Holy Quran’s Strategy in Preventing Social Anger from Turning into Violence

Social anger is a known phenomenon in the world. It is in itself neither positive nor a negative phenomenon. How it is expressed and it effects determine whether it is good or bad. This paper, with a focus on the relation between people and government, tries to determine the boundaries of the negative or positive aspects of expression of social anger and introduce Quranic strategies acting on which can prevent social anger from turning into destructive acts of violence. This paper, written using the library research method, describes positive social anger as one that leads to reforming and improving the conduct of rulers and directing them to the path of accountability and responding to people’s demands. It also describes negative social anger as one that, due to indifference of rulers, turns into violence and involves disintegration of social cohesion and spread of chaos in society. The paper concludes that the Quran’s strategy for preventing social anger from turning into violence can be summarized in four stages and, naturally, if governments act on them, they could avoid facing the consequences (of negative social anger). The four stages are: 1- Allowing criticism and expression of anger; 2- Receiving and analyzing the criticisms meticulously; 3- Having dialogue and humbly accepting faults; 4- Making efforts for reform.