The Theme of Man in the Qur’anic/Islamic Conscience—(2)
In the previous article, I explained that, according to the Qur’an, when God creates a thing (khalq); He at the same time puts into it, in addition to its qadr, the laws of its behavior (amr , “command” or sunnatullah “the way of God”), and that this should not to be confused with laws imposed ON Man but, rather, laws ingrained IN him—what the Qur’an calls “fitra” (30:30). Amr means that if X happens, Y must essentially follow. Man is not an exception, since these laws are ingrained in every created being to provide steadiness to this world which thus makes it livable. These laws are so steady that we can establish our perspectives in this world based on them. Interestingly, the fact that this concept is reiterated so many times in the Qur’an reflects how crucial it is that we properly conceive it (33:38, 62; 35:44; 40:85; 48:23; 7:54).
The only, yet major, difference in Man than other beings is that Man has been granted the freedom to choose his X’s, but not the Y’s (see the previous example) for him/herself rather than being dictated by God. Interestingly, this means that Man not only has the freedom to choose his/her own set of references, but s/he has been provided with potentialities that can equally make him/her a morally and aesthetically “perfect” man or a “Satanic” one (95:5).
But why is it easier for Man to “gravitate down to the Earth” (7:175-176)?
It is because of what the Qur’an calls “pettiness (da’f)” and “narrowness of mind (qatr)” which are effortlessly existent in Man. His/Her self-destructive selfishness and the greed to which s/he is a constant prey, his/her hasty, panicky behavior, his/her lack of self-reliance, and the fears that perpetually haunt him/her arise ultimately from the effortlessly existing narrowness of his/her mind (70:19-21; 17:100; 21:37; 17:11). Eventually, this results in Man being oblivious of the long-term consequences of his reactions—the Y’s. The Qur’an ubiquitously talks about this condition where Man becomes conscientiously “blind” and “deaf” despite being physically sound (7:179; 22:46)—Man becomes completely immersed in the externalities of this life, where s/he becomes a slave for anything and everything—societal traditions, fear, parental upbringing, political and religious authoritarians, people’s expectations, culture, the unknown, money, sex, time and place, etc. (30:7; 9:24) i.e. He becomes a conscientiously dead Man and a lively Satanic mosaic. S/He becomes so outward that s/he loses the realizability of the real moral and spiritual consequences of his deeds—Good becomes bad and vice versa; corruption becomes reformation and vice versa (18:103-5; 2:11-12). He loses himself in the middle of the chaos of the world that s/he does no longer remember what s/he once was. Indeed, this echoes strongly with what the Qur’an says in 59:19 that s/he who forgets God (i.e. his/her primordial, God-conscious nature and his/her responsibility of being a morally sound and autonomous being), God causes him/her to forget him/herself. For it is God’s “remembrance” that ensures the cementing of personality where all details of life and particulars of human activity are properly integrated and synthesized; “forgetting” God, on the other hand, means fragmented existence, “secularized” life, an unintegrated and eventually disintegrated personality, and enmeshment in the details at the cost of the whole. This is precisely Muhammad Iqbal’s distinction between Godliness and un-Godliness:
The sign of a kafir is that he is lost in the horizons;
The sign of a mu’min is that the horizons are lost in him.
It is in this sense that all evil deeds are very often termed dalal by the Qur’an. This term is usually translated as “misguidedness” which is correct provided that we clearly understand that misguidedness signifies primarily that “one will not go anywhere”, no matter how long or how hard one walks. That is to say, dalal, is sterile or vainless—what the Qur’an calls batil. Arguable, torture in hell basically consists of the realization that the mountains one had built have suddenly shrunk to a particle of sand and that all false Gods will come to nothingness (6:24;94; 7:53; 10:30; 11:21; 16:87; 41:48; 7:139; 11:16; 22:62; 29;67; 47:3). This establishes the equation of batil and dalal and their contrast with hidaya (getting somewhere) and haqq (the truth).
6 comments:
Ahmad this one is quite good.But why do you need to relate all you think with Q'uran. Tell us directly what is inspired to you.
Here is mine: We are all flowers of god like OTHERS. We are not different than any being; passion makes us talk and think and tell. Well here is a good point: we are aware of it.
Fitra is the nature of yourself that creates your genuine passion.
Batil is the thought(or action) that does not belong to your genuine passion.
Dalal is the situation you are in when you think (or act) with passion that does not belong to you.
In fact X is your passion that is the motive of action and you can't design it. XY is the thought(action) that helps you to fullfil that passion and Y is the state of satisfied or unsatisfied passion. You can choose only XY which is the process of fullfiling or try. Going thru this process ethically and aesthetically is what makes the difference.
