ABOUT THE QURAN

The fact is that God Almighty has created man with great potential. It is not good to suppress this potential. One should rather avail of this potential for the sake of personality development. Our personality develops if we face the challenges posed by the society. The above spirituality can be termed as creative spirituality. For example, there is a verse in the Quran which says with reference to the believers that “they forgive people when they are angry” (3: 134). It means that spirituality is based on the formula of anger management rather than on trying to become a person who has no feelings of anger. The principle for such spirituality can be summarized thus; turn your negative sentiment into positive response; make friends out of opponents. Further, being spiritual should make one live a simple life and follow high ideals. Simple living and high thinking are complementary to each other. Simple living saves one from all kinds of distractions and high thinking saves one from being the victim of negative experiences. Simple living and high thinking are a sine qua non of the spiritual culture. Spirituality is mentioned as being of sublime character (68: 4). Sublime character is that character which is based on high thinking. If one reads the Quran, one will find that it lays great emphasis on sabr (39: 10), sulh (4: 128), forgiveness (42: 40), avoidance (7: 199). Though these teachings apparently seem to advocate passivity they are not so, for they embody great wisdom. The Quran tries to build that kind of mind which is able to manage all the affairs of life on the basis of spirituality. It is not passivity that is advocated but skill in the proper management of life’s problems. The purpose of this formula—indeed, it is the Quran’s greatest concern— is to concentrate on high goals and one who wants to achieve high goals has no option but to foster the aforementioned qualities. He has to try to effectively manage all undesirable situations. Otherwise, he will become preoccupied by trivial issues and will fail to continue his journey towards higher goals. In the chapter Al-Shams (The Sun) of the Quran, you will find these verses: “He who purifies it will indeed be successful, and he who corrupts it is sure to fail” (91: 9-10). These Quranic verses refer to the importance of personality development, laying emphasis not on its physical, but on its spiritual aspects. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the main theme of the Quran, personality development being its basic goal.