Thanks to Islamic renaissance that has given impetus to the positive developments in the Muslim society, Islam as a complete code of life is increasingly emphasized. The present study is an attempt to find out correlation between social service and Islam the Godly Ordained Path. However, before we touch upon the Islamic concept of social service, its motives, the directives given and the measures required to be adopted, it would not be inapt to have a cursory view on the modern concept of social service.

Essentially social service is the beginning of an end to social problems which are the product of social living. A man prefers to live in groups due to socio-economic and psychological reasons. So long as mutual understanding, co-operation, love and respect among fellow beings perists, the collective living results in the formation of an ideal society. But as soon as ulterior motives, vicious designs, and cut-throat competition thwart the positive thinking and action, then the society gets engulfed with vices, ills and evils. The reign of ills and evils becomes a matter of social concern particularly to the conscious group of the society. The concern converts into action-social action. Social service or social work is thus a natural outcome of the awareness on the part of the people that a particular social situation is a threat and that the existing situation can be altered only by collective action.

Social service or work is old in practice but new as a profession. It is said that as a profession, it woes its beginning to the enactment of English Poor Laws and educational activities of the first social settlement. Moreover, social service as a professional science depends upon the disciplined methods of social sciences. However the concept is easily understood than precisely defined as there is no universally accepted definition available. Some define social work as provision of services designed to aid individual or group in coping with present or future social and psychological obstacles that prevent or are likely to prevent full or effective participation in the society.

To some others, it is an organized activity that is primarily and directly concerned with the conservation, protection and improvement of human resources. According to an Indian definition, social work is a dynamic activity undertaken by the public or private efforts in the implementation of the social policy with a view to raising the standard of living and to bring about social, economic, political and cultural well-being of individual, family and the group within a society irrespective of its stages of social developments.

According to Coller’s encyclopedia, `social work is defined as a professional service which uses social scientific techniques to alleviate economic, social and emotional distresses among individual, group and communities.’

Thus from the above defined approaches it is clear that social work is an effort to remove conditions creating problems for an individual, a family or a group of the society. Furthermore, the modern concept of social work not only includes material help to indigent but interacts with concepts, conditions, traditions and practices that germinate social vices.

In partial consonance with the modern concept, social work has traditionally been understood as rendering help to indigent, sick’s, destitute, unfortunate and underprivileged lot of the society. It appears that the scope of social work was limited due, perhaps, to the limited and less diversified nature of the problems. As mentioned above, in today’s world the social problems are associated with social living. That is why the existence of ignorance, individual and collective disorganizations, poverty and unemployment, corruption and other unlawful works, dowry sati, problems of widow remarriage, prostitution and beggary, casteism and undeliquency and unmarried mothers and orphans etc. are different captions indicating the dimensions of social problems of our society. Truly speaking intensity and dimension of the problems have changed due to the change in outlook and understanding of the modern man.

The scope and dimension of the modern social work are multi faceted and wide. On the one hand assistance in cash or kind to the needy to rid him from his immediate problems (worries) is treated as social service. And on the other hand assistance to the people for restoration of their self-sufficiency is included in the sphere of social services. Over and above, efforts physical or mental directed to remove such conditions and factors which create or are likely to create ills are treated as the most desired type of social activity. That is how the modern literature of social service classifies social work:

• Firstly, Palliative social work which is directed towards alleviation of already existing economic stresses which includes various measures like assistance in cash or kind.
• Secondly, Protective or Rehabilitative social work which aims at restoring self sufficiency by removing dependency upon others, and
• Finally, Preventive or Curative social activity which is directed towards the elimination of those factors in the environment or personality that prevent achieving maximum desirable standard of social and economic well being.

So far as the motives and features of the social work are concerned they are observed differently under different conditions. However, social work is treated basically as a helping activity. Moreover, it is a liaison activity through which disadvantaged individuals or groups may tap community resources. The motives behind social service are generally ego satisfaction, selfishness and sense of religious duties. It is observed that individual as well as societies devoid of Godly Learning undertake social activities, because of the satisfaction of their ego and pride. Furthermore, the motive of social work is noted differently in extreme materialistic viz. capitalist societies. It is observed that huge volume of money spending as charity by capitalists are less due to love and respect of fellow citizens but more for arresting the declining effective demand of the goods and services they produce. Truly speaking this type of charity is of compensatory nature and borne out of the fear that poverty anywhere is danger to the prosperity everywhere. Surprisingly, the capitalist as a bonus of charitable work, gets a mask of philanthrophism to hide his devilish face and bloody clutches to continue with his exploitative designs.

However, social work with its true nature of selfless helping activity is observed only when it is motivated out of religiosity. In fact the very emergence of social action owes its existence to religious teachings. Collier’s encyclopedia tracing the history of social service rightly quotes that…`religion created a social consciousness which responded to need. Modern social work springs from this social consciousness.