Social Obstacles of Thinking in the Islamic Model of Progress based on Grounded Theorizing in the Quran

The current paper aims to study sociologically the obstacles of thinking and its consequences in the progress model which is based on the teachings of the Quran. Accordingly, the main questions are as follows: what are the social obstacles of thinking in the Islamic model of progress based on the teachings of the Quran? What are the solutions to eliminate these obstacles? The following steps have been taken to respond to these questions: (1) referring to the Quran and identifying its sociological propositions, (2) recognizing the verses that deal with these issues, (3) fractionating the interpretational issues of each verse into the principal and sub elements and concepts in addition to the areas, situations, circumstances, and the relationships between phenomena, (4) translating the elements, concepts, and the specified relationships into a sociological language, (5) preparing and presenting the contents into a logical thematic explanation and interpretation. Grounded theory is one of the qualitative research methods which is suitable when there is inadequate knowledge about an issue (Farahani and Arizi, 1996 Glaser and Strauss) or there is no relevant theory on which it would be possible to formulate assumptions (Mansourian, 2006: 3). It is a methodology which aims at developing theories with medium range (Merton, 1967) and is interesting for description of applied sciences. Additionally, today, grounded theory plays a particular role in social sciences (Hildenbrand, 2004: 22). In grounded theory, theories are extracted from data which are gathered and analyzed during the research. In this method, information gathering, analysis, and the final theory have a close relationship with each other and the researcher do not initiate the work with a theory in mind unless it is a generalization of an available theory. In the contrary, it is started in reality and lets the theory be formulated based on gathered data. Researcher's creativity is one of the main characteristics of this method (Strauss and Korbin 2012: 34). Thus we utilized grounded theory as a qualitative research due to information restrictions and noncompliance of progress concept with the current terms in religious sources on the one hand, and lack of extraction of such a progress model in these sources on the other hand. Discussion of Results & The results showed that obstacles of thinking can be classified into five categories of individual, social, macro, procedural, and contextual obstacles. All of these categories and concepts are to be found in interactive frameworks, interactions, contexts and intruding conditions. They explain the impact and contribute to the lack of thinking outcomes. Disorder in socialization process, lack of appropriate thinking training, lack of tolerance, and absence of open-mindedness are the results of pervasive selfishness. The common interactions between these variables can explain the contribution of wisdom in progress of a society. Cultural and political obstacles are mentioned in the Quran are fundamental for change in the essence of knowledge. Also, social obstacles involve those governments that not only do not consider development of science and technology as a necessity for their society, but see it as something which is inconsistent with their own long-term interest. Lack of the required knowledge and wrong beliefs in social actions contribute to obstacles of thinking in the progress model and change the form of knowledge. Finally, corrupted social environment and inattention to the fate of other nations are considered as contextual obstacles of thinking.