How Is Islamic Religiosity Connected With Socioeconomic Development?

Mochammad Arif Budiman, Nurhidayati, and Priyougie Study Program of Accounting for Islamic Financial Institution, Politeknik Negeri Banjarmasin Study Program of Accounting for Islamic Financial Institution, Politeknik Negeri Banjarmasin Study Program of Computerized Accounting, Politeknik Negeri Banjarmasin E-mail: a m.arif.budiman@poliban.ac.id; b nurhidayatidahlan@poliban.ac.id; c priyougie@akuntansipoliban.ac.id Corresponding Author Whatsapp Number {+6281253944851}


Introduction
There is a positive and causal relationship in Islam between religiosity (the implementation of religion in its fullest sense) and prosperity or development (see the Quran,7:96;. It is idealized that Islamic teaching is fully reflected by all Muslims in their life. However, such an ideal condition is not always the case, such as in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. Many have considered that the Muslim society in the province is highly religious (Buseri, 2011;Daud, 1997), but in fact the prosperity of the people lags behind other provinces particularly in terms of Human Development Index (BPS, 2012). This coexistence of the observed high religiosity and the low level of development essentially shows an irony as long as the ideal Islam is concerned.
This study attempts to discuss the relationship between religiosity and development in South Kalimantan from the Islamic perspective using Maqasid al-Shari'ah framework. The main research question of this study is how and to what extent is the relationship between Islamic religiosity of South Kalimantan people and the level of their socioeconomic development?

Literature Review Development in Islam
Since its beginning, the role of religion on development in Islam is very obvious and causal. This means that the level of development is highly dependent upon the implementation of religion or religiosity in the society or country concerned (Budiman, 2016). This kind of positive relationship between religion and development is declared by the Holy Qur"an, If the people of the towns had but believed and feared Allah, We should indeed have opened out to them (all kinds of) blessing from heaven and earth; but they rejected (the truth), and We brought them to book to their misdeeds (the Quran, 7: 96).
There is one of the divine laws (sunnatullah) confirming that the true religious implementation or obedience toward Allah would bring about development, welfare or prosperity in any society. As long as this religious factor exists, the development would flourish, but conversely, if the former disappears, the latter would certainly collapse (Shihab, 2004). al-Zuhaily (2009) also emphasizes that the true belief is the source for happiness and prosperity in which Allah will simplify and make easier all good things (kulla khair) from everywhere for the believers.
The above divine law essentially relates to the concept of barakah (Divine blessing) which is defined as "the increase in quality and quantity of God"s blessing via unseen ways to human life." Barakah is a bounty from God to one whom He chooses out of His love in appreciation of servant"s obedience and submission to His will. This bounty could be manifested in many forms such as knowledge, wisdom, qualities, skills, wealth, health, or family. As such, the obedience and submission to God will or religious factor is a prerequisite for barakah in order to materialize (Demirel & Sahib, 2015).
The paramount role of religion in overall development is emphasized by Muslim scholars. Learning from the past magnificent Muslim civilization, Ibn Khaldun developed his theory of development that puts Islam as a central factor that activates all the developmental factors in a positive direction. It improves the moral and material dimensions of individuals, who represent the primary force behind the rise or fall of a society. Islam imparts development-friendly institutions and establishes a morally-oriented political system and a framework for "good governance" to promote justice, equality and human dignity. It also sets up rule of law and guarantees sanctity of life, individual honor, and wealth (Chapra, 2008a). In short, Islam has always played a strategic role and provided solutions for its adherents as long as they truly and totally implement its teachings in a whole life.

Maqasid Al-Shari'ah: The Islamic Development Framework
Improving human welfare is a very basic concern of development in Islam and part of the objectives of the Shari'ah (Sadeq, 1997). This concept of human welfare and its relation to development in Islam are best discussed within the framework of Maqasid al-Shari'ah (Chapra, 2008b;Dar, 2004;Elahi & Osmani, 2011;Ibrahim, Basir, & Rahman, 2011).
Literally, maqasid means purpose, intention and objective. Therefore, maqasid al-Shari'ah are the objectives, purposes, intents, or ends behind Islamic rulings (Auda, 2010). The notion of Maqasid al-Shari'ah is derived from the common understanding that all Islamic rulings are basically aimed to be blessing for all creatures (the Qur"an, 21:107) and designed to protect the benefits of mankind.
The traditional concept of Maqasid is categorized into three levels, namely, necessities (al-daruriyyat), complements (al-hajiyyat), and luxuries (al-tahsiniyyat) (al-Raysuni, 1997). They are primary, secondary, and tertiary Maqasid respectively. Necessities are subsequently classified into the preservation of five components according to al-Ghazali and al-Shatibi, namely preservation of religion (hifz al-din), preservation of life (hifz al-nafs), preservation of intellect (hifz al-'aql), preservation of posterity (hifz al-nasl), and preservation of wealth (hifz al-mal) (al-Raysuni, 1997;al-Shatibi, 1997). These are the overriding objectives of the Shari'ah in that the entire range of the laws of the Shari'ah are intended to promote these components (Auda, 2011;Kamali, 2002). Haneef (2008) splits the level of necessities (aldaruriyyat) into two parts, namely: (1) Dini (religiously), preservation of religious values or the purposes for the Hereafter; and (2) Dunyawi (worldly), preservation of the purposes related to this world which includes the preservation of life, intellect, progeny (family values), and wealth. This classification can be seen in Figure 1.  (Haneef, 2008) It is based on this split between dini and dunyawi that the conceptual framework of this present study is constructed. Afterwards, the kind of relationship between both parts, especially from dini to dunya, is examined following the divine law extracted from the Qur"anic verse depicted earlier.

