THE PHILOSOPHY OF UNITY 8-14/21

 

 Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society

THE PHILOSOPHY OF UNITY

(8)      Unity of Truth:

God has stated the basic Truth in His Revealed Guidance, and has invited His vicegerents, the human beings, to experience the Truth through their observation. Truth does not have different facets; it is one-sided. But its observation through the finitude of human senses and reason gives only partial views which relate to infinitesimally small portions of the whole and are, in the very nature of the case, discrete. However, even the minute and partial views, if interpreted in the scientific spirit, i.e., objectively and without the distortion of the image through the intrusion of subjectivity, are bound to corroborate the Revealed Truth. In other words, true Religion and true Scientific Approach to Truth stand in the relation of unity.  

 

(9)      Unity of Religion:

The Holy Qur’an teaches that, God being One and humanity being one, Divine Guidance in terms of Religion has not been confined to any particular chosen race. Rather, entire humanity has been blessed with it during the course of human history (13:7; etc). Nor could it be different for different communities. This gives the principle of unity in respect of Divine Revelation. Also, this teaching provides the venue of appeal to the religions of the world for casting off the shells of later accretions, perversions and distortions brought into existence by human ignorance, ingenuity, or vested interests, and returning to the original Message in the light of reason and with the assistance of the Qur’anic Revelation,—finally bringing about the unification of religions in the Divine Truth and paving the way to the unity of mankind. 

 

(10)  Unity of ‘Love’ and ‘Law’:

‘Love’ functions as the ‘soul’ and ‘Law’ functions as the ‘body’ of the human code of Conduct; and, in the Qur’anic view, genuine flowering of the human personality is possible only when ‘Love’ and ‘Law’ function in organic unity in the life of a person. 

 

(11)  Unity of Mankind:

Coming to human beings: God, the One, has created them all; and He originated the existence of the human species on the earth through one original pair of man and woman. This gives us the Qur’anic principle of the Unity of Mankind, in which all prejudices of race, colour, caste and sex are obliterated and the only principle of distinction in respect of status is achievement in terms of spiritual and moral character and knowledge. As regards respect for human dignity, it is, in the Qur’anic view, the birthright of every human being. 

 

(12)  Principle of Unity in respect of the Sexes:

Although man and woman are different in respect of some of their functions, and consequently in some of their organs, they have emerged, according to the Holy Qur’an,  from a single primeval Self. In their basic human nature and status, therefore, they are united in the bond of humanity:—they are one and the same, and even in their functions they stand out as complimentaries and not as the negation of one another. Consequently both possess, equal human dignity. 

 

(13)  Unity of Human Personality :

With reference to the human personality, the Holy Qur’an emphasises its organic wholeness. The human being is a unitary being, with the soul, the mind and the body and their different dimensions of existence and behaviour, forming an integrated organic Whole—a Unity. This Qur’anic view gives rise to the Qur’anic ideal of the integration, wherein all the dimensions of human personality: the physical, the moral, the rational, the aesthetical and the spiritual, have to be developed comprehensively and harmoniously in order to achieve the Divine Purpose with regard to human destiny. 

 

It may be emphasised here that, similar to what we have noticed in the case of the cosmos, the human being also emerges, in the  Qur’anic view, as a being who is ‘space-less’ and ‘time-less’ in his origin and constitution. Namely, he originated in a dimension of existence which transcends ‘space’ and ‘time’, or, in other words, in the transcendental dimension—a dimension akin to the fifth dimension of the five-dimensional continuum in which we find an electron during its jump from one orbit to the other. And his essential constitution is in terms of what is called ‘soul’ in popular language. As for the birth and the death of the human being on the earth, the Qur’anic view may be stated in scientific terms thus. In respect of birth : The soul projects itself, under the Will of God, in the ‘dimension of time’, bringing about the existence of the mind, which is temporal. Then, beyond that, it projects itself into the ‘dimension of space’, bringing about the existence of the body, which is spatiotemporal. At the time of death, the soul resumes its purely transcendental state of existence,—of course, carrying within itself the effects of its earthly career.   

 

(14)  Unity in respect of ‘Freedom’ and ‘Determinism’:

According to the Holy Qur’an, man is neither the abject slave of inexhorable Fate, as the ancient oriental philosophy would  have it, nor completely self-determined—the sole maker of his destiny, as the atheistic existentialism of the modern West teaches. Affirmation of inexhorable Fate bars the way to all moral struggle,—in fact, to all struggle for improvement, because every sentiment and every idea and every desire of every human being is conceived to be predestined. On the other hand, the view that man is completely free plunges him in the terror and the agony of being infinitely lonely—and that with all the human weaknesses—in what is regarded as an alien and hostile world. Both of these views end in the philosophy, of Pessimism, which is pure poison in relation to human happiness and progress.

