Abstract
Along the lifeline stretching between birth and death, a social environment based on love and trust is at the forefront of the basic needs bearing a vital importance for human existence. Under the influence of the social environment in which one person is living, her or she witnesses a social and cultural rebirth. In this study, I focus on the phenomenon of environment and its impact on human development through the concept "neighborhood (Arabic, muhit), which is frequently used as a synonym for the word environment in Turkish and found in the Qur’an. For this purpose, firstly, I carry out an evaluation of the literature on development and principles of development, which are the basic concepts of education and developmental psychology. In the second stage, I will make some analyzes based on the semantic field formed by a group of words that have the same etymological origin as the word muhit. Within the semantic field formed by these words; it has been determined that it creates a very rich field of meanings such as "containment", "encirclement", "being a wall", "protecting", "behaving cautiously", "having a inclusive and comprehensive knowledge". In particular, I will draw attention to the fact that the word muhit, which is presented as a name for God in the Qur'an, expresses His encompassing and unlimited knowledge about all existence and human beings, and that humans are ontologically encompassed by the God’s knowledge. In the analyzes that I will make on the concepts of environment and muhit, which seem like two words that meet each other, I will emphasize that the person who was born with a certain potential as a continuation of a genetic heritage rebuilds his or her life in the socio-cultural sense through the muhit or neighborhood in which he or she was born. Based on the analyzes that I will make, I emphasize on the need for desirable environments that fully meet the meanings of containment, protection, prudence, and being a wall for the healthy development of the individual. Looking at the subject from the point of view of the child's belief development and religious education, it is important to bring a child into the idea that the God’s knowledge contains the actions of the human being and covers the horizon of thought with His knowledge, for the benefit of the child's mental environment from an early age.