer for them, nor shall they be rescued.[24]
- He it is Who makes you travel by land and sea Until when you are in the ships, and they sail on with them in a pleasant breeze, and they rejoice, a violent wind overtakes them and the billows surge in on them from all sides, and they become certain that they are encompassed about, they pray to Allah, being sincere to Him in obedience: If Thou dost deliver us from this, we will most certainly be of the grateful ones.[25]
- So each We punished for his sin Of them was he on whom We sent down a violent storm, and of them was he whom the rumbling overtook, and of them was he whom We made to be swallowed up by the earth, and of them was he whom We drowned And it did not beseem Allah that He should be unjust to them, but they were unjust to their own souls.[26]
- Therefore (for) whomsoever Allah intends that He would guide him right, He expands his breast for Islam And (for) whomsoever He intends that He should cause him err, He makes his breast strait and narrow as though he were ascending upwards.[27]
- And the morning when it brightens.[28]
In the Holy Quran Allah, the Almighty mention two different motivations that are necessary for surviving the human beings.
A: Sexual Motivation:
- “O you men! surely We have created you of a male and a female, and made you tribes and families that you may know each other Surely the most honorable of you with Allah is the one among you most careful (of his duty) Surely Allah is Knowing, Aware”.[29]
- “O people! be careful of (your duty to) your Lord, Who created you from a single being and created its mate of the same (kind) and spread from these two, many men and women And be careful of (your duty to) Allah, by Whom you demand one of another (your rights), and (to) the ties of relationship Surely Allah ever watches over you”.[30]
- “And Allah has made wives for you from among yourselves (to rest in them), and has given you sons and grandchildren from your wives, and has given you of the good things Is it then in the falsehood that they believe while it is in the favor of Allah that they disbelieve?”.[31]
- “The Originator of the heavens and the earth He made mates for you from among yourselves, and mates of the cattle too, Multiplying you thereby Nothing like a likeness of Him And He is the Hearing, the Seeing”.[32]
- “And of everything We have created pairs that you may be mindful”.[33]
- “Glory be to Him Who created pairs of all things, of what the earth grows, and of their kind and of what they do not know”.[34]
B: Motherly motivation: Allah, the Almighty created an important nature motivation for women by which they can do their duties and keep their children safe. E.g. they tolerate the pregnancy periods with love and feeding, taking care of and upbringing their kids.
- “And We have enjoined on man doing of good to his parents With trouble did his mother bear him and with trouble did she bring him forth And the bearing of him and the weaning of him was thirty months”.[35]
- “” And We have enjoined man in respect of his parents his mother bears him with faintings upon faintings and his weaning takes two years saying: Be grateful to Me and to both your parents; to Me is the eventual coming””.[36]
For further information in this regards, please refer to the following answer:
Index: Good behavior? Refraining from a bad suspicion, answer 580.
Index: Psychology in Qurah / Psychological Defense Mechanisms, answer 584.
[1] . Surah Taha, verse 50.
[2] . Surah Aala, verses 1-2-3.
[3] . Surah al-Hijr, verse 19.
[4] . Surah al-Furqan, verse 2.
[5] . Surah al-Ra’d, verse 8.
[6] . Surah al-Qamar, verse 49.
[7] . Surah Taha, verse 117.
[8] . Surah al-Nahl, verse 80.
[9] . Surah al-Tawbah, verse 120.
[10] . Surah al-Naml, verse 18.
[11] . Surah al-Baqarah, verse 155.
[12] . Surah al-Nahl, verse 112.
[13] . Surah Quraysh, verses 3-4.
[14] . Surah al-Insan, verses 12-13.
[15] . Surah Fatir, verse 34.
[16] . Surah al-Hijr, verse 48.
[17] . Surah al-Room, verse 23.
[18] . Surah Younus, verse 67.
[19] . Surah Ghafir, verse 61.
[20] . Surah al-Naba’, verse 9.
[21] . Surah al-Furqan, verse 47.
[22] . Surah al-An’am, verse 60.
[23] . Surah al-Anfal, verse 11.
[24] . Surah Yasin, verse 43.
[25] . Surah Younus, verse 22.
[26] . Surah al-Ankabout, verse 40.
[27] . Surah al-An’am, verse 125.
[28] . Surah al-Takvir, verse 18.
[29] . Surah al-Hujurat, verse 13.
[30] . Surah al-Nisa, verse 1.
[31] . Surah al-Nahl, verse 72.
[32] . Surah al-Shura, verse 11.
[33] . Surah al-Zariyat, verse 49.
[34] . Surah Yasin, verse 36.
[35] . Surah al-Ahqaf, verse 15.
[36] . Surah Luqman, verse 14.