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Qur’anic Well-Being among Coastal Fishermen: The Mediating Role of Religiosity

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Coastal fishermen are commonly assessed through economic indicators such as income, assets, poverty status, and livelihood security. Although these indicators are important, they provide only a partial understanding of how Muslim fishing communities perceive and experience a meaningful, peaceful, and successful life. Existing well-being frameworks are largely rooted in secular and material-oriented perspectives, with limited attention given to the spiritual and religious dimensions emphasised in the Qur’an. Furthermore, studies on fishing communities have primarily focused on economic vulnerability, resilience, and livelihood sustainability, while the role of religiosity in shaping well-being remains insufficiently explored. Addressing these theoretical and empirical gaps, this conceptual article develops a Qur’anic framework of well-being grounded in the concepts of hayatan ?ayyibah and al-fal??. The framework conceptualises well-being as a holistic condition encompassing spiritual peace, psychological resilience, meaning and purpose in life, lawful livelihood, family support, social justice, and institutional trust. The proposed model comprises intrinsic factors, extrinsic factors, religiosity as a mediating construct, and Qur’anic well-being as the outcome variable. Religiosity is positioned as a key explanatory mechanism through which fishermen interpret hardship, income uncertainty, environmental risks, and social responsibilities through faith, worship, gratitude, patience, and trust in Allah. The framework is designed to be empirically tested using a quantitative cross-sectional survey and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The article contributes to Islamic well-being scholarship by extending well-being measurement beyond material indicators and proposing a context-sensitive framework for Muslim coastal fishing communities.
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