Understanding the Social Foundations of Islam

Abstract

Sociology is a social science that studies human societies, their interactions,
and the processes that preserve and change them. It does this by examining the
dynamics of constituent parts of societies such as institutions, communities,
populations, and gender, racial, or age groups. Sociology also studies social
status or stratification, social movements, and social change, as well as societal
disorder in the form of crime, deviance, and revolution.
Social life overwhelmingly regulates the behaviour of humans, largely
because humans lack the instincts that guide most animal behaviour. Humans
therefore depend on social institutions and organizations to inform their
decisions and actions. Given the important role organizations play in
influencing human action, it is sociology's task to discover how organizations
affect the behaviour of persons, how they are established, how organizations
interact with one another, how they decay, and, ultimately, how they disappear.
Among the most basic organizational structures are economic, religious,
educational, and political institutions, as well as more specialized institutions
such as the family, the community, the military, peer groups, clubs, and
volunteer associations.(1)
With this brief introduction of sociology, we will now try to understand
the philosophical relation of sociology with religion