{"author":"Fazlur Rahman","author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman","total_quotes":26,"quotes":[{"text":"The essence of all human rights is the equality of the entire human race, which the Qur’ān assumed, affirmed, and confirmed. It obliterated all distinctions among men except goodness and virtue (taqwā).","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":1265,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"Philologists assure us that żulm 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.","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":12421,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"The essence of all human rights is the equality of the entire human race, which the Qur’ān assumed, affirmed, and confirmed. It obliterated all distinctions among men except goodness and virtue (taqwā): The reason the Qur’ān emphasizes essential human equality is that the kind of vicious superiority which certain members of this species assert over others is unique among all animals. This is where human reason appears in its most perverted forms.","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":36136,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"Empirical' knowledge itself is of little benefit unless it awakens the inner perception of man as to his own situation, his potentialities, his risks, and his destiny.","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":43057,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"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 isto maximize moral energy, the Qur’ān—which claims to be 'guidance formankind'—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.","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":48494,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"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].","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":62824,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"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.","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":71172,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"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.","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":82696,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"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.","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":118500,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"},{"text":"The Qur’ān does not appear to endorse the kind of doctrine of a radical mind-body dualism found in Greek philosophy, Christianity, or Hinduism; indeed, there is hardly a passage in the Qur'ān that says that man is composed of two separate, let alone disparate, substances, the body and the soul.","author":"Fazlur Rahman","tags":["islam"],"id":126314,"author_id":"Fazlur+Rahman"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":26,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}