Anyone with the vaguest knowledge of Islamic culture knows that it has produced extraordinary works of art and architecture -- Persian miniatures, the Taj Mahal, the Alhambra. Few are aware, however, that this rich artistic heritage is firmly rooted in a worldview that highlights love and beauty.
The link between love and beauty is clear. We love what we find beautiful. Beauty attracts, ugliness repels. Nor are beauty and ugliness simply physical characteristics. We all know people who are outwardly attractive but personally repellent, and vice versa.
Beauty makes a massive appearance in love poetry like that of Ibn al-Farid, Rumi, Yunus Emre, and countless others. Their verses stir up wonder and delight by evoking the beautiful characteristics of the beloved.
In explaining the relationship between love and its object, philosophers like Avicenna analyzed the universe in terms of a Necessary Being that combined the attributes of Plato's Good with those of Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. All contingent things, animate or inanimate, are in love with the absolute beauty of the Good and strive to reach it, hence the ceaseless activity that fills the universe.
Those with a more theological bent preferred to cite the saying of the Prophet, "God is beautiful, and He loves beauty." They understood both beauty and love in terms of the axiom of tawhid, "There is no god but God." If God is beautiful, then there is nothing truly beautiful but God. And if God is loving, then no one truly loves but he.
A bit of reflection on God's love for beauty leads to the conclusion that he loves himself before all else. God as the one true lover perceives his own true beauty and loves it eternally. As for the universe, God loves it because, by loving himself, he loves everything demanded by his beauty and mercy, and that includes an infinity of creaturely possibilities. This view was encapsulated in the oft-quoted divine saying, "I was a Hidden Treasure, and I loved to be recognized, so I created the creatures to recognize Me."
In discussions of God's love for the universe, theologians and scholars agreed that God loves both the way things are and the way things ought to be. The discrepancy between these two loves has given rise to the never-ending debate over determinism and free will, nature and nurture, science and values.
God loves the way things are because "He made beautiful everything He created" (Quran 32:7). All things are lovable because they make his beauty manifest. Each thing plays its own harmonious role in the infinite web of relationships that the Quran calls God's "signs." The signs in turn display the characteristics of what it calls God's "most beautiful names."
God loves the way things ought to be because he created human beings with freedom to change themselves. Unique among all things in the universe -- so far as we know -- human beings have the capacity to recognize themselves as works in progress and to intervene in the manner in which they develop. Ghazali and other theologians pointed out that people are "compelled to be free." The expression points precisely to the creative tension between what is and what ought to be.
God's love for all things is often discussed in terms of the universal, all-encompassing mercy designated by the name "All-merciful." His love for the way people ought to be is then tightly bound up with the particular, responsive mercy designated by the name "Ever-merciful." The formula of consecration -- "In the name of God, the All-merciful, the Ever-merciful" -- acknowledges both sorts of love.
To say that God loves all things reiterates the principle of with-ness voiced in the verse, "He is with you wherever you are" (57:4). By means of his all-embracing love and mercy, God tends to the welfare of the universe, including the posthumous realms.
To say that God loves things as they ought to be points to the human capacity to recognize God's with-ness. In order to live their lives in a manner appropriate to the divine presence within themselves, people must be merciful and compassionate. The fact that God is with them does not mean that they are also with him -- that is precisely what needs to be achieved, what "ought to be."
Not being with God opens the door to the ugliness and evil that are apparent to everyone. To ask then how a beautiful God could create a world full of ugliness is to ask why each thing and each person is uniquely itself. From the standpoint of the role that beings and things play in the cosmic harmony, all are beautiful, but some are more beautiful than others, and the scale of beauty stretches not from "one to 10" but from one to infinity.
Whatever the scale we use to judge the discrepancies among things and people, no two fit exactly into the same niche. There is gradation without limit in categories without limit. The lower a thing may be on the scale of beauty, the more it is apt to appear as ugly.
More simply, the world is ugly inasmuch as we perceive it empty of God, the absolute good. It is beautiful inasmuch as we recognize the divine with-ness, the signs of the most beautiful names that fill the universe. Failure to recognize the signs goes back to ignorance -- the "root poison," as Buddhists call it.
Islam has no notion of original sin, but the Quran does say that Adam "forgot" (20:115). Our inherited forgetfulness provides all we need to bungle the job of being what we ought to be.
Islam: God and Love - by Dr. Ahmad Shafaat
William C. Chittick, Ph.D.: The Islamic Notion of Mercy
William Chittick: "The Recovery of Human Nature" on Vimeo
COLUMN - The MYSTIC PEN - Dr. William Chittick Remembers | Wild ...
1. God created man with certain powers which he could exercise under certain limitations. It is the exercise of these powers in one way or another that produce good or evil. For example power of speech, man can use it to do good or bad to humanity using this power, to utter a truth or slander
2. According to the holy Quran, God is the first and ultimate cause of all things. But this does not mean that He is the creator of the deeds of man. God is the creator of man. God has endowed man with discretion to choose how to act, which he can exercise under certain limitations and only in accordance with certain laws.
