Being psychologically in a quiet or restorative environment allows individuals to take a break from the periods of sustained attention that characterize modern life. In the development of their Attention Restoration Theory (ART), Kaplan and Kaplan have proposed that the recovery of cognitive overload can be most effectively achieved by returning to a natural, fortifying environment that removes daily distractions and allows the imagination to wander, thus allowing individuals to reconnect with their environments. The theory works on the principle that the number of reflections possible in such an environment depends on the type of cognitive engagement. For example, the attractiveness of the environment.
An environment of low attractiveness is known to have enough interest to attract attention, but not enough to the point that it interferes with the individual’s ability to think. In this sense, Soft Fascination, which has been taken by Herzog and Pheasant as a correct term to describe tranquility, provides a satisfactory level of sensory feedback that involves no effort other than to extricate oneself from a cluttered mental environment.
What does “sakînah” mean?
Sakînah سكينة is an Arabic term of great semantic richness, which can be translated by: inner peace, quietness, serenity, tranquility, and rest. It thus designates a state of inner being characterized by great peace, absolute quietness, a feeling of inner security, etc.
Sakînah, universal discourse
Sakînah is a universal ideal and object of the inner quest of men in very diverse cultures since the origins of History. In pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, sakînah takes the form of ataraxy, a word coming from the Greek ataraxia, absence of disorder. Ataraxy defines an absolute quietude of the soul, conceived in epicureanism and stoicism as the principle of happiness. Sakînah is also an ecumenical ideal, shared by the three monotheisms, the Arabic term having the same semantic relationship with the Hebrew shkhinâ and the Aramaic (language of Jesus) shkhîntâ.
Sakînah and its semantics
As in these languages, the term sakînah comes from the root skn, which has two main notions:
That of quietude, immobility, and rest. The Holy Qur’an says:
“It is He Who causes the dawn to split forth, and has ordained the night for repose, and the sun and the moon for reckoning time. All this is determined by Allah the Almighty, the All-Knowing.”
(Qur’an, 6: 96).
- That of dwelling, of installation, of residence:
Thus, to the verb sakinah, he inhabited, is linked to the word maskan which precisely designates what in French is called “la demeure“, in the double meaning of dwelling, of domicile, but also of “what remains” in this dwelling, that is to say, what remains stable, fixed, immobile: namely rest, calm. Maskan is, therefore, the house as a “haven of peace”, a “place of rest”, where one can feel sheltered from the movement and jolts of the world. Conclusion: From this etymological investigation, we can metaphorically deduce that sakînah is the state of the soul which, after the daytime agitation, finds its inner shelter to taste the “sakînah” of “sukûn al-layl“, literally the “rest” of the “silence of the night”.
Rasulullahﷺ
Allahﷻ
صلى الله عليه وعلى آله وصحبه
رضي الله عنه
