Arba'een, A Social Ritual in Civilizational Form: Civilizational Capacities and Sub-System

According to the Islamic discourse “rituals” are concepts related to obedience and submission to God’s commandments and attempting to honor the Islamic rituals. On the other side, Western sociologists such as Durkheim as the pioneers of social rituals concept try to represent a reductionist approach toward religion and limit it within symbolic rituals and give a minimal role to transfer values and create social solidarity. But the different nature of Islam in comparison to other religions indicates that the Western version is not suitable for the Islamic world, because Islam has its own serious role in the society, and the Islamic social rituals play a maximal role in transferring values and creating solidarity among Moslems. The Islamic social rituals and especially Arba'een is not limited to such rituals as related to identity, or ethnic, national and lingual rituals. In fact, it goes even higher than religious identity borders and represents a social ritual that encompasses different tribes, nations, and languages. The ritual of Arba'een creates civilizational subsystems the most important of which are as follows:Cooperative-based economy pattern, cultural and artistic civilization concept, modern social order, positive security, and civilizational identity.

Keywords:

Arba'een , social rituals , identity-related layers , promised civilization , civilizational capacity making