- Oneness of God (tawheed) plays an important role in making Muslims imbued with the highest level of life satisfaction
- Measuring life satisfaction is about as close to quantifying ‘happiness’ as we’ve been able to get thus far
Muslim people feel the most satisfied with their lives because they feel the greatest sense of ‘oneness,’ or tawheed than people of other faiths, a new study suggests, The Daily Mail reported.
“[The results] clearly indicate that the causal direction of the association between oneness beliefs and life satisfaction is in line with the assumptions derived from the literature: oneness beliefs are a significant determinant of life satisfaction over time, whereas there is no reversed effect of life satisfaction on oneness beliefs,” study author Dr. Laura Marie Edinger-Schons, a University of Mannheim psychologist, wrote.
“It would be of high interest to test whether individual differences in oneness beliefs predict differences in real adaptation, for example, coping with stressful life events.”
Researchers at the University of Mannheim in Germany wanted to parse out how oneness affected life satisfaction across religions.
They surveyed over 67,000 non-students of unclear nationalities about their religious affiliations and used crafted questions to assess how connected and fulfilled these adults felt.
Among all groups, Muslims were most likely to believe that they were connected to something larger than themselves, according to the new study, published in the journal of the American Psychological Association.
Second to Muslims, Christians that considered themselves neither Catholics nor Protestants reported the greatest average oneness beliefs, followed by Buddhists and Hindus.
Atheists felt the least connected to others or a higher power.
“This study broadens the knowledge on the psychology of religion, revealing not only the average level of oneness beliefs in the different religious groups but also exploring the effect of these beliefs on life satisfaction while controlling for the effect of religious affiliation,” the researchers wrote.
Known as “tawheed” in Islam, this concept of the Oneness of God was stressed by Moses in a Biblical passage known as the “Shema”, or the Jewish creed of faith:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)
It was repeated word-for-word approximately 1500 years later by Jesus, when he said:
“…The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord.” (Mark 12:29)
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) came along approximately 600 years later, bringing the same message again:
{And your God is One God: there is no God but He…} (Quran 2:163)