The Holy Qur’an steers clear of both the above-mentioned standpoints and gives us a view whereby it harmonises the concepts of Freedom and Determinism. It teaches that when God created man, He endowed him with personality as well as freedom—a freedom which, though not absolute, is, nevertheless, adequate to human nature. Then it teaches that God has not abandoned man to himself. Man has been made the vicegerent to function in harmony with God, Who is the real Architect of man’s destiny. As such, God is man’s constant ‘companion’, and God and man both participate in the making of man’s destiny. This ‘Mutual Participation’ forms the medium wherein Freedom and Determinism stand out in unity.^[1]

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[1] Cf. The position of Ahl-as-Sunnah wal-Jami’ah in terms of ‘bain al-Jabr wa al-Ikhtiyar’.

Source

to be continued . . . . . 

Quranic Foundation & Structure Of Muslim Society In The End Times

THE PHILOSOPHY OF UNITY 1-7/21

 

 Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society

Chapter 6

THE PHILOSOPHY OF UNITY

 

The Holy Qur’an has laid the greatest emphasis on the concept of Unity (Tawhid). It is not found there, however, merely as a concept among concepts but as an all-pervading principle which governs all the fundamental domains of human faith and action. As such, it is vitally necessary to understand it in all its dimensions for the sake of understanding the basic Qur’anic approach to the vital human problems.

 

(1)  Unity of God:

The Qur’anic view of life is grounded in the purest monotheism—the doctrine of the Unity of God. God is One. He is indivisible, and He has no partner in the godhead. He is the Reality. He is all-in-all. Belief in Him demands indivisible loyalty and devotion to Him. This emancipates the human beings from every cosmic and earthly bondage and elevates them to the highest pinnacle of glory. 

 

(2)  Unity of the Universe:

The universe has come into existence through creation, and God alone is its Creator. Therefore, it is a unity—in existence as well as in purpose. And, as such, it is a cosmos and not a chaos. It is a Reign of Law and not a Chance Order. Moreover, it is a Moral Order and not an amoral conglomeration of wayward particles. 

 

Subjectively pitched on the denial of the existence of God by hook or by crook, the materialistic philosophies assume,—assume only, because they have no proof—the origin of the world in chance— a ghostly and meaningless term in that respect. Postulation of chance shuts the door to the affirmation of any Meaning, or of the necessary existence of a Monistic Principle as the starting point. But the affirmation of a Meaningful Monistic Principle is the condition of believing in the universe as a cosmos, as opposed to chaos; and the affirmation of the universe as a cosmos is necessary for regarding the human life as meaningful. Then, unless human life is meaningful, all talk of philosophy, science, economics, politics, social improvement, justice and truth is, to say the least, beside the point. 

 

The principle of Evolution may be presented by the Materialists as the monistic principle underlying the working of the cosmos. But, how, where, why and by whom was that process originated? Evolution remains devoid of any genuine meaningfulness without satisfactory answers to those questions? Indeed, it remains a blind process, even though we may notice some method in it. The difficulties inherent in the hypothesis of Evolution have been commented upon by an eminent French scientist thus:

“One of the greatest successes of modern science was to link the fundamental Carnot Clausius law (also called the second law of thermodynamics),^[1] key-stone of our actual interpretation of the inorganic world, with the calculus of probabilities. Indeed, the great physicist Boltzmann proved that the inorganic, irreversible evolution imposed by this law corresponded to an evolution toward more and more ‘probable’ states, characterized by an ever increasing symmetry, a levelling of energy. The universe, therefore, tends towards an equilibrium where all the dissymmetries existing today will be flattened out, where all motion will have stopped and where total obscurity and absolute cold will reign. Such will be the end of the world—theoretically.

“Now, we men at the surface of the earth are witnesses to another kind of evolution: that of living things. We have already seen that the laws of chance, in their actual state cannot account for the birth of life. But now we find that they forbid any evolution other than which leads to less and less dissymmetrical states, while the history of the evolution of life reveals a systematic increase in dissymmetries, both structural and functional. Furthermore, this trend can hardly be attributed to a ‘rare fluctuation’ destined to be ironed out statistically, as it has manifested itself steadily for over one thousand million years (probable age of life on this globe), and as the dissymmetries, gloriously unconcerned about the law set by man, became greater as eons passed by until they culminated in the brain of man.

“Once more we repeat that there is not a single fact or a single hypothesis, today, which gives an explanation of the birth of life or of natural evolution. As far as the origin of life is concerned, we have briefly studied the problem in the first part of this book. Willy-nilly, we are, therefore, obliged either to admit the idea of a transcendent intervention, which the scientist may as well call God as anti-chance, or to simply recognize that we know nothing of these questions outside of a small number of mechanisms. This is not an act of faith, but an undisputed scientific statement.”^[2]

 

In the hypothesis of the Dialectical Process also the Materialists fail to see that the emphasis should lie not on the process as such but on the monistic principle inherent in it. If the world-process is conceived to have started with the simultaneous emergence, through chance, of the thesis and the anti-thesis, leading through their interaction to synthesis, that would explain nothing. If it is said that only a thesis emerged first and the anti-thesis was born out of it, that would give us a monistic principle at the start. But the emergence of the original thesis by chance makes the entire process blind and does not provide any sanction for any meaningful philosophy of life. The fact is that if it is inferred on the basis of certain phenomena that the world-process consists in repitition ad-infinitum of a triad in terms of ‘thesis—anti-thesis—synthesis’, then we are compelled to accept the monistic principle as the controlling force running through the process, because of the culmination of the interaction of the ‘thesis’ and the ‘anti-thesis’ in ‘synthesis’ every time that the cycle is conceived to be repeated,—the repitition giving to the world-process the form of a chain wherein every new ‘synthesis’ assumes the form of two prongs in terms of ‘thesis’ and ‘anti-thesis’ that finally merge themselves into a ‘synthesis’. In other words, dualism is repeatedly reducing itself into monism. This gives the clue to the existence of a monistic principle as the starting point and of the spirit of ‘monism’ pervading twice the dialectic. 