What is a genuine passion? How do you know that is genuine?What happens if it can't be satisfied?
What happens when it is satisfied?
Psychiatry has some answers for these questions and i have some too:)
I went throught your piece and I had some conceptual remarks:
1-Is the laws of behavior an emergent property of the system or it is implemented by an intelligent creature (e.g. God) ?
2- I am quiet confused about the meaning of “Fitra” because instinct is not a bunch of “if, then “ logical sequences but it is a group of adaptive strategies to survive and the rationale behind its emergence is the interaction with our environment…I think this is quiet different of the definition you proposed that it is we are pre programmed which means that we embody the environment in ourselves which I think is not a clever strategy to survive.
I agree that there are universal abstract laws in every creature but it has a differential representation according to the ecological and cultural context in which it is employed for example the virtue of “Kheir” is culturally defined and the same for universalities like supernatural powers most of the people believe in a supernatural entity but how it is embodied is culturally and ecologically dependent some people will believe in allah, some others will believe in Jesus as god,etc…. 3- I disagree that this universality leads to steadiness because it is the essence of creativity. One would ask why it is the origin of creativity because it will be unfavorable to create individual laws one by one (which could be compared to an energetically unfavorable process) but create universal abstract laws embedded in the higher mental abstraction from which can be deducted individual or group laws according to the context in which this mental state is employed. I think this universal laws are evident in any ideological system because as you said it is in us as humans and humans have created a multitude of ideologies. If we abstract these ideologies, we will find universalities for sure that support the claim that we make use of them to create adaptive ideologies where we exist.
4-I agree that man has a rational deliberation to choose the precedent of the event or what can be called initial conditions but what I disagree upon is the one to one correspondence you established. You can choose your state to be X but the resulting action could be Y or Z or P or Q because the state is not in a perfectly linear universe on the contrary it is in universe where non linearity is the rule. Also the evolution of state X depend on the context and whether the resultant state is on the same level of description or it is on another level because the passage between hierarchal levels can produce collective behaviors that cannot be reduced to the individual behavior. So you must be caution when you use the “If then “ rule as humans beings are not analog/digital computer but they have more plasticity, interactivity and highly combinatorial non linear systems. These implies another kind of causality other than the linear one (you support) but a circular causality where the cause and effect are not evident because in the real world you cannot segregate between cause and effect. 5- I agree that we are equipped with potentialities which could be compared to the potential energy a ball requires to move a long its dynamical landscape the same we do when we set the initial conditions of this ball and let it go on the dynamical landscape though this process it will use its potential energy.
6 -The list of the behaviors you say that human beings possess and they self destroy themselves is the product of the universal embedded laws stated before because part of the instinct is the survival instinct in human beings. So human beings had to create strategies to survive and due to the lack of access to other people mental states, one had to selfishly acting because he will be always be sure of himself and no one else. I think no one is granted access to other people mental states. So I view selfish behavior as a product of instinct. But you argued that it is due to narrowness of mind I would like to know the bases of your argument because when I say narrow means that I have a reference for the mind or a criteria to measure it which appears quiet vague to me and how this argument could be related to the universal instinct you approved its existence beforehand. I partially agree on the argument on the long term consequences which I will call it “ the dynamical evolution of behavior “ but the reason is not being oblivious in my opinion but the feeling of “improbability “ and you could argue that this obliviousness is the product of “Improbability” but this does not discarded the probability that the feeling of “Improbability” may give rise to behaviors other than “Obliviousness” may be “ Creativity” for me feeling “Improbable” encourages me to be more “Creative” in order to survive effectively.
6 - “Man becomes completely immersed in the externalities of this life, where s/he becomes a slave for anything and everything—societal traditions, fear, parental upbringing, political and religious authoritarians, people’s expectations, culture, the unknown, money, sex, time and place, etc” I think in this passage you switched to another line of argument which confused me because you were supporting the innate origin of our creation and the laws within and you did not give the environment any effect for example the “If then” rules you were in favor for. But in this passage you argued for an oppressive external effects so I would to know how you can make a conjecture between the two arguments. Is it externalities? I think the human beings are the one who created all what you are stating so I do not think there is a sharp distinction between what is external and what is internal but it is a cyclic feedback system where everything affects everything. In my opinion, it is different representations for the universal laws that pushes human to seek strategies for survival. I cannot name it is slavery because the human made it and he used it but you can argue that human are sadistic or maschoic but I think this argument lack support in my own view. I agree that satanic mosaic is a cultural concept to embody all the deeds that is created by a counter cultural or created by the same culture but in a non accordance with the traditions so I argue that the concept of “Satanic mosaic” is the slavery because you counter normal human tendencies that human created by created an in group slavery where everyone has to be slave to the in group and the out group is from Satan "What is satanic in a culture is non satanic is another one".
