ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A Study in the Philosophy of Islamic Rites The Link Between the Absolute Is a Two-fold Problem The observer, scrutinizing the different acts of the stage-story of man in history, may find out that the problems are different and the worries diversified in their given daily formulas.

But if we go beyond these formulas, infiltrating into the depth and essence of the problem, we will find one main essential and fixed problem with two edges or contrasting poles wherefrom mankind suffers during his civilized advancement along history. Looking from one angle, the problem is loss and nonentity which is the negative side of the problem. And from another angle, the problem is extreme in entity and belonging.

This is expressed by connecting the relative facts to which man belongs to an Absolute, thus expressing the positive side of the same problem. The Concluding Jurisprudence (of Islam) has given the name "atheism" to the first problem, which it expresses very obviously, and the name "idolatry" and Shirk (believing in one or many partners with God) as also an obvious expression of it.

The continuous struggle of Islam against atheism and Shirk is, in its civilized reality, a struggle against both sides of the problem in their historical dimensions. Both angles of the problem meet into one essential point, and that is: deterring man's advancing movement from a continuously good imaginative creativity.

The problem of loss means to man that he is a being in continuous loss, not belonging to an Absolute, to Whom he can support himself in his long and hard march, deriving help from His Absolutism and Encompassment, sustenance, and a clear vision of the goal and joining, through that Absolute, his own movement to the universe, to the whole existence, to eternity and perpetuity, defining his own relationship to Him and his position in the inclusive cosmic framework.

The movement at loss without the aid of an Absolute is but a random movement like that of a feather in the wind, the phenomena around it affect it while it is unable to affect them. There is no accomplishment or productivity in the great march of man along history without a connection to and promulgation with an Absolute in an objective march.

This same connection, on the other hand, directs the other side of the problem, that of extreme entity, by changing the "relative" to an "absolute," a problem which faces man continuously.