Quotes from Fazlur Rahman

Empirical" knowledge itself is of little benefit unless it awakens the inner perception of man as to his own situation, his potentialities, his risks, and his destiny

The successful are those who can be saved from their own selfishness.

The removal of God from human consciousness means the removal of meaning and purpose from human life.

All evil, all injustice, all harm that one does to someone else—in sum, all deviation from man's normative nature—in a much more fundamental way and in a far more ultimate sense one does to oneself, and not just metaphorically but literally.

To hold that the Qur'?n believes in an absolute determinism of human behavior, denying free choice on man's part, is not only to deny almost the entire content of theQu r'?n, but to undercut its very basis: the Qur'?n by its own claim is an invitation to man to come to the right path (hudan lil-n?s).

Philologists assure us that ?ulm in Arabic originally meant "to put something out of its proper place," so that all wrong of any kind is injustice, i.e., an injustice against the agent himself) is, therefore, a very common term in the Qur'?n, with its clear idea that all injustice is basically reflexive.

The essence of all human rights is the equality of the entire human race, which the Qur'?n assumed, affirmed, and confirmed. It obliterated all distinctions among men except goodness and virtue (taqw?): The reason the Qur'?n emphasizes essential human equality is that the kind of vicious superiority which certain members of this species assert over others is unique among all animals. This is where human reason appears in its most perverted forms.

People belittle or ignore or even rebel against God, because they view the processes of nature as having self-sufficient causes, normally regarded by them as ultimate. They do not realize that the universe is a sign pointing to something "beyond" itself, something without which the universe, with all its natural causes, would be and could be nothing.

the Qur'?n appears to be interested in three types knowledge for man. One is the knowledge of nature which has been made subservient to man, i.e., the physical sciences. The second crucial type is the knowledge of history (and geography): the Qur'?n persistently asks man to "travel on the earth" and see for himself what happened to bygone civilizations and why they rose and fell. The third is the knowledge of man himself.

Nor can one take an unfair attitude even towards enemies: "Let the enmity of a people[towards you] not determine you upon an unjust course; be fair, it is closer to taqw?. Quran

The essence of all human rights is the equality of the entire human race, which the Qur'?n assumed, affirmed, and confirmed. It obliterated all distinctions among men except goodness and virtue (taqw?)

The corruption of religious leaders, who were expected to be the source of spiritual force and regeneration, is the last step in the of decay of a community.

This struggle between good and evil, fresh and stale, new and decrepit, between the vigor of moral youth and the dotage of senility, is of positive benefit, for it keeps the perennial moral values alive

Nature exists for man to exploit for his own ends, while the end of man himself is nothing else but to serve God, to be grateful to Him, and to worship Him alone.

The purpose of man's creation is that he do good in the world, not substitute himself for God and think that he can make and unmake the moral law at his own convenience and for his own selfish and narrow ends. This is the difference between physical laws and the moral law—the one is to be used and put to service; the other must be obeyed and served. For God says

For the Qur'?n, it is neither strange nor out of tune nor blameworthy for a prophet that he is not always consistent as a human. It is nevertheless as a human that he becomes an example for mankind, for his average level of conduct is still so high that it is a worthy model for mankind.

The simple truth is that nowhere in human history is there another man who combined so uniquely and effectively in his person both the idealist and realist factors as did Mu?ammad (Peace be upon him)

If metaphysics enjoys the least freedom from assumed premises, man enjoys the least freedom from metaphysics in that metaphysical beliefs are the most ultimate and pervasively relevant to human attitudes; it is consciously or unconsciously the source of all values and of the meaning we attach to life itself.

Metaphysics, in my understanding, is the unity of knowledge and the meaning and orientation this unity gives to life. If this unity is the unity of knowledge, how can it be all that subjective? It is a faith grounded in knowledge.

top up position down ? bottom "The corruption of religious leaders, who were expected to be the source of spiritual force and regeneration, is the last step in the decay of a community.

The Qur'?n does not appear to endorse the kind of doctrine of a radical mind-body dualism found in Greek philosophy, Christianity, or Hinduism; indeed, there is hardly a passage in the Qur'?n that says that man is composed of two separate, let alone disparate, substances, the body and the soul.