Copyright © 2000 by Dr. Nazeer Ahmed.

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

Dedicated to

Maimoona M. Ahmed

CHAPTER 1

"WHAT MAKES US

HUMAN?"

AN INTRODUCTION

Quite simply, this book should be read. It is an important work. It is also remarkable. It is important because of the subject matter it addresses and the dire need for some guidance on what makes us human. It is remarkable, given the complexity of the subject and the great facility with which the author handles it.

This is a work for the scientist, the educator, the philosopher, the student, the man or woman of religion (no matter what the faith), the historian, the ordinary citizen. In many respects, it is a composite of a much larger work. It is far reaching and it is balanced. As a Muslim, I have often been disappointed and embarrassed by the works of many contemporary Muslim scholars. The approaches have been so heavy handed and out of balance, that in spite of the best of intent, they fail to correctly and persuasively convey the beauty, the pearl, the gem of the Qur’anic message. As such, they have been a poor counterbalance to the many misconceptions and pervasive distortions that have, in modern times, characterized the manner in which Islam has been portrayed. Dr. Ahmed’s work is a refreshing departure from this tradition.

With the scope of a philosopher and the precision of a scientist, Dr. Ahmed takes us on a journey, an inquiry into a question that has occupied the best minds in every age: What makes us human? The question has appeared in different apparel. What is man? What is his relationship to his environment, his Creator? What is his purpose? All these varying manifestations of dress, which have been adorned by Socrates, Aristotle, Marx, Plato, Ghazzali, Rumi, Confucius and by many others are inextricably linked to the essential question: What Makes Us Human?

This is part of the strength of Dr. Ahmed’s endeavor, he has asked the right question. Framing the question is an essential step that many miss or fail to grasp. The wrong question not only leads us in the wrong direction, but also often leads one away from the right answers. There is much wisdom in how Dr. Ahmed proceeds.

Let us examine his approach. I would categorize it as follows:

A.    He established the foundation, and

B.    He builds a conceptual framework. Its components being:

1)    The IMPORTANCE of the question,

2)    Its IMPACT,

3)    HISTORICAL backdrop and context,

4)    PROCESS and

5)    RESOLUTION (some answers).

Dr. Ahmed first establishes a foundation, and then upon it, he constructs a framework to assist our analysis. He is unambiguous. He lets us know that his base is the Qur’an. He has no crisis of confidence in the Qur’anic base upon which he stands. He not only addresses the importance of asking the question, he underscores its importance by uncovering the impact of not dealing with it properly: Man and his Many Prisons. Conversely, he shows us the great need and the greater reward in finding the answers. The complexities and plagues of the modern age, the gravity of materialism and the dearth of a spiritual reservoir, all cry out for assistance. In effect, Dr. Ahmed puts the matter in context so that the reader might better see its significance as a question worthy of our pursuit.

He does not stop there. Before we are done, Dr. Ahmed almost gives us a map of man’s intellectual history. From the evolutionist days of Darwin, through the glorious days of Greece and its major figures (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), with a stop off in the time of the Germanic period dominated by Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Marx and Engel, our imagination is stretched and challenged. Dr. Ahmed enriches this journey by drawing upon his own Indian background, sharing the manner in which Hindus and Buddhists have addressed the matter. Our voyage is replete with passages through Africa, Egypt in its antiquity, early America, and Europe, particularly its era of darkness and religious upheaval. The ground upon which we tread is not always smooth, and the terrain is often troublesome. Sometimes the regions we encounter are unexplored, or at the very least, not yet chartered. But with a skillful hand, Dr. Ahmed guides us through without bowing us down or losing us along the way. If we were to go no further, by this point in his book, we have witnessed a comprehensive and coherent synthesis of world history and some of man’s dealings with the important matters of every age, especially the question of what makes us human.

From the outer regions of man’s history and dealings, we go to the inner realms of his essence. As a philosophy and psychology major at Yale, by this time, I am having problems containing myself. He now really has my attention. Like the modern day philosopher Mortimer Adler’s revisit of the Six Great Ideas that consumed thinkers of antiquity, we now examine notions of justice, free will, how man learns, and before we are done, we examine man’s SOUL. The Qur’anic contribution here is most insightful. We expand our notion of soul into the larger concept of NAFS. The effect is comparable to what Columbus must have felt when he discovered that the world is not flat, it is round. In fact, there is a New World beyond the horizon.

We go on. In this New World, we acquire an expanded vision of old concepts. Speech, intelligence, the senses, reason, creativity, and knowledge take on increased momentum. The process through which Dr. Ahmed so skillfully takes us, and the questions we ask along the way, deepen our understanding. Whether we agree with Dr. Ahmed’s views or not, we can appreciate his thinking; and some of our own now begins to emerge. We learn that we have brought our intellect along as well. It is a companion that has benefited from the journey. Where do we go from here?

Revelation. Now the gems of Qur’anic thinking emerge from the bright light of the Qur’an. Some of the answers that the Qur’an offers to assist modern man in his long-standing and ancient responsibility as the crown of creation charged with vice-regency come to the fore. I shall not say more, except read what Dr. Ahmed has to say.

To quote Dr. Ahmed:

The fountain of Truth is available to all men and women. Some strive to find it and are favored. Others make an attempt but are not successful. A great many never make an attempt.

In What Makes Us Human?, Dr. Ahmed has made great strides. The full value of his contribution is only beginning. After reading What Makes Us Human?, it is clear that Dr. Ahmed has a lot more to say. This reader hopes he will continue to write.

God doth guide whom He wills to His light.

Qur’an (24:35)

Muhammad Abdullah, J. D.

Associate Director,

UCLA Graduate School of Management,

Los Angeles, Ca.

