A Brief Study of the Koran

The Rise and Fall of Cultures and Civilizations 

First, let us see what civilization is: Civilization means creating order and harmony in human relations in a society so that destructive conflicts are replaced with competition toward perfection and greatness; people's social lives and communities cause the people's constructive potentials to be activated.

Here, "man-oriented" does not mean the ridiculous concept of "considering man as high as a god;" what we mean is that all efforts and values concerning civilization should be at man's service rather than man being sacrificed for deceiving phenomena called civilization. The most fundamental fact is that civilization and culture, with all their unique advantages, have been regarded in Islam as servants of man's intelligible life; man's intelligible life should not be at the service of a civilization or culture so as to activate his positive human potentials and supreme feelings. If man sometimes sacrifices himself in order to safeguard culture or civilization, it should serve to eradicate dangers to intelligible life, not a culture or civilization that does not care about his intelligible life.

A human society affected by the factors that can destroy a civilization or culture is like a human being who has risen due too certain factors, but then suddenly falls.

It is understood from the Koran and the Nahj-ul-balaqah that man is the start and the end of all cultures and civilizations. 

و لو ان اهل القري امنوا و اتقوا لفتحنا عليكم بركات من السماء و الارض و لكن كذبوا فاخذناهم بما كانوا يكسبون

"Had the peoples of the cities believed and been god-fearing, We would have opened upon them blessings from heaven and earth; but they cried lies and so We seized them for what they earned." (The Battlements, 7:96)

The Koran has cited factors like lack of gratitude toward God for His blessings (what brought about the fall of the Saba people) corruption, selfishness, tyranny, atrocity, and deviation from righteousness as what makes a civilization or culture fade away, so the opposites of these factors must be those which create and elevate them. Thus, giving thanks for God's blessings, good intentions, justice, acting on the path of the truth, and righteousness are factors that enrich cultures and civilizations. Many verses in the Koran amazingly state that cruelty and atrocity bring cultures and civilizations to their doom. 

و لقد اهلكنا القرون من قبلكم لما ظلموا

"We destroyed the generations before you when they did evil."

         (Jonah, 10:13)

و تلك القري اهلكناهم لما ظلموا و جعلنا لمهلكهم موعدا

"And those cities, We destroyed them when they did evil, and appointed for their destruction a tryst."(The Cave, 18:59)

The issue of providing a good living for people in order to create a great Islamic society is a highly important and delicate one, for reaching man's mental and spiritual comfort requires man's physical needs – which, depending on man's various needs can make quite a vast range – to be fulfilled. 

Basic Islamic references – the Koran and hadith – have dealt with it with great emphasis. Let us consider an example: 

 

يا ايها الذين امنوا استجيبوا لله و للرسول اذا دعاكم لما يحييكم

"O believers, respond to God and the Messenger when He calls you unto that which will give you life…"(The Spoils, 8:24)

There is no doubt that "giving life" in the above verses does not refer to "being alive and breathing," for animals can also explore, discover and struggle without even needing prophets; it refers to finding intelligible life. And intelligible life is indeed impossible without the readiness for a clean life, free from all the evil, greedy opportunism seen in all lifestyles like industry, agriculture and so forth.

 

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