 

The Qur’an also speaks explicitly, and not just implicitly, of the presence of the dialectic in the world-process in terms of the perpetual conflict of the ‘Reality’ and the ‘un-reality’, or of Truth and Falsehood (21:18; etc.), and it emphasises its importance for human beings in its ethico-religious dimensions. It affirms its origin and starting point, however, not in chance, nor in a blind monistic principle, but in the Will of the Supreme Being Who possesses all the attributes of Perfection. 

 

It may also be observed in passing that while the so-called Scientific Materialism emphasises the transformation of Quantity into Quality as the mode of the world-process, the Qur’an emphasises the transformation of Quality into Quantity. The former view was actually built on certain wrong scientific notions of the nineteenth century in respect of Matter, which have now undergone radical change— lending ever-growing support to the Qur’anic view.  

 

We might state the Qur’anic view thus: Because God is the Absolutely Transcendental Being, His fundamental Attribute is ‘Absolute Quality’. The cosmos has emerged in existence, in terms of evolutionary creation—as opposed to ‘spontaneous’ creation— through the activity of His Will. Quality is ‘intangible’. Quantity relates to tangibility. The world-process is the progressive crystallisation of in-tangibility into tangibility. The intangible is space-less and time-less,—we may call it ‘Idea’ in the fundamental sense. The tangible is spatio-temporal. We know that we proceed progressively towards intangibility as we move from ‘appearance’ to ‘reality’ in the physical analysis of Matter, which means that intangibility, or space-lessness and time-lessness, or Qualitativeness, is the basis of the existence of Matter.   

 

(3)  Principle of ‘Unity’ in respect of the relation of God with the      Cosmos:

According to the Qur’an: God is Eternal and Absolute, and the cosmos is Transient and Relative. Now, the Relative is not the Absolute. But it has originated in the Will of the Absolute and is sustained by the Absolute. Thus, the Relative has no independent existence of its own, while the Absolute neither excludes nor includes the Relative. (Cf. the philosophical doctrine of the “Ahl-as-Sunnah wal Jama ‘ah”: la ‘ain wa la ghair).  

 

(4)  Unity of Life:

Taking ‘life’ in the universe as a whole, or ‘life’ as such, all ‘life’ forms a unity. In other words: Because the Holy Qur’an projects the universe as an organic whole which has come into existence through the unitary action of the Divine Will, all the projections and manifestations of ‘life’ exist within a single unitary evolutionary principle—human life being distinguished as unique and overpowering because it functions within the framework of Personality.

With respect to the human being, as such, his life before his birth on the earth, his earthly life, and his life after death—all these three phases form a unity. Indeed, life is tied to a continuous evolutionary process. 

 

(5)  Unity of the ‘Natural’ and the ‘Super-Natural’:

The Basis of Existence for all phenomena and things in the entire universe being one, and the Source of all laws pertaining to every aspect and every part of the universe being one, the ‘natural’ and the ‘super-natural’ are only two levels of the activity pervading the cosmos, involving no contradiction. The distinction is actually grounded only in the human framework of reference. 

 

(6)  Unity of Knowledge:

Because the universe is a unity, knowledge should be pursued in terms of ‘unity’ in the sense that it should form one ‘Whole’. The different branches of knowledge should be viewed in the relationship of inter-dependence. This leaves no ground in the Qur’anic view of knowledge for the time-honoured division in terms of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’.  

 

(7) Unity of Faith and Reason:

It is not, however, only the different branches of knowledge that are complimentary among themselves. The time-honoured dichotomy of Faith and Reason, which has played havoc in the history of Christian West, is also a false notion. Cognition (knowing) and conation (feeling) are not anti-thetic, both being the dimensions of the same human Consciousness. Faith and Reason have also, therefore, to go together: to function in unity. Faith without Reason lands human beings in superstition. Reason without Faith deprives humanity of the highest values. Taking up this problem in the very first Revelation, the Holy Qur’an has emphasised the unity of Faith and Reason and has projected the ideal of Rationally-orientated Faith.

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[1] This law can be worded as follows: An isolated material system can never pass twice identically through the same state. Every successive state entails a definite decrease in its available energy. Hence its irreversibility.

[2] Le Comte du Nouy: Human Destiny, pp. 41, 134.

Source

to be continued . . . . . 

Quranic Foundation & Structure Of Muslim Society In The End Times