September 1990

CHAPTER 2

MAN AND HIS MANY

PRISONS

Humanity is asleep, concerned only with what is useless and living in a wrong world … Sufi Shaikh Sanai, teacher of Maulana Rumi

What does a spiritual tradition have to offer modern man? It is a vision of man which is consistent with his dignity, his self worth and his purpose in life. This vision has been lost to mankind. Man has gone off on a tangent and has been lost in speculation and a negation of his self worth. You look at modern man and you find him full of anxiety, unsure of himself and searching for meaning in life. This is happening even while man is surrounded by ever increasing material wealth, while the productive capacity of world economies keeps going up and the gross national product of nations goes from billions to trillions. The current generation in the affluent countries owns more things, grows more food, wears better clothes, lives in better homes than any other generation in the past. They own cars, ride in planes, hop from continent to continent at the speed of sound and discuss the possibility of interplanetary travel. Incomes keep going up and a million dollars which were at one time the privilege only of the Rockefellers and the sultans, don’t mean much any more. Even though there is so much material wealth and man has learned to exploit the earth very efficiently, there is a poverty of spirit. Man is unsure of who he is. He does not know what place in the cosmos he occupies. He does not know which way he is headed and what destiny beckons him.

What a spiritual tradition has to offer man is a perspective of his true self, a vision of his nobility, a clarification of his condition. A contemporary effort at the presentation of this vision cannot overlook the enormous strides that have been made in the physical understanding of the world. It must integrate this knowledge in a comprehensive world view, point out what is missing from the physical perspective and complete a picture that at present stands like a moth-eaten jig-saw puzzle. It must also examine other world views, other visions of man, offered by secular and religious traditions, so that the spiritual perspective stands clear in the comity of ideas.

It is essential that a people know their innate spirituality. A people who have forsaken their spirituality are much like a tree without roots. A single whiff of wind can knock it down and it has to be held up by external props. Such is the condition of modern man. He has been indoctrinated, exposed to and has come to accept theories of man and of his condition originating from a host of secular philosophies. He has lost touch with his own spiritual heritage. Man must revisit and make friends with that heritage.

Man becomes what he believes in. The task before us is to examine these assumptions, ask ourselves whether they make sense, show how they have led him to the state of anxiety he is in and to present the sublime vision of man as a trustee of his own free will, born into freedom, blessed with a soul, endowed with consciousness, able to carve out his own destiny in righteousness and justice.

Is Man His Material Self?

The materialist theory originated with the Greeks. Democratus (460—362 B.C.) was the greatest exponent of this theory. It received a great deal of attention by European thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hobbes (1588—1679 C.E.), for instance, formulated a mechanistic theory of psychology. According to him, all that the mind knows can be explained in terms of material motion. In the nineteenth century, Karl Marx advanced the theory of dialectic materialism in which the social and political condition of man is determined by material conditions.

According to the materialist theory man has been molded and created by material nature just as have been all other animals, plants and living organisms. It is assumed that all acts and events can be reduced to material tasks. For instance, the functioning of the mind is assumed to be nothing more than the functioning of the neurological system and psychology receives a mechanistic description.

Does it make sense to say that man is only his material self? The spiritual position is that man is what he is because of his attributes not because of the material composition of his body. If you examine the human body it is composed of 80 percent water plus traces of minerals like phosphorus, iron, etc. If all of these minerals were dried out and sold in the open market they would be worth less than five dollars. Indeed, a dead body is economically worthless and is dependent on the goodwill of those who are alive to dispose of it. But a man who is alive is priceless because of his attributes. He acts and leaves his trail through history on the sands of time. His indomitable will conquers, shapes, molds and fashions matter. His creativity imparts beauty to inanimate materials. He extracts minerals from the earth, processes them, cuts and shapes them and brings out properties that were hidden in them. He cuts a stone and makes a diamond out of it. He processes sand and makes a transistor out of it. He excavates the earth, extracts metals, and constructs rockets there from to traverse interplanetary space. Man is not part of matter; he rules matter. To equate man with matter is to deny him his creativity and his will. Matter cannot create. It cannot and does not choose. Certainly, matter has no will. How can the free will of man spring forth from dead matter?

Man As Thinker

I think, therefore I am is the succinct way this view can be summarized. It implies that man is what he is because of his rational faculties.

This view dates back to the classical period of the Greeks of which Aristotle (384—322 B.C.E.) was one of the great masters. It was refined and developed by Muslim scholars in the classical period of Islamic civilization. Ibn Rushd (known in Latin as Averoes, 1126—1198 C.E.), The Commentator as he is referred to by Western writers, is considered the greatest disciple of Aristotle. The West came into contact with rational thought through a translation of Arabic works into Latin in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This happened as a result of the conquest of Spain and Sicily by Crusader armies. In 1085 C.E. the city of Toledo fell, and the great libraries of that city came into Christian possession. The church set upon translating the great works of Muslim scholars and those of classical Greek thinkers from Arabic into Latin. Thus rational thought entered into the Latin West. It received further stimulus when a large number of Greek scholars of the Eastern Orthodox tradition left Constantinople (now Istanbul) after it was captured by the Osmania (Ottoman) Turks in 1453 C.E. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rational thought attracted a great many thinkers so much so that this period is referred to as the Age of Reason. Hegel (1770—1831) is considered one of the greatest rational philosophers of this age. The real is rational and the rational real sums up his philosophy. He considered art to be a creative expression of reason and proposed that history is the development from the subjectivity of the individual to the objectivity of the state. He was the father of dialectic philosophy and believed that the institutions of man develop only as a result of spiritual or material dialectics. The state was more important than the individual and thus the individual was to be submerged in the interests of the state. This view ran counter to individualism. But it has had two important offshoots. In the hands of the right wing German philosophers it formed the basis of German nationalism and Nazism. In the hands of the left wing philosophers,