Research Method
This study examines the relationship between Islamic religiosity and various components of development in South Kalimantan society. There are five variables which constitute the components of Maqasid al-Shari'ah, as can be seen in Figure 2. There are three phases in conducting this research. The first phase is developing the instrument for data collection purpose. This is followed by data collection phase using a survey. The third phase is data analysis to assess the relationships among variables using the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).

Demographic profiles
The respondents of the study constitute Muslim households in the province of South Kalimantan. A total of 226 respondents originating from two districts participated in this study. Each district characterized different part of the province, i.e. Banjar Kuala represented by Banjarmasin and Banjar Pahuluan represented by Hulu Sungai Tengah. The demographic profiles of the respondents of this study are shown in Table 1.   3,472,790;SD = 3,549,862). The biggest income group was those who earned around Rp 2,501,000-Rp 5,000,000 with 65 respondents (28.8%) while the smallest income group was below 500,000 (11 respondents or 4.9%). In addition, the proportion of urban areas compared to rural areas was 65% and 35%.

Instrument, Reliability and Validity
The instrument for this study was a questionnaire constructed based on the framework of Maqasid al-Shari'ah. The major sources for this instrument were Islamic texts especially from the Holy Qur"an and Prophet sayings as well as from other development measurements relevant to this study (Amin, Yusof, Haneef, Muhammad, & Oziev, 2013;Budiman, Amin, Yusof, & Adeyemi, 2015).
Reliability test was performed over the instrument and Cronbach"s alpha or internal consistency for all variables was significant as follows: preservation of Religion (11 items) was 0.856; preservation of Life (9 items) was 0.799; preservation of Intellect (6 items) was 0.786; preservation of Posterity (6 items) was 0.843; and preservation of Wealth (6 items) was 0.777 respectively. In brief, overall measurements for these five variables were reliable with the value greater than 0.7, a minimum threshold for internal consistency that was considered acceptable (Field, 2009). In order to ensure the validity of this instrument, a series of principal component analysis (PCA) were conducted.
The subsequent phase after PCA was confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the construct validity and to provide a confirmatory test of the measurement model (Hair et al., 2006). In order to determine the goodness-offit of the models, several fit statistics were used including: Chi-square, GFI, CFI, and RMSEA.

Hypotheses Testing
Based on the estimates from AMOS version 21, the hypotheses testing was performed. It is evident that all the structural and factor loadings were statistically significant at p < 0.001 (denoted with three asterisks) which means that there were significant relations among variables. The fit model was quite good: Chi-square =995.461, CMINDF = 1.575; CFI = 0.901 and RMSEA = 0.51.
Hypothesis 1: Preservation of Religion is positively related to preservation of Life. The result showed that there was a positive relation between these two variables.
The standard path coefficient of 0.848 was significant at p < 0.001 (CR= 6.267), hence supported the hypothesis. This coefficient means that if preservation of Religion increases by 1 point, preservation of Life increases by 0.848 point. The result suggested that the more religious a person, the better the quality of his (preservation of) Life.
Hypothesis 2: Preservation of Religion is positively related to preservation of Intellect. The hypothesis was supported by the data because the standardized path coefficient of 0.791 was significant at p < 0.001 (CR= 5.819). The coefficient means that if preservation of Religion rises by 1 point, preservation of Intellect increases by 0.791 point. The result suggested that the more religious a person, the higher the quality of his (preservation of) Intellect. This finding is consistent with empirical researches in Muslim societies (Yusof, Budiman, & Amin, 2018) as well as Western societies suggesting positive relationship between religiosity (church attendance and religious service) and educational attainment or years of schooling (Brown & Taylor, 2007;Lehrer, 2004;Loury, 2004;Sander, 2010).
Hypothesis 3: Preservation of Religion is positively related to preservation of Posterity. The data collected supported this hypothesis by the standardized path coefficient of 0.404 and it was significant at p < 0.001 (CR= 4.234). The coefficient means that if preservation of Religion goes up by 1 point, preservation of Posterity rises by 0.404 point. The result suggested that the more religious a person, the better the quality of his (preservation of) Posterity.
Hypothesis 4: Preservation of Religion is positively related to Preservation of Wealth. The result supported this hypothesis with the coefficient of 0.858 and it was significant at p < 0.001 (CR= 7.402). This means that if preservation of Religion increases by 1 point, preservation of Wealth goes up by 0.858 point. The result suggested that the more religious a person, the higher the quality of his (preservation of) Wealth.

Conclusion
Based on hypotheses testing presented above, all postulated hypotheses were significantly supported by the sample data. It can be concluded that preservation of religion or Islamic religiosity has positive relationships on all socioeconomic variables in the framework of Maqasid al-Shari'ah with various degrees. This finding suggests that religion is indeed an exceptional factor that leads Muslim society into higher level of development as indicated by some Qur"anic verses such as 7:96 and 65:2-4.

Recommendations
The enhancement of religion or religiosity level among people in the Muslim society should always be strengthened through a variety of ways or policies as it was proven to have positively significant relationships on better development of the society.