ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Jihad al-Akbar, The Greatest Jihad: Combat with the Self Foreword In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful Human being is the most wonderful and complex creation of God, a creature who, aside from natural and animal instincts and physical reactions, has spiritual disposition and personality, which has made him excel over other living creatures; a being who thinks, chooses, and through rational planning and physical endeavor, he tries to remove the obstacles along the pursuit for a better living.

Along with this venture, he makes his life’s history and increases the learning which he has inherited from his predecessors and he paves the way for the future generation to have a more rapid development, more extended dominance over the nature, and further ingenuity in unraveling the unknown and mysteries of creation.

Yet, it is lamentable to note that amidst man’s endeavors to attain his desires and yearnings, and the hullabaloo of man’s encounter with the nature, an ever more precious truth has been consigned in the limbo of oblivion. That truth is the spirit and essence of man’s personality. In other words, it is the “man’s primordial self”, self-refinement and purification, and nurturing an exalted man—the man to whom God has bestowed a superior station over all creatures.

In understanding this truth, the true and authorized exegetes and expounders of the revelation say, “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” Yes, negligence of the self, overlooking the infinite aspects of man’s spirit, and inattentiveness with respect to man’s ingenuities in traversing the path of perfections and moral excellences are maladies with which most of the human societies have been afflicted.

Technological ascendancy and mechanical living as well as hegemony of the materialists and mammonists over the extensive regions of the world. On one hand, and the inability of divergent schools and thoughts in presenting a clear direction and exact explanation of man, on the other hand, have exacerbated retrogression and self-alienation.

In the midst of this, only the forerunners of monotheism, the prophets and vanguards of the sanctities of values and spiritualities can mould man in the form of their incessant struggle. And in consonance with the light of reason and the call of natural disposition they have guided human society towards perfection and lofty values.