Rozumienie pracy w cywilizacji arabskiej
The understanding of work in Arab civilization

Summary/Abstract: The Authoress recognizes the Alcoran as a basic source for the properly understood meaning of human work in the Arabian civilization. Yet, its other resources can be traced in the pre-Islamic civilizational conditions as established by views and customs of the old-Arabian world. As impor-tant factors for the understanding of work there are consequences followed from the functioning of such concepts as “predestination” and “divine omnipotence,” and the conception of law. In the Ara-bian civilization the intellectual and productive work finds its justification primarily in the context of the principal end of Mussulman’s life, i.e. the service to God. Muslim service to God is regulated by law what consequently reduces moral actions to the proper execution of orders and the fair ob-servance of prohibitions. Work as such is not any fundamental task of man on the Earth. The ideal of idleness expressed in a description of paradise seems to be significant. The extent of work is fur-nished by jihad understood as all kinds of fight engaging people to act for spreading the faith in Allah. In the light of the article, ’amal (work, practice) shapes and completes this effort by acting understood as the practice of moral life, principally regulated by the divine law.

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