55. The Benevolent One

In the name of God, the Benevolent, the Merciful


1. The Benevolent One
2. taught the Recital,
3. created man,
4. taught him expression.
5. The sun and the moon
follow calculated courses,
6. and *the stars and the trees bow down.
7. The Benevolent One
has raised the sky,
and set the balance,
8. so you would not
overstep balance.
9. So establish weight justly,
not letting the balance
give short measure.
10. And the Benevolent One
has set the earth for creatures,
11. with fruit there,
and date palms with spathes,
12. and grain with stalks,
and fragrant herbs.
13. Now which of the blessings
of your Lord do you deny--
14. having made man
from clay, like earthenware,
15. or having created the sprites
from a mixture of fire--
16. which of the blessings
of your Lord do you deny?
17. Lord of the two Easts
and Lord of the two Wests--
18. which of the blessings
of your Lord do you deny--
19. having loosed the two
bodies of water to meet
20. without overflowing
a barrier between them--
21. so which of the blessings
of your Lord do you deny--
22. from them come pearls and coral--
23. so which of the blessings
of your Lord do you deny--
23. owner of the ships
under sail over the sea
like mountains--
25. which of the blessings
of your Lord do deny?
26. Every being on earth perishes,
27. yet there remains
the design of your Lord,
sublime and honorable:
28. so which of the blessings
of your Lord do you deny?
29. All beings in the heavens and the earth
ask of the One who's in charge every day--
30. now which of the blessings
of your Lord do you deny?

(The Qur'an, trans. by Thomas Cleary).

"Unfortunately, three negative forces retarded the founding of an Orthodox rabbinical college.

First in importance was the low prestige and the lack of power and economic security which plagued the East European Orthodox rabbis in America, largely a result of the poverty of their congregations. The rabbis were so harried with maintaining their positions that they lacked the time, energy and vision to create a uniting force. Because of their own personal insecurity, they were more critical than constructive and most hesitant to merge forces where the yielding of individual sovereignty was involved. The dissension that characterized their relationships was described by a prominent East European Orthodox rabbi in the following manner: "There is no unity and no agreement among them as to how and by what means to raise the prestige of religion....Each decides and acts as of he were the only one in the world." [43] [...]

The sorry position of the Orthodox rabbinate was further aggravated by a lack of aggressive, and imaginative leadership to rise above the sordid conditions of the day. There was no Orthodox rabbi with the perseverance and consecration to inspire a following, to create a movement, to evaluate a problem, and to devote his life to improving the status of his fellow immigrants. [...]

The second factor was the absence of an upper class that had the means and the leisure to sponsor a rabbinical seminary. [...] The main obstacle, however, was the absence of a proper organization and structure to sponsor and support such a school. [...]

To sum up, therefore, the efforts of East European Jews to create a rabbinical school were hampered initially by the weak position of its rabbinate, by the limited and undeveloped financial resources, and by the absence of a congregational union to sponsor and support such an effort.

-Gilbert Klaperman, The Story of Yeshiva University: The First Jewish University in America, (Toronto: The Macmillan Company, 1969), pgs. 46-47.

e: I wonder how far one could make the analogy with the Muslim community in America today. We certainly have a lot of scholars and folks who have studied and it perhaps remains to be seen if they can work together and muster their resources together, instead of each one trying to have his/her own institute/seminary.

On the other hand, Muslims in America are spread around the country and so all the scholars don't necessarily have to be tied to one specific institution in a single geographic area. However, in a certain region, shouldn't folks pool their resources together and collaborate, even if they have differences?

"This is an empty fancy, yet it is prevalent among most men.

Thus, whenever you trace back a statement and attribute it to a speaker of whom they have a good opinion, they accept it, even thought it be false; but whenever you attribute it to someone of whom they have a bad opinion, they reject it. even though it be true. This they always know the truth by men, not men by the truth--which is the ne plus ultra of error!"

-Al-Ghazālī, Deliverer from Error, p. 40.

Imam al-Ghazālī on Specialized Expertise

"A person skilled one one field is not necessarily skilled in every field. Thus a man skilled in jurisprudence and kalām is not necessarily skilled in medicine, nor is a man who is ignorant of the speculative and rational sciences necessarily ignorant of the science of syntax. On the contrary, in each field there are men who have reached in it a certain degree of skill and preeminence, although they may be quite stupid and ignorant about other things."

-Al-Ghazālī, Deliverer from Error, p. 32. 

Shaikh Abdulhakim Murad Winter - Master Classes on Imam Al Ghazali - 1

AL-GHAZALI: REASON AND REVELATION, Zaytuna College 3rd Annual Islamic Higher Education Conference

March 4th-6th, 2016

Link

"a politics of enlightenment"

Siddhartha left his throne to seek a precise understanding of reality in order to serve society better. After experiencing that comprehensive awareness which he called awakening or enlightenment, he did not float away on a cloud of bliss into some otherworldly realm. He stood up and began a sustained campaign of social action, offering all people in all nations a chance to improve their moral, emotional, and intellectual lives, while creating a greater world for future generations. By founding institutions of education, he initiated, on the cultural and social levels, a politics of enlightenment.

[...] A revolution that transforms the outlook and behavior of many individuals and thereby slowly transforms a society can be called a 'cool' revolution. It educates people to think critically, to enter that realm of nonconformity that has always been the source of change.  When people have transformed their minds, they will naturally and cooly act to transform the society and eventually the polity. Shakyamuni turned politics on its head and proved that best way to build a healthy society was from the bottom up -- through the development of individual - not from the top down.

-Robert Thurman, Inner Revolution, pgs. 94-95. 

"We are the savages of outer modernity."

We have imagined our world to be tamed, or civilized, since we live in cities and seem to have nature under control. It is hard for us to think of ourselves as wild and untamed. But 'civilized' should mean something more than just living in cities. It should mean that we are wise, gentle, just, and even artistic in our dealings with the world and with other animals and humans. Our civilization is what I call an 'outer civilization'; its modernity is an outer modernity. It is based on turning the full force of human reason on the enterprise of conquering and taming the outer universe -- the universe of matter and energy, lands and continents, materials and products--and on viewing people as resources to be managed and developed for production. [...]

And what we have not controlled? We have not tamed our own minds very much at all. Our religions did do something of a taming job up to the modern period. They kept our world picture wholesome and made it meaningful for us to restrain our more bestial impulses most of the time. [...]

We are the savages of outer modernity. We have reached the point where the lethal passions are emerging as planetary enemy number one.  [...]

The middle way between the two extremes of authoritarian repression and self-defeating nihilism is to take our systematic and scientific cleverness, enthusiasm, and ingenuity and turn our attention toward the inner self the way we have turned in to so successfully on outer nature.  Why not engineer spiritual balance and harmony? We can investigate the lethal passions and their institutional foundations, find out precisely how they work, how they take hold of us and use us as their instruments. Then we can devise technologies and arts to conquer them and to transmute them into useful energies. Or we can use the technologies of the adepts who have gone before.

-Robert Thurman, Inner Revolution, pgs. 216-218. 

"Despite appearances, and the urgent but mistaken desire of many Muslims to engage in dialogue with purely secular thinkers and ideologies, we are primarily called to speak to the ‘People of the Book’."

"Religion is about truth, and unless truth be properly discerned and defended, nothing else will come right." -AHM

http://masud.co.uk/quicunque-vult-or-a-teenage-journey-to-islam/