7- When you said “S/He becomes so outward that s/he loses the realizability of the real moral and spiritual consequences of his deeds—Good becomes bad and vice versa; corruption becomes reformation and vice versa” the first thing I thought about is that he becomes out of the cultural context that he is in because “real moral” and “ spiritual consequences of his deeds” are dependent on the cultural context and the holy book you withdraw these moralities from.
8- You repeat the word God many times but I was wondering what do you mean by God ? do you mean the muslim’s allah or the supernatural unseen power or any other meaning ?
These are my philosophical remarks for today but I shall post more later as I have more remarks on the embodiment of the "Absolute" in the human beings...
Going on with my remarks on the conceptual framework you adopted in this essay. When you talk about quran and human, I feel that all human on earth have a universal tendency to follow quran which is not emperically justifiable. A proportion of people on earth do follow quran so when you mention human in this context you should refer to this proportion because generalizing a literary work (holy in the view of muslims) to be a universal embodiement for human nature should be taken cautiously and should be supported with strong arguments related to the world we percieve not the "words of the literary work". Also generalizing "Quran" to be the consistent with the human nature when you refer to human generally implies that you ignore the presence of other ideologies that reflect human nature and ignoring such ideologies support the idea that you yourself act selfishly to promote the survival of your idea and this is acceptable because this is the way ideas survive: they create a set of arguments withdrawn from literary work (holy in their view) and relate it to the universalities because relating to the universality of human implies that following these ideas are the same as following your nature and this is a clever evolutionary trick.
Other points to be mentioned that were difficult for me to comprehend:
1-first how ones forget God or the supernatural and then remember it ? here you metaphorically compare God to a kind of memory. I may agree with this but on the collective level of many individual where God represent part of the collective memory and in times of problems there is a collective remebrance for God as a source of power. But on the individual level I had difficulty comprehending a memory for God may be a concept for God because you either believe or not which is whether you have the concept or not.
2- I felt while reading that God is inside human beings because you infer all the unity of the inner subjective personal states to it so this contribution to the unity of states non accessible to external entities imply that may be God is the internal unifier which poses further philosophical problem for whether this entity is independent from the human being or not.
3-"Forgetting God" meaning fragmented existence is in favor of the argument that God in your view is an orchestrator of the internal state ensuring its homogeneity and when this conception is lost there is a heterogeneity produced. I see that if we imply the existence of one godly experience the same as one you argue for so we have a one unified homogeneous existence state but Is this argument justifiable in terms of the heterogeneity of our personalities ? How can these account for humane differences and how can it interact with the environment ? Is god inside or outside or both and if both how can these be conceptually possible to argue for a unity of human environment or a unity of microscopic macroscopic behavior ?
3- "Secularized" life how do you define secular in this context ? and this returns us to the selfish ignorance of others but if we accept that secularized life leads to what you call "disintegrated personality" and what's bad? the argument deduced could be that the distingreation is favorable for adaptation because when a system is disintegrated it tends to self organize like breaking a bird flok birds will return together and these tendency to self organize will return the system to its equilibrium state and this self organization confers high adaptivity to environment change as the system shifts between several unstable states that ensures its existence. I would like to know how would you argue for a non fragmented rigid unipolar existence adapt ?
4- about the misguidance. You stated that one choose the state x and does not know the consequences of these initial states so what would be the reference for guidance here ? whether the actions are guided withing a framework ? and then follow the question is there only one framework for the guidance of states ?
I think this makes a really good point. Allah (swt) creates a world that is unitary and orderly, and He has created a law that guides it. The law is both within us (fitra) and without (the revelations sent through the prophets, peace be upon them). There is a straight path that we should follow to be led to a final spiritual destination, one that is positive -- though that straight path certainly has many lanes!
I think there are certain basic principles in Islam (love, generosity, peacefulness, kindness, etc.) that correspond to the laws of this universe. Unfortunately, humanity has not been enacting principles of love, generosity, peace, kindness, etc. like it should...and the consequences are evident in today's world.
What I like about this post is the way it serves to call humanity back to the straight path, so that we do not veer too far off of it and create our own "Hell".
دا كلامك والا منقول؟
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