Fazlur Rahman Quotes

Taqwā means to protect oneself against the harmful or evil consequences of one's conduct. If, then, by "fear of God" one means fear of the consequences of one's actions - whether in this world or the next (fear of punishment of the Last Day) - one is absolutely right. In other words, it is the fear that comes from an acute sense of responsibility, here and in the hereafter, and not the fear of a wolf or of an uncanny tyrant, for the God of the Qur'ān has unbounded mercy - although He also wields dire punishment, both in this world and in the hereafter.

People belittle or ignore or even rebel against God, because they view the
processes of nature as having self-sufficient causes, normally regarded by them as
ultimate. They do not realize that the universe is a sign pointing to something
"beyond" itself, something without which the universe, with all its natural causes,
would be and could be nothing.

This idea (Taqwa)can be effectively conveyed by the term "conscience," if the object of conscience transcends it. This is why it is proper to say that "conscience" is truly as central to Islam as love is to Christianity when one speaks of the human response to the ultimate reality - which, therefore, is conceived in Islam as merciful justice rather than fatherhood. Taqwā, then, in the context of our argument, means to be squarely anchored within the moral tensions, the "limits of God," and not to "transgress" or violate the balance of those tensions or limits. Human conduct then becomes endowed with that quality which renders it "service to God ['ibāda].

This struggle between good and evil, fresh and stale, new and decrepit,
between the vigor of moral youth and the dotage of senility, is of positive benefit, for it keeps the perennial moral values alive

Metaphysics, in my understanding, is the unity of knowledge and the meaning and orientation this unity gives to life. If this unity is the unity of knowledge, how can it be all that subjective? It is a faith grounded in knowledge.

The removal of God from human consciousness means the removal of meaning and purpose from human life.

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"The corruption of religious leaders, who were expected to be the source of spiritual force and regeneration, is the last step in the decay of a community.

the Qur'ān appears to be interested in three types knowledge for man. One is the knowledge of nature which has been made subservient to man, i.e., the physical sciences. The second crucial type is the knowledge of history (and geography): the Qur'ān persistently asks man to "travel on the earth" and see for himself what happened to bygone civilizations and why they rose and fell. The third is the knowledge of man himself.

Philologists assure us that zulm in Arabic originally meant "to put something out of its proper place," so that all wrong of any kind is injustice, i.e., an injustice against the agent himself) is, therefore, a very common term in the Qur'ān, with its clear idea that all injustice is basically reflexive.

To hold that the Qur'ān believes in an absolute determinism of human behavior, denying free choice on man's part, is not only to deny almost the entire content of theQu r'ān, but to undercut its very basis: the Qur'ān by its own claim is an invitation to man to come to the right path (hudan lil-nās).

It must be constantly remembered that the Qu r'ān is not just descriptive but is primarily prescriptive. Both the content of its message and the power of the form in which it is conveyed are designed not so much to "inform" men in any ordinary sense of the word as to change their character. The psychological impact and the moral import of its statements, therefore, have a primary
role. Phrases like "God has sealed their hearts, blinded their eyes, deafened them to truth" in the Qur'ān do have a descriptive meaning in terms of the psychological processes described earlier; but even more primarily in such contexts, they have a definite psychological intention: to change the ways of men in the right direction.

All evil, all injustice, all harm that one does to someone else - in sum, all deviation from man's normative nature - in a much more fundamental way and in a far more ultimate sense one does to oneself, and not just metaphorically but literally.

The successful are those who can be saved from their own selfishness.

For the Qur'ān, it is neither strange nor out of tune nor blameworthy for a prophet
that he is not always consistent as a human. It is nevertheless as a human that he
becomes an example for mankind, for his average level of conduct is still so high that it is a worthy model for mankind.

The Qur'ān began by criticizing two closely related aspects of that society: the polytheism or multiplicity of gods which was symptomatic of the segmentation of society, and the gross socioeconomic disparities that equally rested on and perpetuated a pernicious divisiveness of mankind. The two are obverse and converse of the same coin: only God can ensure the essential unity of the human race as His creation, His subjects, and those responsible finally to Him alone. The economic disparities were most persistently criticized, because they were the most difficult to remedy and were at the hear of social discord - although tribal rivalries, with their multiple entanglements of alliance, enmity, and vengeance, were no less serious, and the welding of these tribes into a political unity was an imperative need. Certain abuses of girls, orphans, and women, and the institution of slavery demanded desperate reform.

Nature exists for man to exploit for his own ends, while the end of man himself is nothing else but to serve God, to be grateful to Him, and to worship Him alone.

The Qur'ān definitely seems optimistic about the future, while rather grim about the past It is absolutely imperative for successor civilizations and their bearer communities to study well and learn from the fate of earlier ones that have perished; or they will assuredly meet with the same fate, for "God's law does not change" for any people. This is perhaps one of the most insistent ideas in the Qur'ān, which constantly exhorts people to "travel on the earth and see the end of those before them

Nor can one take an unfair attitude even towards enemies: "Let the enmity of a people[towards you] not determine you upon an unjust course; be fair, it is closer to taqwā. Quran

This unstable character of man, this going from one extreme to the other, arising as it does out of his narrow vision and petty mind, reveals certain basic moral tensions within which human conduct must function if it is to be stable and fruitful. These contradictory extremes are, therefore, not so much a "problem" to be resolved by theological thought as tensions to be "lived with" if man is to be truly "religious," i.e., a servant of God. Thus, utter powerlessness and "being the measure for all things," hopelessness and pride, determinism and "freedom," absolute knowledge and pure ignorance - in sum, an utterly "negative self-feeling" and a "feeling of omnipotence" - are extremes that constitute natural tensions for proper human conduct. It is the "God-given" framework for human action. Since its primary aim is
to maximize moral energy, the Qur'ān - which claims to be "guidance for
mankind" - regards it as absolutely essential that man not violate the balance of opposing tensions. The most interesting and the most important fact of moral life is that violating this balance in any direction produces a "Satanic condition" which in its moral effects is exactly the same: moral nihilism. Whether one is proud or hopeless, self-righteous or self-negating, in either case the result is deformity and eventual destruction of the moral human personality.

The purpose of man's creation is that he do good in the world, not substitute
himself for God and think that he can make and unmake the moral law at his own
convenience and for his own selfish and narrow ends. This is the difference between
physical laws and the moral law - the one is to be used and put to service; the other
must be obeyed and served. For God says