Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah and Subjective Well-Being

Toward a Holistic Framework for Muslim Quality of Life

Abstract

Purpose—  This article develops a conceptual framework for measuring Muslim quality of life by bringing the normative architecture of Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah into dialogue with the psychological theory of subjective well-being (SWB). Contemporary well-being measurement commonly distinguishes life evaluation, affective experience, and meaning, while Islamic accounts of welfare additionally specify religious, moral, relational, intellectual, bodily, and material goods that deserve protection and enhancement. The purpose is therefore not to replace subjective accounts of a good life with a religious checklist, but to explain how a Maqāṣid-informed framework can make the measurement of Muslim quality of life more culturally intelligible, ethically grounded, and analytically multidimensional.

Design/methods— The study uses a directed integrative literature review and conceptual synthesis. It reads primary and contemporary Maqāṣid scholarship together with peer-reviewed literature on SWB, quality of life, and Indonesian well-being measurement. The analysis differentiates between objective life conditions, subjective evaluations, and ethical-relational meanings; it then maps these planes onto the five widely used Maqāṣid domains: preservation and flourishing of religion, life, intellect, family or posterity, and wealth.

Findings— The synthesis yields three core principles: first, each Maqāṣid domain should be assessed through both enabling conditions and subjective appraisals; second, material wealth cannot compensate for severe deprivation in other domains (non-compensation principle); and third, faith must be treated as a substantive dimension rather than a residual cultural variable. This framework provides a culturally intelligible and ethically grounded measurement model for Muslim populations.