The Highest Level of Perfection!

By Mohamed Bazzy

We humans, an image of intelligence through which we are the core of this creation, are the guardians of this plane. Had we appointed to our interaction with the universe signs of dominance or transgression, we would then see the aches of history buried down our feet!

Thus it is a discourse of responsibility we should take on our shoulders, as to discover, learn, and build for the survival of the global.

Amongst all plants, animals, living and non-living beings, we are honored by the signs of intellect that demarcates between construction and deconstruction. It is the basis of knowledge from which all sciences stem their methods and orient their goals. In Islam, the beauty of knowledge is that of its tri-dimensional base: God, Man, and the Universe. The interaction is dialectical; yet profoundly rooted within coherence and intelligibility.

Reflecting its importance, the first word that manifested sovereignty is the Arabic "إقرأ" "Read"! Amongst the unfolded linguistic capacity in the Arabic literature, "Read" was in the front holding the cresset for the blessed enlightenment; lifting both the Arabs and the West, afterwards, from ages of darkness to periods of thought and humanity.

"Read" is not an order that is forced on Man with power and tyranny. Rather it is molded with the antiquity of being and with that essence of him that shall always be the oar of his ship!

God: the Creator of all, the omnipotent and omniscient. The Sole-giver, Whom from His Blessings order, beauty, and science saw the light and paved the way for His elected vicegerent.

Man: The Central creature that which all other reflections of God orbit and bow! He took the responsibility, by his rationality and moral spirituality, of encompassing reality in terms of its theoretical philosophy and applied actuality.

The Universe: it is those reflections of God and the manifestations of His will. It is the origins of Man and his field of search and actions.

"Tawhid" is the Unity of the Divine Principle. It unites the integrated world of multiplicity, the various fields and domains of knowledge, under the coherent intersection of the Rationale and the Innate Constitution of the Soul. It is the underlying principle that bonds the fragmented fields and realities of knowledge in the intellect of Man and his soul. It becomes his ultimate reality from which he perceives the world.  From this converging lens, the multiple fields of interaction with the physical becomes a unity, an up thrust, and an uprising force towards liberation; liberation from ignorance, transgression, and servitude of the self and yearnings.

This is the highest level of perfection attained by the profound understanding of Tawhid and by implementing its foundations starting from knowledge, as a critical philosophy, of the self, the universe, and God.

Consequently, knowledge is critical to Man that without it he loses his essentiality in this creation and centrality on this plane. It is that alleviating factor that sublimates his essence from sheer materiality to exalted spirituality, once "Tawhid" is recognized as the ultimate truth connecting the multiple realities, being as the unity of the Divine Principle.

Competition Kills!

By Izzat El-Hajj

Sometimes we hear stories that can be uncomforting about students giving each other wrong information or withholding resources from their classmates in preparation for an exam. The phenomenon doesn't make things any better, but sets the stage for students to hope that their colleagues don't do very well, thus lowering the average and making their own grades higher. Such a competitive atmosphere is not a very healthy one in a place where people come to learn and become positively active members of society.

And this is merely a microcosm of the professional world out there where the same things happen in different colors. Colleagues spread rumors about their fellow colleagues to ruin their reputations and gain competitive advantage. Employees withhold helpful information from their teammates to rise ahead of them in the ranks of the company. This should not be the way people treat each other!

Competition on its own is not inherently a bad thing. One of the biggest mistakes earlier regimes committed was eliminating competition from peoples' lives; the result was a devastating loss of incentive and a decline in society's productivity and economic growth. Competition can be channeled in two different directions: it can be constructive, and it can be destructive.

People who are constructively competitive compete with others by trying to improve their own performance and do a better job, yet still wishing the best for others. Meanwhile, people who are destructively competitive enjoy watching others trip and fall behind, and may even try to cause them to do so themselves. Maybe such feelings emerge from our increasingly materialistic perceptions of life - the perceptions that humans seek to maximize their profits and increase their utility from resources which are scarce (two basic assumptions in ECON 211). This fuss about scarce resources is very peculiar in a world that produces enough to feed its entire population six times over!

With such an attitude, or with that of wanting to maximize the welfare of society as a whole, we can come to view the people around us in two different ways. We may view them as our opponents who will beat us to those scarce resources and take them out of our way. This is the destructive type. We may also view them as our partners in this world, all working towards trying to make it a better place for us and for those around us. With such a disposition, we would like to see our "competitors" succeed just as much as we would like to see ourselves do so. This is the constructive type. Prophet Muhammad once said, "None of you truly believes until you love for your brother what you love for yourself". In the global scope of things, the success of an individual will contribute to that of society, and that of society will contribute to the wellbeing of every individual in the society, so it will always come back and benefit us all.

Enough with people viewing each other as opponents of one another, and enough with them trying to hold each other back. Poverty is our opponent. Jealousy is our opponent. Hatred is our opponent. As for us people, we are all partners.