Thus the holy Quran says, “The truth is from your Lord: So let him who pleases accept (it) and let him who pleases reject (it) Chapter 18: Verse 29. This means man can exercise his discretion or his will in doing a thing or not doing it. But he is responsible for his own deeds and is made to suffer the consequences.
3. Another verse of the Quran says “Surely We (God) have shown him (man) the way, he may accept or reject” Chapter 76: Verse 3 and again “The truth is from your Lord. So let him who pleases believe and let him who pleases disbelieve.” Chapter 18: Verse 29”
God seems to like ugliness as well. Life abounds in a cesspool. Life? God created it, right? Disease germs? God created those as well. Syphilis, ebola, or even the flu. God created them all. Are they beautiful for being God's creation? Would you accuse God of creating ugliness? Yet man or devil could not have created those germs.
Light is beautiful. The bright explosion of a supernova is full of beauty -- and death to all about it. The meteorite that fell into the sea 65 million years ago must have been a thing of beauty as it fell. There is a beauty in physics, order, and structure. The elements, the periodic table, radioactivity, the atomic bomb, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How beautiful and dazzling the blast must have been to the viewers, moments before they were incinerated.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The author admits that God is the ultimate Narcissist, in love with Himself, creating others to marvel at Him and worship. Those who will worship Him will live with Him forever to keep worshiping Him, while those that won't will experience the awful beauty of an eternal fire and eternal torment -- a beautiful punishment surely to the One Who demands All reverence!
The same thing can be beautiful and ugly at the same time, wonderful and horrible, holy and evil.
Life and faith are both messy.
There is no world culture or religion that is acceptable for modern human beings...we need new models. Buddhism gives us the guidance to even begin to think about this. This was an absurd article...time to delete God and restore respect for the mystery of Life. Therein lies beauty....
When an atrocity is announced over the media, why is it not accompanied by a means of determining degree?
Today, a couple of individuals brew themselves and number of innocent individuals to pieces. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of other citizens all over the world went about their lawful daily business in peace.
http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/terror.htm
Here's another source of authoritative condemnations of the attacks:
http://islam.about.com/cs/currentevents/a/9_11statements.htm
And here's another set of statements (scroll down):
http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm
Therefore the notion of Muslims being "silent" after 9/11 is completely false.
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate,
contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and
unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the
discomfort of thought."
John F Kennedy
That may be a healthy notion insofar as it softens and loosens a tight-fist and promotes patience and kindness, but implying that some collective-fist is therefore sufficiently loose and tolerant is a stretch.
Are you kidding?
Sure is. So is politics. So is sexual attraction. Et cetera.
I mean, it's your business, but I always wonder how somebody like this justifies the selection of evidence to fit the point. Believers in God have also been responsible for some of the greatest acts of charity and humanity ever committed. Some Republicans and right-wingers have committed terrible acts of violence; so have some Democrats or left-wingers. Maybe the conclusion is that across millions of people in human history, you're going to find examples of people acting for good and acting badly in the name of whatever institution or belief you happen to pick. At that point I would think one would want to examine what the institution or belief actually espouses, what the actual substance of the thing is, rather than selecting only the negative acts of people who claim to be associated with it.
Really? What are they? I would disagree that they would qualify as the "greatest acts of charity and humanity ever committed" because in many instances they would have an underlying proselytizing agenda which would be absent in equivalent secular acts of charity and humanity. Doubtless, there are many spectacular Hospitals, Medical facilities, aid organizations and marvelous individuals flying under religious banners, but the REAL acts of healing and hands-on aid are being done by scientists called "doctors" who do the real work.
I believe you are arguing a false-equivalency fallacy when you try to compare religion to politics and "sexual attraction."
I don't expect politics to do good deeds. Diplomacy does in many instances. And I have no idea what you mean in your comparison of "sexual attraction" to religion. Having sex is a natural function responsible for all of our lives, so enough said there.
On the OTHER hand, most modern religions sell themselves on notions of superior morality, blueprints for life provided by an omniscient and omnipotent supernatural beings, usually called "God" and in general, on a better way of living. Seeing as how this has failed so massively in every historical, subjective and empirical way, I don't think your comparisons hold water.
Anyways, people do CRAZY things for LOVE and love of God absolutely does wonders...it's sad to say so many people are duped to love man made ancient era fictional gods and anything horrible that is alleged to that God, but truth is that they do and that does cure cancers and create genius art work. Belief is a very strong placebo, combine it with narcotics & you have a magic, as the case with all the arts that great religions of the world have created.
You know what it is called when you condemn a very large population based on the bad actions of a very small minority of that population?
That's right: prejudice.
Carry on.