Human potential(DW#804)
Sep 24, 2020
The one who acts with Ihsan is called a muhsin (the one who does excellent things, beautiful things, acts with excellence, virtue and grace).
In the Quran, we are told that He, God is the first Muhsin, that He is Ahsanul Khaliqeen, the best of creators, and that He is the one
Who made good everything that He has created [Holy Quran 32:7]
So God’s doing the beautiful began with creation itself, the crowing glory of creation is the human being, made in God’s most beautiful form.
In Sura Teen [The Fig], the Quran says:
Truly We created man in the most beautiful stature[Holy Quran 95:4]
Scholars remind us that this verse is one of the most emphatic affirmations of humanity’s exalted status, before which the angels were ordered to bow down. God declares in 38: 72:
I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My Spirit.
Here man is taken to mean all of humanity, male and female, believer and disbeliever alike. Taqwīm, translated stature, is a verbal noun from the verb qawwama, "to raise, shape, form, or arrange." Here it is taken to indicate something that has become what it truly ought to be by achieving harmony and balance.
While the verse alludes to the physical form and beauty of the human being, it is far beyond that. The physical is also a symbol of man’s "inner comportment," as human beings are "the best of God’s creation both outwardly and inwardly", as expressed in a famous ḥadīth qudsī, "Truly God created Adam in His image"
This narration is understood to mean that human beings are created with such attributes as life, knowledge, power, will, speech, hearing, and sight (the qualities most often used in Islamic theology to describe God), which are in fact Divine Attributes that God has caused to be reflected in human beings.
Human beings are able to manifest all of the Divine Names and Qualities, whereas all other created beings are only able to manifest a limited range of the Divine Names and Qualities. "For this reason the philosophers say that [man] is a microcosm, since all that makes up created entities is gathered within him".
Verses such as this and others in the Quran are a call to human beings to reflect upon their exalted status and to live in accordance with it. The work of the human being in this existence then, is to aspire to live up to his full potential by pursuing and practicing Ihsan.
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